HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY
BY
FRANK THILLY
Professor of Philosophy in Cornell University
NEW YORK
HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY
COPTBIGHT, 1914,
BT
HENET HOLT AND COMPANY
January, 1931
PRINTED IN THE U. S. A.
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
PAGE
History of Philosophy 1
Science, Philosophy, and Religion 3
General Classification 3
Sources of Study 3
Bibliography 4
GREEK PHILOSOPHY
PHILOSOPHY OF NATURE
1. ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT OF EARLY GREEK THOUGHT ... 7
History of Greek Philosophy 7
Environment 7
Politics 8
Literature 9
Religion 10
Philosophy 11
Survey of Greek Philosophy 11
Bibliography 13
2. DEVELOPMENT OF PRE-SOPHISTIC PHILOSOPHY 14
3. PROBLEM OF SUBSTANCE 16
Thales 16
Anaximander 17
Anaximenes 18
4. PROBLEM OF NUMBER 18
Pythagoras and his School 19
Pythagorean Number-Theory 20
Astronomy 21
6. PROBLEM OF CHANGE 22
Heraclitus 23
Union of Opposites 23
Law of Reason 25
Psychology and Ethics 25
School of Elea 26
Theology (Xenophanes) 27
Ontology (Parmenides) 28
Dialectics (Zeno and Melissus) 29
6. EXPLANATION OF CHANGE . 30
Solution of the Riddle 30
ill
iv CONTENTS
Empedoeles 31
Anaxagoras 33
Atomists 36
PROBLEMS OF KNOWLEDGE AND CONDUCT
7. AGE OF THE SOPHISTS 40
Progress of Thought 41
Greek Enlightenment 42
Sophists 44
Significance of Sophistry 48
8. SOCRATES 60
Life of Socrates 50
Problem of Truth 61
Socratic Method 63
Ethics 66
Pupils of Socrates 67
AGE OF RECONSTRUCTION
9. PLATO 58
Plato and his Problem 58
Dialectics 60
Doctrine of Ideas 63
Philosophy of Nature . 65
Psychology 67
Ethics 69
Politics 71
Plato's Historical Position 73
Platonic School 75
10. ABISTOTLE 75
Aristotle's Problems 75
Philosophy and the Sciences 78
Logic 79
Metaphysics 82
Physics . 85
Biology 87
Psychology 87
Ethics 89
Politics 93
Peripatetic School 94
ETHICAL MOVEMENT
11. THE OUTLOOK 94
12. EPICUREANISM 97
Epicurus 97
The Problem 98
CONTENTS v
PAGE
Logic 98
Metaphysics 99
Psychology 101
Ethics i . 101
Politics 103
13. STOICISM . . 104
Zeno and his School 104
Logic 105
Metaphysics 108
Cosmology 109
Psychology Ill
Ethics Ill
Politics . 114
Religion 114
Resume" of Greek Ethics 115
14. SKEPTICISM AND ECLECTICISM 116
Skeptical School 116
Doctrines of the School 117
Later Skeptics 119
Eclecticism 119
RELIGIOUS MOVEMENT
15. JEWISH-GREEK PHILOSOPHY 120
Philosophy and Religion 120
Beginnings of Jewish-Greek Philosophy 122
Philo 123
16. NEOPLATONISM 125
Neopythagoreanism 125
Neoplatonism 126
Plotinus 127
Theology 127
Three Stages of Being 128
Human Soul 130
Mysticism 131
Porphyry 131
Jamblichus 132
Close of School at Athens 132
PHILOSOPHY OF THE MIDDLE AGES
RISE OF CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY
17. BEGINNINGS OF CHRISTIANITY 133
Revival of Religion 133
Christianity 133
Christianity and Classical Culture 134
vi CONTENTS
PAOB
Scholastic Philosophy 136
Bibliography 137
18. DEVELOPMENT OF CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY 137
Early Theology 137
Gnostics 138
Apologists 140
Teachings of the Apologists 141
Logos-Doctrine 143
Free Will and Original Sin 146
19. WORLD- VIEW OF AUGUSTINE 147
Augustine >, . 147
Theory of Knowledge 148
Theology 149
Psychology 150
Ethics 151
Freedom of the Will 153
BEGINNINGS OF SCHOLASTICISM
20. DARK AGES 155
New Peoples . 155
Beginnings of Learning . 157
21. SPIRIT OF THE MIDDLE AGES 158
Principle of Authority 158
Problem of Scholasticism 159
Characteristics of Scholasticism . 161
Stages of Scholasticism 162
Sources of Scholasticism 163
22. JOHN SCOTUS ERIGENA 164
Faith and Knowledge 164
Pantheism 164
Mysticism 166
23. PROBLEM OF UNIVERSALS: REALISM AND NOMINALISM . . .166
Early Schoolmen 166
Roscelin's Nominalism 168
Meaning of Realism 168
DEVELOPMENT OF SCHOLASTIC REALISM
24. ANSELM OF CANTERBURY 169
His Proofs for the Existence of God 169
Contemporaries 171
25. PETER ABELABD AND THE SCHOOLMEN OF THE TWELFTH CENTUBY . 172
Abelard 172
The School of Chartres 174
The Sentences 175
John of Salisbury 175
CONTENTS vii
PAOB
26. MYSTICISM AND PANTHEISM ......... 175
Mysticism ............ 176
Pantheism .... ........ 177
27. SYMPTOMS OP UNREST .......... 178
Opposition to Scholasticism ........ 178
Organization of Learning ....... 179
Discovery of Aristotle ........ .180
CULMINATION OF SCHOLASTICISM
28. ABABIAN PHILOSOPHY 181
Greek Sources 181
Different Schools 192
Rationalists 184
Downfall of Philosophy in the East 185
Spanish School 186
Jewish Philosophy 188
29. PBEDOMINANCE OF ABISTOTLE 188
Scholasticism and Aristotle . . . . l. . . .188
Augustinian Theology 189
Albert the Great 190
30. THOMAS AQUINAS 191
Philosophy and Theology 191
Theory of Knowledge 193
Metaphysics 194
Theology 195
Psychology 196
Ethics 198
Politics 202
Followers of Thomas 203
31. ANTI- SCHOLASTIC TENDENCIES: MYSTICISM, PANTHEISM, AND
NATURAL SCIENCE 203
Mysticism ... 203
Logic 204
Natural Science 204
Heresy 206
Raymond Lully 207
DECLINE OF SCHOLASTICISM
32. JOHN DUNS SCOTUS 207
Opposition to Thomas 207
John Duns Scotus 208
Faith and Knowledge 208
Doctrine of Universals 209
Theology 211
Tiii CONTENTS
PAOB
Psychology , 212
God and the Moral Law 212
33. NOMINALISM 214
Rational Theology and Universals 214
William of Occam 215
Nominalism versus Realism 217
Followers of Occam 217
34. MYSTICISM 218
Orthodox and Heretical Mystics 218
Meister Eckhart 219
35. THE PROGRESS OF FREE THOUGHT 221
Medieval Rationalism 221
Rise of Nationalism 222
Heretical Tendencies 224
The Spirit of Free Inquiry 225
PHILOSOPHY OF THE RENAISSANCE
36. THE NEW ENLIGHTENMENT 227
Reason and Authority < 227
Bibliography 228
Humanism 228
37. NEW PHILOSOPHIES 229
Platonism 229
Nicolas of Cusa 230
The True Aristotle 231
Reform of Science and Philosophy 232
Reform of Logic 233
38. PHILOSOPHY OF NATURE AND NATURAL SCIENCE .... 233
Occultism 233
Paracelsus 234
Philosophy of Nature 235
Scientific Movement 236
39. GIORDANO BRUNO AND TOMMASO CAMPANELLA 238
Bruno 238
Campanella . . 239
40. NEW THEORIES OF THE STATE; PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION; AND
SKEPTICISM 241
Scholastic Theory of the State 241
Machiavelli 241
The New Politics 243
Evolution of the Modern State 244
The New Philosophy of Religion 245
Skepticism 246
41. RELIGIOUS REFORM 246
Spirit of the Reformation 246
CONTENTS ix
PAOB
Protestant Scholasticism 247
Mysticism of Jacob Boehme ........ 248
MODERN PHILOSOPHY
42. THE SPIBIT OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY 250
Characteristics of the Modern Era 250
Bibliography . 252
Empiricism and Rationalism 252
ENGLISH EMPIRICISM
43. FBANCTS BACON 255
Reform of Science 255
Inductive Method 257
Program of Philosophy 260
Philosophy of Man 260
Metaphysics and Theology 262
Bacon as an Empiricist 263
44. THOMAS HOBBES . 263
Aim and Method 264
Theory of Knowledge 265
Metaphysics 267
Psychology 268
Politics 269
CONTINENTAL RATIONALISM
45. RENfi DESCARTES 272
The Problem 272
Classification of the Sciences 274
J Method and Criterion of Knowledge 274
Proofs for the Existence of God 277
Truth and Error 279
External World 279
Mind and Body 281
Emotions 284
Innate Ideas 286
46. SUCCESSORS OF DESCARTES 287
The Problems 287
Occasionalism 288
Arnold Geulincx 289
Idealism (Nicolas Malebranche) 289
Mysticism (Blaise Pascal) 290
Skepticism (Pierre Bayle) 291
47. BENEDICT SPINOZA 292
Rationalism 292
Method 294
CONTENTS
Universal Substance 295
Attributes of God 296
Doctrine of Modes 298
The Human Mind 300
Theory of Knowledge 302
Intellect and Will 303
Ethics and Politics 305
Notion of God . 307
DEVELOPMENT OF EMPIRICISM
48. JOHN LOCKE 307
The Problem 307
Origin of Knowledge 309
Nature and Validity of Knowledge 313
Limits of Knowledge 315
Metaphysics 318
Ethics 322
Free Will 325
Politics 326
Education 328
49. SUCCESSOES OF LOCKE 329
Influence of Locke 329
Deists 330
Psychology 330
Ethics 332
Political Economy 334
50. GEORGE BEBKELEY 335
The Problem 335
Objects of Knowledge 336
World of Bodies 337
World of Spirits 339
Objections Answered 340
Knowledge of Ideas, Spirits, and Relations .... 342
Refutation of Dualism, Atheism, and Skepticism . . 342
51. DAVID HUME 345
The Problem 345
Science of Human Nature 346
Origin of Knowledge . . . 347
Cause and Effect 348
Validity of Knowledge 352
Knowledge of the External World 354
Soul-Substance 355
Freedom and Necessity 356
God 357
Anti-Intellectualism 361
CONTENTS xi
PAGE
62. RATIONALISTIC REACTION IN ENGLAND 362
Cambridge School 362
Samuel Clarke 362
Scottish Common-Sense School .363
DEVELOPMENT OF RATIONALISM IN GERMANY
53. GOTTFBIED WlLHELM LEIBNIZ 364
Rise of German Culture 364
The Problem 365
Notion of Force 367
Doctrine of Monads 368
Theology 373
Ethics 375
Logic and Theory of Knowledge 376
54. SUCCESSORS OF LEIBNIZ 380
Philosophy of Common-Sense^i 380
Mysticism .... ^r 381
PHILOSOPHY OF THE ENLIGHTENMENT
55. PBOQBESS OF ENLIGHTENMENT 382
Eighteenth Century 382
Voltaire 383
The Enlightenment in England 384
The German Enlightenment 385
Materialism and Evolutionism 386
Sciences 388
Jean Jacques Rousseau 389
CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY OF IMMANUEL KANT
56. IMMANUEL KANT 391
Progress of Modern Philosophy 392
Mysticism 393
Problem of Kant 393
Problem of Knowledge 397
Theory of Sense-Perception 399
Theory of the Understanding 402
Validity of Judgments 403
Knowledge of Things-in-Themselves 406
Impossibility of Metaphysics 408
(a) Rational Psychology 410
(6) Rational Cosmology 410
(c) Rational Theology 415
Use of Metaphysics in Experience 417
Use of Teleology in Nature 420
Practical Use of Reason and Moral Theology . . . .421
Ethics ... 422
xii CONTENTS
PAOB
57. SUCCESSORS OF KANT 426
The Problems 426
Idealism and the Thing-in-Itself 427
Critics of the New Philosophy (Herder, Jacobi, Fries) . . 428
GERMAN IDEALISM
68. JOHANN GOTTLIEB FICHTE .431
Post-Kantian Philosophy 431
Fichte's Principle 433
Aim and Method of the Science of Knowledge . . . . 435
Knowledge of the Ego 437
The External World 440
Objective Idealism 441
Moral Philosophy 445
69. FBIEDBICH WILHELM SCHELLING 448
The New Idealism and Romanticism 448
Philosophy of Nature 450
Philosophy of Mind 454
Logic and Intuition 455
60. FBIEDBICH SCHLEIEBMACHEB 458
Philosophy of Religion 458
Knowledge and Faith 459
God, the World, and the Individual 460
61. GEOBG WILHELM HEGEL 462
Hegel and his Predecessors 462
Problem of Philosophy 464
Dialectical Method 467
Thought and Being 469
Logic and Metaphysics 471
Philosophy of Nature and Philosophy of Mind . . . 472
Philosophy of Right 474
Art, Religion, and Philosophy 476
Hegelian Schools . .476
GERMAN PHILOSOPHY AFTER HEGEL
62. REALISM OF JOHANN FRIEDRICH HEBBABT 478
Opposition to Hegelianism 478
Realistic Ideal of Philosophy 479
Metaphysics 480
Psychology 482
Science of Values 484
F. H. Beneke 485
63. PHILOSOPHY OF WILL: SCHOPENHAUEB AND HABTMANN . . . 485
A. Schopenhauer 485
The World as Will and Idea 486
CONTENTS xiii
PAGE
Will in Nature and in Man 486
Ethics of Pity 488
Philosophy of the Unconscious (E. von Hartmann) . . 490
(54. NEOKANTIANISM 491
Reaction against Speculative Philosophy 491
Materialism 492
Revival of Criticism 493
Immanent Philosophy 494
Theological Neokantians 494
65. THE NEW IDEALISM . 494
Metaphysics and Natural Science . . . . . . 494
Hermann Lotze 495
Mechanism and Teleology 495
Gustav Theodor Fechner 498
Friedrich Paulsen 498
Wilhelm Wundt 498
Philosophy of Value 500
Wilhelm Windelband 500
H. Rickert, H. Miinsterberg, W. Dilthey 501
Rudolph Eucken 502
PHILOSOPHY IN FRANCE AND ENGLAND
66. POSITIVISM AND ITS OPPONENTS IN FRANCE 503
Reaction against Sensationalism < . . 503
Saint-Simon 504
Auguste Comte i 505
Reform of Society and the Sciences o6d
Evolution of Knowledge 507
Classification of the Sciences 508
Social Science 509
Ethics and the Religion of Humanity 510
Idealistic Opposition to Positivism 511
C. Renouvier 511
A. Fouillee 512
67. SCOTTISH RATIONALISTIC PHILOSOPHY 513
William Whewell 513
Sir William Hamilton 514
68. EMPIBICISM OF JOHN STUART MILL 516
Empiricism and Positivism 516
Science and Social Reform 518
' Logic 519
Inductive Inference 519
Warrant of Induction 520
Law of Causation 521
A priori Truths 524
The External World and the Self 526
xiv CONTENTS
PAGE
Mental and Moral Sciences 527
Ethology 529
Social Science 529
Ethics 532
69. EVOLUTIONISM OF HEBBEBT SPENCER 535
Ideal of Knowledge 535
Relativity of Knowledge 537
Persistence of Force 539
Mind and Matter 540
Law of Evolution 541
Biology 542
Psychology 543
The External World 544
Ethics 545
Politics 647
70. NEW IDEALISM IN ENGLAND AND IN THE UNITED STATES . . 549
Influence of German Idealism 549
Thomas Hill Green 550
Metaphysics 551
Man's Place in Nature 552
Ethics . . . . 553
F. H. Bradley 555
Metaphysics 555
Immediate Feeling and Thought 557
The Absolute 558
Josiah Royce 559
Contemporary Idealists 562
CONTEMPORARY REACTION AGAINST RATIONALISM AND
IDEALISM
New Tendencies 562
71. THE NEW POSITIVISTIC THEOBY OF KNOWLEDGE .... 564
Ernst Mach 564
R. Avenarius 568
72. PRAGMATISM 566
William James 566
John Dewey 571
Other Pragmatists 574
^ Friedrich Nietzsche 574
73. THE INTUTTIONISM OF HENRI BERGSON 577
Intellect and Intuition 577
Metaphysics 679
74. REALISTIC REACTION AGAINST IDEALISM 580
The Neo-Realists 580
75. RATIONALISM AND ITS OPPONENTS 382
Merits of Anti-Intellectualism • 581
CONTEXTS xv
PAGE
Appeal to Reason 583
Intelligence and Reality 584
Aim of Philosophy 586
The Block-Universe -587
Intellect and Intuition 588
Conclusion 589
693
A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY
INTRODUCTION
The history of philosophy aims to give a connected account
of the different attempts which have been made to solve the
problem of existence or to render intelligible to us our world
of experience. It is the story of the development of rea-
soned human thought from its earliest beginnings down to
the present time; not a mere chronological enumeration and
exposition of philosophical theories, but a study of these in their
relation to one another, the times in which they are produced,
and the thinkers by whom they are offered. While every system
of thought is more or less dependent on the civilization in which
it arises, the character of preceding systems, and the personality
of its author, it in turn exercises a potent influence on the con-
ceptions and institutions of its own and succeeding ages. The
history of philosophy must, therefore, endeavor to insert each
world-view in its proper setting, to understand it as a part of
an organic whole, to connect it with the intellectual, political,
moral, social, and religious factors of its present, past, and
future. It must also attempt to trace the line of progress in
the history of human speculation: show how the mental atti-
tude called philosophy arises, how the different problems and the
solutions that are offered provoke new questions and answers, and
what advance has been made, on the different stages, towards
reaching the goal.
In dealing with the different systems, we shall be careful to
let the authors present their ideas without extensive criticism
on our part. It will be found that the history of philosophy is,
in a large measure, its own best critic; that a system is con-
tinued, transformed, supplemented, or overcome by its successors,
that the errors and inconsistencies contained in it are brought
to light ; and that it is often made the starting-point of new lines
2 INTRODUCTION
of thought. The historian should assume an impartial and
objective attitude in his study, and, so far as he can, guard
against obtruding his own philosophical theories into the dis-
cussions. It will, however, be impossible to eliminate the personal
element altogether; to some extent the historian's preconcep-
tions are bound to shine through his work. They will manifest
themselves in many ways: in the emphasis which he lays on
particular philosophies, in his notion of what constitutes prog-
ress and decline, — even in the amount of space devoted to
different thinkers. All this is unavoidable. The philosopher,
however, should be permitted to tell his own story without being
interrupted by constant objections before he has had the oppor-
tunity of stating his case completely. And we should not criti-
cise a system solely in the light of present achievement, that is,
measure it by present standards to its hurt. Compared with
modern theories, the early Greek world-views seem naive, child-
ish, and crude, and it would be no great mark of intelligence
to ridicule them ; whereas, regarded from the standpoint of their
times, as the first efforts of a people to understand the world,
they may well stand out as epoch-making events. A system of
thought must be judged in the light of its own aims and historical
setting, by comparison with the systems immediately preceding
and following it, by its antecedents and results, by the develop-
ment to which it leads. Our method of study will, therefore, be
historico-critical.
The value of the study of the history of philosophy ought to
be apparent. Intelligent persons are interested in the funda-
mental problems of existence and in the answers which the human
race has sought to find for them on the various stages of civiliza-
tion. Besides, such a study helps men to understand their own
and other times; it throws light on the ethical, religious,
political, legal, and economic conceptions of the past and the
present, by revealing the underlying principles on which
these are based. It likewise serves as a useful preparation for
philosophical speculation; passing, as it does, from the simpler
to the more complex and difficult constructions of thought, it
reviews the philosophical experience of the race and trains the
mind in abstract thinking. In this way we are aided in working
out our own views of the world and of life. The man who tries
INTRODUCTION 3
to construct a system of philosophy in absolute independence
of the work of his predecessors cannot hope to rise very far
beyond the crude theories of the beginnings of civilization.
Science and philosophy may be said to have had their origin
in religion, or rather, originally science, philosophy, and reli-
gion were one : mythology is the primitive attempt to understand
the world. Man at first interprets the phenomena which, for
some reason or other, largely practical, attract his attention,
according to his crude experiences. He projects his own nature
into them, fashions them after his own image, animates them,
regards them as somehow alive and ' ' ensouled. ' ' Among many
peoples, such vague and indefinite animistic notions are trans-
formed into clear and distinct conceptions of personalities, —
of a higher order than human beings, but yet essentially resem-
bling human beings (polytheism). None of these mythological
creations, however, can be regarded as the work of single indi-
viduals or as the product of logical thought ; they are expressions
of the collective soul, in which imagination and will play the
most important role.
A universal history of philosophy would include the philoso-
phies of all peoples. Not all peoples, however, have produced
real systems of thought, and the speculations of only a few can
be said to have had a history. Many do not rise beyond the
mythological stage. Even the theories of Oriental peoples, the
Hindus, Egyptians, Chinese, consist, in the main, of mythological
and ethical doctrines, and are not thoroughgoing systems of
thought : they are shot through with poetry and faith. We shall,
therefore, limit ourselves to the study of the Western countries,
and begin with the philosophy of the ancient Greeks, on whose
culture our own civilization, in part, rests. We shall follow the
customary classification of universal history and divide our field
into Ancient Philosophy, Medieval or Christian Philosophy, and
Modern Philosophy.
The sources of our study will be (1) the works of the philoso-
phers or the fragments of their writings, in cases where only
the latter are extant: primary sources. (2) In the absence of
either of these, we have to depend, for our knowledge of their
teachings, on the most trustworthy and accurate accounts of
them by others. Among the sources which will help us here are
4 INTRODUCTION
expositions of the lives and doctrines of particular philosophers,
general and special treatises on the history of philosophy, criti-
cisms of certain teachings, and references to them in various
books. Such secondary sources are indispensable where the
primary sources have disappeared. But even when this is not
the case, the secondary sources are of great value in so far
as they may throw light on the systems with which they deal.
The historian of philosophy will seek help from all works that
contribute to our knowledge of the subject, and among these the
secondary sources play an important part. He will also appeal
to whatever fields of research may give him an understanding
of the spirit of the times under examination: to the history of
all human activities, such as science, literature, art, morals,
education, politics, and religion.
Works on the history of philosophy (including ancient, medieval,
and modern). Introductory: K. Fischer, History of Modern Philoso-
phy, vol. I, Book I, transl. by Gordy; B. D. Alexander, A Short
History of Philosophy; Weber, History of Philosophy, transl. by
Thilly; Schwegler, History of Philosophy, transl. by Seelye; A. K.
Rogers, A Student's History of Philosophy; Windelband, History of
Philosophy, transl. by Tufts; Turner, History of Philosophy; Stockl,
Handbook of the History of Philosophy, transl. by Coffey; Ciishman,
History of Philosophy. See also : J. B. Bury, History of the Freedom
of Thought; J. M. Robertson, Short History of Free Thought, 2 vols.
More advanced works : J. E. Erdmann, History of Philosophy, 3 vols.,
transl. by Hough ; Ueberweg, History of Philosophy, 3 vols., transl. by
Morris (from the German ed. of 1874, which has been frequently
revised and supplemented by M. Heinze and is now in its 10th ed.) ;
Hegel, Lectures on the History of Philosophy, 3 vols., transl. by Hal-
dane; Allgemeine Geschichte der Philosophic (prepared by a number
of German scholars for the series Kultur der Gegenwart; contains
also sections on primitive philosophy, Hindu, Mohammedan and Jewish,
Chinese, and Japanese philosophy) ; Deussen, Allgemeine Geschichte
der Philosophic, vol. I (three parts) contains Oriental philosophy;
vol. II, Greek philosophy and philosophy of the Bible; Grosse Denker,
by many German scholars; Schwarz, Der Gottesgedanke in der
Philosophic.
Histories of special subjects : Lange, History of Materialism, 3 vols.,
transl. by Thomas; Lasswitz, Geschichte der Atomistik; Willmann,
Geschichte des Idealismus, 3 vols.; R. Richter, Der Skeptizismus in
der Philosophic, 2 vols. Logic: Prantl, Geschichte der Logik, 4 vols.;
Uphues, Geschichte der Philosophic als Erkenntniskritik; Adamson,
Short History of Logic. Psychology : Dessoir, Outlines of the History
of Psychology, transl. by Fisher; Klemm, History of Psychology, transl.
by Wilm; J. M. Baldwin, History of Psychology, 2 vols.; Bosanquet,
INTRODUCTION 5
History of Esthetics; Schasler, Kritische Geschichte der Aesthetik.
Ethics : Paulsen, System of Ethics, ed. and transl. by Thilly, pp. 33-215 ;
Eucken, Problem of Human Life, transl. by Hough and Boyce Gibson ;
Sidgwick, History of Ethics; R. A. P. Rogers, Short History of Ethics;
Wundt, Ethics, vol. II; Martineau, Types of Ethical Theory, 2 vols.
(Hyslop, Elements of Ethics, Seth, Study of Ethical Principles, Thilly,
Introduction to Ethics, contain historical material.) Rand, Classical
Moralists (selections from writers) ; Watson, Hedonistic Theories from
Aristippus to Spencer; Janet, Histoire de la philosophic morale et
politique. Politics: Pollock, History of the Science of Politics; Dun-
ning, History of Political Theories; Bluntschli, Geschichte des allge-
meinen Staatsrechts. Education : P. Munroe, Text-book in the History
of Education; Graves, History of Education, 3 vols.; Davidson, His-
tory of Education; Williams, History of Education; Schmid, Geschichte
der Erziehung. Science: Whewell, History of Inductive Sciences, 3
vols.; Bryk, Geschichte der Naturwissenschaften; German works by
Strunz, Bryk, Schultze; H. F. Osborn, From the Greeks to Darwin;
Hannequin, Etudes d'histoire des sciences; histories of mathematics by
Cajori, Ball, Cantor, Montucla, Chasles; of chemistry by Kopp; of
astronomy by Berry, Dreyer, Wolf, Delambre.
Dictionaries of philosophy : Baldwin, 2 vols. ; German works by
Eisler, Mauthner, Kirchner; Eisler, Philosophen-Lexikon. Consult
also articles in encyclopedias, especially Encyclopedia Britannica,
Hastings, Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics, Catholic Encyclopedia,
Jewish Encyclopedia, P. Munroe, Cyclopedia of Education.
Bibliographies in Rand, Bibliography of Philosophy; Baldwin, Dic-
tionary of Philosophy, vol. Ill ; Ueberweg-Heinze, op. cit., 10th German
ed. Complete bibliographies of books published since 1895 in Archiv
fur systematische Philosophie; since 1908 in Ruge, Philosophic der
Gegenwart.
Philosophical journals: Philosophical Review, International Journal
of Ethics, Journal of Philosophy, Psychology, and Sc. Methods, Monist,
Mind, Proceedings of Aristotelian Society, Archiv fur Philosophie,
Kant-Studien, Zeitschrift fur Philosophic, Vierteljahresschrift fur wiss.
Philosophie, Zeitschrift fur positivistische Philosophie, Philosophisches
Jahrbuch, Jahrbuch fur Philosophie, Logos, Revue philosophique,
Revue de metaphysique et de morale, Revue de philosophic, Annee
philosophique, Revue des sciences philosophiques et theologiques, Revue
neoscolastiques, Revue thomiste, Annales de philosophic chretienne,
Rivista di filosofia, Rivista filosofica, Rivista di filosofia e scienze afflni,
La cultura filosofica, Rivista neoscolastica.
Psychological journals: Psychological Review, American Journal
of Psychology, British Journal of Psychology, Archiv fur Psychologic,
Psychologische Studien, Zeitschrift fur Psychologic, Archives de psy-
chologic, La revue psychologique, Annee psychologique, Rivista di
psicologia, Annales di psicologia.
GREEK PHILOSOPHY
PHILOSOPHY OF NATURE
1. ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT OF EARLY GREEK THOUGHT
Few of the ancient peoples advanced far beyond the mytho-
logical stage, and perhaps none of them can be said to
have developed a genuine philosophy except the
Greeks. It is for this reason that we begin our ac- History of
count with them. They not only laid the founda-
tions upon which all subsequent systems of Western
thought have been reared, but formulated nearly all the prob-
lems and suggested nearly all the answers with which European
civilization occupied itself for two thousand years. Their
philosophy is one of the best examples of the evolution of
human thinking from simple mythological beginnings to complex
and comprehensive systems that any people has furnished. The
spirit of independence and the love of truth which animate their
thinkers have never been surpassed and rarely equaled. For
these reasons the study of Greek philosophy ought to be an
attractive and valuable discipline to the student interested in
higher speculative thought.
By the history of Greek philosophy we mean the intellectual
movement which originated and developed in the Hellenic world.
We shall include in it, however, not only the systems of the
Greeks themselves, but also those which exhibit the essential
features of Greek thinking and which are manifestly the prod-
ucts of Hellenic civilization, whether they flourish at Athens,
Rome, Alexandria, or in Asia Minor.
The people whose philosophy we are to study inhabited the
mountain peninsula of Greece, a territory whose natural char-
acteristics were favorable to the production of a _ .
Environment
strong and active race, and whose many harbors,
while encouraging navigation and commerce, furnished an
7
8 GREEK PHILOSOPHY
outlet for emigration over the islands to the lands beyond.
Greek colonies were established in an unbroken chain from the
mainland to the coasts of Asia Minor and, eventually, to Egypt,
Sicily, Southern Italy, and the Pillars of Hercules; without
losing touch with the mother country, these colonies enjoyed the
benefits which active contact with peoples of different customs,
traditions, and institutions is apt to bring. The wonderful
economic progress resulting from such conditions, the develop-
ment of commerce, industry, and trade, the rise of cities, the
accumulation of wealth, and the increasing division of labor
exercised a profound influence on the social, political, intellectual,
and religious life of the entire Greek world and opened the way
to a new and richer civilization. This physical and human envi-
ronment helped to stimulate both intellect and will ; it gave men
a broader outlook upon life and the world, quickened the spirit
of criticism and reflection, led to the development of unique
personalities, and made possible a varied progress along all lines
of human thought and action. To a people naturally endowed
with keen and quick intelligence, a burning thirst for knowledge,
a fine sense of beauty, and practical energy and ambition, it sup-
plied the materials upon which to try its powers and talents;
and enabled it to make rapid progress in the field of politics,
religion, morals, literature, and philosophy.
The political fortunes of the Hellenic city-states, on the main-
land and in the colonies, exhibit certain common characteristics :
everywhere we find an evolution from the patri-
archal monarchy through the aristocracy to democ-
racy. The society described by the Homeric epics is a caste so-
ciety and the form of government a patriarchal monarchy. The
acquisition of wealth and culture by the few leads to the establish-
ment of aristocratic forms of government and, as time goes on, to
the rise of oligarchies. With changing social conditions, a citizen
class (the Demos) arises and begins to dispute the leadership
of the privileged class; and through the efforts of bold and
ambitious men, who wrest the power from the lords, " tyrannies "
are established throughout the Hellenic world, during the
seventh and sixth centuries B.C. In the end, the people them-
selves assume the reins of government, and the tyranny gives
way to the democracy.
EARLY GREEK THOUGHT 9
We may view these conditions as the result of the awakening
of the Greek consciousness. The new movement is both a symp-
tom and a cause of enlightenment : it is the outward .
„ .. , .,. . ,. Literature
sign of growing reflection and criticism of the tradi-
tional; it issues in a protest against the old institutions and
in a demand for reform. The history of Greek literature before
the sixth century B.C. reveals the development of a spirit of
reflection and criticism similar to that expressing itself in
political life. The Homeric cheerfulness and objectivity, char-
acteristic of the naivete of childhood, gradually disappear; the
poets become less optimistic, more critical and subjective. Al-
ready in Homer we find occasional moral reflections on the
behavior of men, the foolishness of mortals, the misery and
transitoriness of life, and the wickedness of injustice. In Hesiod
the note of criticism and pessimism grows louder; his Works
and Days is a moral handbook that attacks the foibles of the
age and offers moral maxims and practical rules of life, praising
the home-spun virtues and lamenting the decline of the good
old days. In mournful and satiric strain, poets of the seventh
century (Alcaeus, Simonides, Archilochus) decry the rise of
the tyrannis and deplore the weakness of men, urging them,
however, to bear their lot bravely and to leave the outcome
to the gods. The didactic and pessimistic spirit is still more
marked in the poetry of the sixth century ; the political fortunes
of the people are made the subject of discussion, and the new
order of things is condemned, often with great bitterness. To
this period belong the fable-writer JSsop and the so-called
gnomic poets (Solon, Phocylides, Theognis), whose wise maxims
embodying ethical reflections may be characterized as an em-
bryonic moral philosophy. The truth is, the individual is begin-
ning to analyze and criticise life, — not merely living it, but
pondering on it; — he is no longer content to give voice to the
customary conceptions and ideals of his race, but is prompted
to set forth his own personal ethical, political, and religious
thoughts and yearnings. Eventually, this spirit of inquiry and
discontent, which results from larger and more complex experi-
ences, leads to a philosophical study of human conduct in the
form of theories of ethics and politics.
The religious development follows along similar lines. Origi-
10 GREEK PHILOSOPHY
nally a form of nature-worship, the Greek religion develops
into polytheism and creates a society of gods peopled by the
imagination of the poets with a galaxy of superior
beings, who lead a historical life. In this field, too,
the spirit of reflection and criticism does its work and helps to
make religion ethical and rational. Reflection on the character
and conduct of the gods, as portrayed by Homer, and the re-
finement of the moral consciousness bring about a purer con-
ception of Olympus: with the progress of civilization the gods
themselves become moral and Zeus is conceived as the ethical
head of the divine social order, the protector of right on earth
and in heaven.
The metaphysical need, on the other hand, finds expression
in theories of the gods, their origin and relation to one another
and the world. Men begin to think about the traditional
mythology, asking themselves how such gods arose ; they attempt,
in a crude way, to account for things, using the traditional
mythology as the basis of their speculations. The oldest example
of such a primitive genealogy of the gods, or theogony, is the
Theogony of Hesiod. To the same class of literature belong
the theogony of Pherecydes of Syros (540 B.C.) and the Orphic
cosmogonies, which, perhaps, rest on an older theogony (per-
haps of the sixth century B.C.), but in their present form do
not date back farther than the first century B.C. According to
the Theogony of Hesiod, Chaos first arose, then Gaia (the earth),
then Eros (love). Out of Chaos came Erebos (darkness) and
Nux (night) and from the union of the two, JSther (light) and
Hemera (day). The earth brings forth the sea and, in union
with the heaven (Uranos), the rivers. From the seed of Uranos
springs Aphrodite (love) ; that is, the rains from heaven cause
life to germinate in nature. The attempt is here made to
explain the origin of things, not in a scientific and logical man-
ner, as we understand these terms, but with the aid of the poetic
imagination and the popular mythology. The poet asks himself
how the things and the occurrences around him came about, and
accounts for them, in terms of simple every-day experiences, as
the effects of generation or human volition : Darkness and Night
together generate the Day ; the Earth fructified by Heaven gives
birth to the rivers.
EARLY GREEK THOUGHT 11
Theogonies, though not philosophy, are a preparation for
philosophy. Already in the mythological notions there is present
a germ of philosophical thought, a desire for some
kind of explanation, even though the demand is
rooted in the will and easily satisfied by pictures of the imagi-
nation. The theogonies and cosmogonies represent an advance
over the mythologies; they are an attempt to rationalize the
mythical world and to explain the origin of the beings supposed
to govern occurrences in nature and events in the life of man.
These theories, however, are still, in a large measure, such as
satisfy the poetical imagination rather than the logical intellect,
and they appeal to supernatural forces and agencies rather than
to natural causes. Philosophy arises when fancy is superseded
by reason, imagination by intellect; when the supernatural
agencies are abandoned, as principles of explanation, and facts
of experience made the basis of investigation and explanation.
It is an effort to account for things and occurrences in a more
or less impartial and unprejudiced way, independently of the
popular mythology, and unhampered by immediate practical
needs. Appearing in Greece during the sixth century B.C., in
an age of enlightenment, it is the natural outcome of the spirit
of inquiry which we have described and which expressed itself
in all the forms of Greek mental life.
Gomperz, The Greek Thinkers, vol. I; Zeller, Outlines of the His-
tory of Greek Philosophy, and Philosophy of the Greeks, vol. I;
Encyclopedia Britannica, articles under Greece, Greek Art, Literature,
Religion, etc.
Greek philosophy begins with an inquiry into the essence of
the objective world. It is, at first, largely interested in external
nature (philosophy of nature), and only gradually
turns its eye inward, on man himself, or becomes Survey of
humanistic. The first great problem is: What is
nature and, therefore, man? the second: What is
man and, therefore, nature? The shifting of the interest from
nature to man leads to the study of human-mental problems:
the study of the human mind and human conduct, the study
of logic, ethics, psychology, politics, poetics. The attention is
next centered, more particularly, upon the ethical problem : What
12 GREEK PHILOSOPHY
is the highest good, what is the end and aim of life? Ethics is
made the main issue ; logic and metaphysics are studied as aids
to the solution of the moral question. Finally, the problem of
God and man's relation to him, the theological problem, is pushed
into the foreground, and Greek philosophy ends, as it began,
in religion.
(1) The first great problem was taken up in what we may
call the Pre-Sophistic period, which extends, let us say, from
about 585 to the middle of the fifth century B.C. The earliest
Greek philosophy is naturalistic: its attention is directed to
nature ; it is mostly hylozoistic : it conceives nature as animated
or alive ; it is ontological : it inquires into the essence of things ;
it is mainly monistic : it seeks to explain its phenomena by means
of a single principle ; it is dogmatic : it naively presupposes the
competency of the human mind to solve the world-problem. The
scene of the philosophy of this period is the colonial world;
it flourishes in Ionia, Southern Italy, and Sicily.
(2) The period of the Sophists, who belong to the fifth cen-
tury, is a period of transition. It shows a growing distrust of
the power of the human mind to solve the world-problem and
a corresponding lack of faith in traditional conceptions and
institutions. This movement is skeptical, radical, revolutionary,
indifferent or antagonistic to metaphysical speculation; in call-
ing attention to the problem of man, however, it makes neces-
sary a more thorough examination of the problem of knowledge
and the problem of conduct, and ushers in the Socratic period.
Athens is the home of this new enlightenment and of the great
schools of philosophy growing out of it.
(3) The Socratic period, which extends from 430 to 320 B.C.,
is a period of reconstruction. Socrates defends knowledge
against the assaults of skepticism, and shows how truth may be
reached by the employment of a logical method. He also paves
the way for a science of ethics by his efforts to define the mean-
ing of the good. Plato and Aristotle build upon the foundations
laid by the master and construct rational theories of knowledge
(logic), conduct (ethics), and the State (politics). They like-
wise work out comprehensive systems of thought (metaphysics),
and interpret the universe in terms of mind, or reason, or spirit.
We may, therefore, characterize this philosophy as critical: it
EARLY GREEK THOUGHT 13
investigates the principles of knowledge; as rationalistic: it ac-
cepts the competence of reason in the search after truth; as
humanistic: it studies man; as spiritualistic or idealistic: it
makes mind the chief factor in the explanation of reality. It is
dualistic in the sense that it recognizes matter as a secondary
factor.
(4) The last period, which extends from 320 B.C. to 529 A.D.,
when the Emperor Justinian closed the schools of the philoso-
phers, is called the Post- Aristotelian. The scene is laid in
Athens, Alexandria, and Rome. Two phases may be noted, an
ethical and a theological one. (a) The paramount question with
Zeno, the Stoic, and Epicurus, the hedonist, is the problem of
conduct : What is the aim of rational human endeavor, the high-
est good? The Epicureans find the answer in happiness; the
Stoics in a virtuous life. Both schools are interested in logic
and metaphysics: the former, because such knowledge will
destroy superstition and ignorance and contribute to happiness ;
the latter, because it will teach man his duty as a part of a
rational universe. The Epicureans are mechanists; according
to the Stoics, the universe is the expression of divine reason,
(b) The theological movement, which took its rise in Alexandria,
resulted from the contact of Greek philosophy with Oriental
religions. In Neoplatonism, its most developed form, it seeks
to explain the world as an emanation from a transcendent God
who is both the source and the goal of all being.
Consult the general histories of philosophy and special works men-
tioned on pages 4 and 5; also the following: Marshall, History of
Greek Philosophy; Windelband, History of Ancient Philosophy, transl.
by Cushman; Zeller, Outlines of History of Greek Philosophy, transl.
by Alleyne and Abbott; Benn, Philosophy of Greece, 2 vols.; J. Bur-
net, History of Greek Philosophy; Adamson, Development of Greek
Philosophy; Schwegler, Geschichte der griechischen Philosophic.
More advanced works: Zeller, Philosophy of the Greeks (the stand-
ard work), transl. by Alleyne and others, 9 vols.; Gomperz, Greek
Thinkers, transl. by Magnus, 4 vols.; M. Wundt, Geschichte der
griechischen Philosophic, 2 vols.; Doling, Geschichte der griechischen
Philosophic, 2 vols.; Siebeck, Untersuchungen zur Philosophic der
Griechen, 2d ed.
Special works: H. 0. Taylor, Ancient Ideals; Mahaffy, History of
Greek Civilization, and What we Owe to the Greeks; Cornford, From
Religion to Philosophy (treats Greek philosophy as an evolution from
Greek religion) ; Robert Eisler, Weltenmantel und Himmelszelt (Greek
14 GREEK PHILOSOPHY
philosophy a continuation of Iranian traditions of mysteries of Asia
Minor and India) ; Campbell, Religion in Greek Literature; Caird,
Evolution of Theology in the Greek Philosophers, 2 vols. ; Rohde,
Psyche; Gilbert, Griechische Eeligionsphilosophie; Krische, Die the-
ologischen Lehren der griechischen Denker; Heinze, Lehre vom Logos,
etc.; Aall, Geschichte der Logosidee, etc. Logic: Beare, Greek The-
ories of Elementary Cognition; German works by Natorp and Freytag.
Psychology: works by Siebeck (from Aristotle to Thomas of Aquino)
and Chaignet. Ethics: by Schmidt, Luthardt, Ziegler, Kostlin; Denis,
Histoire des theories et des idees morales dans I'antiquite; also Heinze,
Euddmonismus in der griechischen Philosophie. Education: works by
Mahaffy and Laurie; Davidson, Aristotle and Ancient Educational
Ideals. Science: histories of mathematics by Gow, Allman, Brett-
schneider, Hankel.
Histories of Greece: Bury, Grote (12 vols.), Meyer (5 vols.). His-
tories of Greek literature by Jevons, Murray, Croiset, Mahaffy (3 vols.),
Christ, Bergkh (4 vols.).
For accounts of the original sources see Windelband, Ancient Philos-
ophy, pp. 8-11; Zeller, Outlines, pp. 7-14; Ueberweg-Heinze, Part I,
§7.
Collections of fragments and passages relating to philosophers by
Mullach, 3 vols., Ritter and Preller, Diels, Fragmente der Vorsokratiker
(Greek and German), 2d ed., Doxographi Graeci, and Poetarum phi-
losophorum fragmenta. Consult always Aristotle, Metaphysics, Bk. I.
English translations of fragments, etc.: Fairbanks, First Philoso-
phers of Greece; Bakewell, Source-Book of Ancient Philosophy. See
also Jackson, Texts to Illustrate the History of Philosophy from
Thales to Aristotle.
2. DEVELOPMENT OF PRE-SOPHISTIC PHILOSOPHY
Under this head we shall consider the Ionian " physicists,"
or nature-philosophers, the Pythagoreans, Heraclitus, the
Eleatics, Empedocles, the Atomists, and Anaxagoras. The
speculative impulse finds genuine expression in the Ionian
physicists, who attempt to explain phenomena by natural causes
and without appeal to mythical beings. They ask the question :
What is the basal stuff of which the world is composed? and
answer in terms of sense-perception: it is either water or air
or a hypothetical undifferentiated mass. By means of a single
principle (monism) they endeavor to account for the qualities
of different bodies and their changes : these are transformations
of the primal stuff. As observation shows, substances are
changed into other substances (water, for example, becomes
steam) ; hence the original element must have been similarly
transmuted into the different substances found in our present
PRE-SOPHISTIC PHILOSOPHY 15
world of experience. The fact of change itself is explained by
the view, — tacitly assumed by all the early Greek thinkers, —
that reality is alive: the original substance bears within itself
the cause of motion and change (hylozoism). The Pythagoreans
fix their attention, not so much upon a sense-perceived substance,
as upon the relations existing between things, the order, uni-
formity, or harmony in the world. Since this may be expressed
in numbers, they make entities of numbers, conceiving them as
the primary causes of things. Heraclitus resembles the lonians
in assuming an animated substance (fire) as the principle, but
consciously singles out the fact of change, or becoming, as the
significant thing: the world, according to him, is in constant
change ; everything is in a state of flux ; there is no real perma-
nence in things. He also brings out, more clearly than did his
predecessors, the idea that there is a reason in the world con-
trolling its happenings. The Eleatics, too, turn their attention
to the notion of change, but reject it as absolutely inconceivable :
it is unthinkable that an element, like fire, should ever become
anything else; a thing cannot become something other than
itself; whatever is, must remain what it is; permanence, not
change, is the significant characteristic of reality. The problem
thus created is taken up by Empedocles, who agrees with the
Eleatics that absolute change is impossible, that nothing can
become anything else, in the real sense of the term. Nothing can
come from nothing; nothing can go into nothing; nothing can
change into anything absolutely different. And still, so he holds
with Heraclitus, things do change. The change, however, is only
relative, not absolute. There are permanent elements or par-
ticles; these are combined to form bodies: this is origin; and
the parts of the bodies are separated: this is decay. Nothing
can really originate or change or disappear in the absolute sense ;
but the permanent, unchangeable elements of the world can and
do change their relations to one another. The Atomists accept
this new conception in principle, but differ from Empedocles in
several respects: instead of assuming, as he did, four elements
(earth, air, fire, water) and certain moving forces, personified
as Love and Hate, they presuppose numberless minute indivisible
particles of matter, called atoms, which are more elementary
than earth, air, fire, water; and conceive motion as inherent
16 GREEK PHILOSOPHY
in the atoms themselves. Anaxagoras also subscribes to the prin-
ciples of explanation offered by Empedocles and the Atomists,
with this difference : he assumes countless elementary qualities
and introduces the notion of a mind, outside of these elements,
to explain the origin of their motion. The Sophists, finally,
assume a negative attitude towards all these theories, declar-
ing the attempts to solve the world-problem to be futile, on the
ground that certain knowledge in this field is out of the question.
Special works : Burnet, Early Greek Philosophy, 2d ed. ; Heidel,
Study of the Concept of Nature among Pre-Socratics; Teichmiiller,
Studien; Byk, Vorsokratische Philosophic; Goebel, Vorsokratische Phi-
losophic ; Schultz, Pythagoras und Heraklit. Translations of fragments
in Fairbanks, Burnet, and Bakewell. Bibliographies in Ueberweg-
Heinze, op. cit., Part I.
3. PROBLEM OP SUBSTANCE
Thales was born in Miletus, a Greek colony, about 624 B.C., and
died between 554 and 548 B.C. He was noted as a statesman, mathema-
tician, and astronomer, and as the first philosopher of
Thales Greece. It is said that he predicted the eclipse which
occurred May 28, 585. All the writers who give lists
of the Seven Wise Men of Greece mention his name. Thales prob-
ably never wrote anything; at any rate we possess no work of his;
the book Nautical Astrology, which has been ascribed to him, is
spurious. Our knowledge of his teaching is, therefore, limited to
secondary sources.
The importance of Thales lies in his having put the philo-
sophical question squarely and in having answered it without
reference to- mythical beings. He declared water to be the
original stuff, basing his inference, perhaps, on the observed
fact that many elements essential to life (nourishment, heat,
seed) contain moisture. Out of water everything comes; how,
he does not tell us, most likely because the transformation of one
substance into another was accepted by him as a fact of experi-
ence, and was not a problem for him at all. He evidently looked
•upon nature as alive, as moving, acting, changing, as did all
the early Greek philosophers; so at least Aristotle tells us. If
we may believe Hippolytus, all things not only come from water,
according to Thales, but return to water. Perhaps he conceived
it as a kind of slime, which would explain most satisfactorily
V>th solids and liquids and the origin of living beings.
PROBLEM OF SUBSTANCE 17
Anaximander was born in Miletus, 611 B.C., and died 547 or 546 B.C.
He is mentioned as a pupil of Thales, and it is fair to presume that,
as a fellow-townsman, he was acquainted with the
laser's views. We hear that he was interested in Anaximander
astronomy, geography, and cosmology, that he made
maps of the earth and of the heavens, and that he introduced the
sun-dial into Greece. His treatise On Nature, of which only fragments
remain, was the first philosophical book written in Greece and the first
prose work in the Greek language.
Anaximander reasoned somewhat as follows: The essence or
principle of things is not water, as Thales supposes, — for water
itself must be explained, — but the infinite (to aneipov), an
eternal imperishable substance out of which all things are made
and to which all things return. By this he most likely meant
a boundless space-filling animate mass, the nature of which
he did not define specifically, because he regarded all quali-
ties as derived from it. It is infinite, because, as he naively
infers, otherwise it would be consumed in the creation of
things.
From this great mass of undifferentiated matter different sub-
stances are parted off, in consequence of its eternal motion ; first
the hot and then the cold, the hot surrounding the cold as a
sphere of flame. The heat of the flame turns the cojfl into mois-
ture, and then into air, which expands and breaks up the sphere
of fire into wheel-shaped rings. The rings have openings like
the holes of a flute, through which the fire streams, and these
are the heavenly bodies, which the air, surrounding them, forces
to move around the earth. The sun is the highest body in the
heavens, next comes the moon, and then the fixed stars and the
planets. The earth is a cylindrical body in the center, formed
by the drying-up of the original moisture, and the sea is what
is left of the moisture.
Out of the moist element, as the sun evaporated it, the first
living beings arose. In the course of time, some of these creatures
came out of the water upon the drier parts of the land, and
adapted themselves to their new surroundings. Man, like every
other animal, was in the beginning a fish. Everything must
return again to the primal mass whence it sprang, only to be
produced anew ad infinitum. This is the doctrine of the alter-
nation of worlds common to early thought. The creation of
18 GREEK PHILOSOPHY
things is injustice, in the sense that by becoming what they are
they rob the infinite.
Anaximander 's thinking represents an advance over that of
Thales, first, in his attempt to explain as a derivative the ele-
ment which Thales sets up as a principle, and, secondly, in his
attempt to describe the stages of the process of becoming. He
likewise seems to have some notion of the indestructibility of
matter. His unwillingness to qualify the boundless mass shows
a tendency towards a more abstract mode of thought than we
find in his predecessor's concrete, sense-perceived substance. His
original biological doctrines are mentioned as early examples of
the theory of evolution, while his theory of the spheres plays
an important part in the history of astronomy.
Anaximenes (588-524 B.C.), another citizen of Miletus, is sup-
posed to have been a pupil of Anaximander. He wrote a prose-
work in the Ionic dialect, of which only a small
Anaximenes » , .. , . , . , .
fragment is left. According to him, the first
principle of things, or underlying substance, is one and infinite,
as his teacher had held, but it is not indeterminate: it is air,
or vapor, or mist. As air or breath is the life-giving element
in us, so it is the principle of the universe. As our own soul,
which is air, holds us together, so breath (nvev^ia} and air
surround the whole world. This air is animate and extends infi-
nitely through space.
From air all things arise by the processes of rarefaction and
condensation (nvnvGoait) : when it is rarefied, air becomes
fire; when condensed, it becomes, in turn, wind, cloud, water,
earth, and stone. All other things are composed of these.
Changes are produced by motion, which is -eternal.
Later followers of the Milesian school are : Hippo (fifth century B.C.),
Idaeus, and Diogenes of Apollonia (440-425 B.C.).
4. PROBLEM OF NUMBER
The thinkers whom we have considered were interested in the
problem of the essence of things : What, they asked, is the stuff
of which the world is composed ? They regarded it as a concrete,
determinate substance, like water or air, or as something from
which such elements are differentiated. We come now to a school
PROBLEM OF NUMBER 19
of philosophers who turned their attention particularly to the
question of form or relation. As mathematicians they were
interested in quantitative relations, which are
measurable, and began to speculate upon the prob-
lem of the uniformity and regularity in the world,
attempting to explain this fact by making an entity of number,
and setting it up as the principle of all being.
The founder of the school (the Pythagoreans) was Pythagoras.
Many fantastic stories are told of this man, particularly by writers
coming centuries after his time. He is said to have traveled ex-
tensively and to have derived his ideas from the countries through
which he passed, but these accounts are untrustworthy. He was born
in Samos, between 580 and 570 B.C., and emigrated to the Greek
colonies in Southern Italy, perhaps in the year 529. It is stated
that his opposition to the tyranny of Polycrates and his loyalty to
the aristocratic party caused him to leave his home. He settled in
Crotona and founded an association, the purpose of which is described
as ethical, religious, and political. His ideal was to develop, among
his followers, the political virtues, to teach them to act for the good
of the State, to subordinate themselves to the whole. In order to
realize this end, he emphasized the need of moral training: the in-
dividual should learn to control himself, to subdue his passions, to
harmonize his soul; he should have respect for authority, for the
authority of his elders, his teachers, and the State. The Pythagorean
brotherhood seems to have been a practical training-school for citizen-
ship, in which the ideals of the master were put to the test. Its
members cultivated the virtue of friendship, and practised the habit
of self-examination with a view to improving their character. They
formed a community, living together as a large family, taking their
meals in common, wearing the same kind of dress, and applying them-
selves to the arts and crafts, as well as to the study of music, medicine,
and, particularly, mathematics. It was customary for members to
pass through a novitiate, the watchword being: first to hear, then to
know. It is probable that the society was, originally, a form of the
great popular religious revival which took place in Greece at this
time, and which had as its aim the purification of life and the par-
ticipation of the entire people in worship, particularly that form of
it which expressed itself in the so-called mysteries. In the teachings
of these mysteries, the future destiny of the soul was made dependent
on man's conduct during his earthly life, and rules were laid down for
the governance of his conduct. It is held that the Pythagorean society
extended the usefulness of this religious movement, which was spreading
among the lower classes, by adapting it to the needs of the more
educated and aristocratic classes.
The political tendencies of the Pythagorean brotherhood brought it
into conflict with the people of many cities in which it gained ad-
herents, and ultimately provoked serious persecution. In consequence of
20 GREEK PHILOSOPHY
these disturbances, it is stated, Pythagoras was forced to seek refuge in
Metapontum, where he died 500 B.C., while many of his followers were
driven from Italy and found a home in Greece, among them Archytas of
Tarentum (most likely a contemporary of Socrates) and Lysis, who
escaped to Thebes. These misfortunes put an end to the Pythagorean
brotherhood as an organized society, though disciples of the master
continued to teach and develop his doctrines for hundreds of years.
Porphyry, Life of Pythagoras; Jamblichus, Life of Pythagoras. See
Gomperz, op. cit., vol. I; Zeller, vol. I.
Pythagoras himself left no writings, and we can ascribe to him
only the ethical, political, and religious teachings which have been
mentioned. It is likely, however, that he is the originator of the
number-theory which forms the central idea in the doctrines of the
school that bears his name and to which we now turn. The system,
as it has come down to us, was worked out by Philolaus, in the second
half of the fifth century B.C., and continued by other members of
the school (Archytas, Lysis) into the fourth century.
The Pythagoreans take note of the fact of form and relation
in the world ; they find measure, order, proportion, and uniform
recurrence, which can be expressed in numbers.
Pythagorean Without number, they reasoned, there can be no
Theory1" suc^ rations and uniformities, no order, no law;
hence number must lie at the basis of everything;
numbers must be the true realities, the substances and grounds
of things, and everything else an expression of numbers. They
made entities of numbers, just as many persons to-day make
entities of the laws of nature, speaking of them as though they
were the causes of whatever happens. In their delight over
the discovery that there is a numerical relation, for example,
between the length of the string and the pitch of the tone, they
called number, which is only a symbol or expression of the
relation, the cause of the relation, and placed number behind
phenomena as their basal principle and ground.
Now if number is the essence of things, then whatever is true
of number will be true of things. The Pythagoreans, therefore,
devoted themselves to the study of the countless peculiarities
discoverable in numbers, and ascribed these to the universe
at large. Numbers are odd and even ; the odd cannot be divided
by two, the even can; hence the former are limited, the latter
unlimited. Hence the odd and the even, the finite and the
infinite, the limited and unlimited, constitute the essence of
reality. So, too, nature is a union of opposites, of the odd and
PROBLEM OF NUMBER 21
the even, the limited and unlimited. A table of ten such oppo-
gites is offered: limited and unlimited; odd and even; one and
many ; right and left ; male and female ; rest and motion ; straight
and crooked; light and darkness; good and bad; square and
rectangle. Each of the numbers from one to ten has its
peculiarity.
The corporeal world is also numerical, being based on the unit.
The point is one, the line two, the figure three, the solid four.
Again, earth is a cube; fire, a tetrahedron; air, an octohedron;
water, an icosahedron ; and so on. That is, the lines and surfaces
of bodies were conceived as entities having an independent exist-
ence; for there can be no bodies without lines and surfaces,
whereas lines and surfaces can be thought without bodies. The
spatial forms are the causes of bodies, and since these forms
can be expressed by numbers, the latter are the ultimate causes.
The same reasoning was applied to non-corporeal things: love,
friendship, justice, virtue, health, etc., are based on numbers;
love and friendship being expressed by the number eight, be-
cause love and friendship are harmony, and the octave is
harmony.
The Pythagorean school also gave its attention to the study
of astronomy and furnished a number of noted astronomers. In
the center of the universe, which forms a sphere, .
they placed the central fire; around it the planets
revolve, turned by means of transparent moving spheres to
which they are attached. The fixed stars are fastened to the
highest arch of heaven, which revolves around the central fire
in the course of 36,000 years; below this follow, in concentric
spheres, Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Mercury, Venus, the sun, moon,
and earth. But since ten is the perfect number, there must be
ten heavenly bodies; hence, the Pythagoreans place between the
earth and the central fire a counter-earth, which screens the
earth from the rays of the central fire. The earth and counter-
earth daily revolve around the central fire in such a way that
the earth always turns the same face to the counter-earth and
the central fire, for which reason we, living on the other side
of the earth, do not see the central fire. The sun, which encircles
the central fire once in the course of the year, reflects the light
of this body. The movement of the spheres represents an octave
22 GREEK PHILOSOPHY
and is, therefore, a harmony; since every sphere produces its
own tones, the harmony of the spheres results.
Fantastic though these astronomical notions may seem, they
paved the way for the construction of the heliocentric theory,
which was offered in antiquity by Aristarchus of Samos, about
280 B.C. In the course of time, the counter-earth and central
fire were given up; and Hicetas and Ecphantus taught the
axial rotation of the earth. Heraclides found reason to reject
the view that all the planets revolve around the earth in con-
centric spheres, and connected their movements with the move-
ment of the sun. Aristarchus concluded from the larger size of
the sun that it did not revolve around the earth and made the
earth move round the sun. (See Gomperz, op. cit., vol. I.)
5. PROBLEM OF CHANGE
The Ionian physicists were interested in the substantial nature
of things, the Pythagoreans in quantitative relations, order,
harmony, number. The next problem to attract
attention was tne problem of change or becoming.
The first philosophers spoke of the process of
change, transformation, origin and decay, in a naive objective
way; it was not a problem for them at all. They did not stop
to speculate about the notion of change, but made use of it, in
their explanations, without reflection. They showed how every-
thing emerged from their assumed primal unity and how every-
thing returned to it, how, for example, air became clouds, clouds
water, water earth, and how all these substances could be trans-
formed back again into the original substratum. Implicit in
all these theories of the transformation of substance was the
thought that nothing could absolutely originate or be lost: it
is the same principle that appears now as water, now as cloud,
and now as earth. It was only natural that some thinker should
emphasize the phenomenon of change, growth, origin and decay,
and move it into the center of his system. This is what Hera-
clitus did. He is deeply impressed with the fact of change in
the world, and concludes that change constitutes the very life
of the universe, that nothing is really permanent, that perma-
nence is an illusion, that though things may appear to remain
PROBLEM OF CHANGE 23
stable, they are actually in an endless process of becoming, in
a constant state of flux. The Eleatics take the opposite view
and deny the very possibility of change or becoming. To them
it is unthinkable that reality should change, that a thing should
really and truly become something else. And so they declared
that change is illusory, mere sense-appearance, and that being
is permanent and eternal.
Heraclitus (535-475 B.C.) was born in Ephesus, the son of a noble
family. He remained an uncompromising aristocrat all his life, his
contempt for the democracy being extreme. He was
serious, critical, and pessimistic, independent in his Heraclitus
opinion of men, dogmatic, proud, and inclined to find
fault. He speaks disparagingly of Hesiod, Pythagoras, Xenophanes,
and even of Homer, and prides himself on being self-taught. " Polyma-
thy," he says, " does not train the mind ; if it did, it would have made
Hesiod and Pythagoras and Xenophanes wise." His style is obscure,
possibly intentionally so, so that he came to be called the Obscure.
Nevertheless, he was a forceful writer, full of wise and original sayings,
and given to oracular utterances, which he made no attempt to support
by proof. Only fragments of his work remain; it is supposed to
have borne the customary title On Nature and to have been divided
into three parts, physical, ethical, political. The Letters frequently
ascribed to him are spurious.
Patrick, Heraclitus on Nature; Bywater, Fragments of Heraclitus;
Diels, Heraklit (Greek and German), 2d ed. ; Schafer, Die Philosophie
des Heraklit; monographs by Bernays, Lasalle, E. Pfleiderer, Spengler,
Bodrero.
The fundamental thought in the teaching of Heraclitus is, as
we have already seen, that the universe is in a state of cease-
less change ; ' * you could not step twice into the
same rivers, for other and yet other waters are H111
ever flowing on." It is to bring out this notion
of incessant activity that he chooses as his first principle the
most mobile substance he knows, something that never seems to
come to rest, the ever-living fire (sometimes called by him vapor
or breath), which is regarded by him as the vital principle in
the organism and the essence of the soul. To some interpreters
the fire-principle is merely a concrete physical expression for
ceaseless activity, or process, not a substance, but the denial of
substance, pure activity. Heraclitus, however, most likely, did
not reason the thing out to so fine a point ; it sufficed him to have
24 GREEK PHILOSOPHY
a principle that changes incessantly, undergoes continual quali-
tative transformation; and fire satisfied these demands.
Fire changes into water and then into earth, and the earth
changes back again into water and fire, " for the way upward
and the way downward are one." " All things are exchanged
for fire, and fire for all things ; as wares are exchanged for gold
and gold for wares. ' ' Things seem to be permanent because we
do not perceive the incessant movements in them, and because
what they lose in one way they gain in another: the sun is new
every day, kindled at its rising and quenched at its setting.
The primal unity is in constant motion and change, it never
stands still. Its creation is destruction, its destruction creation.
That is, as it passes into something else, from fire into water,
the fire is lost in a new form of existence. Everything is thus
changed into its opposite; everything, therefore, is a union of
opposite qualities; nothing can persist in its qualities, there is
no thing that has permanent qualities. In this sense, everything
both is and is not; whatever can be predicated of its opposite
may at the same time be predicated of it. And such opposition
alone makes a world possible. Harmony in music, for example,
results from the combination of high notes and low notes, i.e.,
from a union of opposites.
In other words, the world is ruled by strife: " war is the
father of all and the king of all." If it were not for strife
or opposition, the world would pass away, — stagnate and die.
" Even a potion dissolves into its ingredients when it is not
stirred." The oppositions and contradictions are united, and
harmony is the result ; indeed, there could be no such order with-
out contradiction, opposition, movement, or change. Ultimately,
they will all be reconciled in the universal principle ; the world
will return to the original state of fire, which is also reason,
and the process will begin anew. In this sense, good and bad
are the same; " life and death, waking and sleeping, and youth
and old age, are the same; for the latter change and are the
former, and the former change back to the latter." For God
all things are fair and good and just, for God orders things
as they ought to be, perfects all things in the harmony of the
whole, but men suppose some are unjust and others just.
The cosmic process, therefore, is not haphazard or arbitrary,
PROBLEM OF CHANGE 25
but in accordance with " fixed measure "; or, as we should say
to-day, governed by law. " This one order of
things neither any one of the gods nor of men has
made, but it always was, is, and ever shall be, an
ever-living fire, kindling according to fixed measure and
extinguished according to fixed measure." Heraclitus some-
times speaks of it as the work of Fate or Justice, expressing in
this way the idea of necessity. In the midst of all change and
contradiction, the only thing that persists or remains the same,
is this law that underlies all movement and change and opposi-
tion ; it is the reason in things, the logos. The first principle is,
therefore, a rational principle; it is alive and endowed with
reason. " This alone is wise," says our philosopher, " to un-
derstand the intelligence by which all things are steered through
all things." Whether he conceived it as conscious intelligence,
we cannot say with absolute certainty, but it is fair to presume
that he did.
On this theory of the universe, Heraclitus bases his psy*
chology and ethics. Man's soul is a part of the universal fire
and nourished by it. We breathe it, and receive
it through our senses. The driest and warmest
soul is the best soul, most like the cosmic fire-soul.
Sense-knowledge is inferior to reason; the eyes and ears are
bad witnesses. That is, perception without reflection does not
reveal to us the hidden truth, which can be found only by
reason.
The controlling element in man is the soul, which is akin
to divine reason. He must subordinate himself to the universal
reason, to the law that pervades all things. " It is necessary
for those who speak with intelligence to hold fast to the uni-
versal element in all things, as a city holds fast to the law, and
much more strongly. For all human laws are nourished by one
which is divine." To be ethical is to live a rational life, to
obey the dictates of reason, which is the same for us all, the
same for the whole world. Yet, " though reason is common,
most people live as though they had an understanding peculiar
to themselves." Morality means respect for law, self-discipline,
control of passions ; it is to govern oneself by rational princi-
ples. " The people ought to fight for their law as for a wall."
26 GREEK PHILOSOPHY
" Character is a man's guardian divinity. " " Wantonness
must be quenched more than a conflagration." t( It is hard
to contend with passion; for whatever it desires to get it buys
at the cost of the soul." " To me one man is ten thousand
if he be the best."
Heraclitus had a low opinion of the masses who " follow the
bards and employ the crowd as their teacher, not knowing that
many are bad and few good," and " eat their fill like cattle."
Life is a sorry game at best : * ' lifetime is a child playing at
draughts ; the kingdom is a child 's. " * ' Man, like a light in the
night, is kindled and put out." For the popular religion, too,
he had nothing but contempt: tl They purify themselves with
blood, as if one who had stepped into the mud were to wash it
off with mud. If any one of men should observe him doing so,
he would think he was insane. And to these images they pray,
just as if one were to converse with men 's houses, for they know
not what gods and heroes are. ' ' *
Heraclitus is impressed with the phenomenon of change and
motion; the Eleatics insist that change and motion are un-
thinkable, that the principle of things must be
permanent, unmoved, and never-changing. The
school takes its name from the town of Elea, in
Southern Italy, the home of its real founder Parmenides. We
distinguish three phases in this philosophy: (1) Xenophanes,
who may be regarded as the originator, presents its fundamental
thought in theological form. (2) Parmenides develops it as
an ontology and completes the system. (3) Zeno and Melissus
are the defenders of the doctrine: they are the dialecticians of
the school. The former attempts to prove the Eleatic theses by
showing the absurdity of their opposites, while the latter offers
positive proofs in support of the theories.
Freudenthal, Uber die Theologie des Xenophanes; Diels, Parmenides.
See bibliography in Ueberweg-Heinze, §§ 18-21.
Xenophanes (570-480 B.C.) emigrated from Colophon, in Asia
Minor, to Southern Italy, and as a rhapsodist wandered from
place to place, reciting his ethical-religious poems. Only a few
fragments of his works are extant. He is a speculative theo-
* Translations by Fairbanks, First Philosophers of Greece.
PROBLEM OF CHANGE 27
logian rather than a philosopher. Like Pythagoras, he came
under the influence of the popular religious movement of the
sixih century. He attacks the prevailing polythe-
ism with its anthropomorphism, and proclaims the
unity and unchangeableness of God. " But mortals think that
the gods are born as they are, and have perceptions like theirs, and
voice and form." " Yes, and if oxen or lions had hands, and
could paint with their hands and produce works of art as men
do, horses would paint the forms of the gods like horses and
oxen like oxen. Each would represent them with bodies accord-
ing to the form of each." " So the Ethiopians make their gods
black and snub-nosed; the Thracians give theirs red hair and
blue eyes. ' ' * God is one, unlike mortals in body or in mind ;
without toil he governs all things by the thought of his mind.
He abides in one place and does not move at all; he sees all
over, thinks all over, and hears all over, that is, in all his parts.
God is one; he is without beginning, or eternal. He is unlim-
ited in the sense that there is nothing beside him, but limited
in the sense that he is not a formless infinite, but a sphere,
a perfect form. He is immovable as a whole, — for motion is
inconsistent with the unity of being, — but there is motion or
change in his parts.
Xenophanes is a pantheist, conceiving God as the eternal
principle of the universe in which everything is, as the One and
All ( eV Hat ndv ) : God, in other words, is the world ; he is not
a pure spirit, but the whole of animated nature, as the early
Greeks always conceived nature (hylozoism). If he believed
in the gods of polytheism at all, he regarded them as parts of
the world, as natural phenomena.
Xenophanes also offered natural-scientific theories. From the
evidence of shells and imprints of sea-products in stones, he
infers that we ourselves, and all things that come into being
and grow, arose from earth and water. Once the earth was
mingled with the sea, but it became freed from moisture in the
course of time. It will sink back again into the sea and become
mud, and the race will begin anew from the beginning. The
sun and the stars he regards as fiery clouds, which are extin-
guished and rekindled daily.
•Translations by Burnet, Early Greek Philosophy.
28 GREEK PHILOSOPHY
The world-view suggested by Xenophanes was developed and com-
pleted by Parmenides, the metaphysician of the school, who was born
about 515 B.C., the son of a wealthy Elean family. He was acquainted
with the teachings of Heraclitus, and had probably been a Pythagorean.
His didactic poem On Nature, fragments of which have been pre-
served, is divided into two parts: concerning truth and concerning
opinions.
Heraclitus taught that everything changes, that fire becomes
water, and water earth, and earth fire, that things are and then
are not. But how is this possible? asks Par-
menides; how can a thing both be and not bet
How can any one think such a contradiction; how can a thing
change its qualities, how can one quality become another quality ?
To say that it can, is to say that something is and something
is not, that something can come from nothing, and that some-
thing can become nothing. Or, to employ another line of argu-
ment : If being has become, it must either have come from not-
being or from being. If from not-being, it has come from
nothing, which is impossible ; if from being, then it has come
from itself, which is equivalent to saying that it is identical with
itself or always was.
It is evident, then, that from being, only being can come, that
no thing can become anything else, that whatever is always has
been and always will be, or remains what it is. Hence, there
can be only one eternal, underived, unchangeable being. Since
it is all alike and there cannot be anything in it but being,
it must be continuous. Further, it must be immovable, for
being cannot come into being or pass away, and there is no non-
being (space) for it to move in. Again, being and thought are
one, for what cannot be thought, cannot be; and what cannot
be, or non-being, cannot be thought. That is, thought and being
are identical: whatever is thought, has being. Being and
thought are also one in the sense that reality is endowed with
mind.
Being or reality is a homogeneous, continuous, indeterminate
mass, — which the aesthetic imagination of our philosopher pic-
tures as a sphere, — endowed with reason, eternal and immutable.
All change is inconceivable, and, therefore, the world of sense
is an illusion. To regard as true what we perceive by the senses,
is to identify being with non-being. Parmenides shows a firm
PROBLEM OF CHANGE 29
belief in reason: what is contradictory to thought cannot be
real.
Besides the doctrine called the truth, Parmenides offers a
theory, based on sense-perception, according to which there are
both being and non-being, and hence motion and change. The
world is the result of the mingling of two principles, the warm
and light element and the cold and dark element. Organic
beings arose from slime. The thought of man depends on the
mixture of the elements in his body, the warm element per-
ceiving the warmth and light in the world; the other, its
opposite.
Parmenides shows us in his " true " teaching that logical
thought compels us to conceive the world as a unity, as un-
changeable and immovable. Sense-perception, on the other hand,
reveals to us a world of plurality and change : this is the world
of appearance and opinion. How it is possible for such a world
to exist, or how it is possible to perceive such a world, he does
not tell us.
Zeno (about 490-430), a statesman of Elea and a pupil of
Parmenides, attempts to prove the Eleatic doctrine by point-
ing out the absurdity of its opposite. His idea
. * .„ , ,., Dialectics
is that, if we assume plurality and motion, we
involve ourselves in contradictions. Such notions are self-
contradictory, hence it is impossible to accept them. Thus, if
there are many things, these must be both infinitely small and
infinitely great; infinitely small, because we can divide them
into infinitely small parts, which will never give us magnitude ;
infinitely great, because we can add an infinite number of parts
to every part. It is absurd to say that multiplicity is both
infinitely small and infinitely great, hence we must reject it.
Motion and space are impossible for similar reasons. If we
say that all being is in space, we must assume that this space is
in a space, and so on ad infinitum. Similarly, let us assume
that a body is moving through space. In order to pass through
a certain space, it must first have moved through half of that
space; in order to have passed through this half, it must first
have gone through half of this half, and so on ad infinitum. In
30 GREEK PHILOSOPHY
short, the body can really never get anywhere; and motion is
impossible.
Melissus of Samos, a successful admiral, attempts a positive
proof of the Eleatic doctrine. Being cannot have originated,
for that would mean that there was non-being before there was
being; and from non-being being cannot come. Being is also
one, for if there were more beings than one, being would not be
unlimited. There is no empty space or non-being, hence motion
is impossible. If there is neither multiplicity nor motion, there
can be neither separation nor combination, and no change.
Hence, the senses deceive us in presenting motion and change.
6. EXPLANATION OF CHANGE
The old nature-philosophers had all implicitly assumed that
nothing can arise or disappear, that absolute creation or de-
struction is impossible. They did not, however,
the Middle bring this thought to consciousness; they accepted
it without criticism; it was implicit rather than
explicit in their minds. The Eleatic thinkers become fully con-
scious of the axiom; they do not merely tacitly presuppose it
in their reasonings, but deliberately assert it as an absolute
principle of thought and rigorously apply it. Nothing can arise
or disappear, and nothing can change into anything else; no
quality can become another quality, for that would mean the
disappearance of a quality on the one hand, and the creation of
a quality on the other. Reality is permanent and unchangeable,
change a fiction of the senses.
Still, things seem to persist, and things seem to change. How
is it possible for things to persist and yet to change? How
is this deadlock in thought to be removed ? Philosophy could not
leave the matter thus; the riddle of permanence and change
had to be solved, the static and the dynamic views of the world
had to be reconciled in some way; and this the successors of
Heraclitus and Parmenides proceeded to do.
Absolute change, they say, is impossible; so far the Eleatics
are right. It is impossible for a thing to come from nothing,
to become nothing, and to change absolutely. And yet we have
the right to speak of origin and decay, growth and change,
EXPLANATION OF CHANGE 31
in a relative sense. There are beings or particles of reality
that are permanent, original, imperishable, underived, and these
cannot change into anything else: they are what they are and
must remain so, just as the Eleatic school maintains. ' These
beings, or particles of reality, however, can be combined and
separated, that is, form bodies that can again be resolved into
their elements. The original bits of reality cannot be created
or destroyed or change their nature, but they can change their
relations in respect to each other. And this is what we mean
by change. In other words, absolute change is impossible, but
relative change is possible. Origin means combination, decay
separation of elements : change is a change in their relations.
Empedocles, the Atomists, and Anaxagoras give the same
general answer to the problem proposed by Heraclitus and Par-
menides. They agree that absolute change is impossible, but
that there is relative change. They differ, however, in their
answers to the following questions: (1) What is the nature of
the particles of reality of which the world is composed? (2)
What causes these particles to combine and separate? Accord-
ing to Empedocles and Anaxagoras, the elements have definite
qualities; according to the Atomists, they are without quality.
According to Empedocles, there are four qualitative elements :
earth, air, fire, water ; according to Anaxagoras, there are count-
less numbers of such elements. According to Empedocles, two
mythical beings, Love and Hate, cause the elements to unite and
divide; according to Anaxagoras, it is a mind outside of the
elements that initiates motion; according to the Atomists, mo-
tion is inherent in the elements themselves.
Empedocles was born in Agrigentum, Sicily, 495 B.C., the son of a
wealthy and public-spirited family. He was for~a~Tong time the leader
of the democracy of his native city, and it is said of
him that he declined the kingship. He died, probably Empedocles
as an exile, in the Peloponnesus, 435 B.C. The story
that he committed suicide by leaping into the crater of Mt. ^Etna is
legendary. Empedocles was not only a statesman and orator, but a
religious teacher, physician, poet, and philosopher. Many stories are
told of the miracles he worked, and it is not unlikely that he himself
believed in his powers of magic. We possess fragments of two poems,
the one cosmological, On Nature, the other religious, bearing the title
Purifications. (Translation in verse by Leonard, 1908.)
S2 GREEK PHILOSOPHY
According to Empedocles, there is neither origin nor decay
in the strict sense, but only mingling and separation. " For it
cannot be that aught can arise from what in no way is, and
it is impossible and unheard of that what is should perish ; for
it always will be, wherever one may keep putting it."* There
are four elements, or " roots of things," each having its specific
nature, earth, air, fire, water ; they are underived, unchangeable,
and indestructible, and fill the all. Bodies are formed by the
coming together of these elements, and destroyed by their dis-
union. The influence of one body on another is explained as
the passing of effusions from the one into the pores of the other,
into which they fit.
But what causes the elements to unite and divide? Em-
pedocles explains this by assuming two mythical beings, Love
and Strife, or Hate.f These two forces, — attraction and re-
pulsion, we should call them, — always act together, causing
bodies to be formed and bodies to be destroyed. Originally,
however, all the elements were mingled together in the form of
a sphere, — a blessed god, in whom Love reigned supreme. But
gradually Strife gained the upper hand, and the elements were
scattered, each existing for itself alone, there being no bodies of
any kind. Then Love entered the chaos and produced a whirling
motion, causing particles to unite, like with like. In conse-
quence, air or ether first separated off, forming the arch of the
heavens; fire came next, forming the sphere of stars beneath;
water was pressed from the earth by rotating motion, and seas
were formed; and the evaporation of the water by the fire of
heaven produced the lower atmosphere. This process of union
will continue until all the elements shall be combined again
into a blessed sphere, by the action of Love, and then the
process of disintegration will begin anew, and so on, in periodic
change.
Organic life arose from the earth; first plants, then different
parts of animals, arms and eyes and heads. These parts were
combined, haphazard, producing all kinds of shapeless lumps
and monsters, — creatures with double faces, offspring of oxen
* Translation by Burnet.
f The elements, being animated, also seem to have the power to move
themselves. There is a tendency of like to like.
EXPLANATION OF CHANGE 33
with human faces, children of men with oxen's heads, — which
separated again, until, after many trials, such forms were pro-
duced as were fit to live; and these are perpetuated by
generation.
Man is composed of the four elements, which accounts for
his ability to know each of them: like is known by like; it is
by earth that we see earth; and by water, water; and by air,
glorious air; and so on. Sense-perception is explained as the
result of the action of bodies on the sense-organs. Thus, in
vision, particles (of fire and water) pass from the object seen
to the eye, where they are met by similar particles passing
through the pores of the eye, through the attraction of the par-
ticles from without. By the contact of these bodies, near the
surface of the eye, images are produced. Only such particles,
however, affect the eye as fit into the pores of the eye. In
hearing, air rushes into the ear and there produces sound; in
taste and smell, particles enter the nose and mouth. The heart
is the seat of intelligence.
Empedocles, in the hylozoistic fashion of the early Greek
philosophers of nature, ascribes psychic life to all things : ' ' All
things have power of thought. ' ' In his religious work he teaches
the fall of man and the transmigration of souls, doctrines which
seem to connect him with the great Orphic sect that influenced
all Hellas.
Anaxagoras (500-428 B.C.), of Clazomense, in Asia Minor, took up
his abode at Athens and became the friend of the great statesman
Pericles, who aimed to make his city the intellectual as
well as political center of Hellas. Owing to the charge Anaxagoras
of atheism, brought against him by the enemies of his
patron, he left Athens after a residence of thirty years (464-434), and
settled at Lampsacus, where he died. He was a noted mathematician
and astronomer, as well as philosopher. We have important fragments
of his work On Nature, which was written in clear and simple prose.
Breier, Die Philosophie des Anaxagoras; Heinze, Uber den vovf des
Anaxagoras.
The problem for Anaxagoras, as for Empedocles, was to
explain the phenomenon of change or becoming. He accepted
the Eleatic notion that absolute change is impossible, that no
quality can become another quality, that reality must be per-
manent and unchangeable in its fundamental essence : ' * Nothing
34 GREEK PHILOSOPHY
comes into being or passes away. ' ' But he did not deny the fact
of change: there is relative change; things do come into exist-
ence and pass away, in the sense, namely, of mixture and sepa-
ration of elements. The elements, however, must be more than
four; a world so rich and full of qualities as ours cannot be
explained by so few. Besides, earth, air, fire, and water are
not elements at all; they are mixtures of other substances.
Anaxagoras, therefore, assumed, as his utimates, an infinite num-
ber of substances of specific quality, " having all sorts of forms
and colors and tastes, ' ' particles of flesh, hair, blood, bone, silver,
gold, and so on. Such infinitely small, but not indivisible, cor-
puscles are uncaused and changeless, for " how could flesh come
from that which is not flesh? " Their quantity as well as their
quality is constant, nothing can be added or taken away. He
was led to this view by reflections of this sort: The body is
made up of skin, bones, blood, flesh, etc., differing in lightness
and darkness, in heat and cold, softness and hardness, and so
on. The body is nourished by food, hence food must contain
portions of such substances as build up the body. But since
food draws its ingredients from earth, water, air, and the sun,
the latter must furnish the substances composing food. Hence,
the so-called simple elements of Empedocles are in reality the
most complex things of all ; they are veritable reservoirs of in-
finitely small particles of matter of all kinds : they must contain
all the substances to be found in the organic body, otherwise
how could we account for the presence of skin, bone, and blood
in the body ?
Originally, before the formation of worlds, infinitely small
particles of matter, which our philosopher called germs or seeds
(spermata) and Aristotle homogeneous parts or homoiomere
(and which we might call molecules), were all mingled together
in a confused mass, filling the entire universe, and not separated
from one another by empty spaces. The original mass is a mix-
ture of an infinite number of infinitely small seeds. The world,
as it exists now, is the result of the mingling and separation
of the particles composing this mass. But, we inquire, how were
the seeds separated from the chaos in which they lay scattered,
and united into a cosmos or world-order ? By mechanical means,
or motion, by change of place. What, however, caused them
EXPLANATION OF CHANGE 35
to move ? They are not endowed with life, as the hylozoists hold,
nor are they moved by Love and Hate. Anaxagoras finds the
clue to his answer in the rotation of the heavenly bodies observed
by us. A rapid and forcible whirling motion was produced at
a certain point in the mass, and separated the germs; this mo-
tion extended farther and farther, bringing like particles to-
gether, and will continue to extend until the original chaotic
mixture is completely disentangled. The first rotation caused
the separation of the dense from the rare, the warm from the
cold, the bright from the dark, the dry from the moist. " The
dense, the moist, the cold, the dark, collected where the earth
now is ; the rare, the warm, the dry, the bright, departed toward
the farther part of the ether." The process of separation con-
tinued and led to the formation of the heavenly bodies, which
are solid masses hurled from the earth by the force of the rota-
tion, and to the formation of different bodies on the earth. The
heat of the sun gradually dried up the moist earth; and from
the seeds filling the air, and deposited in the earth-slime by the
falling rain, organic bodies arose, which Anaxagoras endowed
with souls in order to explain their movements.
We see, the entire complex world-process, as it now appears,
is the result of a long series of movements, which followed nec-
essarily from the original rotation. And what caused that? To
account for the initial motion, Anaxagoras has recourse to an
intelligent principle, a mind or nous (vovf), a world-ordering
spirit, which he conceives as an absolutely simple and homo-
geneous substance, — not mixed with other elements or seeds, but
absolutely separate and distinct from them, — that has power over
matter. It is a spontaneous active being, the free source of all
movement and life in the world: it knows all things, past, pres-
ent, and future, it arranges all things and is the cause of all
things ; it rules over all that has life, both greater and less.
There is disagreement among interpreters as to whether
Anaxagoras meant by his mind pure spirit or an exceedingly
fine matter, or something not entirely material and not entirely
immaterial. Although he sometimes expresses himself awkwardly
on this point, calling mind the most rarefied of all things, it is
to all intents and purposes a distinct principle, distinct in the
sense that it never mingles with anything else. We may de-
36 GREEK PHILOSOPHY
scribe his standpoint as a vague dualism, as a dualism not yet
sharply defined. Mind initiated the world-process, but it also
seems to be present in the world, in organic forms, even in min-
erals, wherever it is needed to account for movements not other-
wise explainable. It is in the surrounding mass, in the things
that were separated, and in things that are being separated.
That is, to use modern terms, it is both transcendent and imma-
nent; theism and pantheism are not sharply separated in the
system. Aristotle is right in his criticism: " Anaxagoras uses
mind as a device by which to construct the universe, and when
he is at a loss for the cause why anything necessarily is, then
he drags it in, but in other cases he assigns any other cause
rather than mind for what comes into being. ' ' * The fact is,
the philosopher endeavored to explain everything by mechanical
principles, and had recourse to mind as the intelligent cause of
motion, only as a last resort.
Empedocles and Anaxagoras paved the way for the natural-
scientific view of the universe which, under the name of the
atomic theory, has remained the most influential
Atomists , . .
theory in science to this day. Their teachings,
however, needed revision in several important respects, and this
they received at the hands of the Atomists. The Atomists agree
with their predecessors in the acceptance of original and change-
less particles of reality, but they deny to them the qualities
ascribed to them either by Empedocles or Anaxagoras, and reject
the view that they are moved from without by gods or a mind.
Earth, air, fire, and water are not the " roots of all things," nor
are there numberless " seeds " of different qualities. Such
things are not real elements, but are themselves composed of
simpler units, invisible, impenetrable, indivisible spatial entities
(atoms), differing only in form, weight, and size; and these
units or atoms have an inherent motion of their own.
The founders of the School of Atomists are Leucippus and Democ-
ritus. Of Leucippus we know almost nothing; his very existence has
been doubted by some, while others, with Aristotle, regard him as the
real originator of the atomic system.! The latter view is, most likely, the
correct one. He is said to have come from Miletus, to have studied
* Translations by Fairbanks.
f Cf. Burnet, Early Greek Philosophy.
EXPLANATION OF CHANGE 3T
under Zeno at Elea, and to have established the school at Abdera, which
his pupil Democritus made famous. His writings, which were few,
were, so it is reported, incorporated in the works of his disciple.
Democritus was born, about 460 B.C., in the commercial city of
Abdera, situated on the coast of Thrace, and died 370. He traveled
extensively, wrote many books, on physics, metaphysics, ethics, and
history, and took high rank as a mathematician.
Comparatively few fragments of his writings have come down to us,
and we cannot always decide with certainty what belongs to him and
what to Leucippus. We may, however, with the help of the materials
at hand, form a notion of the atomic theory, even though the question
of its authorship be left in doubt.
Brieger, Die Urbewegung der Atome; Lortzing, Die ethischen Frag-
mente des Demokrit; Natorp, Die Ethika des Demokritos; Dryoff, Demo-
krit-Studien.
The Atomists agree with the Eleatics that absolute change
is impossible ; reality is, in its essence, permanent, indestructible,
unchangeable. At the same time, it cannot be denied that change
is going on, that things are in constant motion. Now, motion
and change would be unthinkable without empty space, or the
void, without what Parmenides had called non-being. Hence,
the Atomists insist, non-being, or empty space, exists; space is
not real in the sense of being corporeal, but it exists: what is
(bodies), is no more real than what is not (space). A thing
can be real without being a body. Being, or the full, and non-
being, or the void, both exist. That is, the real is not one con-
tinuous, undivided, immovable being, as the Eleatics held, but
a plurality of beings, — an infinite number of beings, separated
from one another by empty spaces.
Each of these beings is indivisible (arojj.ov)t impenetrable,
and simple, an atom. The atom is not a mathematical point,
or a center of force, as some moderns conceive it, but has ex-
tension; it is not mathematically indivisible, but physically in-
divisible, i.e., it has no empty spaces in it. All atoms are alike
in quality ; they are neither earth, air, fire, or water, nor are they
germs of specific kinds. They are simply very small, compact,
physical units, differing in shape, size, and weight, arrangement
and position. They are underived, indestructible, unchangeable.
What they are, they have always been and ever shall be. In
other words, atoms are the one indivisible Being of Parmenides
broken up into small bits that cannot be further divided, and
separated from each other by empty spaces.
38 GREEK PHILOSOPHY
Out of these atoms, as building stones of reality, and empty
spaces, the different objects are formed, as comedies and trage-
dies are composed of the same letters of the alphabet. All bodies
are combinations of atoms and spaces; origin means union;
destruction, separation. Bodies differ because the atoms con-
stituting them differ in the ways already mentioned. They act
on one another by direct contact only, through pressure and
impact, or hy means of emanations moving from one body and
striking the other, action in the distance being impossible. What
causes atoms to unite and separate is the motion inherent in
them. " Nothing happens without a ground, but everything
for a reason and necessarily. ' ' The motion is uncaused, like the
atoms themselves ; they have never been at rest, but have been
in motion from the very beginning. Owing to the many different
shapes of atoms, some having hooks, others eyes, or grooves, or
humps, or depressions, they interlace and hook together.
The evolution of worlds is explained as follows. Atoms are
heavy and fall downward, but the larger ones fall faster, thus
forcing the lighter upward. This action causes a whirling mo-
tion, which extends farther and farther, in consequence of which
atoms of the same size and weight collect, the heavier ones at
the center, forming air, then water, then solid earth ; the lighter
ones at the periphery, forming the heavenly fires and the ether.
Multitudes of worlds are produced in this way, each system
having a center and forming a sphere ; some having neither sun
nor moon, some with larger planets or a greater number of them.
The earth is one of the bodies thus created. From the moist
earth, or slime, life arose. Fiery atoms are distributed over the
entire organism, which accounts for the heat of these bodies.
They are especially abundant in the human soul. The soul is
composed of the finest, roundest, most nimble, and fiery atoms,
which are scattered over the entire body, — there being always
one soul atom between two other atoms, — and which produce the
movements of the body. Certain organs of the body are the
seat of particular mental functions: the brain, of thought; the
heart, of anger; the liver, of desire. The resistance of every
object, whether alive or not, to the pressure of surrounding forces
is explained by the presence in it of such a soul. We inhale
and exhale soul-atoms; and life exists so long as this process
EXPLANATION OF CHANGE 39
continues. At death, the soul-atoms are scattered; when the
vessel of the soul is shattered, the soul spills out. We have here
the crude beginnings of a physiological psychology on a mate-
rialistic basis.
Sense-perception is explained as a change produced in the
soul by the action of emanations, or images, or idols (e?dQD\a),
resembling the perceived body. These images fly off from the
body and give their shape to the intervening air; that is, they
modify the arrangement of the particles next to the object, which
gives rise to a modification in those immediately adjoining it,
and so on, until emanations coming from the sense-organs are
reached. The like perceives the like, that is, perception is pos-
sible only when the images passing from a body are like those
emanating from the sense-organ. This theory of perception
resembles, in principle, the undulatory and ether theories of
modern science.
By means of such images, which pass from objects everywhere,
Democritus explains dreams, prophetic visions, and the belief
in gods. Gods exist, but they are mortal like men, though longer-
lived. There is a world-soul, which is composed of finer atoms
than the souls of men.
The sensible qualities (color, sound, taste, smell, etc.) which
we attribute to the different bodies are not in the things them-
selves, but merely effects of combinations of atoms on our sense-
organs. Atoms, as such, have no qualities other than those we
have already mentioned, impenetrability, shape, and size. Hence,
sense-perception does not yield us a true knowledge of things;
it tells us merely how these affect us. (We have here the dis-
tinction between primary and secondary qualities, which is made
in modern philosophy.) We cannot see atoms as they are; we
can, however, think them. Sense-perception is obscure knowl-
edge; thought, which transcends our sense-perceptions and ap-
pearances, and reaches the atom, is the only genuine knowledge.
Democritus is a rationalist, as, indeed, all the early Greek phi-
losophers are. But thought is not, therefore, independent of
sense-perception; indeed, " the genuine way of knowing, which
has a finer organ of thought," begins when sense-experience can
carry us no farther, " when the investigation must be carried
farther into that which is still finer " than the limits placed
40 GREEK PHILOSOPHY
against our sense-knowledge. Besides, it must be remembered
that soul (fyuxr\} and reason (rov$) are the same thing for
Democritus.
In the ethical fragments ascribed to Democritus, we can trace
the outlines of a refined hedonistic ethics. The true end of life
is happiness, which he describes as an inner state of satisfac-
tion or pleasure, depending on the tranquillity, harmony, and
fearlessness of the soul. This does not depend on material goods,
not on wealth or the pleasures of the body, — for these are short
and productive of pains, and require repetition; — but on mod-
eration in pleasure and symmetry of life. The less we desire,
the less apt we are to be disappointed. The best way to seek
the goal is to exercise the mental powers, — by reflection and the
contemplation of beautiful acts.
All virtues are valuable in so far as they realize the highest
good, happiness ; chief among them are justice and benevolence.
Envy, jealousy, and bitterness of mind create discord and harm
everybody. We should, however, do right, not from fear of
punishment, but from a sense of duty. To be good, one /must
not merely refrain from doing wrong, but not even desire it.
" You can tell the man who rings true from the man who rings
false, not by his deeds alone, but also by his desires." " The
right-minded man, ever inclined to righteous and lawful deeds,
is joyous day and night, and strong, and free from care." We
ought to serve the State because " a well-administered State is
our greatest safeguard." " When the State is in a healthy con-
dition, all things prosper; when it is corrupt, all things go to
PROBLEMS OF KNOWLEDGE AND CONDUCT
7. AGE OP THE SOPHISTS
Philosophy had made great progress since the days of the
theogonies and cosmogonies. The old conceptions of the world
and of life had been profoundly transformed under the influ-
ence of philosophy ; to what extent, the contrast between the
naive theory of a universe full of gods and occult mythical
* Translations taken from Bakewell, Source-Book.
AGE OF THE SOPHISTS 41
forms and the machine-theory of the Atomists plainly shows.
The spirit of free inquiry, however, was not confined to the phi-
losophers' schools, but, as was inevitable, perme-
ated other fields of thought ; there, too, new concep-
tions were gradually displacing the old. We may
note the change in the dramatic poetry of the Greeks : in ^Eschylus
(525-456 B.C.), Sophocles (496-405), and Euripides (480-406);
their views of life and religion are deepened and broadened by
criticism and reflection. We see it in the writings of the historians
and the geographers: the old legendary tales and superstitions,
which had formerly found such ready acceptance, are discred-
ited, and Herodotus (born 480) paves the way for a critical
study of history, of which Thucydides (born 471) is the finest
classical representative. In medicine, the old fantastic ideas
and practices are abandoned by the leaders of the craft ; the need
of a knowledge of nature and of man is felt, and the physical
theories of the philosophers, many of whom were themselves
physicians, are applied in the art of healing. The name of
Hippocrates (born 460) stands out as a landmark of the prog-
ress made by Greece in the direction of a scientific study of
medicine. The investigations of the physicians came to be of
great value to students of philosophy, in showing the importance
of observation and experience.*
We now reach a period in the history of Greek philosophy
in which the construction of great systems of thought comes
to a temporary stop. Some thinkers simply continue and de-
velop the teachings of the existing schools, others seek to com-
bine the doctrines of the earlier philosophers with those of later
masters in eclectic fashion; some turn their attention to the
natural-scientific investigations which were being pursued by
the schools of medicine, others are interested in the study of
the mental disciplines forming the basis of morals, law, and
politics. As Gomperz points out, the zeal for investigation was
intense and extended to all sorts of problems, including ques-
tions concerning the origin and purpose of the State, the prin-
ciples of conduct, religion, art, and education. Specialistic
manuals were being produced in abundance. Every form of
human activity, from the cooking of food to the creation of
*Cf. Gomperz, The Greek Thinkers, vol. I; Moon, Relation of Medicine
to Philosophy.
42 GREEK PHILOSOPHY
works of art, from taking a walk to carrying on war, was for-
mulated into rules and, if possible, reduced to principles. Phi-
losophy was leavening the lump. The spirit of independent
reflection and criticism, so characteristic of the beginnings of
philosophy in Greece, had invaded every field of study, and
was preparing the way for another and greater era of specu-
lative thought. But the human mind had to follow many false
paths and lose itself in many blind alleys before the culmination
was reached. We shall attempt to describe the fortunes of
philosophy during the second half of the fifth century B.C., a
century of great significance for the history of Greece and civili-
zation in general.
We have observed in the political, moral, religious, and philo-
sophical development of the Hellenic people a growing tendency
toward freedom and individualism. The critical
, attitude toward life and human institutions had
rmligntenment
already made itself felt in their early poetry, faintly
in Homer, with increasing force in Hesiod and the poets of the
seventh and sixth centuries B.C. These men meditated upon
the manners and customs of their times, upon the social and
political institutions, upon the religious ideas and practices,
upon the origin, nature, and behavior of the gods. They de-
veloped a purer conception of deity, and, in their theogonies
and cosmogonies, prepared the way for the coming of philosophy.
In the philosophies of the sixth century, the tendency to inde-
pendent thinking appears almost full-fledged. During this
century and the first half of the fifth, natural science and nature-
philosophy are the order of the day; the inquiring mind turns
outward to the world of physical things. The effort is made
to understand the meaning of the cosmos; system after system
is offered to solve the riddle of the universe ; the object of chief
interest is the world and its ways, man's place in nature being
determined by the conclusions reached in metaphysics.
The political, economic, and intellectual experiences of the
Greek people during the fifth century were highly favorable
to the development of the spirit of enlightenment which char-
acterized their philosophers. The Persian wars (500-449 B.C.)
had left Athens the mistress of the sea and a world-power, as
well as the commercial, intellectual, and artistic center of Greece.
AGE OF THE SOPHISTS 43
Poets, artists, teachers, and philosophers now entered her gates
and helped to entertain and instruct her wealthy citizens ; mag-
nificent buildings and statues adorned the city, and the theaters
rang with the plaudits of a self-satisfied people. When we call
to mind the illustrious men who dwelt within the city-walls, dur-
ing the second half of the fifth century, — Pericles, Anaxagoras,
Thucydides, Phidias, Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes, Hip-
pocrates, Socrates, — we can well understand the proud words
in the great funeral oration delivered by Pericles that Athens
was the school for Greece.
The great economic changes and the establishment of demo-
cratic institutions, resulting from the new order of things, gave
a further impetus to independent thought and action, and with
these there came the desire for power and the things that bring
power: wealth, fame, culture, efficiency, and success. The tradi-
tional views of religion, morality, politics, philosophy, science,
and art were subjected to criticism; the old foundations were
examined and in many cases torn up ; the spirit that denies was
abroad in the land. The demand for instruction in the new
subjects of study grew strong ; public life offered a splendid field
for men skilled in persuading and convincing the people, and
preparation in the arts of rhetoric, oratory, and dialectics became
a practical necessity.
The age we have been describing was an age of enlightenment
(Auflclarung) . The attitude of mind engendered could not fail
to encourage the growth of individualism. The individual
began to cut loose from the authority of the group, to strike out
for himself, to think his own thoughts and to work out his own
salvation, independently of the old traditions. This critical
habit of thought, which was good enough in its way, assumed an
exaggerated form in some quarters and culminated in mere quib-
bling and hair-splitting; in others, it tended to degenerate into
intellectual and practical subjectivism: what I happen to think
is true, is true ; what I happen to believe is right, is right. One
man's opinion is as good as another's; one man's way of acting
is as good as another's. It is not surprising, under the circum-
stances, that no man's opinion should have been esteemed very
highly, that skepticism should have flourished in the theoretical
sphere, and that the gospel of self-interest should have been
44 GREEK PHILOSOPHY
preached in the field of practice. An often quoted passage from
Thucydides, though perhaps an exaggeration, throws some light
upon a degenerate phase of the new movement: " The common
meaning of words was turned about at men 's pleasure ; the most
reckless bravo was deemed the most desirable friend; a man of
prudence and moderation was styled a coward; a man who lis-
tened to reason was a good-for-nothing simpleton. People were
trusted exactly in proportion to their violence and unscrupulous-
ness, and no one was so popular as the successful conspirator,
except perhaps one who had been clever enough to outwit him
at his own trade, but any one who honestly attempted to remove
the causes of such treacheries was considered a traitor to his
party. As for oaths, no one imagined they were to be kept
a moment longer than occasion required; it was in fact an
added pleasure to destroy your enemy if you had managed to
catch him through his trusting to your word. ' ' * Aristophanes,
in his comedies, also shows us the seamy side of the new civili-
zation. According to him, says Benn, " the ancient discipline
had in time become very much relaxed. The rich were idle and
extravagant; the poor mutinous; young men were growing more
and more insolent to their elders; religion was derided; all
classes were animated by a common desire to make money and
to spend it on sensual enjoyment." f
This was one side of the picture, the picture of the free-
thinking, individualistic, culture and wealth seeking child
of the age. On the other side we see the conservative, the
representative of the good old times, who opposes the new
thought, the new education, the new virtues, or rather the new
vices, because intellectual pursuits seemed to him to lead " to
irreligion and immorality, to make young people quite unlike
their grandfathers, and were somehow connected with loose com-
pany and a fast life. ' ' $
The new movement was represented by the Sophists. The
term Sophist originally meant a wise and skilful man, but in
^ the time we are describing it came to be applied
to the professional teachers who traveled about,
giving instruction for pay in the art of thinking and speaking,
* History of the Peloponnesian War, Bk. Ill, 82.
f The Greek Philosophers, Vol. I, p. 74. $ Benn, op. cit., p. 93.
AGE OF THE SOPHISTS 45
and preparing young men for political life.* To this task they
devoted themselves with feverish zeal. " If you associate with
me," Protagoras is reported to have said to a young man, " on
the very day you will return a better man than you came. ' ' And
when Socrates asks how he is going to bring this about, he
answers : * * If he comes to me, he will learn that which he comes
to learn. And this is prudence in affairs, private as well as
public; he will learn to order his house in the best manner, and
he will be able to speak and act for the best in the affairs of
the State." f In order to fit himself for a career, it was neces-
sary for the young man to perfect himself in dialectics, gram-
mar, rhetoric, and oratory. Such subjects the Sophists began
to study with a practical end in view, and thus broke the soil
for new fields of investigation. They also turned their attention
to moral and political questions, and so gave the impetus to a
more systematic and thorough treatment of ethics and the theory
of the State. As the moral earnestness of the times declined,
and the desire to succeed at all hazards intensified, some of the
later Sophists, in their anxiety to make their pupils efficient,
often went to extremes; it became the object of instruction to
teach them how to overcome an opponent in debate by fair means
or foul, to make the worse appear the better cause, to confuse
him with all sorts of logical fallacies, and to render him ridicu-
lous in the eyes of the chuckling public.
The critical spirit of the age, which had, in a large measure,
been fostered by philosophy, began to react upon philosophy
itself and led to a temporary depreciation of metaphysical specu-
lation. Thought weighs itself in the balance and finds itself
wanting; philosophy digs its own grave. No two philosophers,
so it is argued, seem to agree in their answers to the question
of the essence of reality. One makes it water, another air, an-
other fire, another earth, and yet another all of them together;
one declares change to be impossible, another says there is noth-
ing but change. Now, if there is no change, there can be no
knowledge : we cannot predicate anything of anything, for how
*The name gradually became a term of reproach, partly because the
Sophists took pay, partly owing to the radicalism of some of the later
Sophists, which scandalized the conservative element.
f Plato's Protagoras.
46 GREEK PHILOSOPHY
can the one be the many? If everything changes, there can be
no knowledge either; for where nothing persists, how can we
predicate anything of anything? And if we can know things,
only so far as they affect our senses, as some hold, again we
cannot know, for then the nature of things eludes our grasp.
The upshot of it all is, we cannot solve the riddle of the universe.
The truth begins to dawn on the Sophist that the mind of man
is an important factor in the process of knowing. Thinkers
before him had assumed the competence of human reason to
attain truth; with all their critical acumen they had forgotten
to criticise the intellect itself. The Sophist now turns the light
on the knowing subject and concludes that knowledge depends
upon the particular knower, that what seems true to him is true
for him, that there is no objective truth, but only subjective
opinion. " Man is the measure of all things/' so Protagoras
taught. That is, the individual is a law unto himself in matters
of knowledge. And from this theoretical skepticism, the step
is not far to ethical skepticism, to the view that man is a law
unto himself in matters of conduct. If knowledge is impossible,
then knowledge of right and wrong is impossible, there is no
universal right and wrong : conscience is a mere subjective affair.
These consequences were not drawn by the older Sophists, by
men like Protagoras (born about 490 B.C.) and Gorgias, but
they were drawn by some of the younger radical set, by Polus,
Thrasymachus, Callicles, and Euthydemus, who are spokesmen
in Plato's Dialogues. Morality to them is a mere convention;
it represents the will of those who have the power to enforce
their demands on their fellows. The rules of morals are con-
trary to " nature." According to some, laws were made by the
weak, the majority, in order to restrain the strong, the " best,"
to hinder the fittest from getting their due : the laws, therefore,
violate the principle of natural justice. Natural right is the
right of the stronger. According to others, the laws are a
species of class legislation ; they are made by the few, the strong,
+-he privileged, in order to protect their own interests. That
is, it is to the advantage of the overman that others obey the
laws so that he can the more profitably break them.
" The makers of the laws," says Callicles in the Platonic dialogue
Gorgias, " are the majority who are weak ; and they make laws and
AGE OF THE SOPHISTS 4,7
distribute praises and censures with a view to themselves and their
own interests; and they terrify the stronger sort of men, and those
who are able to get the better of them, in order that they may not get
the better of them; and they say that dishonesty is shameful and unjust;
meaning by the word injustice the desire of a man to have more than
his neighbors ; for knowing their own inferiority, I suspect that they are
too glad of equality. And therefore the endeavor to have more than
the many, is Conventionally said to be shameful and unjust, and is
called injustice, whereas nature herself intimates that it is just for
the better to have more than the worse, the more powerful than the
weaker; and in many ways she shows, among men as well as among
animals, and indeed among whole cities and races, that justice consists
in the superior ruling over and having more than the inferior. For
on what principle of justice did Xerxes invade Hellas, or his father
the Scythians? (not to speak of numberless other examples). Nay, but
these are the men who act according to nature; yes, by heaven, and
according to the law of nature : not, perhaps, according to that artificial
law, which we invent and impose upon our fellows, of whom we take
the best and the strongest from their youth upwards, and tame them like
young lions, — charming them with the sound of the voice, and saying
to them, that with equality they must be content, and that the equal
is the honorable and the just. But if there were a man who had
sufficient force, he would shake off and break through, and escape from
all this; he would trample underfoot all our formulas and spells and
charms and all our laws which are against nature: the slave would
rise in rebellion and be lord over us, and the light of natural justice
would shine forth."
Thrasymachus talks in the same strain in the Republic:
" The just is always a loser in comparison with the unjust. First of
all, in private contracts: wherever the unjust is the partner of the
just you will find that when the partnership is dissolved, the unjust
man has always more and the just less. Secondly, in their dealings
with the State: when there is an income-tax, the just man will pay
more and the unjust less on the same amount of income; and when
there is anything to be received the one gains nothing and the other
much. Observe also what happens when they take an office; there
is the just man neglecting his affairs and perhaps suffering other
losses, and getting nothing out of the public, because he is just; more-
over he is hated by his friends and acquaintances for refusing to
serve them in unlawful ways. But all this is reversed in the case
of the unjust man. I am speaking as before of injustice on the large
scale in which the advantage of the unjust is most apparent; and my
meaning will be most clearly seen if we turn to that highest form
of injustice in which the criminal is the happiest of men, and the
sufferers or those who refuse to do injustice are the most miserable, —
that is to say tyranny, which by fraud and force takes away the
property of others, not little by little but wholesale; comprehending in
one, things sacred as well as profane, private and public; for which
48 GREEK PHILOSOPHY
acts of wrong, if he were detected perpetrating any of them singly,
he would be punished and incur great disgrace, — they who do such
wrong in particular cases are called robbers of temples, and man-
stealers and burglars and swindlers and thieves. But when a man
besides taking away the money of the citizens has made slaves of them,
then, instead of these names of reproach, he is termed happy and
blessed, not only by the citizens, but by all who have heard of the
consummation of injustice. For mankind censure injustice, fearing
that they may be the victims of it, and not because they shrink from
committing it. And thus, as I have shown, Socrates, injustice, when
on a sufficient scale, has more strength and freedom and mastery than
justice; and, as I said at first, justice is the interest of the stronger,
whereas injustice is a man's own profit and interest." *
Owing to the hostile criticisms of Plato and Aristotle, as
well as to the nihilistic teachings of some of the younger
Sophists, the importance of the Sophistic move-
ofgSofi hist66 ment in the history of Bought was long misjudged.
It is only since Hegel and Grote attempted to give
a fairer estimate of these thinkers that justice has been done
them. There was good and there was evil in their teachings.
Reflection and criticism are indispensable to sounder concep-
tions in philosophy, religion, morals, politics, and in all fields
of human endeavor. The appeal to reason was commendable in
itself, but the fault lay in the inability of Sophistry to use the
instrument of reason in anything like a constructive way. The
Sophists brought philosophy down from heaven to the dwellings
of men, as Cicero said, and turned the attention from external
nature to man himself; with them the proper study of mankind
was man. But they failed to recognize the universal element
in man; they did not see the forest for the trees, they did not
see man for men. They exaggerated the differences in human
judgments and ignored the agreements. They laid too much
stress on the illusion of the senses. They emphasized the acci-
dental, subjective, and purely personal elements in human knowl-
edge and conduct, and failed to do justice to the objective
element, the principles which are accepted by all.
Nevertheless, their criticisms of knowledge made necessary a
profounder study of the problem of knowledge. The older
speculators had naively and dogmatically assumed the compe-
tence of the mind to reach truth; in denying the possibility of
* Jowett's translation of Plato's Dialogues.
AGE OF THE SOPHISTS 49
sure and universal knowledge, the Sophists forced philosophy
to examine the thinking process itself and opened the way for
a theory of knowledge. In employing all sorts of logical fal-
lacies and sophisms, they made necessary a study of the correct
laws of thought and hastened the birth of logic.
The same thing may be said of moral knowledge and prac-
tice. The appeal to the individual conscience was sound: from
mere blind, unintelligent following of custom, morality was
raised to the stage of reflective personal choice. When, how-
ever, the appeal became an appeal to mere subjective opinion
and self-interest, it struck a false note. Independence of thought
easily degenerates into intellectual and moral anarchy; indi-
vidualism, into pure selfishness. Yet in this field, again,
Sophistry rendered a service: radical criticism of the common
notions of right and wrong and public and private justice, made
necessary a profounder study of ethics and politics, — a study
that was soon to bear wonderful fruit.
The great value of the entire Sophistic movement consisted
in this: it awakened thought and challenged philosophy, reli-
gion, custom, morals, and the institutions based on them, to
justify themselves to reason. In denying the possibility of knowl-
edge, the Sophists made it necessary for knowledge to justify
itself: they compelled philosophy to seek a criterion of knowl-
edge. In attacking the traditional morality, they compelled
morality to defend itself against skepticism and nihilism, and
to find a rational principle of right and wrong. In attacking
the traditional religious beliefs, they pressed upon thinkers the
need of developing more consistent and purer conceptions of
God. And in criticising the State and its laws, they made in-
evitable the development of a philosophic theory of the State.
It became necessary to build upon more solid foundations, to
go back to first principles. What is knowledge, what is truth?
What is right, what is the good? What is the true conception
of God? What is the meaning and purpose of the State and
human institutions? And these problems, finally, forced the
thinkers of Greece to reconsider, from new angles, the old ques-
tion, which had been temporarily obscured, but which no
people can long ignore: What is the world and man's place in
nature ?
50 GREEK PHILOSOPHY
Grote, History of Greece, vol. VII; Hegel, History of Philosophy,
vol. II; Zeller, Philosophy of the Greeks, vol. II; Sidgwick, The
Sophists, in Journal of Philology, vols. IV and V, 1872, 1873 ; Gomperz,
op. tit., vol. I ; Benn, op. cit., vol. I ; articles on " Sophists," " Socrates,"
and " Plato " in Britannica; Schanz, Die Sophisten.
8. SOCRATES
We have described the situation, as it began to shape itself toward
the end of the fifth century B.C. A man was needed to bring order
into the intellectual and moral chaos of the age, to
Life of sift the true from the false, the essential from the
Socrates accidental, to set men right and to help them to see
things in their right relations, — a peacemaker who might
hold the balance even between the ultra-conservatives and the ultra-
liberals. The man appeared in Socrates, one of the greatest figures
in the history of thought, the intellectual father of a line of philosophers
whose ideas and ideals dominated Western civilization for two thousand
years, and continue to influence speculation to this day.
Socrates was born in Athens, 469 B.C., the son of poor parents, his
father being a sculptor, his mother a midwife. How he acquired an
education, we do not know, but his love of knowledge evidently created
opportunities in the cultured city for intellectual growth. He took
up the occupation of his father, but soon felt " a divine vocation to
examine himself by questioning other men." It was his custom to
engage in converse with all sorts and conditions of men and women,
on the streets, in the market-place, in the gymnasia, discussing the
most diverse topics : war, politics, marriage, friendship, love, house-
keeping, the arts and trades, poetry, religion, science, and, particularly,
moral matters. Nothing human was foreign to him. Life with all
its interests became the subject of his inquiries, and only the physical
side of the world left him cold; he declared that he could learn
nothing from trees and stones. He was subtle and keen, quick to
discover the fallacies in an argument and skilful in steering the con-
versation to the very heart of the matter. Though kindly and gentle
in disposition, and brimming over with good humor, he delighted in
exposing the quacks and humbugs of his time and pricking their empty
bubbles with his wit.
Socrates exemplified in his conduct the virtues which he taught: he
was a man of remarkable self-control, magnanimous, noble, frugal, and
capable of great endurance; and his wants were few. He gave ample
proof, during his life of seventy years, of physical and moral courage,
in war and in the performance of his political duties. His bearing at
his trial furnishes an impressive picture of moral dignity, firmness,
and consistency; he did what he thought was right, without fear or
favor, and died as beautifully as he had lived, with charity for all
and malice toward none; condemned by his own people, on a false
charge of atheism and of corrupting the youth, to drink the poison
hemlock (399 B.C.). His respect for authority and his loyalty to
SOCRATES 51
the State he proved by obeying the laws himself and insisting that
others obey them. When, after his condemnation, friends arranged
a plan of escape, he refused to profit by it, on the ground that he
had enjoyed the benefits of the laws during his whole life and could
not, in his old age, prove disloyal to his benefactors.
In personal appearance Socrates was not prepossessing. He was
short, stocky, and stout, blear-eyed and snub-nosed; he had a large
mouth and thick lips, and was careless in his dress, clumsy and uncouth,
resembling in his physical make-up a Satyr, for which reason Alcibiades,
in Plato's Symposium, likened him to the busts of Silenus. But all
these peculiarities were forgotten when he began to speak, so great
were his personal charm and the effect of his brilliant conversation.
Xenophon, Memorabilia, transl. by Dakyns; Plato's Dialogues, espe-
cially Protagoras, Apology, Crito, Phado, Symposium, Thecetetus,
transl. by Jowett; Aristotle, Metaphysics (I, 6; XIII, 4), transl. in Bohn
Library, also by W. S. Ross; Aristotle, Ethics, transl. by Welldon. A.
E. Taylor, Varia Socratica, criticises the traditional interpretations of
Socrates. See also Joel, Der echte und der xenophontische Socrates.
Works mentioned under Sophists, p. 50 ; Chaignet, La vie de Socrate;
Labriola, La dottrina di Socrate; Fouillee, La philosophie de Socrate,
2 vols. ; Zuccante, Socrate ; E. Pfleiderer, Sokrates, Plato und ihr$
Schuler; Pohlmann, Sokrates und sein Volk; Doring, Die Lehre de&
Sokrates als soziales Reformsystem; Wildauer, Sokrates' Lehre vom
Willen. See the extensive bibliography in Ueberweg-Heinze, § 33.
The chief concern of Socrates was to meet the challenge of
Sophistry, which, in undermining knowledge, threatened the
foundations of morality and the State. He looked
upon philosophical reflection as the most timely
and practical of tasks, for if skepticism was to be
the last word of the age, there would be little hope of escaping
the nihilistic conclusions of the fashionable views of life. He
saw clearly that the prevailing ethical and political fallacies
sprang from a total misconception of the meaning of truth, and
that the problem of knowledge was the key to the entire situa-
tion. It was in this conviction, and with an optimistic faith in.
the power of human reason to meet the practical difficulties
of his times, that he entered upon his mission. The aim which
he set himself was not to construct a system of philosophy, but
to arouse in men the love of truth and virtue, to help them
to think right in order that they might live right. His purpose
was practical rather than speculative; he was interested in the
correct method of acquiring knowledge more than in a theory
of such a method, or methodology. He did not offer a theory
52 GREEK PHILOSOPHY
at all, but practised a method, lived it, and, by his example,
taught others to follow it.
In order to reach the truth, so his thought ran, we must
not trust every chance opinion that enters our heads. Confused,
vague, and empty thoughts fill our minds; we have a lot of
undigested opinions which we have never examined, a lot of
prejudices which we have accepted on faith, and of which we
do not understand the meaning; we make a lot of arbitrary
assertions for which we have no warrant. In fact, we have
no knowledge at all, no convictions; we have built our intel-
lectual house on sand; the whole edifice will tumble to pieces
upon the slightest attack. It is our business to clear up our
ideas, to understand the real meaning of terms, to define cor-
rectly the notions we employ, to know exactly what we are
talking about. Then, too, we should have reasons for our views ;
prove our assertions, — think, not guess, — put our theories to the
test, verify them by the facts, and modify and correct them
in accordance with the facts.
The Sophists say there is no truth, we cannot know; men
differ, opinion is set against opinion, and one is as good as
another. This, says Socrates, is a mistake. There is diversity
of thought, true ; but it is our duty to discover whether, in the
clash of opinions, there may not be agreement, some common
ground on which all can stand, some principle to which all
can subscribe. To evolve such universal judgments was the
purpose of the Socratic method, which our philosopher employed
in his discussions, and which is an ingenious form of cross-
examination. He pretended not to know any more about the
subject under discussion than the other participants; indeed,
he often acted as though he knew less (the Socratic irony )./
Yet they soon felt that he was master of the situation, that
he was making them contradict themselves, and all the while
deftly guiding their thought into his own channels. " You are
accustomed to ask most of your questions when you know very
well how they stand," so one of his listeners complained. Be-
fore one's very eyes, the confused and erroneous notions of the
disputants shape themselves into form, growing clear and dis-
tinct, and finally stand out like beautiful statues. Socrates had
not learned the art of sculpture for nothing.
SOCRATES 53
In discussing a subject, Socrates generally sets out from
the popular and hastily formed opinions of his company. These
he tests by means of illustrations taken from every-
day life, showing, wherever possible and necessary,
that they are not well-founded, and that they are
in need of modification and correction. He helps those taking
part in the dialogue to form the correct opinion, by suggesting
instances of all kinds, and does not rest content until the truth
has developed step by step. A well-known example will make
this clear. By skilful questioning Socrates gets a young man
named Euthydemus to confess his ambition to become a great
politician and statesman. Socrates suggests to him that, in that
case, he must, naturally, hope to be a just man himself. The
young man thinks he is that already. "We go on with the story
as it is told by Xenophon.
" But, says Socrates, there must be certain acts which are the
proper products of justice, as of other functions or skills. No
doubt. Then of course you can tell us what those acts and products
are? Of course I can, and the products of injustice as well. Very
good; then suppose we write down in two opposite columns what
acts are products of justice and what of injustice. I agree, says
Euthydemus. Well now, what of falsehood? In which column shall
we put it? Why, of course in the unjust column. And cheating?
In the same column. And stealing? In it too. And enslaving? Yes.
Not one of these can go to the just column? Why, that would be an
unheard-of thing. Well but, says Socrates, suppose a general has
to deal with some enemy of his country that has done it great wrong;
if he conquer and enslave this enemy, is that wrong? Certainly not.
If he carries off the enemy's goods or cheats him in his strategy, what
about these acts? Oh, of course they are quite right. But I thought
you were talking about deceiving or ill-treating friends. Then in
some cases we shall have to put these very same acts in both columns?
I suppose so.
Well, now, suppose we confine ourselves to friends. Imagine a gen-
eral with an army under him discouraged and disorganized. Suppose
he tells them that reserves are coming up, and by cheating them into
this belief, he saves them from their discouragement, and enables them
to win a victory. What about this cheating of one's friends? Why,
I suppose we shall have to put this too on the just side. Or suppose
a lad needs medicine, but refuses to take it, and his father cheats him
into the belief that it is something nice, and getting him to take it,
saves his life; what about that cheat? That will have to go to the
just side too. Or suppose you find a friend in desperate frenzy, and
steal his sword from him for fear he should kill himself; what do you
54 GREEK PHILOSOPHY
say to that theft? That will have to go there too. But I thought
you said there must be no cheating of friends? Well, I must take it
all back, if you please. Very good. But now there is another point
I should like to ask you. Whether do you think the man more unjust
who is a voluntary violator of justice, or he who is an involuntary
violator of it? Upon my word, Socrates, I no longer have any con-
fidence in my answers. For the whole thing has turned out to be
exactly the contrary of what I previously imagined." *
In this way, by a process of induction, Socrates evolves defi-
nitions. With the help of examples, a provisional definition is
formed; this is tested by other examples, and broadened or
narrowed to meet the requirements until a satisfactory result
has been reached. What Bacon would call negative instances
play an important role in the process, that is, cases which con-
tradict the provisional definition offered. The aim is always to
discover the essential characteristics of the subject to be defined,
to reach clear and distinct notions, or concepts. At other times,
Socrates tests the statements made, by going back at once to first
principles, by criticising them in the light of correct definitions.
Here the method is deductive. You say, for example, that this
man is a better citizen than that one. Your assertion, however,
is a mere subjective opinion, having no value whatever unless
you can give reasons for it. You should know what a good
citizen ;,s, you should define your terms.
" Whenever any person contradicted him on any point who had
nothing definite to say, and who perhaps asserted, without proof, that
some person whom he mentioned, was wiser or better skilled in political
affairs, or possessed of greater courage, or worthier in some such respect
(than some other whom Socrates had mentioned), he would recall the
whole argument, in some such way as the following, to the primary
proposition : Do you say that he whom you commend, is a better citizen
than he whom I commend? I do say so. Why should we not then
consider, in the first place, what is the duty of a good citizen? Let us
do so. Would not he then be superior in the management of the public
money who should make the State richer? Undoubtedly. And he in
war who should make it victorious over its enemies? Assuredly. And
in an embassy he who should make friends of foes? Doubtless. And
he in addressing the people who should check dissension and inspire
them with unanimity? I think so. When the discussion was thus
brought back to fundamental principles, the truth was made evident
to those who had opposed him."
•Xenophon, Memorabilia, Book IV, ch. 2 (transl. by .Marshall, Greek
Philosophy).
SOCRATES 55
" When he himself went through any subject in argument, he pro-
ceeded upon propositions of which the truth was generally acknowl-
edged, thinking that a sure foundation was thus formed for his reason-
ing. Accordingly, whenever he spoke, he, of all men that I have
known, most readily prevailed on his hearers to assent to his arguments ;
and he used to say that Homer had attributed to Ulysses the character
of a sure orator, as being able to form his reasoning on points acknowl-
edged by all mankind." *
Knowledge, then, is possible, after all. We can attain truth
if we pursue the proper method, if we define our terms cor-
rectly, if we go back to first principles. Knowledge is con-
cerned with the general and typical, not with the particular and
accidental. This the Sophists failed to understand, and Socrates
sets them right. He shared with them, however, the belief in
the futility of physical and metaphysical speculations. " In-
deed, in contrast to others, he set his face against all discussions
of such high matters as the nature of the universe; how the
' cosmos, ' as the savants phrase it, came into being ; or by what
forces the celestial phenomena arise. To trouble one's brain
about such matters was, he argued, to play the fool. ' ' His inter-
ests were practical, and he did not see what was to come of such
speculations. " The student of human learning," he said, " ex-
pects to make something of his studies for the benefit of himself
or others, as he likes. Do these explorers into the divine opera-
tions hope that when they have discovered by what forces the
various phenomena occur, they will create winds and waters at
will and fruitful seasons? Will they manipulate these and the
like to suit their needs? " " He himself never wearied of dis-
cussing human topics. What is piety? what is impiety? What
is the beautiful? what the ugly? What the noble? what the
base? What is meant by just and unjust? What by sobriety
and madness, what by courage and cowardice? What is a
State? What is a statesman? What is a ruler over men?
What is a ruling character? and other like problems, the knowl-
edge of which, as he put it, conferred a patent of nobility on
the possessor, whereas those who lacked the knowledge might
deservedly be stigmatized as slaves. ' ' f
•Xenophon, op. cit., IV, ch. 6, 12, ff.; transl. by J. S. Watson, Bohn
Library.
t Xenophon, op. cit., I, ch. 1, 11, ff. (transl. by Dakyns) ; see also
IV, ch. 7.
56 GREEK PHILOSOPHY
Socrates 's faith in knowledge, in clear and reasoned think-
ing, is strong, — so strong that he sees in it the cure of all our
ills. He applies his method to all human prob-
lems, particularly to the field of morality, and
seeks to find a rational basis for conduct. The radical thinkers,
as we saw, looked upon the ethical ideas and practices of their
times as mere conventions; after all, might makes right. The
conservatives regarded them as self-evident : rules of conduct are
not things about which one can reason; they have to be obeyed.
Socrates endeavors to understand the meaning of morality, to
discover a rational principle of right and wrong, a criterion
by which to measure it. The question uppermost in his mind
is: How shall I order my life? What is the rational way of
living? How ought a reasoning being, a human being, to act?
The Sophists cannot be right in saying that man is the meas-
ure of all things in the sense that whatever pleases me, the par-
ticular me, is right for me ; that there is no universal good.
There must be more to the matter than that; there must be
some principle, or standard, or good, which all rational creatures
recognize and accept when they come to think the problem out.
What is the good, what is the good for the sake of which all
else is good, the highest good?
Knowledge is the highest good, so Socrates answers. Right
thinking is essential to right action. In order to steer a ship
or rule a State, a man must have knowledge of the construction
and function of the ship, or of the nature and purpose of the
State. Similarly, unless a man knows what virtue is, unless he
knows the meaning of self-control and courage and justice and
piety and their opposites, he cannot be virtuous; but, knowing
what virtue is, he will be virtuous. " No man is voluntarily
bad or involuntarily good." " No man voluntarily pursues
evil or that which he thinks to be evil. To prefer evil to good
is not in human nature ; and when a man is compelled to choose
between two evils, no one will choose the greater when he may
have the less." The objection is raised that " we see the bet-
ter and approve of it and pursue the evil. ' ' Socrates would have
denied that we can truly know the good and not choose it. With
him knowledge of right and wrong was not a mere theoretical
opinion, but a firm practical conviction, a matter not only of
SOCRATES 57
the intellect, but of the will. Besides, virtue is to a man's
interest. The tendency of all honorable and useful actions is
to make life painless and pleasant, hence the honorable work
is the useful and good. Virtue and true happiness are identical ;
no one can be happy who is not temperate and brave and wise
and just. * ' I do nothing, " says Socrates in the Apology, ' ( but
go about persuading you all, old and young alike, not to take
thought for your persons or properties, but first and chiefly to
care about the greatest improvement of the soul. I tell you that
virtue is not given by money, but that from virtue comes money
and every other good of man, public as well as private." And
the last words which he speaks at his trial are these: " Still I
have a favor to ask of them [my condemners and accusers].
When my sons are grown up, I would ask you, oh my friends,
to punish them; and I would have you trouble them as I have
troubled you if they seem to care about riches or about
anything, more than about virtue; or if they pretend to
be something when they are really nothing, — then reprove
them, as I have reproved you, for not caring about that
for which they ought to care, and thinking that they are
something when they are really nothing. And if you do
this, both I and my sons will have received justice at your
hands."
Socrates, as we have already pointed out, did not construct
a system of metaphysics nor did he offer a theory of knowledge
or of conduct. It remained for his pupils to build
upon the foundations laid by the master. Some
made the logical problems suggested by his method
the subject of their study, others turned their attention to
ethical questions and attempted to work out theories of ethics.
The Megarian school, founded by Euclides (450-374 B.C.), com-
bined the Socratic teaching that virtue is knowledge with the
Eleatic doctrine of the unity of being: the notion of the good
constitutes the eternal essence of things; nothing else, — neither
matter, motion, nor the changing world of sense, — has real be-
ing. Hence, there can be but one virtue, and hence, also,
external goods can have no value. The successors of Euclides
exaggerated the dialectical phase of his teaching, after the man-
58 GREEK PHILOSOPHY
ner of Zeno, the Eleatic, and the Sophists, and delighted in all
kinds of subtleties and hair-splitting (eristic).
Among the members of this school are Eubulides, Alexinus, Diodorus,
and Stilpo. Phaedo, of Elis, established the Elean (later Eretrian)
school, which agreed with the Megarians.
Two ethical schools arose, each basing itself on certain phases
of Socrates 's teachings, the Cyrenaic, founded by Aristippus
(born about 435) at Gyrene, and the Cynic, established by An-
tisthenes (-{-366) at the gymnasium of Cynosarges in Athens.
The Cyrenaic doctrine, that pleasure is the highest good, was
continued and completed by the Epicureans, while the Cynic
teaching, which rejected the pleasure-theory and made virtue
for virtue's sake its motto, was developed by the Stoics.
AGE OF RECONSTRUCTION
9. PLATO
None of these schools, however, succeeded in constructing com-
prehensive and thoroughgoing systems of thought; and yet,
such an undertaking seemed necessary to complete
^e work begun by the great master. The problems
suggested by him had to be thought out to the end ;
they were intimately connected with one another and with the
problem of the ultimate nature of being, and they could not
receive an adequate answer unless studied in their interrelations
and as parts of a larger question. The problem of the meaning
of human life, human knowledge, human conduct, and human
institutions depended, for its complete answer, on the answer
to the problem of the meaning of reality at large. It was the
greatest pupil of Socrates, Plato, who undertook the task at
hand; he offered not only a theory of knowledge, a theory of
conduct, and a theory of the State, buL crowned his work with
a theory of the universe.
Plato was born 427 B.C., the son of noble parents. According to
report, he first studied music, poetry, painting, and philosophy with
other masters and became a pupil of Socrates in 407, remaining with
him until the latter's death (399)3 when he accompanied the sorrowing
PLATO 59
Socratics to Megara. He is said to have traveled in Egypt and Asia
Minor, to have visited Italy and the Pythagoreans (388), and to have
lived for a time at the court of Dionysius I, the tyrant of Syracuse, who
became his enemy and sold him into slavery as a prisoner of war; but
all of these stories have been denied. He founded a school in the
groves of Academus, the Academy, where he taught mathematics and
the different branches of philosophy, by means of connected lectures
and the dialogue, a method that has been compared to our modern
seminars. The story goes that he interrupted his work, on two occasions
(367 and 361), by further visits to Syracuse, presumably in the hope
of assisting in the realization of his ideal State, and that he was
disappointed in this hope. His death occurred in 347 B.C. Plato was
a poet and mystic, as well as a philosopher and dialectician j combining,
in a rare degree, great powers of logical analysis and abstract thought
with wonderful poetic imagination and deep mystical feeling. His
character was noble ; he was an aristocrat by birth and by temperament,
an uncompromising idealist, hostile to everything base and vulgar.
It seems that all the works of Plato have come down to us. Of the
writings, however, transmitted under his name (35 Dialogues, 13 Letters,
and a collection of Definitions], the Letters (nearly all, at least) and
Definitions are spurious. Of the dialogues, 28 are considered authentic
by Hermann, 23 by Schleiermacher, 24 by Zeller and Heinze, and
22 by Lutoslawski. The testimony of Plato's pupil Aristotle as to
the authenticity of a Platonic dialogue is unquestioned here, but un-
fortunately Aristotle does not mention all the works.
Attempts have been made by many scholars to arrange the dialogues
in chronological order,* but it is not yet possible to state with certainty
the exact time and order of their composition. A complete history
of the development of Plato's doctrine is, therefore, still out of the
question. We may, however, distinguish an earlier, Socratic, group,
embracing the ethical dialogues, in which Plato does not advance materi-
ally beyond the standpoint of his teacher. To this belong: Apology,
Hippias Minor, Charmides, Laches, Lysis, Euthyphro, Crito, and Pro-
tagoras. In a second group of writings, which is not so easy to specify
as the first, he begins to develop his own view and to work out
his methodology. To this group Zeller refers : Phcedrus (which contains
the summary of the teachings of this period), Gorgias, Meno, Euthyde-
mus, Thecetetus, Sophist, Politicus, Parmenides, and Cratylus. The
completion of the system is reached in the last period, to which Zeller
assigns : Symposium, Phcedo, Philebus, Republic, Timceus, Critias, Laws.
Zeller rejects, as not genuine, Epinomis, Alcibiades I and II, Anteras,
Hipparchus, Theages, Minos, Cleitophro, Hippias I, lo, Menexenus.
Editions of works by Schanz, 1875, ff ., and Burnet, 1902 ; translations
by Jowett, 5 vols. ; for ottyer editions and translations see article by
Campbell on Plato in Britannica. Ritchie, Plato, A. E. Taylor, Plato;
Pater, Plato and Platonism; Adam, Vitality of Platonism; J. A.
Stewart, Plato's Doctrine of Ideas, and Myths of Plato; Nettleship,
Lectures on the Republic, and Plato's Theory of Education; Grote,
• Cf. Ueberweg-Heinze, § 40; " Plato " in Britannica; Lutoslawski, Origin
and Growth of Plato's Logic; K. Joel, op. cit.
60 GREEK PHILOSOPHY
Plato, etc., and History, vol. VII; Windelband, Plato; Riehl, Plato;
Ritter, Plato, and Neuere Untersuchungen; Natorp, Plato's Ideenlehre,
and Plato's Staat; Fouillee, La philosophic de Platon; Benard, Platon;
Huit, Platon, 2 vols. ; Indexes to Plato's works by Mitchell and Abbott.
Socrates had pointed out that in order to live a rational and
good life we needs must have knowledge of the good, and that
it is possible to attain such knowledge. He did not present a
theory of the method of reaching it, but he practised the art
of evolving truth in the form of the dialogue. This method Plato
employs witl^l /wonderful artistic effect in his writings. But he
also speculates on the method and meaning of truth, and out-
lines a theory of method, or dialectics, or logic, in which he
discusses the art of forming and combining concepts, or the
logical operations by means of which truth is reached. We
have here the beginnings of a theory of knowledge and formal
logic. Plato is not content, however, with telling how true
concepts and judgments may be obtained ; his chief object is
to obtain them, to know reality in all its phases, — physical, men-
tal, and moral, — to comprehend it in its unity and complete-
ness. Indeed, it is plain to him that the knowledge-problem
itself cannot be solved without an understanding of the nature
of the world. To this end he develops a universal system, in
the spirit of the teachings of the great thinker who became his
ideal. Although Plato did not explicitly divide philosophy into
logic, metaphysics (physics), and ethics (practical philosophy,
including politics), he makes use of such a division in his works.
We shall, therefore, follow this order, in a general way, in our
exposition of his thought, and begin with logic, or dialectics.
Plato clearly understood the great importance of the problem
of knowledge in the philosophy of his day. A thinker's concep-
tion of the nature and origin of knowledge largely
Dialectics . _ , . .... , .
determined his attitude toward the engrossing
questions of the age. If our propositions are derived from
sense-perception and opinion, Plato argued, then the Sophists
are quite right in their contention that there can be no genuine
knowledge. Sense-perception (ai'ffSrfffiS) does not reveal the
true reality of things, but gives us mere appearance. Opinion
(6 oB, a] may be true or false; as mere opinion it has no value
whatever ; it is not knowledge, but rests on persuasion or feeling ;
PLATO ^S^_ 61
it does not know whether it is true or false, it cannot justify
itself. Genuine knowledge (emarrf^irj) is knowledge based on
reasons, knowledge that knows itself as knowledge, knowledge
that can authenticate itself. The great majority of men think
without knowing why they think as they do, without having
any grounds for their views. Ordinary virtue is no better
off: it, too, rests on sense-perception and opinion; it is not con-
scious of its principles. Men do not know why they act as
they do; they act instinctively, according to custom or habit,
like ants, bees, and wasps; they act selfishly, for pleasure and
profit, hence the masses are a great unconscious Sophist. The
Sophist is wrong because he confuses appearance and reality,
the pleasant and the good. ^*m \ " ""
We must advance from sense-perception and opinion to genu-
ine knowledge. This we cannot do unless we have a desire, or
love of truth, the Eros, which is aroused by the contemplation
of beautiful ideas: we pass from the contemplation of beauty
to the contemplation of truth. The love of truth impels us to
dialectics; it impels us to rise beyond sense-perception to the
idea, to conceptual knowledge, from the particular to the uni-
versal. The dialectical method consists, first, in the compre-
hension of scattered particulars in one idea ( ffvvaycoyrf) , and
second, in the division (Siai'peeiS) of the idea into species, that
is, in the processes of generalization and classification. In this
way alone can there be clear and consistent thinking; we pass
from concept to concept, upward and downward, generalizing
and particularizing, combining and dividing, synthetizing and
analyzing, carving out concepts as a sculptor carves a beauti-
ful figure out of a block of marble. Judgment expresses the
relation of concepts to one another, articulates concept with con^
cept, while the syllogism links judgment with judgment, in the
process of reasoning. Dialectics is this art of thinking in con-
cepts; concepts, and not sensations or images, constitute the
essential object of thought. We cannot, for example, call a man
just or unjust unless we have a notion, or concept, of justice,
unless we know what justice is; when we know that, we can
judge why a man is just or unjust.
But, Plato warns us, the notion or idea (of justice, for ex-
ample) does not have its origin in experience; we do not derive
_ . '
62 GREEK PHILOSOPHY
it from particular cases (of justice), by induction. These are
merely the means of clearing up, or bringing to consciousness,
or making explicit, the notion (of justice) which already exists
obscurely, or implicitly, in the soul. When the notion has been
evolved, other notions may be deduced from it; we develop its
implications or meanings, and so reach new and absolutely cer-
tain knowledge. Man is, therefore, indeed, the measure of all
things, of all truth, because there lie imbedded in his soul
certain universal principles, notions, concepts, or ideas, which
form the starting-point of all his knowledge.
Experience, then, is not the source of our notions; there is
nothing in experience, in the world of sense, exactly corre-
sponding to them, — to the notions of truth, beauty, goodness,
for example; — no particular object is absolutely beautiful or
good. We approach the sense-world with ideals or standards of
the true, the beautiful, and the good. In addition to these no-
tions, Plato came to regard mathematical concepts and certain
logical notions, or categories, such as being and non-being,
identity and difference, unity and plurality, as inborn, or
a priori.
Conceptual knowledge, then, is the only genuine knowledge:
that was the teaching of Socrates. The question, however, arises :
What guarantee have we of its truth? Plato bases his answer
on the metaphysical teachings of several of his predecessors.
Knowledge is the correspondence of thought and reality, or
being: it must have an object. Hence, if the idea or notion
is to have any value as knowledge, something real must corre-
spond to it, — there must, for instance, be pure, absolute beauty
as such, — realities must exist corresponding to our universal
ideas. In other words, such ideasj^ cannot be mere passing
thoughts in men's heads; the truths of mathematics, the ideals
of beauty, truth, and goodness, must be real, must have inde-
pendent existence. If the objects of our ideas were not real,
our knowledge would not be knowledge; hence they must be
real.
The same result is reached in another way. Truth is the
knowledge of reality, of being as such, of that which is. The
world perceived by our senses is not the true world; it is a
changing, fleeting world, one thing to-day, something else to-
TO - 63
morrow (Heraclitus) ; it is mere appearance, illusion. True
being is something permanent, unchangeable, eternal (Par-
menides). Hence, in order to have genuine knowledge, we must
know the permanent and unchangeable essence of things.
Thought alone, conceptual thought, can grasp eternal and
changeless being ; it knows that which is, that which persists, that
which remains one and the same in all change and diversity, the
essential forms of things.
Plato found it necessary, in short, to appeal to metaphysics,
to his world-view, for the proof of the validity of knowledge.
Sense-knowledge, — the kind the Sophist believed in, — presents
to us the passing, changing, particular, and accidental; hence
it cannot be genuine knowledge: it does not tell the truth or
get at the heart of reality. Conceptual knowledge reveals the
universal, changeless, and essential element in things and is,
therefore, true knowledge. Philosophy has for its aim knowledge
of the universal, unchangeable, and eternal.
The idea, or notion, or concept, as we have seen, compre-
hends or holds together the essential qualities common to many
particulars: the essence of things consists in their
necessary form. We are apt to consider such ideas P,oc*
as mental processes only: particulars alone exist,
there is nothing corresponding to the idea or type outside of
the mind; " I see a horse, but ' horseness ' I do not see/' as
Antisthenes is reported to have said. Plato did not share this
view; according to him, the ideas or forms (idiai^i'drj^opcpai)
are not mere thoughts in the minds of men or even in the mind
of God (indeed, the divine thought is dependent on them) ; he
conceives them as existing in and for themselves, they have the
character of substantiality, they are substances (ovcriai), real
or substantial forms: the original, eternal transcendent arche-
types (napadeiy^ara} of things, existing prior to things and
apart from them (#<»pz'£), independent of them, uninfluenced
by the changes to which they are subject. The particular ob-
jects which we perceive are imperfect copies or reflections of
these eternal patterns; particulars may come and particulars
may go, but the idea or form goes on forever. Men may come
and men may go, but the man-type, the human race, goes on
forever. There are many objects or copies, but there is always
64 GREEK PHILOSOPHY
only one idea of a class//of things. There are numberless such
independent forms, or ideas, nothing being too lowly or insig-
nificant to have its idea: ideas of things, relations, qualities,
actions ; ideas of tables and beds and chairs, of color and tone ;
of health, rest, and motion; of smallness, greatness, likeness;
of beauty, truth, and goodness.
These ideas or archetypes, though numberless, are not disor-
dered, like chaos; they constitute a well-ordered world, or
rational cosmos (xoffjuo? vorjroS). The ideal order forms an
interrelated, connected organic unity, the ideas being arranged
in logical order, and subsumed under the highest idea, the idea
of the Good, which is the source of all the rest. This idea is
supreme; beyond it there is no other. The truly real and the
truly good are identical; the idea of the Good is the logos, the
cosmic purpose. Unity, therefore, includes plurality; in the
intelligible or ideal world there is no unity without plurality,
and no plurality without unity (Pannenides). The universe
is conceived by Plato as a logical system of ideas: it forms an
organic spiritual unity, governed by a universal purpose, the
idea of the Good, and is, therefore, a rational moral whole. Its
meaning cannot be grasped by the senses, which perceive only
its imperfect and fleeting reflections and never rise to a vision
of the perfect and abiding whole. It is the business of philosophy
to understand its inner order and connection, to conceive its
essence by logical thought.
We have, in this framework of the Platonic system, a combina-
tion and transformation of the teachings of the leaders of Greek
thought. With the Sophists Plato agrees that knowledge (of
appearances) is impossible; with Socrates, that genuine knowl-
edge is always of concepts; with Heraclitus, that the world (of
appearances) is in constant change; with the Eleatics, that the
world (of ideas) is unchangeable; with the Atomists, that being
is plural (ideas) ; with the Eleatics, that it is one; with nearly
all the Greek thinkers, that it is at bottom rational; with
Anaxagoras that mind rules it and that mind is distinct from
matter. His system is the mature fruit of the history of Greek
philosophy down to his time.
We turn now to the relation of this ideal world to the so-called
real world. As was said before, the particular objects in nature
PLATO 65
are copies of ideas. How is this to be understood ? How can the
pure and perfect, changeless principle be responsible f«r the
incomplete and ever-changing world of sense?
There is another principle, which is everything that ™losophy
idea is not, and to which sensuous existence owes
its imperfections. This principle, which Aristotle calls the
Platonic " matter," forms the basis of the phenomenal world; as
such it is the raw material (eH^aysiov) upon which the forms
are somehow impressed. It is perishable and unreal, imperfect,
— non-being (w ov) • — whatever reality, form, or beauty the
perceived world has, it owes to ideas. Some interpreters of
Plato conceive this Platonic ' ' matter ' ' as space ; others as a
formless, space-filling mass. Plato needs something besides the
idea to account for our world of sense, or nature, which is not
a mere illusion of the senses, but an order of lower rank than the
changeless ideal realm. This substratum, untouched by the ideal
principle, must be conceived as devoid of all qualities, — form-
less, ^indefinable, imperceptible. Nature owes its existence to
the influence of the ideal world on non-being or matter: as a
ray of light, passed through a prism, is broken into many rays,
so the idea is broken into many objects by matter. The form-
less something is non-being, not in the sense of being non-existent,
but in the sense of having a lower order of existence: the term
non-being expresses a judgment of value. The sensible world
partakes of a measure of reality or being, in so far as it takes
on form. Plato does not define more precisely the nature of the
relation between the two realms ; but it is plain that the ideas
are somehow responsible for all the reality things possess: they
owe their being to the presence of ideas, to the participation
of the latter in them. At the same time, non-being, the sub-
stratum, is responsible for the diversity and imperfection of the
many different objects bearing the same name; as Zeller says,
it is a second kind of causality, the causality of a blind, irra-
tional necessity. There are, then, two principles ; we should say,
mind and matter, of which mind is the true reality, the thing
of most worth, that to which everything owes its form and
essence, the principle of law and order in the universe; while
the other element, matter, is secondary, a dull, irrational, recalci-
trant force, the unwilling slave of mind, which somehow, but
66 GREEK PHILOSOPHY
imperfectly, takes on the impress of mind. Form is the active
cause, matter is the cooperative cause. It is both friend and foe,
an auxiliary and an obstruction, the ground of physical and
moral evil, of change and imperfection. Since the world of ideas
is identical with the Good, the non-ideal must be evil. If we
had to label this part of the system, we should call it dualism.
It is idealistic, or spiritualistic, in so far as it makes mind the
paramount principle of things and matter a secondary principle.
In any case, it is thoroughly anti-materialistic and anti-
mechanistic.
Plato attempts to explain the origin of nature in his Timaus,
a work that reminds one of the early Pre-Socratic philosophies.
He presents a cosmology which is shot through with many
mythical elements and often contradicts his other teachings,
but he claims for it nothing more than probability. Like a
human artist or workman, the Demiurge or Creator fashions the
world after the pattern of the ideal world; guided by the idea
of the Good, he forms as perfect a universe as it is possible for
him to form, hampered, as he is, by the principle of matter.
The Demiurge is not really a creator, but an architect ; the two
principles, mind and matter, are already in existence: a being
is needed who will bring them together. In order to realize
his purpose, he endows the world, which is composed of the
four material elements, earth, air, fire, water, with soul and
life. This world-soul he compounds of the indivisible and
divisible, of identity and change, of mind and matter (the four
elements), in order that it may know the ideal and perceive
the corporeal. It has its own original motion, which is the
cause of all motion; in moving itself it also moves bodies; it
is diffused throughout the world and is the cause of the beauty,
order, and harmony in the world: this is the image of God,
a visible God. The world-soul is the intermediary between the
world of ideas and the world of phenomena. It is the cause
of all law, mathematical relations, harmony, order, uniformity,
life, mind, and knowledge: it moves according to fixed laws
of its nature, causing the distribution of matter in the heavenly
spheres, as well as their motion. Besides the world-soul, the
Creator created souls or gods for the planets (which he arranged
according to the Pythagorean system of harmony) and rational
PLATO 67
human souls, leaving it to the lower gods to create animals
and the irrational part of the human soul. Everything has
been made for man, plants to nourish him, and animal-bodies
to serve as habitations for fallen souls.
We have, therefore, in Plato's cosmology many gods, to none
of whom he definitely ascribes personality, perhaps because
he took this for granted, conceiving them in analogy with the
human soul: the Idea of the Good, the total world of ideas,
the Demiurge, the world-soul, the planetary souls, and the gods
of the popular religion.
This cosmology is a teleological world-view in mythical garb,
an attempt to explain reality as a purposeful, well-ordered
cosmos, the work of an intelligence, guided by reason and an
ethical purpose. Purposes or final causes are the real causes
of the world, the physical causes are merely cooperating causes :
whatever is good and rational and purposeful in the universe
is due to reason ; whatever is evil, irrational, and purposeless is
due to mechanical causes.
The theory of knowledge has shown us that there are three
kinds of knowledge, — sense-perception, opinion, and genuine
knowledge or Science (Wissenschaft) . This divi-
sion influences Plato's psychology. In sensation sy
and opinion the soul is dependent on the body; in so far as
it beholds the pure world of ideas, it is pure reason. The
bodily part is, therefore, an impediment to knowledge, from
which the soul must free itself in order to behold truth in its
purity. The copies of the pure ideas, as they exist in the
phenomenal world, merely incite the rational soul to think;
sensation provokes ideas, it does not produce them. Hence,
the soul must somehow possess ideas prior to its contact with
the world of experience. Plato teaches that the soul has viewed
such ideas before, but has forgotten them ; the imperfect copies
of ideas in the world of sense bring back its past, remind it,
as it were, of what it has seen before: all knowledge is remi-
niscence (anamnesis) and all learning a reawakening. (Read
the myth of the charioteer in the Phcedrus.) Hence, the soul
must have existed before its union with a body (pre-
existence).
The human soul, then, is, in part, pure reason (rov?), and
68 GREEK PHILOSOPHY
this rational part is its characteristic phase. It enters a body,
and there is added to it a mortal and irrational part, which fits
it for existence in the sense-world. This is divided into the spir-
ited part (St>/to£), — by which Plato means the nobler impulses
(anger, ambition, love of power), situated in the heart, — and
desire ( TO eTtiSv^ir/Tixor), — by which he means the lower appe-
tites or passions, the part with which the soul loves and hungers
and thirsts, placed by him in the liver. The union with the
body is a hindrance to the intellectual aspirations of the soul,
to knowledge ; the presence of impulses and desires is a hindrance
to the ethical supremacy of reason, which reason itself must
seek to overcome, as Plato shows in his ethics. A soul that
has contemplated the pure eternal ideas must, in part at least,
be like these ideas, pure and eternal; for only like can know
like. The doctrine of reminiscence proves the preexistence and
continued existence of the soul. Other proofs of immortality
are: the simplicity of the soul: whatever is simple cannot be
decomposed ; and its life or spontaneity : such a principle of
activity cannot be destroyed; life cannot become death (Phcedo).
The question arises, How does the pure rational soul happen
to unite with a body? At this point, again, Plato has recourse
to mythical explanation, combining conceptions suggested by his
theory of knowledge, and conceptions suggested by empirical
psychology, with Orphic and Pythagorean mysticism. The pure
rational soul, which was created by the Demiurge, once in-
habited a star. But it became possessed with a desire for the
world of sense and was inclosed in a material body as in a
prison. In case it succeeds in overcoming the lower side of its
nature, it will return to its star, otherwise it will sink lower
and lower, passing through the bodies of different animals
(transmigration of souls). If the soul had resisted desire in
its celestial life, it would have continued to occupy itself, in
a transcendent existence, with the contemplation of ideas. As
it is, it is condemned to pass through a stage of purification.
An important phase of Plato's psychology is the doctrine of
the "Eros. Just as sense-perception arouses in the soul the re-
membrance of pure ideas, or Truth, so the perception of sensuous
beauty, which arouses sense-love, also arouses in the soul the
memory of ideal Beauty contemplated in its former existence.
PLATO 69
This recollection arouses yearning for the higher life, the world
of pure ideas. Sensuous love and the yearning for the beauti-
ful and the good are one and the same impulse ; in yearning for
eternal values, the soul yearns for immortality. The sensuous
impulse seeks the continued existence of the species; the higher
forms of the impulse are the craving for fame, the impulse to
create science, art, and human institutions. These impulses are
another evidence of the immortality of the soul, for what the
soul desires must be attainable.
The question of greatest moment to Socrates was the question
of the good. What is the nature or meaning of the good, what
is a good life, and how can we justify such a life
to reason ? How should a rational being act ; what
ought to be his controlling principle? Socrates raised the
problem and gave his answer. He did not offer a complete phi-
losophy of life in systematic form, but laid the foundations for
such a structure. Plato takes up the problem and seeks to
solve it in the light of his comprehensive world-view. As we
said before, the question of the meaning and worth of life and
human institutions he regards as involved in the larger ques-
tion of the nature and meaning of the world and of man. His
ethics, like his theory of knowledge, is based on his meta-
physics.
The universe is, at bottom, a rational universe: a spiritual
system. Objects of sense, the material phenomena around us,
are mere fleeting shadows of eternal and never-changing ideas;
they cannot endure and have no worth. Only that which endures
is real and has value: reason alone has absolute worth and is
the highest good. Hence, the rational part of man is the true
part, and his ideal must be to cultivate reason, the immortal side
of his soul. The body and the senses are not the true part;
indeed, the body is the prison-house of the soul, a fetter, de-
liverance from which is the final goal of the spirit. " Where-
fore we ought to fly away from earth as quickly as we can, and
to fly away is to become like God." The release of the soul from
the body and the contemplation of the beautiful world of ideas,
that is the ultimate end of life.
In the meanwhile the soul, with its reason, its spirited part,
and its appetites, is inclosed in its dungeon and has its problems
70 GREEK PHILOSOPHY
to solve. The rational part is wise and has to exercise fore-
thought on behalf of the entire soul : hence, its essential func-
tion is to command. The Individual is wise in whom reason rules
over the other inipulses of the soul, knowing what is advan-
tageous for the wjiole inner economy and for each member of it.
The province of ike spirited pa\rt (will) is to be the subject
and ally of reason: music^aiid'g^imastTCs' will bring these two
principles into unison. When they Imve been trained and edu-
cated, they will exercise control over the appetites. Reason takes
counsel, will fights the battles of reason, obeys it, and gives
effect to its counsels by its bravery. An individual, therefore,
is brave when the spirited part holds fast, through pain and
pleasure, to the instructions, of reason as to what is to be feared
and what is not. He is temperate when will and appetite agree
with reafon, submitj(to its authority. Temperance, or self-control,
is mastery over certain kinds of pleasures and desires. When
these three inward principles are in tune, each doing its
proper work, the man is just. The just and honorable course
is that which a man pursues in this frame of mind ; he has the
ethical attitude when he is wise and brave and temperate, when
he has harmonized his soul. Such a man would not repudiate
a deposit, commit sacrilege or theft, be false to friends, be a
traitor to his country, or commit similar misdeeds.
The ideal, therefore, is a well-ordered soul, one in which the
higher functions rule the lower, one which exercises the
virtues of wisdom (ffocpia), courage (dvdpsta], self-control
(GGocppoevvrj), and justice (dinaioavvrj). A life of reason,
which means a life of virtue, is the highest good. Happiness
attends such a life ; the just man is after all the happy man.
Pleasure, however, is not an end in itself, — it is not the high-
est factor in the life of the soul, but the lowest.
There is in Plato's ethical teaching another side to which
we have already referred, and which lays extreme emphasis on
the rational element in the soul, regarding the irrational aspect
as something not merely to be subordinated, but to be cast out.
This part of the teaching differs from the usual Greek concep-
tion; it is ascetic in its tone, it is the doctrine of contemptus
mundi, which we find in primitive Christianity: the world we
perceive is but a passing show : ' ' the glory of the world passeth
PLATO 71
away, and the lust thereof." That which endures, for Plato, is
reason, truth ; all else is vanity. Matter is imperfection, a dead
weight on the soul ; to be free from this clog and to lose oneself
in the contemplation of beautiful ideas, or to see God, as the
Christians put it, is a consummation devoutly to be wished.
Here the Platonic philosophy culminates in mysticism.r--
Plato's theory of the State, which is given in the Republic,
is based on his ethics. Since virtue is the highest good, and'
the individual cannot attain the good in isolation, Politics
but only in society, the mission of the State is to
realize virtue and happiness ; the purpose of its constitution and
its laws is to bring about conditions which will enable as many
men as possible to become good; that is, to secure the general
welfare. Social life is a means to the perfection of individuals,
not an end in itself. It is true, the individual must subordinate
his private interests to the public welfare, but that is only be-
cause his own true good is bound up with the social weal. If
all men were rational and virtuous, there would be no need of
laws and a State: a completely virtuous man is governed by
reason, and not by external law. Few, however, are perfect;
and laws are necessary to the realization of our true good. The
State owes its origin to necessity.^^
The State should be organized like the universe at large and
the individual virtuous soul; that is, reason should rule in it.
There are as many classes in society as there are functions of
the soul, and the relations of these classes to each other should
correspond to those obtaining in a healthy soul. Those who
have received philosophical training represent reason and>ought
to be the ruling class; the warrior class represent the ^pirited
element or will : their task is defense ; the agriculturists,
and merchants represent the lower appetites, and have as
function the production of material goods.* Justice is realij
in a State in which each class, the industrial, military,
guardian, does its own work and sticks to its own business.
State is temperate and brave and wise in consequence of cer-
tain affections and conditions of these same classes. It is master
* Among the nations, Plato regarded the Phoenicians as representing the
lower appetites, the barbarous peoples of the North as representing tho
spirited element or will, the Greeks as representing reason.
72 GREEK PHILOSOPHY
of itself when the desires of the vulgar many are controlled
by the desires and the wisdom of the few, when the governors
and the governed are unanimous on the question who ought to
govern. Every individual ought to have some one occupation in
the State, which should be that to which his natural capacity
is best adapted. Justice is to have and do what belongs to us
and is our own; to mind one's business and not to be meddle-
some.
The ideal society forms a complete unity, one large family;
hence, Plato opposes private property and monogamous mar-
riage, and recommends, for the two upper castes (who are to be
supported by the workers), communism and the common pos-
session of wives and children. Among his othewrecommendations
are supervision of marriages and births (eugenics), exposure
of weak children, compulsory state education, education of
women for war and government, censorship of works of art
and literature. Plato did not have a high opinion of art, re-
garding it as an imitation of the world of sense, which is itself
a mere copy of the true essences of things ; art, therefore, is an
imitation of an imitation. It can and should, however, he
thought, be made a means to moral culture.
The State is an educational institution, the instrument of
civilization, and as such it must have its foundation in the high-
est kind of knowledge attainable, that is, philosophy. " Unless
it happen either that philosophers acquire the kingly power in
states, or that those who are now called kings and potentates be
imbued with a sufficient measure of genuine philosophy, that is
to say, unless political power and philosophy be united in the
same person . . . there will be no deliverance for cities nor
yet for the human race." The State shall undertake the edu-
cation of the children (of the higher classes), following a defi-
nite plan of instruction, which shall be the same for the first
twenty years of life and apply to both sexes, and shall include :
bodily exercises (in infancy) ; the narration of myths with a
view to ethical culture; gymnastics, which develops not only
the body but the will; reading and writing; poetry and music,
which arouse the sense of beauty, harmony, and proportion and
encourage philosophical thought; mathematics, which tends to
draw the mind from the sensuous to the real; and military
PLATO *S" 73
exercises. A selection of the choice characters shall be made
from the ranks of the young men at twenty, and these shall
study the different subjects of their childhood in their interrela-
tions and learn to survey them as a whole. Those who, at the
age of thirty, show the greatest ability in these fields, in military
affairs, and other branches of discipline will study dialectics for
five years, after which they will be put to the test in holding
military commands and secondary civic offices. At the age of
fifty those who have shown themselves worthy will devote them-
selves to the study of philosophy until their turn comes to
administer the higher offices for their country's sake.
Plato's Republic is an ideal of a perfect state, the dream of
a kingdom of God on earth. It is frequently spoken of as
Utopian. It must be remembered, however, that it was con-
ceived by Plato as a small city-state, that many of his ' ' ideals ' '
were actual realities in Sparta, and that not a few of them are
regarded as matters of fact to-day.
In his later work, the Laws, Plato greatly modifies his po-
litical theory. A good State should have, besides reason or
insight, freedom and friendship. All citizens should be free
and have a share in the government ; they are to be landowners,
while all trade and commerce should be given over to serfs and
foreigners. The family is restored to its natural position.
Knowledge is not everything : there are other motives of virtuous
conduct, e.g., pleasure and friendship, pain and hate. Virtue,
however, remains the ideal, and the education of the moral will
the goal.
Plato's philosophy is rationalistic in the sense that it holds
a rational knowledge of the universe to be possible, as well
as in the sense that the source of knowledge lies
in reason and not in sense-perception. Experi- £!.ato's.
. Historical
ence, however, is a necessary means of arousing Position
our a priori ideas. It is realistic in the sense that
it affirms the existence of a real world; idealistic, or spir-
itualistic, in the sense that this world is conceived as an ideal
or mental world; phenomenalistic in the sense that the sense-
world is a world of appearances or phenomena of the real world.
In this sense, too, it is radically anti-materialistic. It is panthe-
istic in the sense that all phenomena are looked upon as mani-
74 GREEK PHILOSOPHY
festations of an intelligible world-order, and also in the sense
of introducing an all-uniting world-soul. It is theistic in the
sense of admitting a Creator, or Demiurge, though this figure
is mythical, and philosophically out of place in the system. It
teaches transcendency in that its ideal world transcends the
world of experience: the pure ideas seem to shun the contami-
nation of the material element; immanency, in that the world-
soul is diffused over all space. It is anti-mechanistic and teleo-
logical in that it seeks the ultimate explanation of the world in
final causes or purposes, embracing all these under a universal
purpose : the idea of the Good. It is dualistic in the sense that
it has two principles of explanation, mind and matter. It is
fundamentally ethical in that the final cause of the whole world
is the idea of the Good. Its ethical theory is anti-hedonistic,
intuitionistic, and idealistic, a self-realization theory we might
say, though the term is apt to be misunderstood. Its political
theory is aristocratic and socialistic.
The great influence of this system on later Greek thought and
on Christian philosophy and theology is easily understood. It
is a world-view with a remarkable span, attempting to ration-
alize nearly every field of human interest and endeavor. To
Christianity, when it sought to make its message intelligible and
reasonable to the educated Roman world, it became a treasure-
house of thoughts. Its idealism, its teleology, its conception of
a system of ideas as patterns of the world, its dualism, its mys-
ticism, its contempt for matter and the world of sense, its ethical
State, its proofs for the immortality of the soul, its doctrine of
the fall of man, — all these teachings, and many more besides,
were welcome gifts to those who wished to justify the new faith
to reason. We shall have occasion, later on, to point out how
much Christian theology owed to the Greeks, and how pro-
foundly the greatest thinker of the early Church, St. Augustine,
was influenced by Plato. And what a vital force his idealism
has remained in the philosophy of the entire European world,
down to the present, will be seen at every step.
The Academy established by Plato was continued by his pupils
after his death. The school at first followed the Pythagorean
doctrines which Plato had adopted during his old age, and iden-
ARISTOTLE 75
tified ideas with numbers. It also emphasized the ethical studies.
This phase of the school is called the Older Academy : its schol-
archs or heads were Plato's nephew, Speusippus (from 347 to
339 B.C.), Xenocrates (339-314), Polemo (314-
270), and Crates (270-247). Other members
of the Old Academy were: Heraclides of Pontus,
Philippus of Opus, Hestiasus of Perinthus, and Eudoxus of
Cnidus. Crates 's successor Arcesilaus (247-241) introduced
skepticism into the Academy and founded the second or Middle
Academy, which remained true to the teachings of Arcesilaus
until Carneades became its head (before 156), and the founder
of the third or New Academy. (See pp. 116, ff.)
10. ARISTOTLE
Plato was the first Greek thinker to construct an idealistic
philosophy on a comprehensive scale. The system, however,
presented difficulties and inconsistencies, which
had to be considered and, if possible, overcome.
The early Platonic school did little to develop the
thought of its founder ; it did what schools generally do, it trans-
mitted his doctrines very largely as they had been received. It
was left to Aristotle, a pupil of independent mind, to recon-
struct the system, to develop it in what seemed to him a more
consistent and scientific manner. First of all, the problem of
transcendent ideas had to be reconsidered : Plato seemed to place
the eternal forms (as Aristotle calls them) beyond the stars,
to separate them from the actual world of experience, and to de-
grade this to mere appearance. Then there was the conception
of the secondary element, the Platonic matter, which needed to
be defined more precisely in order to become a satisfactory prin-
ciple of explanation. The gulf between form and matter had
to be bridged somehow: how could the remote and changeless
ideas place their impress upon a lifeless and irrational sub-
stratum? Other difficulties presented themselves. How shall
we account for the progressively changing forms of things ; how
for the existence of individual immortal souls and their presence
in human bodies? The Demiurge and the world-soul are make-
shifts; the recourse to mythology and the popular religion a
76 GREEK PHILOSOPHY
confession of ignorance. The dualism remains and extends to
every phase of the system, and the problems are not solved. So
at least it seemed to Plato's pupil.
Aristotle retains the changeless eternal forms, the idealistic
principles of the teacher, but rejects their transcendency. He
brings them down from heaven to earth, so to speak. Forms
are not apart from things, but in them; they are not tran-
scendent, but immanent. Matter is not non-being (M ov)
but dynamic (dwajtei ov) • form and matter are not separate,
but eternally together: matter realizes the form or idea of the
thing, moves and changes, grows, or evolves formward. The
world of sense, the phenomenal order, is not a mere imitation
or shadow of the real world ; it is the real world, form and mat-
ter in one, and the true object of Science. It is because he
conceives it so that Aristotle feels at home in it, that he studies
it sympathetically, that his theories always keep in close touch
with it, and that he encourages the natural sciences.
Aristotle was born 384 B.C., in Stagira, the son of Nicomachus, the
court physician of Philip of Macedon. At the age of seventeen he
entered Plato's Academy, where he remained for twenty years as
student and teacher. After the death of Plato (347), he journeyed
to Assos, in Mysia, thence to Mitylene, and is said to have returned
to Athens to open a school of rhetoric. In 342 he was called by
King Philip to direct the education of his son Alexander, afterwards
called the Great. Seven years later he came back to Athens, this time
to establish a school in the gymnasium dedicated to the Lycean Apollo,
from which the school received its historic name, the Lyceum. (It has
also been called the Peripatetic School, because of Aristotle's habit of
walking while giving instruction.) He taught by means of lectures
and the dialogue. After the sudden death of Alexander in 323, the
philosopher was accused of sacrilege by the anti-Macedonian party at
Athens and compelled to flee to Euboea, where he died 322 B.C.
Aristotle was a man of noble character, realizing in his personality
the Greek ideal of measure and harmony taught in his system of
ethics. His love of truth was strong, his judgment sober, impartial,
and acute; he was a master of dialectics, a lover of detail, a great
reader, a close observer, and a specialist. His literary style was like
his thinking, sober, scientific, familiar, free from embellishment and
flights of fancy, even dry. One seldom feels the glow of his own per-
sonality in his works; it is only on rare occasions that he gives ex-
pression to his emotions. In these respects, he was unlike his great
teacher Plato. In perusing his works we seem to be in the presence
of calm impersonal reason. He is, however, one of the greatest figures
in the history of thought, a universal genius. He wrote on a large
ARISTOTLE 7?
number of topics: logic, rhetoric, poetics, physics, botany, zoology,
psychology, ethics, economics, politics, and metaphysics. '
A "large collection of writings attributed to Aristotle has come down
to us, most of them genuine. Many of his books, however, seem to
have been lost. Andronicus, who published an edition of his works
between 60 and 50 B.C., places the number of books (chapters, we
should say) written by Aristotle at 1000. Of the works published by
him for wider circles of readers, only fragments remain; the material
that has been preserved represents his lectures to his pupils and was
not intended for publication.
We may, following Zeller, arrange the extant writings in the follow-
ing groups: (1) Logic (writings called by the followers of Aristotle
the Organon, the organ or instrument for acquiring knowledge). Cate-
gories (mutilated and added to by later hands; largely genuine, though
this is doubted by some authorities) ; Propositions (gives the Aristo-
telian teaching, but is not genuine) ; the two Analytics (Syllogism;
Definition, Classification, Demonstration) ; Topics (nine books on Prob-
ability). Sophistic Fallacies is the last book of the Topics.
(2) Rhetoric. Rhetoric to Theodectes (based on Aristotle's teachings,
but not his work) ; Rhetoric to Alexander (spurious) ; Rhetoric (three
books, third doubtful). The theory of art is presented in the Poetics,
of which only a part remains.
(3) Metaphysics. A series of fourteen books, dealing mainly with
first principles, were placed, in the collection of Andronicus, immedi-
ately after the writings on physics, and bore the heading ra fiera ra QvoiKd
(meta ta physica, or writings coming after the writings on physics),
simply to indicate their position in the collection. This is the origin
of the term metaphysics: Aristotle himself never used it, but called
such discussions of first principles " First Philosophy." These fourteen
books were not intended by Aristotle as a single work. Book II (a) and
parts of Book XI are spurious.
(4) Natural Sciences. Physics (eight books, Book VII an in-
terpolation) ; Astronomy (four books) ; Origin and Decay (two books) ;
Meteorology (four books) ; Cosmology (spurious) ; Botany (spurious) ;
History of Animals (ten books, Book X spurious) ; On the Parts of
Animals (four books) ; On the Progression of Animals (not genuine,
according to some) ; On the Origin of Animals (five books) ; On the
Locomotion of Animals (spurious). Psychology. On the Soul (eight
books, three treating of sensation, memory, sleep and waking; others,
called parva naturalia, are smaller treatises, which have been added,
while the last book on breathing is post- Aristotelian).
(5) Ethics. Nicomachean Ethics (ten books; additions from the
Eudemian Ethics have been made in Books V-VII) ; Eudemian Ethics
(a revision of the former by Eudemus: only Books I-III and VI pre-
served) ; Magna Moralia, the Greater Ethics (a compilation of the
two preceding).
(6) Politics. Politics (eight books, apparently incomplete) ; On
the Constitution of Athens (part of Politics, discovered 1890). The
work on economics attributed to Aristotle is not authentic.
Complete edition of works by Bekker and Brandis; collection of
fragments by Rose; translations appearing under editorship of J. A.
78 GREEK PHILOSOPHY
Smith and W. S. Ross. Index to works by Bonitz; Kappes, Aristoteles-
Lexikon. Other translations : Posterior Analytics and Sophistici Elenchi
by Poste; Metaphysics by Ross, Book I by Taylor; Psychology by
Hammond, Hicks, Wallace; Parva naturalia by Beare and Ross;
Nicomachean Ethics by Welldon, Peters; Politics by Welldon, Jowett
(2 vols.), Ellis; Constitution of Athens by Kenyon; Poetics by By-
water, Butcher, Lane Cooper, Wharton; Rhetoric by Welldon. (Nearly
all these works also in Bohn Library; in addition: Organon and
History of Animals.) Burnet, Aristotle on Education, translations of
parts of Ethics and Politics.
A. E. Taylor, Aristotle; E. Wallace, Outlines of the Philosophy of
Aristotle; Grant, Aristotle; Grote, Aristotle; T. H. Green, Aristotle, in
Works; Chase, Ethics of Aristotle; A. C. Bradley, Aristotle's Theory
of State in Hellenica; Davidson, Aristotle and Ancient Educational
Ideals; Jones, Aristotle's Researches in Natural Science; Siebeck,
Aristoteles; Brentano, Aristoteles und seine Weltanschauung; Piat,
Aristote; special works by Bernays (on theory of the drama), Maier
(syllogism), F. Brentano (psychology).
Aristotle accepts the idealistic and teleological presupposi-
tions of his teacher: the universe is an ideal world, an inter-
related, organic whole, a system of eternal and
Philosophy unchangeable ideas or forms (d'drj). These are
Sciences *ne ultimate essences and causes of things, the
directing forces or purposes that make them what
they are. Ideas are not, however, detached from the world we
perceive, but part and parcel of it, immanent in it; they give
it form and life. Our world of experience is the real world,
and not an untrustworthy appearance. Hence, it is the object
for us to study and to understand ; and experience the basis and
starting-point of our knowledge, from which to rise to the science
of ultimate principles. This conception of reality gives our
philosopher, who was the son of a physician, his wholesome
respect for the concrete and particular, accounts for his interest
in natural science, and determines his method. Genuine knowl-
edge (eTriffTr/jMi), however, does not consist in mere acquaint-
ance with facts, but in knowing their reasons or causes or
grounds, in knowing that they cannot be otherwise than they
are. Philosophy, or Science in the broad sense, embraces all
such reasoned knowledge; it includes mathematics as well as
the special sciences. The science or philosophy which studies
the ultimate or first causes of things is called by Aristotle the
first philosophy; we call it metaphysics. Metaphysics is con-
ARISTOTLE v--^\ 79
cerned with being as such; the different sciences, with certain
parts or phases of being ; physics, for example, with being in so
far as it has matter and motion. These other, partial, sciences
or philosophies are named second philosophies.
Aristotle further distinguishes between theoretical sciences
(mathematics, ptiysics, and metaphysics), practical sciences
(ethics and politics), and creative sciences or arts (knowledge
concerned with mechanical and artistic production). Of these,
he takes up physics (physics, astronomy, biology, etc.), meta-
, and practical philosophy, so that we have, if we add
logic, the general division of Plato: logic, metaphysics, and
ethics.
The function of logic is to describe the method of reaching
knowledge. Socrates and Plato had already laid the founda-
tions of this study, but Aristotle was the first to .
work it out in detail, and to make a special dis-
cipline of it. He is the founder of scientific logic. He considers
it an important instrument for the acquisition of genuine knowl-
edge, and holds that we should not proceed to the study of the
first philosophy, or the science of the essence of things, until
we have familiarized ourselves with the Analytics. Logic, there-
fore, is an introduction or propaedeutic to philosophy.
Its theme is the analysis of the form and content of thought,
of the processes by which we reach knowledge; it is the science
of correct thinking. Thinking consists in reasoning, or scien-
tific demonstration, in deriving the particular from the uni-
versal, the conditioned from its causes. Inferences are com-
posed of judgments, which, when expressed in language, are
called propositions; judgments are made up of concepts, which
are expressed in terms. Aristotle discusses the nature and dif-
ferent kinds of judgments, the various relations in which they
stand to one another, and the different kinds of demonstration,
defining and classifying these processes as they are still largely
defined and classified in the text-books of formal logic to-day.
Concepts do not receive exhaustive treatment in his logic; he
does, however, deal with the concept in the narrow sense, that
is, with definition and the rules of definition ; and also with the
highest concepts, or categories.
He devotes considerable attention to demonstration, which
80 GREEK PHILOSOPHY
is based on the syllogism, — a field neglected by Plato. He was
the first, as Zeller says, to discover in the syllogism the basal
form in which all thought moves, and to give it a name. The
syllogism is a discourse (koyo?) in which from certain presup-
positions (premises) something new (the conclusion) necessarily
follows. In the syllogism the particular is derived from the
universal: it is deductive reasoning. Induction consists in
deriving a universal proposition from particular facts of experi-
ence: in order to be valid, the process must be complete or
perfect, that is, based on knowledge of all the cases.
Valid or scientific demonstration is, therefore, always in the
form of the syllogism : it is syllogistic and deductive. In order
to be true, the conclusion must follow necessarily from the
premises. And the premises themselves must be universal and
necessary, hence they, too, must be proved, i.e., grounded on
other premises. The goal of knowledge is complete demonstra-
tion.* This is possible only in a series of syllogisms in which
conclusions depend on premises which, in turn, are the conclu-
sions of other premises, and so on. But the process cannot go
on forever; we must finally reach propositions or principles
which cannot be proved deductively, and which, nevertheless,
^ have absolute certainty, greater certainty, indeed, than all the
propositions derived from them. We have such direct or imme-
diate, intuitive or -self -evident principles (apx&i), e.g., the
axioms of mathematics and the principle of contradiction. Each
particular science has such principles of its own, and there are,
besides, universal principles common to all the sciences, the
principles of first philosophy, or metaphysics.
The basal notions or principles are inherent in reason itself
(vovs), the highest part of the soul; they are direct intuitions
of reason. They can also be verified by induction, the process
in which thought rises from sense-perception, or the perception
of individual things, to general concepts, or the knowledge of
universals. Human reason has the power of abstracting from
the particular its form, or that in which it agrees with other
particulars of the same name. Such forms constitute the essences
* The ideal science in Aristotle's day was mathematics, hence the im-
portant rSle deduction plays in his logic. His aim was to reach the cer-
tainly of mathematics.
ARISTOTLE 81
of things ; they are real. They are, however, not only the prin-
ciples or essences of things, but also principles Qf^reason ;_being
potential in the mind. Experience is necessary to "firmg lhen\
out, to make reason aware of them, to bring them to conscious-)
ness. That is, they are implicit in the mind and made explicit,
or actual by experience. They are both forms of thought and )
'
itself. This is a basal idea of Aristotle's:
thought and being coincide; truth is the agreement of thought
with being.
Our knowledge, therefore, always begins with sense-perception
and rises from particular facts to universal concepts, i.e., from
" that which is the better known to us " to " that which is the
better known and more certain in itself." Universals are the
last things we reacfe-4n^ our Chinking, but first in nature: they
are the first principle^s^^
Hence, induction is "a preparation for deduction. The ideal
of Science must always be to derive particulars from universals,
to furnish demonstration or necessary proof, which cannot be
done until induction has done its work, until the universals lying
dormant in our reason have been aroused by experience. In
this way Aristotle reconciles empiricism and rationalism. Knowl-
edge is impossible without experience; but truths derived from
experience, by induction, would not be certain, — they would
yield probability only, — hence they must also be a priori, implicit
in the mind. Without experience, truths would never be known ;
without being implicit in reason, they would not be certain.
By the categories Aristotle means the most general forms of
predication, the fundamental and most universal predicates
which can be affirmed of anything. He enumerates ten, some-
times only eight, such categories. We can say of a thing what
it is (man: substance), how it is constituted (white: quality),
how large it is (two yards long: quantity), how related (greater,
double: relation), where it is (in the Lyceum: space), when it
is (yesterday: time), what posture or position it assumes (lies,
sits: position), the state it is in (clothed, armed), what it does
(burns: activity), and what it suffers (is burned: passivity).
All this means that the objects of our experience exist in time
and place, can be measured and counted, are related to other
things, act and are acted on, have essential qualities and acci-
82 GREEK PHILOSOPHY
dental qualities. The categories are not mere forms of thought
or language, — they are that, to be sure, — they are also predicates
of reality as such: every word and concept has something real
corresponding to it. The particular, perceivable substance is
the bearer of all these categories, it is that of which they can all
be predicated. Hence, the category of substance is the all-
important one, the others exist only in so far as they can be
predicated of substance. Science, therefore, deals with the cate-
gory of being, or essence, or substance, i.e., with the essential
qualities of things. This leads us to Aristotle's metaphysics.
The problem of metaphysics is the discovery of ultimate prin-
ciples. How shall we explain the world, what is it in essence?
. Democritus and his school had reduced it to mov-
ing material atoms, Plato to transcendent ideas,
which somehow influence formless matter. Aristotle rejects
both answers, and seeks to mediate between them. The idea or
form cannot be a self-existent essence, apart from matter, as
Plato has it ; a quality cannot exist apart from its object ; jthere
can be no form without matter. Nor can the changing reality
perceived by us be explained by mere purposeless matter in
motion, as the materialists hold; there can be no matter with-
out directing purpose or form. Plato regarded the objects of
concrete experience as mere incomplete copies of the universal
idea, as accidents, and the form as the substance; Aristotle, on
the other hand, regards the particular objects or individual be-
ings as real substances. But the essence or true nature of the
particular concrete being is constituted by its form, by the gen-
eral qualities belonging to the class to which it belongs ; so that,
after all, the form, or idea, is for him, too, the most essential
element.
The particular object, however, changes or grows; all that
is perceived is changeable, it is and it is not, it can be and not
be ; it assumes now these qualities, now those, it is now seed, now
sapling, now tree, now fruit. How shall we explain this process
of becoming ? There must be something that changes, something
that persists in the change, something that has the different
qualities of which we have spoken. This is matter (vXrj) : mat-
ter persists, matter itself cannot disappear. Matter must
always have some qualities; we never experience a formless
ARISTOTLE 83
matter, hence matter and qualities, or forms, exist together. So
that when we say an object changes its form, we do not mean
that the form itself changes or becomes different: no form, as
such, can change into another form. Matter assumes different
forms, a series of forms, one form following another; matter
persists, the^foffiflt first had does not change into another form,
but a new form fashions the matter. The different forms have
always existed, they do not suddenly come into being. Hence,
neither matter nor forms arise or disappear ; they are the eternal
principles of things. In order to explain change or growth, we
must assume a substratum (matter) that persists and changes,
and qualities (forms) which, though never changing, are re-
sponsible for the rich and growing world around us.
When a thing has reached its growth, it has realized its mean-
ing, its purpose, or form : the form is its true being, its realiza-
tion or completion (eVreA^fz**). Its possibilities have been
realized, that which was potential in it (dvva^i^} has become
actual (evfpyeia). Matter has taken on form; the acorn be-
comes an oak, the acorn is a potential oak ; the oak is the realiza-
tion of its potentiality, it is the form made manifest, real, actual.
Aristotle, therefore, calls matter the principle of possibility, and
form the principle of reality, or actuality. Only primary mat-
ter, however, formless matter, which we can think, but which
does not exist as such, is mere possibility; concrete matter
always has form, is, in a sense, actual. But it is a mere possi-
bility as regards some other form or actuality: the seed is
matter for the oak ; the marble, matter for the statue.
In order, then, to explain our world of change we must assume
forms and matter. Every form is, like the Platonic idea, eternal,
but instead of being outside of matter, it is in matter: forms
and matter have always coexisted ; the universe is eternal. Form
realizes itself in the thing; it causes the matter to move: an
end or purpose is realized by the thing. An artist in producing
a work of art has an idea or plan in his mind ; he acts on matter
through the motion of his hands, being governed in his action
by his plan, and so realizes a purpose. We can distinguish
four principles in this process, four kinds of causes: the idea
or form (that which is, the statue in his mind), the formal cause ;
the matter (that from which the statue is made), the material
84 GREEK PHILOSOPHY
cause; the cause of the motion (that through which it is made),
the efficient or moving cause ; and the purpose or end ( that for
the sake of which it is made), the final cause. The same causes
are at work in nature, particularly in the organic world; only,
in nature the artist and his product are not separate, but one;
the artist is in his work, so to speak. But the form or plan
and the end or purpose really coincide: the purpose of the
organism is the realization of its form. And the form or idea
is, also, the cause of the motion, so that, after all, we have only
two essential causes, — form and matter, — which constitute one
indivisible whole, distinguishable only by thought.
Forms are purposive forces which realize themselves in the
world of matter. Every organism becomes what it is through
the action of an idea or purpose. There is a directing principle
at work in the seed that makes it impossible for the seed to
become anything but the plant or animal from which it came.
Since forms are unchangeable, species are immutable ; the species
are constant, individuals pass away.
If all this is so, if form controls matter, which is potential
form, how does it happen that nature so often fails of its mark;
that it is so often incomplete, imperfect, and deformed? Aris-
totle lays the failures in nature to the imperfection of matter:
matter, at this point, is no longer mere possibility, but offers
resistance to the form, has power of its own ; to its recalcitrancy
are due the plurality and diversity of individuals expressing a
type, the differences existing between male and female, as well
as all the monstrosities and deformities in the world.
Motion or change is explained as the union of form and
matter. The idea or form is what causes motion in matter ;
the idea is the mover, matter the thing moved. Motion is the
realization of that which is possible as such. How is this brought
about? By the mere presence of the idea; matter strives to
realize the form, it is roused to action by the presence of the
form, it has a desire for the form. And since form and matter
are eternal, motion is eternal. Here the recalcitrant matter
exhibits the opposite quality: a desire to move in the direction
of the purpose; if this is not merely figurative language on
Aristotle 's part, we have v here a survival of the old Greek
hylozoism.
I
ARISTOTLE 85
Such eternal motion on the part of matter logically presup-
poses, according to our jphilosopher, an eternal unmoved mover,
something that caused motion, without itself moving. For if it
itself moved, it would have to be moved by something else that
moves, and so on ad infinitum; which would leave motion unex-
plained. Somewhere, motion must begin without being caused
by something that moves. Hence, there is an eternal unmoved
first mover, who is the final ground of all vital forces in nature.
Since this first cause is unmoved, it must be form without mat-
ter, pure form, absolute spirit, for where there is matter, there
is motion and change.
The first cause is absolutely perfect, and is the highest purpose
or highest good of the world. God acts on the world, not by
moving it, but as a beautiful picture or an ideal acts on the
soul. All beings in the world, plants, animals, men, desire the
realization of their essence because of the highest good, or God ;
his existence is the cause of their desire. Hence God is the uni-
fying principle of the world, the center towards which all things
strive, the principle which accounts for all order, beauty, and
life in the universe. God's activity consists in thought, in the
contemplation of the essence of things, in the vision of beau-
tiful forms. He is all actuality; every possibility is realized in
him. He has no impressions, no sensations, no appetites, no will
in the sense of desire, no feelings in the sense of passions; he
is pure intelligence. Our intellect is discursive, our knowledge
piecemeal, moving along step by step; God's thinking is in-
tuitive : he sees all things at once and sees them whole. He is
free from pain and passion, and is supremely happy. He is
everything that a philosopher longs to be.
Aristotle's physics, the science of bodies and motion, is char-
acterized by its antagonism to the mechanical-atomistic view
of Democritus. He rejects the attempt to explain .
all changes in the corporeal world quantitatively,
as changes in the local relation of atoms. Matter, as we have
already seen, he tends to conceive as passive and inert, and in
this regard he agrees with Democritus, although he sometimes
endows it with the qualities which hylozoism had ascribed to
it. Empty space is denied along with atoms; and space is
defined as the limit between a surrounded and a surrounding
86 GREEK PHILOSOPHY
body. Whatever is not bounded by another body, is not in
space ; thus there is no space beyond the fixed stars, because there
is no body to limit them. Where there are no more bodies, space
ceases to exist. Hence, there can be no infinite space, the world
is finite; and it does not move as a whole, but only its parts
suffer change. Since space cannot be conceived without motion
and God does not move, God is not in space.
By motion (KivrjffiZ) Aristotle means all kinds of change;
with his teleological theory in mind, he defines it as " the
realization of the possible," and enumerates four kinds of mo-
tion: substantial (origin and decay); quantitative (change in
the size of a body by addition and subtraction) ; qualitative
(transformation of one thing into another) ; and local (change
of place), which conditions all the other kinds of change. The
elements, of which there are four (sometimes five), according
to Aristotle, can be transformed into one another; and the mix-
ture of substances gives rise to a new substance. Qualities are
not mere subjective effects of quantitative changes, as the Atom-
ists hold, but real qualities of the things themselves. Changes
in quality cannot, therefore, be explained mechanically, as mere
changes in the local arrangement of atoms; there is an absolute
change in quality, which is produced by forces acting on matter.
All these conceptions are directly opposed to the theories of
natural science as they had been worked out by the Atomists.
The difference is fundamental: for Aristotle nature cannot be
explained mechanically; it is dynamic and teleological; it is
active and nothing in it happens without purpose. Convinced
of the truth of his metaphysical presuppositions, Aristotle often
settles questions in science by declaring certain occurrences to
be impossible, because inconceivable; — that is, inconceivable on
the basis of his metaphysics. From the standpoint of mecha-
nism, his conception represents a decidedly backward step in the
progress of thought ; but there are many natural scientists to-day
who would subscribe to his dynamic or " energetic " interpre-
tation of nature, and not a few who would accept his teleology.
The universe is eternal, subject neither to origin nor decay.
The earth is in the center; around it, in concentric layers, are
water, air, fire; then come the celestial spheres, which are com-
posed of ether and some of which carry the planets, the sun,
XARISTOTLE 87
and the moon; then the fixed stars. In order to explain the
motion of the planets, Aristotle introduced a large number of
counter-spheres or " backward-moving " spheres. God encom-
passes the outermost sphere of the fixed stars and causes it to
move ; by the motion of this sphere the movements of the other
spheres are influenced. This idea, however, is not consistently
carried out by Aristotle, each sphere also being supplied with
a spirit to move it.
Aristotle may be called the founder of systematic and com-
parative zoology. As in his physics, so in his biology, he is
opposed to the purely quantitative-mechanical-
causal conception of nature; he subordinates it to
the qualitative, dynamic, and teleological interpretation. There
are forces in nature which initiate and direct movements; the
form fe dynamic and purposive, as we have seen, and it is the
soul of the organic body. The body is an organon or instrument ;
instruments are intended for use, presuppose a user, a soul;
the soul is that which moves the body and fixes its structure ; it
is the principle of life (vitalism). Man has hands because he
has a mind. Body and soul constitute an indivisible unity, but
soul is the controlling, guiding principle; that is, the whole is
prior to the parts, the purpose prior to its realization ; we can-
not understand the parts without the whole.
Wherever there is life, — and there are traces of life all through
nature, even in inorganic nature, — there is soul. Different
grades or degrees of soul exist, corresponding to different forms
of life. No soul can be without a body, and no soul without
a specific body: a human soul could not dwell in the body of
a horse. The organic world forms an ascending scale of bodies,
from the lowest to the highest; and a graduated series of souls,
from the plant soul, which governs the functions of nutrition,
growth, and reproduction, to the human soul, which possesses
additional and higher powers.
'Man is the microcosm and the final goal of nature, distin-
guished from all other living beings by the possession of reason
(rov?). The soul of man resembles the plant
soul in that it controls the lower vital functions,
and the animal soul in the possession of faculties of perception,
the so-called common sense, imagination, memory, pleasure and
88 GREEK PHILOSOPHY
pain, desire and aversion. Sense-perception is a change pro-
duced in the soul by things perceived, through the mediation
of the sense-organs. The sense-organ is, potentially, what the
perceived object is actually. The different senses inform the
soul of the qualities of things ; the common sense, whose organ
is the heart, is the meeting-place, as it were, of all the senses;
by means of it we combine percepts furnished by the other
senses and obtain the total picture of an object. It also gives
us a clear picture of qualities, — such as number, size, shape,
motion, and rest, — which are perceived by every sense. The
common sense also forms generic images, composite images, and
has the power of retention or memory (associative thinking).
The feelings of pleasure and pain are referred to perception;
pleasure arises when functions are furthered, pain when they
are impeded. These feelings arouse desire and aversion, which
alone cause the body to move. Desire arises only on the pre-
sentation of a desirable object, of one considered by the soul
as a good. Desire accompanied by deliberation is called ra-
tional will.
The human soul possesses, besides the foregoing functions,
the power of conceptual thought, the faculty of thinking the
universal and necessary essences of things; as the soul per-
ceives sensible objects in perception, so, as reason (rov$)t it
beholds concepts. Eeason is, potentially, whatever it can con-
ceive or think; conceptual thought is actualized reason. How
does reason come to think concepts? There is active or creative
reason and passive reason. Creative reason is pure actuality;
in it concepts are realized, it sees them directly, — here thought
and the object of thought are one, — it is like Plato's pure soul,
which contemplates the world of ideas. In passive reason con-
cepts are potential (it is likened to Aristotle's matter: passive
reason is the matter on which creative reason, the form, acts) ;
they are made real or actual, or brought out, by creative reason.
According to Aristotle 's teaching, nothing can ever become actual
for which an actual cause does not already exist. Thus, for
example, a complete form or idea exists which the matter of a
particular organism has to realize. Similarly, he assumes here,
a complete form must exist in reason for reason to realize. In
order to carry out this thought in the mental world, he distin-
ARISTOTLE 89
guishes between the formal and material phases of reason, be-
tween active and passive reason, actual and potential reason:
the concepts which are potential in passive reason are actual
in creative reason.
Perception, imagination, and memory are connected with the
body and perish with it. Passive reason, too, contains elements
of sensuous images and is perishable. Such images are the occa-
sion for the arousal of concepts in passive reason, but these
cannot be aroused without the action of creative reason. Creative
reason existed before soul and body; it is absolutely immaterial,
imperishable, not bound to a body, and immortal. It is a spark
of the divine mind coming to the soul from without (SvpaSer),
as Aristotle says ; it does not arise in the course of the soul 's
development, as do the other psychic functions. Since it is not
an individual reason, personal immortality is evidently out of
the question. Some interpreters of Aristotle identify it with
universal reason or the mind of God.
Aristotle's metaphysics and psychology form the basis of his
theory of ethics, which is the first comprehensive scientific theory
presented in history. The question to be answered .
by it is the Socratic question of the highest good.
All human action has some end in view. This end may be the
means to a higher end, this to a still higher, and so on ; but finally
we must reach a supreme end or purpose, an ultimate prin-
ciple or good, for the sake of which every other good is to be
sought. What is this highest good? The goodness of a thing
consists in the realization of its specific nature ; the end or pur-
pose of every creature is to realize or make manifest its peculiar
essence, that which distinguishes it from every other creature.
This for man is not mere bodily existence or mere sensuous feel-
ing, the exercise of vegetable and animal functions, but a life
of reason. Hence, the highest good for man is the complete
and habitual exercise of the functions which make him a human
being. This is what Aristotle means by the term eudsemonia
(evdaijtovia), which has been translated by our word happiness,
to which no objection need be raised if it is not taken as pleas-
ure. Pleasure, according to Aristotle, accompanies virtuous
activity as a secondary effect and is thus included in the highest
good, but not identical with it.
90 GREEK PHILOSOPHY
The soul, however, is not all reason, it has an irrational as
well as a rational part: feelings, desires, appetites. With these
reason should cooperate; in order to realize its purpose, the
different parts of the soul must act in the right way and the
body must function properly, and there must be adequate eco-
nomic goods. (Neither a slave nor a child can attain the ethical
goal; and poverty, sickness, and misfortune stand in its way.)
A virtuous soul is a well-ordered soul, one in which the right
relation exists between reason, feeling, and desire. The perfect
action of reason as such is intellectual (dianoetical) efficiency
or virtue (wisdom, insight) ; the perfect action of the emotional-
impulsive function is called ethical virtue (temperance, courage,
liberality, etc.). There will be as many moral virtues as there
are spheres of action. We must assume a rational attitude to-
ward bodily appetites, toward fear, danger, anger, the desire
for economic goods, fame, and so on.
The question arises, In what does this attitude consist? In
keeping the mean between two extremes (the doctrine of the
golden mean *), we are told. Courage, for example, is a mean
between foolhardiness and cowardice; liberality, between ex-
travagance and avarice; modesty, between bashfulness and
shamelessness. This mean is not the same for every individual
and under all circumstances, it is " relative to ourselves," and
it is " determined by reason, or as a right-minded man would
determine it. " It is not, however, a matter of subjective opinion
or arbitrary choice; what moral conduct is, is decided by the
right-minded man: the virtuous man is the standard and meas-
ure of things; he judges everything correctly, and the truth is
manifest to him in every case. Two other points are to be
remembered: Moral conduct implies a disposition (e£t$) or a
habit of the will; it is an expression of character: one swallow
does not make a spring. Moreover, it is voluntary action,
consciously purposive action, freely chosen action : ' ' virtue,
as well as the evil, lies in our power." Aristotle includes
all these ideas in the following definition: " Virtue is a dis-
position, or habit, involving deliberate purpose or choice,
consisting in a mean that is relative to ourselves, the mean
* This principle is frequently abandoned by Aristotle in his discussions,
inapplicable in many cases.
ARISTOTLE 91
being determined by reason, or as a prudent man would deter-
mine it."
The highest good for man, then, is self-realization. This
teaching, however, is not to be interpreted as a selfish indi-
vidualism. A man realizes his true self when he loves and grati-
fies the supreme part of his being, that is, the rational part,
when he is moved by a motive of nobleness, when he promotes
the interests of others and serves his country. One has but
to read Aristotle 's books on friendship and justice in his Ethics
in order to appreciate the exalted altruistic spirit of his teach-
ing. " The virtuous man will act often in the interest of his
friends and of his country, and, if need be, will even die for
them. He will surrender money, honor, and all the goods for
which the world contends, reserving only nobleness for him-
self, as he would rather enjoy an intense pleasure for a short
time than a moderate pleasure long, and would rather live one
year nobly than many years indifferently, and would rather per-
form one noble and lofty action than many poor actions. This
is true of one who lays down his life for another; he chooses
great nobleness for his own." The virtuous man is a lover of
self in the sense that he assigns to himself a preponderant share
of noble conduct. Man is a social being and disposed to live
with others; he needs somebody to do good to. " A virtuous
friend is naturally desirable to a virtuous man, for that which
is naturally good is good and pleasant in itself to the virtuous
man;" that is, loving goodness for its own sake, he is bound
to love a virtuous friend; in this sense, his friend is a second
self (an alter ego) to the virtuous man.
Justice is a virtue implying a relation to others, for it pro-
motes the interests of somebody else, whether he be a ruler or
a simple fellow-citizen. Justice is taken in two senses, lawful-
ness and fairness. Laws pronounce upon all subjects with a
view to the interest of the community as a whole, or of those
who are its best or leading citizens whether in virtue or in any
similar sense. That is, all the virtues are here included in the
notion of justice, only that in this case they are regarded from
the standpoint of the general welfare. The term justice is also
used in the more usual sense of giving each man his due (dis-
tributive justice).
92 GREEK PHILOSOPHY
Nor is the theory to be taken in the hedonistic sense, as a
pleasure-theory. Pleasure is the necessary and immediate con-
sequent of virtuous activity, but not the end of life. Pleasure
is the completion of activity: it is something added, just as
youthful beauty is added to youthful power. It is a con-
comitant of action, and " the activity will be pleasantest when
it is most perfect, and it will be most perfect when it is the
activity of the part being in sound condition and acting upon the
most excellent of the objects that fall within its domain." It is
reasonable to aim at pleasure, as it perfects life in each of us,
and life is an object of desire. Pleasure and life are yoked
together and do not admit of separation, as pleasure is impos-
sible without activity and every activity is perfected by pleas-
ure. Besides, according to Aristotle, it is the things which are
honorable and pleasant to the virtuous man which are really
honorable and pleasant. If people who have never tasted a pure
and liberal pleasure have recourse to the pleasures of the body,
it must not be inferred that .these pleasures are prefer-
able.
The highest happiness is the activity of the best part of our
nature, — speculative activity, an 'activity which takes the form
of contemplation. This is the highest, the most continuous, the
most pleasant, in the highest degree self-sufficient, and loved for
its own sake. Such a life may seem too good for a man. He
will enjoy such a life not in virtue of his humanity, but in virtue
of some divine element in him. " If then the reason is divine
in comparison with the rest of man's nature, the life which
accords with reason will be divine in comparison with human
life in general. Nor is it right to follow the advice of people
who say that the thoughts of men should not be too high for
humanity or the thoughts of humanity too high for mortality;
for a man, as far as in him lies, should seek immortality and
do all that is in his power to live in accordance with the highest
part of his nature." *
It is not enough to know the nature of virtue; we should
endeavor to possess and exercise it. Theories are strong enough
to stimulate youths already liberally minded, but they cannot
inspire the mass of men to chivalrous action. It is difficult for
•Translations by Welldon.
ARISTOTLE 93
one to receive from his early days a right inclination to virtue
unless he is brought up under virtuous laws. We also need laws
to teach us all the duty of life when we have come to man's
estate, for most people are moved by necessity and fear of pun-
ishment rather than by reason and the love of nobleness. The
State should undertake the nurture and the pursuits of its citi-
zens. At any rate, whoever wishes to elevate the people should
try to learn the principles of legislation. In order, therefore,
that the philosophy of human life be made as complete as pos-
sible, Aristotle proceeds to examine the subject of politics, to
which we now turn.
Man is a social being (Zwov Ttokinuor}, who can realize his
true self only in society and the State. Families and village com-
munities are prior to the State in time, but the .
State is the goal of the evolution of human life,
and, as such, prior and superior to them and the individual
by nature, on the Aristotelian principle that the whole is prior
to its parts. That is, social life is the goal or end of human
existence. The aim of the State, however, is to produce good
citizens. We have here a reconciliation of the view that the
individual is the end of life and the view that society is the end.
Society is composed of individuals, and the purpose of society
is to enable the individual citizens to live a virtuous and happy
life.
The constitution of the State must be adapted to the char-
acter and requirements of a people. It is just when it confers
equal rights on the people in so far as they are equal, and un-
equal rights in so far as they are unequal. Citizens differ in
personal capability, in property qualifications, in birth, and
freedom, and justice demands that they be treated according to
these differences.
There are good constitutions and bad ones ; the monarchy, the
aristocracy, and the polity (a form in which the citizens are
nearly equal) being good forms, and the tyranny, oligarchy, and
democracy bad. As the best State for his own time, Aristotle
regards a city-state in which only those are to be citizens whose
position in life and education qualify them for government, that
is, an aristocracy. He justifies slavery on the ground that it uj
a natural institution ; it is just that foreigners, — and they alom
94 GREEK PHILOSOPHY
composed the slave-class in Greece, — being inferior to the Greeks,
should not enjoy the same rights as Greeks.
The philosophy of Aristotle was continued by his pupils, many of
whom showed independence of thought. Theophrastus (+287 B.C.),
his successor as the head of the school, wrote a work
Peripatetic on botany and a history of the doctrines of the " physi-
School cists." Eudemus is known by his history of mathematics
and astronomy ; Aristoxenus, by his studies in the theory
of music; Dicaearchus, by his geography and politics; Strato (suc-
cessor of Theophrastus in the school, from 287-269 B.C.) devotes himself
to the philosophy of nature. After Lyco, who succeeded Strato
(269-225) in the headship, the Peripatetic School lost its importance,
and the writings of the master were neglected. In the first century B.C.,
the school turned its attention to text-criticism and interpretation, a
work which was begun by Tyrannic and Andronicus of Rhodes, and
carried on for many centuries. To this movement we owe the preserva-
tion and transmission of the Aristotelian writings.
ETHICAL MOVEMENT
11. THE OUTLOOK
The vital question for Socrates had been the practical prob-
lem : he conceived it as his mission to set his age right in matters
of morals as well as in matters of truth. His interest in the
problem of knowledge was connected with his conviction that
clear thinking is essential to right action, and that it is pos-
sible to discover practical principles which will appeal to all
reasonable men. With the Socratic schools, too, ethical ques-
tions were uppermost, although the Megarians also showed a
fondness for dialectical discussions ; and Plato 's earlier writings
breathe the ethical spirit of his master. Even in his developed
system, the founder of the Academy never lost sight of the
highest good; his entire philosophy constituted a rational basis
for his ethical idealism. It is true that Aristotle exalted theo-
retical activity in his conception of God, but he, too, regarded
the ethical personality as the noblest goal of the universe. After
the death of Plato and Aristotle, their schools for the most part
adhered to the teachings of the founders and made little prog-
ress in the development of thought ; they were feeding upon the
THE OUTLOOK 95
intellectual legacy which had been bequeathed to them. The
Cyrenaics and the Cynics were preaching their opposing ethical
doctrines of hedonism and asceticism as before; and, influenced
by the Cynic Diogenes of Sinope, the Megarian Stilpo turned
his attention to ethical problems.
The social conditions which had assisted in the birth of the
Socratic movement did not disappear with the death of its
pioneer. The general moral tone of the times did not improve,
the pursuit of enjoyment and gain was not checked, faith in
the popular religion not strengthened. The long and frequent
wars between the Grecian city-states broke the power of one
after the other, and left Hellas an easy prey to the Macedonian
conqueror. The Peloponnesian war (431-404 B.C.) ended in the
complete overthrow of the political hegemony of Athens; the
Corinthian war (395-387) broke Corinth; the Theban war (379-
362) brought Sparta to defeat. After a long and stubborn
struggle, Philip of Macedon defeated the allied Athenians and
Thebans at the battle of Chseronea (338) and became the master
of Greece. Alexander the Great conquered the Persians, and
his generals divided a large part of the world between them
after his death (323). From the hands of Macedonia the Greek
was delivered into the hands of a new world-power: in 146 B.C.
Greece becomes a Roman province.
Under the conditions we have been describing, it was only
natural that the ethical question should again become paramount
in many thoughtful minds. In times like these, in the midst
of the breakdown of the old institutions and the general de-
moralization of public and private life, the problem of the mean-
ing of life would not down. When the State lost its independ-
ence and civic duty degenerated into mere compliance, the ques-
tion forced itself upon the intelligent individual how he might
save himself. How shall the weary soul find rest? This is the
old and ever new problem which conscious human beings put
to themselves when life becomes too complex and difficult for
them, and they are confronted with the danger of being lost in
the struggle. It is the problem of value, the problem of the high-
est good : What is the thing of most worth in the world ; how shall
a man shape his life, what is there left for him to strive for?
Different answers were given to the question by different groups
96 GREEK PHILOSOPHY
of thinkers, then as now. According to one school (the Epicu-
reans), the highest good or ideal is pleasure or happiness
(hedonism) : this is the only goal worth while. Everything else
has value only in so far as it brings pleasure, only in so far
as it is a means to happiness. In the storm and stress of exist-
ence, it is the part of wisdom to keep the mind unruffled and
to move through the world with the greatest possible advantage
to oneself. According to another school (the Stoics), the thing
of most worth is not happiness, but character, virtue, self-
discipline, duty, the subordination of particular interests to uni-
versal ends.
The teachings of both schools were presented in more popular
form and appealed to wider circles than the great systems of
Plato and Aristotle. And yet both of them saw the need of
offering a rational basis for their ethical conceptions, of justify-
ing them to reason, of proving them. They believed that the
moral question could not find a satisfactory answer without a
knowledge of the very nature of things: unless we know the
meaning of the world, we cannot tell how man ought to act
in the world. His conduct will depend on the kind of universe
he is living in; his theory of life will be determined by his
theory of the world, his ethics by his metaphysics. With all their
insistence on the practical, these schools never lost the Greek
love of speculation.
In order to realize the highest good, then, it is necessary to
have knowledge of the meaning of the universe, to know the
truth. The question, however, arises, What is truth? What is
the criterion of truth; and what is its origin? How can we
know that we have the truth? Logic answers these questions
for us ; it furnishes us with a standard or criterion of knowledge,
and enables us to distinguish truth from error. The Epicureans
and Stoics, therefore, both grounded their philosophy of life on
logic and metaphysics.
The Epicureans based their conception of the good on the
mechanical materialism of Democritus, according to which the
universe is the result of the interaction of countless material
atoms, without purpose or intelligence to guide them. Man is
one of the many combinations of jostling particles of matter,
formed, in the ever-changing flow of existence, after many trials
EPICUREANISM 97
and failures; he will last his little day, only to be scattered
again into the great atomic whirl whence he came. Hence, while
he lives, let him live untroubled by superstitious fears of the
here and the hereafter; let him enjoy the few short moments
of life as best he may, conducting himself so as to get as much
happiness out of the game as it will yield. The Stoic philoso-
phers, on the other hand, regarded the universe as held together
and ruled by an intelligent principle or purpose, as a beautiful,
good, and well-ordered cosmos. They saw unity and harmony
in it; for them it is a living God. Since man is a part of this
great rational whole, it is his duty to play his part as a part,
to subordinate himself to the universal harmony, to subject his
will to law and reason, to help realize the will of God. And all
this he should do, not for the sake of his own narrow personal
advantage, not for the sake of pleasure, but for the sake of the
perfection of the whole. There was no happiness possible for
the Stoic except that which he could obtain through obedience
to the reason or law of the universe.
12. EPICUREANISM
The thinker with whose name hedonistic ethics became most
intimately linked in antiquity was Epicurus. His metaphysical
theory is almost entirely reproduced from the system of Democ-
ritus, which we have already studied. The essential features of
his ethical doctrine had also been anticipated by Democritus,
as well as by the Cyrenaic school.
Epicurus was born on the island of Samos, 341 B.C., of Athenian
parents. Through his teacher Nausiphanes he became acquainted with
the writings of Democritus and with the skeptical doc-
trines of Pyrrho. After teaching in various Greek cities, Epicurus
he founded a school at Athens (306), where he lived
quietly until his death (270), surrounded by an admiring group of
pupils and friends, among whom were many women. No philosopher,
perhaps, has been more unjustly reviled and misunderstood than this
amiable and cheerful man whose very name has become a term of
reproach.
Epicurus was a fertile writer, who published many works (one On
Nature, consisting of thirty-seven books), only fragments of which
remain. He summarized his system in forty-four propositions (a kind
of catechism), the nvpiai 66^ai, the gist of which is given in Book X of
the Opinions of Diogenes Laertius. His successors made very little
98 GREEK PHILOSOPHY
change in the system, their work consisting largely in reproducing his
thought. His philosophy began to win many converts from the first
century B.C. on. The most famous of his followers was the Roman
poet Lucretius (94-54), who gave an exposition of the materialistic
philosophy in his poem, On the Nature of Things (De rerum natura),
and made it popular with many poets and literary men of the Augustan
age.*
Of the writings we possess three letters (two of which are held
to be authentic), the xtopuu 66t;ai (which at least reproduce Epicurus's
thought), and fragments. The Herculanean fragments are largely
from his work On Nature. Collection of fragments in Usener's Epicurea,
1887, as well as in the general collections already mentioned.
W. Wallace, Epicureanism; R. D. Hicks, Stoic and Epicurean;
A. E. Taylor, Epicurus; Pater, Marius the Epicurean, 2 vols., 1910;
Joyau, Epicure; works on Epicurus's ethics by Guyau and P. von
Gizicki. Good bibliography in Hicks.
The object of philosophy, according to Epicurus, is to enable
man to lead a happy life. Sciences that have no practical value,
that do not help us to realize this purpose, like
music, geometry, arithmetic, and astronomy, are
useless. A certain knowledge of logic is necessary, enough to
furnish us with a criterion of knowledge. We need to know
physics, or a theory of the universe (metaphysics), in order to
understand the natural causes of things. Such knowledge is
useful, since it frees us from the fear of gods, natural phe-
nomena, and death. The knowledge of human nature will teach
us what to desire and what to avoid. The main thing, however,
is that we understand that all things are produced by natural
and not by supernatural causes. We may, therefore, divide phi-
losophy into logic (Canonic), metaphysics, and ethics.
The problem here is to show how our propositions should be
constituted in order to be true.i What is the test (the Canonic,
as Epicurus called it in his work entitled Canon}
or criterion of their truth ? They must all be based
on sense-perception j what we hear and see and smell and taste
is real, " just as real, just as evident as pain." Unless we trust
our sensations, we can have no knowledge at all. Illusions are
not illusions of the senses, but of judgment: sensations or the
copies of objects are falsely interpreted or referred to the wrong
objects, owing to many causes, such as differences in sense-
organs, changes in the copies on their way to the organ. Mis-
1 *Transl. by Munro. See Santayana, Three Philosophical Poets.
EPICUREANISM 99
takes, however, can be corrected by repeating the observation
and appealing to the experiences of others.
General ideas or images have the same certainty as the sen-
sations on which they depend. There are, however, no abstract
qualities corresponding to such ideas, no independent essences
(as Plato and Aristotle taught) ; the only reals corresponding
to an idea are the particular concrete objects of the class, for
which the general idea is a mark.
In addition to sensations and ideas, we also form opinions
and hypotheses. In order to be true, these must be confirmed
or verified by sense-perceptions, or at least not contradicted by
them. Thus, our theory of atoms is an hypothesis; no one has
ever seen an atom, and it is doubtful whether any one will
ever see one. But we form an idea of the atom in analogy with
our common experiences, and assign to it only such qualities
as our sense-perception reveals in connection with larger
bodies.
In the theoretical field, then, sensation is the criterion of
truth; we know what we perceive; and we imagine, and have
a right to imagine, that the things we do not perceive are like
the things which we do perceive. Epicurus rests his entire
proof of the trustworthiness of sensations on the Democritean
theory of sense-perception. What is directly perceived is not
the objects themselves, but copies of them, which are detached
from objects and influence the sense-organ. Hence, his theory
of truth stands and falls with the assumed theory of sensation.
In the practical field, pleasure-pain is the criterion. Only what
causes pleasure is good; only what causes pain is bad. Here,
too, illusion is due to false judgments concerning these feelings,
and can be avoided.
Now, our senses show us nothing but material bodies, hence
bodies alone are real. But if bodies alone existed, there would
be nothing in which they could be contained or
, ? Metaphysics
across which they could move; hence there must
be empty space, " intangible nature," or non-being. Since
nothing can be absolutely created or destroyed, the origin,
growth, change, and disappearance of bodies can only be ex-
plained as the combination and separation of elements. These
elements are exceedingly small particles of matter, impercep-
100 GREEK PHILOSOPHY
tible, physically indivisible, indestructible, and unchangeable,
(They are not infinitely divisible, or infinitely small in the
mathematical sense; if they were, everything would be reduced
to nothing.) They exist by their own force, as Epicurus says,
and are absolutely full, i.e., there are no empty spaces in them;
they are absolutely hard and impenetrable, they cannot be broken
or cut (hence called atoms). Besides these qualities, atoms
have size, shape, and weight, in which they differ, one from
another, and are in a continual state of motion. Differences
in bodies are explained by differences in the size, shape, weight,
and relation of atoms. The number of shapes, however, is
limited, according to Epicurus. Since there is an infinite number
of atoms, there must be an infinite space to hold them, i.e., an
infinite universe.
On account of their weight, atoms move downward in per-
pendicular lines, at equal rates of speed. But if they simply
moved downward in this way, we should have nothing but a
constant rain of atoms and no world. We must, therefore,
imagine that they have the power to swerve just the least bit
from the perpendicular, " just as all living creatures have the
power to go forward whither the will leads each," as Lucretius
puts it. That is, Epicurus endows his atoms with spontaneity,
partly in order to explain the existing world, partly to make
possible free will in man: without such power of free action
in atoms, freedom would be impossible in us, since nothing comes
from nothing; and the notion of freedom is less disturbing to
man's peace of mind than blind fate or inexorable necessity.
Living beings, too, are explained by the same principles;
originally they arose from the earth. At first monsters were
produced, shapes not adapted to their surroundings, but these
could not live. The heavenly bodies are accounted for in the
same natural way; they are not the creations of gods. Nor are
they endowed with souls, for such cannot exist outside of living
forms.
There are gods, but not as the people conceive them in their
fear and ignorance. That they exist is proved by the common
belief in them, — it is a natural idea, — and by the necessity of
assuming a cause for this idea in us. But the gods did not
create this world: why should supremely happy beings make
EPICUREANISM 101
a world? Besides, whence could they have derived the idea
of such a world? Finally, how could such perfect beings make
so imperfect a world? The gods have the shapes of men, only
they are more beautiful; their bodies are fine bodies of light;
they live in the intermundia. They differ in sex, require food,
and even speak the Greek language. They do not care for men
or interfere with the course of the world, but live peaceful,
blessed lives, free from care and trouble.
The soul is material like all other things; otherwise it could
do nothing and suffer nothing. It is composed of extremely
fine, minute, round, and, therefore, nimble, atoms; p , ,
of fire, air, breath, and a still more refined and
mobile matter, which is the very soul of soul. It is diffused
over the whole body ; whatever sensation ,the latter has. it owes
entirely to the presence of the soul. Tliore is a directing or
rational part, which is seated in the breast (emotions, fear, joy),
and whose will and inclination the rest of the soul obeys. The
soul is mortal; when the body is dissolved, the soul is dissolved
into its elements and loses its powers. When we are convinced
that consciousness ceases with death, death loses its terrors for
us ; there is nothing to fear of a life to come, for death ends all.
Lucretius says : ' ' A fool will not make more out of the hereafter
than he has made of this life."
Sense-perception is explained, with Democritus, by idols or
images or thin film-like forms, which emanate from the objects
around us and influence the sense-organs. Illusions, hallucina-
tions, dreams, and similar states are produced by images of
objects which no longer exist, or by images which adhere to
one another, or in other perfectly natural ways. Will is ex-
plained thus: an image (of walking) presents itself to the mind
(the rational part) ; when the mind wills (to walk), it strikes
the force of the soul which is spread over the whole body; the
soul strikes the body, and the body moves.
Man's nature is bent upon pleasure; yes, all animals from
the moment of their birth seek pleasure and avoid pain by a
natural instinct. Pleasure, therefore, is the goal
at which we all aim, and, indeed, ought to aim:
happiness is the highest good. Every pleasure, as such, is good,
every pain bad. But we should exercise prudence in the choice
102 GREEK PHILOSOPHY
of our pleasures. If one pleasure lasted as long as another and
were just as intense, one would be just as good as another.
If the things which give the debauched men pleasure could give
them peace, we should not blame them. But this is not the
case. Not every pleasure is worthy of being chosen, not every
pain ought to be avoided. Some pleasures are followed by pains
or by loss of pleasures; many pains are followed by pleasures,
and are, therefore, better than some pleasures. Moreover,
pleasures differ in intensity. Mental pleasures are greater than
the pleasures of the body, mental pains worse than physical
pains. For the flesh is sensible only to present affliction, while
the soul feels the past, present, and future. Not only is mental
enjoyment "greyer than physical, but physical enjoyment is
not possible without mental. Hence Epicurus declares that it
«.s tbj part of wisdom to choose the joys of intellectual life.
The reason for this is plain. We are afraid of the catastrophes
of nature, of the wrath of the gods, of death and the hereafter ;
we worry over the past, present, and future. So long as we do
this, we cannot be happy. To rid ourselves of our fears, we
should seek to understand the natural causes of things, that is,
study philosophy. " It would not be possible for a person to
banish all fear about those things which are called most essential,
unless he knew what is the nature of the universe, or if he had
any idea that the fables told about it could be true ; and there-
fore it is that a person cannot enjoy unmixed pleasure without
physiological knowledge " [knowledge of nature].
We can obtain pleasures by satisfying a desire or by having
no desire. Pleasure accompanying the satisfaction of a desire,
like hunger, is not pure, but a mixture of pleasure and pain;
pure pleasure ensues when a desire has been satisfied and dis-
appears, when we no longer desire. Freedom from pain is the
highest measure of pleasure; it cannot be intensified. Hence,
desire that aims beyond this state is immoderate.
To be free from trouble and fear, we should know the causes
of things, and what pleasures to follow and what to avoid; in
other words, be prudent. And if we are prudent, we will be
virtuous, we will obey the rules of morality, for no one can be
happy without living prudently, honorably, and justly. Virtue,
then, or morality, is a means to an end: happiness or repose
EPICUREANISM 103
of spirit ; it is not an end in itself, but, like the art of healing,
a means; we praise it and exercise it for its utility. But hap-
piness cannot be realized by a life of sensual enjoyment and
debauchery; it is bound up with the same virtues that Plato
and Aristotle and the Stoics recommended: wisdom, courage,
temperance, and justice.
Social life is based on the principle of self-interest ; individuals
join together in groups for self -protection (contract theory).
There is no such thing as absolute justice : so-called
natural rights are rules of conduct which men agree
to follow on account of their utility. All laws and institutions
are just only in so far as they make for the security of the
individual, that is, when they are useful. Certain rules have
been found by experience to be necessary wherever men live
together in society, which accounts for certain universal laws;
but laws also differ in different countries according to conditions.
We are just because it is to our advantage to be just; there
is nothing evil in injustice as such, but to fall into the hands
of the judge and to live in constant fear of punishment, that
is an evil. Since participation in public life does not contribute
to happiness, the wise man will avoid it as much as possible.
Though the pleasure-theory of Epicurus is not a doctrine of
sensuality, it is easy to understand how many of its followers
came to interpret it as such in order to suit their own desires
for a life of luxury and sensuous enjoyment. If pleasure is
the highest good for each individual, then what gives him
pleasure is good. If he prefers the pleasures of sense to the
higher pleasures, if he can rid his mind of superstitious fears
without leading an intellectual life, without philosophy, and
attain the repose of spirit, who can gainsay him? " The quan-
tity of pleasure being equal, push-pin is as good as poetry,"
to use Bentham 's phrase. Epicurus preferred poetry and science
and virtues, and so did Atticus and Horace and Lucretius ; but
" for every Atticus and every Horace there were a hundred
Catilines and a hundred Verres. ' ' * The truth is, the Epicurean
philosophy is essentially a doctrine of enlightened self-interest.
The individual is asked to make his own happiness the goal
* Denis, Histoire des theories et des idees morales.
104 GREEK PHILOSOPHY
of all his strivings, and such a theory of life is apt to lead to
selfish disregard of others.
See Lecky, History of European Morals, vol. I; Friedlander, Die
Sittengeschichte Eoms, 2 vols.
13. STOICISM
Opposed to the materialistic, hedonistic, and egoistic concep-
tion of the world and of life is the philosophy taught by Socrates,
Plato, and Aristotle. After the death of the great
School ^ leaders> the essential elements of their theory of
life were presented in popular form by the Stoics,
a school founded by Zeno, around 300 B.C., at Athens, which
had many followers in Greece and Borne, and continued its
existence far into Christian times. Zeno shows the influence of
the Cynics and Megarians, as well as of Plato and Aristotle.
Cynic ethics he frees from its narrowness and places on a logical
and metaphysical foundation. He makes use of Platonic and
Aristotelian notions in modified form, but refuses to conceive
form and matter as different in kind, and returns to the hylozo-
ism of Heraclitus.
Zeno was born 336 B.C. in Citium, Cyprus, a Greek city with a large
foreign, perhaps Semitic, population. He came to Athens, 314, and
studied under Crates the Cynic, Stilpo the Megarian, and Polemon
of the Academy, all of whom had influence on his teachings. In 294
he opened a school in the Stoa Poikile (the painted corridor or porch),
from which the doctrines represented by him received their name.
Zeno was esteemed for the nobility of his character, the simplicity
of his life, his affability, and moral earnestness. He died 264 B.C.
Zeno was followed in the leadership of the Stoic school by his pupil
Cleanthes (264-232 B.C.), who does not seem to have possessed the
qualities needed to meet the attacks of the Epicureans and Skeptics.
His successor in office (232-204) was jChrysippus of Soli, Cilicia, a
man of great ability, who clearly defined the teachings of the school,
gave unity to the system, and defended it against the Skeptics. Among
the pupils of Chrysippus were Zeno of Tarsus, Diogenes of Babylon,
Antipater of Tarsus. Stoicism, as developed by Chrysippus, found
favor in Rome during the Republic, Pansetius (180-110) being one
of its first Roman adherents of note. During the Empire, it divided
into two sections, the one popular, represented by Musonius Rufus
(first century A.D. ) , Jjjeneca (3-65 A.D.), Epictetus (first century), the
Emperor Marcus Aurelius . (121-180) ; the other scientific, whose sole
aim was to preserve intact and interpret the old doctrine. Corinthus
and Herocles. whose work on Ethics was recently discovered, belong
STOICISM 105
to this branch. We shall offer the Stoic philosophy as it was worked
out in the course of the development of the Greek school, limiting
ourselves to the most important phases of it.
Of the old Stoa (304-205 B.C.) and Middle Stoa (down to the Roman
Empire) we have no primary sources except the Hymn of Cleanthes
and numerous quotations in later works. We have to depend for our
knowledge of the teachings on the secondary sources, especially Diogenes
Laertius, Stobaeus, Cicero, Plutarch, Simplicius, and Sextus Empiricus,
from whom we may learn the spirit of this philosophy, though we
are unable to distinguish with certainty between the respective con-
tributions of the leaders. Of the later Roman Stoa we have numerous
Greek and Latin writings. In addition to the collections of fragments
already mentioned, consult: J. von Arnim's collection, 3 vols. ; Pearson,
Fragments of Zeno and Cleanthes; Diels, Doxographi Grceci.
Translations of Epictetus, Discourses (with Encheiridion and frag-
ments), by Long, Higginson; of Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, by Long.
Lecky, History of European Morals, vol. I ; Hicks, Stoic and Epicurean;
Arnold, Roman Stoicism; Bussell, Marcus Aurelius and the Later
Stoics; Watson, M. A. Antoninus; Barth, Die Stoa, 2d ed.
Hatch, Influence of Greek Ideas and Usages on the Christian Church;
Hirzel, Untersuchungen zu Cicero's Philosophie (Part II, pp. 1-566 on
Stoics) ; Weygold, Die Philosophie der Stoa; Schmekel, Philosophie der
mittleren Stoa; Heinze, Lehre vom Logos, etc. ; Ogerau, Systeme philo-
sophique des Stoiciens; Bonhoffer, Epiktet und die Stoa, Die Ethik des
Stoikers Epiktet, and Epiktet und das neue Testament; Dryoff, Ethik
der alien Stoa. Susemihl, Geschichte der Litteratur in der Alexandri-
nerzeit; Wendland, Hellenistisch-romische Kultur. Good bibliography
in Hicks.
The goal of the Stoic philosophy is to find a rational basis
for ethics. We cannot understand the meaning of the good
unless we have a criterion of truth and a theory .
of the universe, that is, unless we study logic and
metaphysics. The Stoics compared philosophy to a field, of
which logic is the fence, physics the soil, and ethics the fruit.
We begin with logic, which is the science of thoughts and dis-
courses, i.e., of concepts, judgments, and inferences, as well as of
their expression in language. The Stoics included grammar in
logic, and are the founders of our traditional science of grammar.
We shall limit ourselves to the so-called dialectical part, which
deals with the theory of knowledge and discusses two main
problems : What is the origin of knowledge, or how do we reach
truth? and, What is the criterion of knowledge?
Oar knowledge is gained through perception. There are no
Jonafo iflpas, as Plato holds; the soul is_aLbirth an empty tablet,
a tabula rasa, which receives fEeimpressionsoJ^tnings^ 'sis "a*
106 GREEK PHILOSOPHY
wax tablet receives the impression of the stamp. Chrysippus
speaks of sensation as a modification of consciousness. Im-
pressions persist and form memory-images, which, when com-
bined, constitute experience. From sensation and images general
ideas are formed, which, when based on common experiences
and derived naturally, are called common notions (notitice
communes). They are the same in all persons, and not subject
to illusion or error. Scientific concepts, however, are produced
consciously and methodically, being the result of voluntary re-
flection.
Sense-perception is the basis of all our knowledge. The mind
has the faculty of forming general ideas, of comprehending in
concepts a large number of particular cases according to their
likeness, and of forming universal judgments on the basis of the
same. This faculty is called reason (Ao^o?), and is a faculty
both of thought and of speech. It is identical, in essence, with
the universal reason which fashions the matter of the world
according to its thoughts. It is owing to this that the human
mind can reproduce the thoughts of God, and thus conceive the
world. But in order to be true, concepts must agree with the
divine thoughts which express themselves in the qualities of
the world. The Stoics opposed the Platonic doctrine of ideas,
regarding universals as subjective abstractions, and holding that
only particular objects have real existence.
Our knowledge, therefore, rests on perceptions and on the
general ideas and concepts derived from them. A sense-image
is true when it is an exact copy of the object. But percepts
and concepts may be false ; many of our ideas evidently do not
give us truth; some of them are delusive. How can we dis-
tinguish the true from the false? What shall be our criterion?
How can we tell whether there really is anything corresponding
to our ideas? How do we know that they are not merely the
creations of our own fancy? All our knowledge is based on
perception. In order to be true, a percept must be accompanied
by the consciousness or immediate conviction that there is a
real object corresponding to it, that it agrees with the object.
This consciousness will appear when the subject has convinced
himself that the sense-organ is in normal condition, that the
percept is. clear and distinct, and that repeated observations
STOICISM 107
by himself and others verify the first impression. A sensation
that carries such conviction with it is called by Zeno a conceptual
impression, or, as some translate it, the apprehending presenta-
tion.
The criterion of knowledge, then, is the self-evidence of the
impression or concept, the feeling of conviction that there is
a reality corresponding, to it. Some of our concepts compel
such a feeling, some of them do not. Merely subjective or
imaginary ideas are not accompanied by this consciousness. We
need not give our assent to such ideas, or pronounce judgment
where conviction is absent, hence we ourselves are responsible
for error ; judgment here is an act of free will. We cannot, how-
ever, deny assent to a conceptual impression or idea.
Knowledge of truth is not the exclusive possession of science
or philosophy. All men share in knowledge through their gen-
eral ideas. But such common notions do not carry conviction
with them, as does genuine knowledge (eTtiffrrfw), which is
acquired by reasoning. Science is an organized body of true
judgments, in which one proposition is deduced from another
by logical necessity. The faculty of drawing correct inferences,
therefore, is another means of reaching truth, and dialectics
an essential qualification of the Stoic sage. The Stoics conse-
quently gave considerable attention to formal logic, particularly
to the doctrine of the syllogism, which they regarded as its
most important phase; they also made additions to the Aristo-
telian logic and revised the table of categories.
The main purpose of the Stoic logic was to show that the
mind cannot create knowledge out of itself, that the source of
all our knowledge is perception ; that this furnishes the materials
of knowledge. The Stoics did not, however, deny the activity
of thought; indeed, they insisted that knowledge is advanced
by reflection on experience, by organizing the raw material into
concepts, by forming judgments concerning it, by drawing in-
ferences and passing from that which is directly given to the
remote in time and place, from the particular to the universal.
The Stoics agree with Aristotle that everything that exists
results from two principles, a principle that acts, moves, and
forms, and a principle that is acted on, moved, and formed, from
an active and a passive principle. And they agree with him also
108 GREEK PHILOSOPHY
that these two things are not separate entities, although they
may be distinguished in thought, but united in one reality. They
"" . differ from him, however, in their notion of the na-
ture of the principles. For them nothing is real
that does not act or is not acted on; and since only bodies
are active and passive, form or force and matter are both
corporeal. These, however, differ in the degree of their cor-
poreality, if we may so express it ; force consists of a finer kind
of stuff, while matter, as such, is coarse, formless, and immov-
able. The two are inseparable, as we have said; there is no
force without matter and no matter without force : matter is
everywhere permeated with force. Everything in the world
is corporeal, the human soul and God included. Even qualities
are corporeal, consisting of a pneumatic substance (Ttvsv^a),
which is a mixture of fire and air, and making each particular
object what it is. Fire and air are active elements, the principles
of life and mind ; water and earth are passive elements, as such
inert and lifeless, clay in the hands of the potter. The pneumatic
substance pervades every particle of matter; it does not merely
fill the spaces between the molecules, but is present in every
smallest piece of reality and continuous throughout the universe.
Each particular thing has qualities which distinguish it from
every other thing; they owe their existence to the material
forms penetrating the body.
C Only forces have causality, and causes can act only on bodies.
) But the effect is always incorporeal; a cause produces a state
I in another body, a movement or a change, which is neither a
f body nor a quality of a body, but a mere state of the body.
Causal action and force are here identified; causal action can
be exercised only on a body; the effect, however, which results
is not a cause or force, but a mere accidental state of the body.
If the effect were a body, the force would have produced another
body, which is impossible. Relations, too, are incorporeal. The
active principle, however, let it be remembered, is alive, intelli-
gent; in this respect the Stoics approximate to the Aristotelian
conception. From their sensationalistic standpoint, they simply
refuse to conceive it as pure form or spirit. Their metaphysics
is the Platonic-Aristotelian philosophy translated back into
hylozoism.
STOICISM 109
The forces in the universe form one all-pervasive force or
fire (Heraclitus), and this principle is rational, the active soul
of the world. It must be one, because the universe is a unity,
because all its parts are in harmony; it is conceived as fire,
because heat produces everything and moves everything, is the
giver of life. It is reason, — intelligent, purposeful, and good, —
because the universe is a cosmos, a beautiful, well-ordered, good,
and perfect whole (teleological argument). All life and move-
ment have their source in it: it is God. It is related to the
matter of the world as the human soul is related to its body:
the world is the body of God, a living organism. It is the soul
or logos (hoyos) of the universe ; in it are contained all the germs
or seeds (spermata) of life ; in it the whole cosmos lies potential,
as the plant in the seed. This is pantheism.
The universal reason or soul pervades the whole world, just
as the human soul is everywhere present in the body. But just
as the governing part of the soul is situated in a particular place
or center, so the ruling part of the world-soul, the Deity, or
Zeus, is seated at the outermost circle of the world, whence it
spreads through the world. The two parts, however, form one
single godhead, one of them assuming the form of the world,
the other retaining its original shape. God, the father of all
things, the perfect and blessed being, has prevision and will, is
a lover of man, benevolent, cares for everything, punishes the
wicked and rewards the good. In these respects the Stoic God
is like the God of theism. But there is a difference. He is not,
after all, taken as a whole, a free personality, a free creator
of the world, but, as we have seen, the substance from which
everything proceeds with the necessity of a process of nature.
The Stoics assign will and forethought to him, but they likewise
identify him with necessary law The fact is these notions are
not consistently carried out; pantheism and theism dwell to-
gether in the system, unconscious of one another, as in many
modern systems.
The Stoics offer a detailed description of the evolution
of the world from the original divine fire. Air, water, and
earth arise from fire; the divine principle, how- c
ever, permeates the lower elements. (It seems
that the lower elements, earth and water, are condensed
110 GREEK PHILOSOPHY
forms of fire, the active principle; that is, fire that has lost
its force: matter is a waste-product.) The divine element
itself differentiates into forms of varying degrees of purity,
acting in inorganic nature as blind causality, in the vegetable
kingdom as a blind but purposive natural force, in animals
as a purposive impulse guided by ideas, in man as rational
conscious purpose. Natural objects are explained as com-
binations of the four elements; their differences, partly as
differences in mixture, partly as differences in the formative
action of the divine fire. The universe is a perfect sphere floating
in empty space, held together and animated by its soul. It
arose in time and will return to tire, to pure life and rationality,
whence it came (the great conflagration), only to pass through
the same cycle, again and again, world without end. But every
recurring world will resemble its predecessors in every detail
(palingenesis), for each is produced by the same law. Every-
thing is absolutely determined, even the human will ; the universe
forms an unbroken causal chain; nothing happens by chance;
everything follows necessarily from the one first cause or mover.
Man is free in the sense that he can assent to what fate decrees,
but, whether he assents or not, he must obey. Yet, in so far
as the law and reason of the world, and the necessity following
from it, has its source in the will of God, everything is under
the will of God or divine Providence. That is, whatever evolves
from the original principle is in accordance with the divine
purpose ; it is the realization of a potential purpose of God. In
this sense, Fate and Providence are not opposed: fate or law
is the will of God.
The question arises, if everything is a manifestation of God,
how shall we explain the existence of evil in the world? The
Stoics sometimes denied the existence of evil: the world is good
and perfect, the so-called evils in it are only relative evils; like
shadows in a picture or discords in music, they are necessary
to the beauty and perfection of the whole; or they are means
of realizing the good. Sometimes they regarded evil (e.g., dis-
ease) as the inevitable consequence of nature, as necessary evil.
Besides, since physical evil cannot affect human character, it
is not really evil. As for moral evil, it is impossible to have
the tendency to virtue without its opposite; moreover, virtue
STOICISM 111
grows strong in combating it. The truth is, the universe is a
beautiful, good, and perfect whole, in which every part has its
own proper place and purpose.
Man is composed of body and soul; the soul is a material
substance, a spark of the divine fire. It is nourished by the
blood. The ruling part, which is situated in the
heart, exercises all the psychic functions: percep- SyC
tion, judgment, inference, feeling, and will; it becomes rational,
in the course of time, acquiring the power of conceptual thought.
Man is free in so far as he has logical thought ; he is not merely
governed by images and impulses, like the brute, but deliberates
and chooses only such acts as gain the assent of reason. A man
is free when he acts in accordance with reason, that is, in obedi-
ence to the eternal laws of nature. There is, therefore, no conflict
between what the wise man wills to do and what nature com-
mands. The philosopher in possession of the complete system
of truths is as free as God himself.
There are different Stoic doctrines of immortality; according
to some members of the school, all souls continue to exist until
the end of the world, according to others only the wise and
virtuous souls persist. But all souls reappear with the recreation
of the universe (palingenesis). Man is the end or purpose of
nature, that is, of God.
On the theories set forth in the foregoing pages, the Stoics
based their ethical philosophy. They conceived the universe,
not as a mechanical-causal series, but as an organ- _
~ ... , n Ethics
ized rational system, as a beautiful well-ordered
whole, in which every part has its function to perform with
respect to the whole, and in which all things work together
for the good of the whole. It was for them a harmonious unity
with a ruling purpose, a living, intelligent God. Man is a part
of the universal order, a spark of the divine fire; he is the
microcosm, his own nature being identical with that of the All.
Hence it behooves him to act in harmony with the purpose of
the universe, to seek to realize the purpose of his own being in
the divine purpose, to reach the highest possible measure of
perfection. In order to do this, he must put his own soul in
order; reason should rule in him as reason rules the world.
And he ought to subordinate his will to the will of the world,
112 GREEK PHILOSOPHY
submit to the law of the universe, take his place in the great
order, and strive to do consciously, intelligently, and voluntarily
what it is his office to do as a member of the cosmos.
This is what the Stoic means by demanding that we live
according to nature, for living according to nature is for a
human being to act in conformity with reason, or the logos,
or to live a good life. Virtue is, therefore, the highest good
and the highest happiness, for only a virtuous life can be a
happy life. And to live thus is to realize oneself • for to realize
one's true self is to serve the purposes of universal reason and
to work for universal ends. This implies a universal society of
rational beings with the same rights; for reason is the same
in all, and all are parts of the same world-soul.
The same conclusions may be reached by a consideration of
the natural impulses of man; for, according to the Stoics, the
universal logos expresses itself in the lower instincts no less
than in human reason. Every being strives to preserve itself;
hence pleasure is not the goal of impulse, but merely a con-
comitant of its successful realization. Nor is the preservation
of the individual the goal, for there is native to all living
creatures an instinct to preserve the species, a desire of some-
thing beyond themselves. With the development of reason man
comes to regard his rational nature as his true self, and finds
satisfaction in the perfection of reason and the promotion of
rational purposes everywhere. What he loves in himself, he
cannot but love in others. By this is not meant that theoretical
speculation is an end in itself for Stoicism; reason is so highly
valued because it reveals to us our duty.
Virtue, therefore, is the only good and vice the only evil, all
else is indifferent in comparison with the ideal; health, life,
honor, wealth, rank, power, friendship, success are not in them-
selves good; nor are death, disease, disgrace, poverty, humble
birth in themselves evil. Neither is pleasure or happiness good
as such, an absolute good ; it is a consequent of action and should
never be made the end. Such things are not in our power ; but
how we shall act with respect to them is in our power. Their
value depends on what use we make of them, on their bearing
upon our character; in themselves they are nothing. Virtue
ftlone can make man happy.
STOICISM 113
A truly virtuous act is one that is consciously directed toward
the highest purpose or end, and is performed with conscious
knowledge of moral principles. That is, virtuous conduct implies
complete and certain knowledge of the good and a conscious
purpose, on the part of the doer, to realize the supreme good.
To act unconsciously and without knowledge is not virtue. If
we look at the matter in this way, virtue is one, for here every-
thing depends on the disposition, on the good will : a man either
has it or he has it not ; there is no middle ground ; he is either
a wise man or a fool. In this sense, where one virtue is, all are.
The virtues are expressions of one and the same disposition and,
therefore, inseparably connected with one another. ( Chrysippus
did not accept this view.) Virtue is not a natural possession
of man, but acquired by practice and through instruction.
Inasmuch as virtue implies complete knowledge, only a mature
man can have it. The assumption here is that a man will act
according to his judgment, that he will naturally strive for what
appears good to him, and avoid what is evil. Hence, evil conduct
is the result of wrong judgment, or false opinion: this the Stoics
regard sometimes as the cause, sometimes as the effect, of the
passions or immoderate impulses, impulses that overshoot the
mark. There are four such passions (TtdSrj) : pleasure, desire,
fear, and grief. A false judgment of a present good arouses
(or is aroused by) pleasure; of a future good, desire; of a
present evil, pain; of a future evil, fear. All these passions
and their different kinds are diseases of the soul, which it is
our business to eradicate, not merely to moderate; quite natu-
rally, for they are irrational, exaggerated feelings: passion is
false opinion. Freedom from passion or apathy is, therefore,
the Stoic ideal. In order to realize it, complete knowledge is
necessary, and such knowledge is connected with strength of
will or character. To be free from passion means to be brave
and temperate. It lies with the individual himself, however,
whether he will obey the moral law or not; the will is free.
In their metaphysics, the Stoics teach determinism; in their
ethics, free will.
As we have already shown, the ethics of the Stoics is not
egoistic. Man has not only the impulse of self-preservation, but
the social impulse, which leads him to an ever-extending group*
114 GREEK PHILOSOPHY
life. The promptings of the natural instinct are made fully con«
scious and verified by rational thought; reason teaches that we
are members of a cosmic society of rational beings
toward whom we have duties (justice and be-
nevolence). This society is a kind of universal State, in which
there is but one law, one right (natural law, natural right),
because there is but one universal reason. In this universal
State morality is the sole test, the sole standard of discrimination
between citizens; here gods and sages are the privileged indi-
viduals, whom, however, every one is free to join. All men are
related, all are brothers, children of the same father; they have
the same origin and destiny; the same universal reason speaks
in them all; they stand under one law and are citizens of one
State; even our enemies are entitled to our help and pardon.
Reason demands that we place the universal welfare, the common
good, above our own particular interests, that we sacrifice our-
selves for it if need be, for in realizing the universal good we
are fulfilling our true mission and preserving our true selves.
This is the Stoic cosmopolitanism.
Unlike the Epicureans, who held themselves aloof from public
affairs, the Stoics recommended participation in political affairs :
it is the duty of every man to take part in social and political
life in the same spirit in which he behaves as a citizen of the
world, to labor for the welfare of his own people and his own
State. But they could never become narrow chauvinists; their
nationalism was broadened by a humanitarianism that embraced
the entire world. The laws of the particular states must be
rooted in the universal law and justice of the universal State;
natural right is the basis of the positive law. Friendship and
marriage were also highly prized by them, as, indeed, were all
forms of social life in which the individual might learn to
subordinate himself to a universal ideal.
True religion and philosophy are one, according to the Stoics.
They were defenders of the popular religion, regarding the uni-
versal recognition which it received among man-
kind as a proof of its truth. It appeared to them,
likewise, as a necessary support of morality. They objected,
however, to the superstitious and anthropological elements in
this religion and offered an allegorical interpretation of it, — •
STOICISM 115
the first systematic attempt which had been made in this
direction.
Piety is the knowledge and worship of the gods: it consists
in forming an adequate conception of them and imitating their
perfection. Submission to the universal will, or resignation, con-
stitutes the true essence of religion.
Common to nearly all the Greek theories of morality is the
ideal of order, harmony, symmetry : man should subject himself
to the rule of reason, control himself, keep measure
in all things. Materialists and idealists agree, also,
on the importance of intelligence: right action
depends on correct thinking. Nor is any difference made
by the opposing schools between the kind of conduct con-
ducive to a good life; the fundamental virtues, — wisdom, self-
control, courage, and justice, — are recommended by the refined
hedonists and their opponents alike. And they are at one that
by living a life of virtue, by being wise, moderate, brave, and
just, man attains happiness, repose of spirit, peace of mind.
The difference is: the hedonists declare we should follow virtue
for the sake of happiness, while the ethical idealists regard a
well-ordered, beautiful soul as good in itself, as something worthy
of attainment even if it did not bring happiness. All prize kind-
ness to fellow-men, friendship, benevolence, brotherhood; and
both Stoics and Epicureans widened the circle of sympathy to
include all mankind. But Epicurus tended to base it on self-
interest (in theory) : we cannot be happy unless we are at peace
with our surroundings. The Stoics, on the other hand, made
love of neighbor a good in itself: my fellow-man is not a mere
means to my happiness, but, so far as I am concerned, an end
in himself.
In the value which it placed on man as such, the ethical
philosophy of Stoicism even transcended that of Plato and
Aristotle. Both of these moralists defend slavery and both are
influenced by national prejudices; both look upon " barbarians "
as inferior peoples and upon slavery as a natural and just in-
stitution. The ideal of universal brotherhood and equality was
not theirs. They preached justice and equal rights for all full-
fledged and equal citizens of the State, and held that the State
116 GREEK PHILOSOPHY
was made for peace and not for conquest. But the citizens
they had in mind were always free and intelligent Hellenes. It
was not until the loss of Greek independence and the conquest
of the so-called barbarians by Alexander that the idea of uni-
versal brotherhood and equal rights for all rational human be-
ings began to dawn on some minds ; and this ideal was preached
by the Stoics. The solidarity of the human race became a
central thought in their system. The notion of the dignity of
man developed: the idea that all rational beings are children
of the same father and citizens of the world, having the same
rights and the same duties, subject to the same law, the same
truth, and the same reason. The value of a man depends not
on wealth, or rank, or class, but on his moral worth, on the good
will. " Virtue despises no one, neither Greek nor barbarian,
man nor woman, rich nor poor, freeman nor slave, wise nor
ignorant, whole nor sick. ' ' * Character is the supreme test, and
this no one can give and no one can take away.
14. SKEPTICISM AND ECLECTICISM
The philosophical movements which we have been discussing,
though chiefly interested in the ethical problem, offer compre-
hensive systems of metaphysics and attempt to
^ vP 1 prove the competence of human reason to reach
truth. In this respect they follow in the footsteps
of the great thinkers after Socrates, who had defended knowledge
against the attacks of skepticism and had restored the faith of
thought in itself. But the time seemed ripe again for another
period of negation. Contemporaneously with Stoicism and Epi-
cureanism and, as a kind of shadow to their dogmatism, there
appeared a new philosophy of doubt. It was preached by Pyrrho
of Elis and called Pyrrhonism, a name which has become a
synonym of skepticism.
Pyrrho (365-270 B.C.), who studied Democritus in his youth with a
pupil of the great Atomist, and became acquainted with the Elean-
Megarian teachings, did not write anything, but his views were set
down by Timon of Phlius (320-230), of whose satires (ZOAw) only
fragments remain. After Timon the skeptical school was absorbed
by the Platonic Academy, and did not emerge again as an independent
* Denis, Histoire des theories et des idees morales.
SKEPTICISM AND ECLECTICISM 117
movement until the Academy purged itself of skepticism. Arcesilaus
(315-241) was the first of the leaders of the Academy to give up the
traditional doctrine and to devote himself to the criticism of Stoicism
and Epicureanism, which he regarded as pseudo-philosophies. He
trained his pupils in dialectics, or the art of proving and disproving
every thesis. He regarded suspension of judgment with respect to
metaphysical problems as the ideal. The greatest skeptic in the Academy
was Carneades (213-129), who, like his predecessor, wrote nothing;
he was followed by Clitomachus (+110), Philo of Larissa (+80), and
Antiochus of Ascalon (+68).
The Academy (called Middle Academy during the skeptical period)
purged itself of skepticism under the headship of Philo of Larissa
and Antiochus; and skepticism again became an independent movement
under the leadership of ^Enesidemus, at the beginning of the Christian
era, and was later represented by Sextus Empiricus (active from 180-
210 A.D.). ^Enesidemus wrote a work on Pyrrhonism, fragments of
which are preserved by Sextus, and Sextus Empiricus wrote Against
the Mathematicians and Pyrrhonic Hypotyposes.
Edition of fragments of Timon of Phlius by Wachsmuth.
Maccoll, Greek Sceptics; Patrick, Sextus Empiricus; Robertson,
Short History of Free Thought; Goedeckemeyer, Geschichte des
griechischen Skepticismus; R. Richter, Der Skepticismus in der Philoso-
phic, 2 vols. ; Staudlin, Geschichte des Skepticismus; Kreibig, Ethischer
Skepticismus; Brochard, Les sceptiques grecs; Waddington, Pyrrho et
Pyrrhonisme. See also Hirzel and Schmekel, cited on p. 105.
The thought common to this school is that we cannot know '
the nature of things. Our senses tell us only how things appear
to us, not what they are in themselves. If sensation
is the source of all our knowledge, how can we
know whether objects agree with sensations or
not, since we never get outside~of our sensations ? Moreover, our
thoughts and sensations conflict, and we have no criterion
here for distinguishing the true from the false (Pyrrho). The
Epicureans regard every sensation as a criterion of truth, the
Stoics say it is only the sensation carrying conviction with it
that commands our assent; but, in neither case, is the criterion
a safe one. It deceives us constantly ; percepts that have nothing
corresponding to them may be just as clear and distinct and
self-evident as true ones (Arcesilaus). We cannot tell whether
a sensation is a true copy of the real object, because we never
have the object with which to compare it. Besides, we cannot
assent to an idea, we can assent only to a judgment, and judg-
ment is already thinking, and is in need of a criterion (Car-
neades). Carneades also declares that we cannot prove anything.
118 GREEK PHILOSOPHY
To prove anything, we must either assume the premise from
which the truth follows, which is begging the question, or we
must try to prove the premise by basing it on other premises.
But, in this way, we never reach a stopping-place, and our con-
clusion can never attain certainty.
If we cannot know anything, we ought to suspend judgment,
that is, assume nothing at all. All we can say is that we have
such and such states of consciousness, that an object appears
white or black, not that it is white or black. And this will be
sufficient for all practical purposes (Pyrrho). Certain knowl-
edge is also out of the question in moral matters, and here too
we ought to suspend judgment. We can save ourselves much
unhappiness if we do this and cease striving for ideals. Peace
of mind will be the result of such an attitude of resignation
(arapagia). Carneades, however, holds that although we have
no criterion for knowing the nature of things, we have sufficient
certainty, e.g., the clearness and vividness of a percept, to guide
us in our practical behavior. There are various degrees of
probability ; it is not necessary, therefore, to suspend judgment.
The wise man will assent to an idea according to its degree of
probability; he will, however, always remember that the highest
degree of probability does not guarantee truth. This view of
Carneades led to eclecticism, or the philosophy of common-
sense.
Carneades attacks the system of the Stoics, endeavoring to
bring out the contradictions contained in it and to show the
futility of all knowledge. He repudiates their teleological argu-
ment for the existence of God on the ground that the world is
not rational, beautiful, and good; even if it were, it would not
prove that a God made it. Their conception of God or the
world-soul is criticised on the ground that if he has sensation
or feeling, he is changeable, and that a changeable God cannot
be eternal. If, on the other hand, he is unchangeable, he is a
rigid, lifeless being. Again, if God is corporeal, he is changeable
and perishable; if he is incorporeal, he has not sensation or
feeling. If he is good, he is determined by the moral law, hence
not supreme ; if he is not good, he is inferior to men. The idea
of God is full of contradictions; our reason cannot grasp him,
knowledge of him is, therefore, impossible.
SKEPTICISM AND ECLECTICISM 119
Philo of Larissa declares that, though the Stoic criterion of
truth is not adequate, it does not follow that knowledge is im-
possible. He does not believe that either Arcesilaus or Car-
neades ever intended to deny the possibility of knowledge. An-
tiochus abandons skepticism and takes up eclecticism.
The skeptical view is worked out, in greater detail, by the
later skeptics, ^Enesidemus and Sextus. Among the reasons
given by ^Enesidemus for the uncertainty of knowl-
edge are these : The same objects seem different to
different beings, to different persons, to the same
person, to different senses, to the same sense at different times
and under different conditions of the subject and the environ-
ment. Every sensation is conditioned by subjective and objective
factors, and is therefore never the same. Proofs are also offered
against the possibility of proof, against the notion of cause and
effect, and against the arguments for the existence of God.
The skeptical movement was not without influence on the
history of philosophy. It tended to weaken the extreme dog-
matism of some of the schools and induced others to modify
their views. By pointing out the differences and contradictions
in and among various systems, it caused thinkers to soften the
differences and to emphasize the agreements, and to select from
the different systems what appealed to their common-sense. In
this way the philosophical movement called eclecticism took its
rise.
Eclecticism was also encouraged by the growing intellectual in-
tercourse between Greek scholars and the Romans. The Eomans
had no genius for philosophy ; they lacked specula- .
tive power and paid little attention to theories of
the world and of life. It was not until Macedonia was conquered
by Rome in 168 B.C. and Greece became a Roman province
(146), that interest arose in philosophical reflection. Greek
teachers came to Rome and young Romans attended the philo-
sophical schools in Greece; and Greek philosophy began to be
regarded as an indispensable part of higher culture. The Roman
thinkers, however, never produced an independent system of
thought ; they were eclectics, taking from different systems what
most appealed to them. Even when they accepted a system as
a whole, they modified it to suit their taste. They had no
120 GREEK PHILOSOPHY
patience with subtleties, sophistries, and paradoxes, and avoided
the hair-splittings and fine distinctions in which the Greeks
reveled; nor were they fond of controversies and disputations.
They were not profound thinkers, but were governed by com-
mon-sense : ' ' they sought and found in philosophy, ' ' as Denis *
says, " nothing but a rule of conduct and a means of govern-
ment."
Eclecticism made its way into nearly all the schools, into the Acad-
emy, the Lyceum, and the Stoa; the Epicureans alone remaining true
to their creed. We mention among its representatives: Antiochus, of
the Newer Academy; Panaetius (180-110 B.C.), Posidonius (+91 B.C.),
of the Middle Stoa; Cicero (106-43 B.C.), the school founded in Rome
by Sextius (born 70 B.C.), L. AnnaBus Cornutus (first century A.D.),
L. Annseus Seneca (3-65 A.D.), C. Musonius Rufus (first century A.D.).
RELIGIOUS MOVEMENT
15. JEWISH-GREEK PHILOSOPHY
We have passed in review the different philosophical move-
ments which succeeded the great systems of Plato and Aristotle,
and come now to a period in our history when
(R°r philosophy seeks refuge in religion. Epicureanism,
interpreting the world as a machine, advises its
followers to turn it to their use and to derive as much hap-
piness from it as they can. The Stoics, conceiving it as
an intelligent teleological system, find it wise to subordi-
nate themselves to the universal will and to assist in realizing
the purpose of the whole. Skepticism, refusing to give any
answer whatever, advises the abandonment of all attempts to
understand the universe and recommends, as a guide in practical
matters, the following of nature, custom, and probability. Ec-
lecticism, finally, turns its attention to what seems good in
all the theories that have been offered, and endeavors to piece
together a satisfactory world-view from the old materials at
hand.
These philosophies, however, did not satisfy all types of mind.
Some temperaments found it impossible to look upon the world
* Hisioire des theories et des idees morales.
JEWISH-GREEK PHILOSOPHY 121
as a mechanical interplay of atoms and to cease from troubling
about God. Nor were they able, by silencing their yearnings
and resigning themselves to the universal will, to find peace
and power " within their own pure hearts." And in spite
of the Skeptics, they did not succeed in rooting out the desire
for certain knowledge of God; they refused to surrender them-
selves to the fate of blindness — they longed not only to know
but to see God. Zeller characterizes the period we have reached
in the following words: " The feeling of estrangement from
God, the yearning for a higher revelation, is characteristic of
the last centuries of the old world. This yearning expresses
nothing less than the consciousness of the decline of the classical
peoples and their culture, and the premonition of the approach-
ing new era; it brought to life not only Christianity, but, even
before its advent, pagan and Jewish Alexandrianism and its
kindred phenomena."*
This attitude gave rise to a philosophy strongly tinctured with
religious mysticism; and Greek thought, gathering together the
achievements of its intellectual history, ended, as it began, in
religion. The religious movement was encouraged by the con-
tact of Greek speculation with the Egyptian, Chaldaean, and,
particularly, Jewish religions. The cosmopolitan city of Alex-
andria, in Egypt, furnished the favorable physical medium for
bringing the two forces together. We may distinguish three
currents in this religious philosophy: (1) An attempt to combine
an Oriental religion (Judaism) with Greek speculation : Jewish-
Greek philosophy; (2) an attempt to construct a world-religion
upon Pythagorean doctrines: Neopythagoreanism ; (3) an at-
tempt to make a religious philosophy of the Platonic teaching:
Neoplatonism. Common to all these theologies, or theosophies,
are : the conception of God as a transcendent being, the dualism
of God and world, the idea of revealed and mystical knowledge
of God, asceticism and world-denial, the belief in intermediary
beings, demons, and angels. Some of these elements were char-
acteristic of the Jewish religion, as it appeared at the time we
have reached (monotheism, dualism, revelation and prophecy,
angelology), and it, therefore, readily lent itself to an amalga-
mation (syncretism) with certain Greek systems of thought
•Zeller, The Philosophy of the Greeks, Part III, vol. II.
122 GREEK PHILOSOPHY
All the systems represent a union of Hellenistic and Oriental
culture: in Neoplatonism the Greek element predominates, in
the Jewish-Greek philosophy Orientalism is strongest.
See Lecky, History of European Morals, vol. I; Cumont, Oriental
Religions in Roman Paganism; Gibbon, Decline and Fall of Roman
Empire.
Alexandria, which was founded by Alexander the Great, 333
B.C., became, under the rule (323-181) of the descendants of his
general Ptolemy, the leading commercial and in-
Beginnings of tellectual city of the world, and the chief meeting-
Place °^ Hellenic and Oriental civilization. Here
a great scientific Museum with its celebrated
library (700,000 volumes) was established, under Ptolemy II
(285-247), which attracted poets, men of science, and philoso-
phers from every region of the classical world.* Here, under
Ptolemy II, the sacred Jewish Scriptures were translated into
Greek (the Septuagint) for the benefit of the large Jewish popu-
lation who had forgotten their mother-tongue. The Greek influ-
ence on Jewish thought was, however, not limited to Alexandria,
but extended to Palestine itself, as we know from the efforts
made by King Antiochus IV to hellenize the Jews and from
the encouragement he received from the educated classes of
Jerusalem.
The first direct trace of the union of Jewish and Greek ideas
is found in a treatise by a Peripatetic Jew named Aristobulus
(about 150 B.C.), who wrote a commentary on the Pentateuch.
He tried to show a harmony between the teachings of the Old
Testament and the Greek philosophers, and asserted that the
Greeks (Orpheus, Homer, Hesiod, Pythagoras, and Plato) had
drawn upon the Jewish Scriptures for their knowledge. In sup-
port of his position he appealed to a number of verses in the
Greek poets, which were afterward proved to be forgeries. He also
attempted to get rid of the anthropomorphism in the Scriptures
by means of allegorical interpretations (after the fashion of
* Among them : the poets Callimachus, Theocritus, and Apollonius of
Rhodes; Euclid the mathematician; the astronomers Apollonius of Perga,
Arystillus, Timocharus, and Ptolemy, the author of the Almagest and the
geocentric or Ptolemaic theory of the heavens; and the geographer
Eratosthenes.
JEWISH-GREEK PHILOSOPHY
123
the Stoics), aiming to reconcile it with Hellenic thought. God
is conceived as a transcendent being; invisible; no mortal soul
ever beheld him, he is visible only to pure intelligence (vovs).
The world-soul (of the Stoics) is not God himself, but the divine
Power that governs all things. The influence of Aristotle and
the Stoics is plainly noticeable here. Traces of Greek philosophy
are found in other Jewish writings, e.g., in the work called
Wisdom of Solomon, in the Book of Maccabees, Sibylline Ora-
cles, and Wisdom of Sirach.
These tendencies culminate in the system of Philo, an Alex-
andrian Jew of priestly family, who was born 30 B.C. and died
50 A.D. He wrote historical, political, ethical, and
exegetical works, of which many are extant. Ac-
cording to Philo, Judaism is the sum-total of human wisdom.
One and the same Reason speaks in Greek philosophers, Pythag-
oras and Plato, and in the inspired teachings of Moses and the
Prophets ; to prove this, Philo read Greek philosophy, especially
Platonism and Stoicism, into the Scriptures by means of the
allegorical method which was in common use at Alexandria.
Adam stands for spirit or mind, Eve for sensuality, Jacob for
asceticism, and so on.
New edition of Philo's works by Wendland and Cohn; translation
of works by Yonge, 4 vols.
Drummond, Philo- Judceus; Conybeare, Philo; Schiirer, History of
the Jewish People; Pfleiderer, History of Philosophy of Religion;
Heinze, Lehre vom Logos; Reville, Le logos; Arnim, Quellenstudien zu
Philon; Falter, Philon und Plotin.
The fundamental conception in the system of Philo is the
idea of God. God is an absolutely transcendent being, so far
above us that we cannot comprehend him or define him, the
ineffable one, who is higher than knowledge, virtue, and the
highest good. We know that he is, not what he is ; we are imme-
diately certain of his existence, knowing him through our high-
est reason or pure intelligence (rovS). His existence can,
however, also be proved. He is the ground and source of every-
thing; everything is contained in him. He is absolute power,
absolute perfection, absolute goodness, absolute blessedness, and
pure mind, intelligence, or reason. God is too exalted to come
in contact with impure matter. In order to explain his action
124 GREEK PHILOSOPHY
on the world, Philo assumes intermediate powers or instruments,
making use of the Jewish notion of angels and demons, and of
the Greek conception of the world-soul and ideas. Sometimes
he describes these powers as properties of God, as ideas or
thoughts of God, as parts of the universal power or reason,
sometimes as messengers or servants of God, as souls, angels,
or demons; thinking at times in terms of Greek philosophy, at
others in terms of the Jewish religion. All such powers he
combines into one, the Logos, the Divine Reason or Wisdom.
(We conceive the Logos through the logos in ourselves, which is
a second faculty of knowledge, different from pure intelligence
or vovt.) It is the container or place of all ideas (as the soul
of the builder contains the plan of the city), the power of all
powers, the highest of the angels, the first-born Son of God,
the image of God, the second God, the God-man, the heavenly
Adam. In fact, Philo 's Logos is the Stoic world-soul, the former
of the world, the pattern of the universe, or the Platonic world
of ideas, made into a being intermediate between God and the
world. Sometimes he speaks of this principle as a radiation of
the divine light, a conception which faintly anticipates the
emanation-theory of Plotinus. Whether or not the Logos is to
be conceived as a person, is left uncertain.
The Logos is the wisdom and power and goodness of God
substantialized, or conceived as an entity distinct from him. In
order that it may have something to act upon, another principle
is brought in : quality -less matter or a mass occupying space, of
which God is the cause. From this chaotic mass, and using the
Logos as his organ, God fashioned the world of visible things,
which are the images or copies of ideas. We know the sensible
images of the Logos, or the world of sense, through sense-
perception, which is a third faculty of knowledge in man. The
world has had a beginning in time, but has no end (Jewish con-
ception of creation). Time and space were created when the
world was created. Since the Logos is perfect and good, the
defects and evils of the world must owe their origin to matter.
Man, like the universe, is soul and matter ; he is the microcosm,
the most important piece of creation. But pure thought (rovt)
constitutes his chief essence. The body and the irrational part
of the soul belong to the world of matter; the ruling part con-
NEOPLATONISM 125
sists of desire, courage, and reason (logos). The incorporeal
mind or pure intelligence is added to the soul from above ; this
makes man an image of God. The body is the source of evil
in man; the incorporation of souls is a fall: by its union with
the body the soul becomes predisposed to evil (original sin).
If the fallen souls fail to free themselves from sense, they enter
other mortal bodies. Although human intelligence is in con-
stant connection with the divine mind, according to Philo, it is
nevertheless free to declare for or against God, free to lose
itself in sensuality or to rise above it ; how this is possible, we
are not told. Man should deliver himself from his body, the
evil principle in him, eradicate his passions and all sensuality,
by theoretical contemplation (asceticism). But we cannot do
this unaided, we are too weak for that, too sinful ; we need help,
divine help. God must illuminate us, penetrate our souls. ' ' The
sun of consciousness must set." This is ecstasy. In this state
we immediately apprehend God, plunge ourselves into the pure
source of being, see God (mysticism).
16. NEOPLATONISM
Pythagoras lived in the sixth century B.C. The object of his
teaching was chiefly ethical, political, and religious; it aimed
at an ethical-religious reform. After his death,
the practical phases of his doctrine survived, par- Ne°Pytliag0-
reanism
ticularly in Italy, but the school, as a philosophical
organization, died in the fourth century. Plato absorbed the
Pythagorean number-theory and the religious-mystical elements,
during his old age, and his immediate successors in the school em-
phasized these latter-day teachings of the master. With the rise of
Aristotelianism and the later Greek systems, the Academy aban-
doned Pythagoreanism as its official creed. The Pythagorean
secret societies, however, with their mysteries, continued to lead a
somewhat precarious existence until the religious yearning which
took possession of the Roman world, in the first century B.C.,
revived them and the spirit of the times encouraged them to
devote themselves once more to philosophy. The leaders in this
movement, however, did not go back to the Pythagoreanism of
the early days; they took the doctrine as it appeared in Pla-
126 GREEK PHILOSOPHY
tonism, and combined it, in the eclectic fashion of the age, with
other Greek theories. Pythagoras came to be regarded as the
source of divinely revealed knowledge. Whatever the Neopytha-
goreans accepted as truth, and whatever appealed to them in
the writings of Plato, Aristotle, and the Stoics, they naively
ascribed to the great teacher whose personality and work had
been surrounded with the nimbus of mystery.
Among the names to be mentioned here are those of P. Nigidius
Figulus, Sotion the pupil of Sextius, Apollonius of Tyana, Moderatus,
of the first century A.D., and Nicomachus and Philostratus of the
second century. Apollonius declared Pythagoras to be the world-
savior, while Philostratus gives this title to Apollonius himself. The
Neopythagorean movement also influenced many Platonists, e.g., Plu-
tarch of Cha3ronea (50-125), Maximus of Tyre, Apuleius (born around
126-132), the physician Galen (second century), Celsus, Numenius, and
others.
Translation of Philostratus, Life of Apollonius, 1903. Works on
Apollonius by F. Campbell, Whittaker, Mead.
The attempts to construct a religious philosophy on the basis
of Greek thought culminate in Neoplatonism. Plato's system
becomes the framework for a religious world-view,
Neoplatonism , , . , ...
or theosophy, which utilizes whatever seems valu-
able in the other theories, especially in Peripatetic and Stoic
speculation, in an independent manner. God is conceived as
the source and goal of everything; from him everything comes,
to him all things return ; he is the alpha and omega, the begin-
ning, middle, and end. Communion with God or absorption in
God, therefore, is the real object of all our strivings, and reli-
gion the heart-beat of the universe.
A number of stages may be distinguished in the school: (1)
The Alexandrian-Roman school, to which belong: Ammonius
Saccas (175-242 A.D.), the founder, 'who left no writings;
Plotinus (204-269), who develops the system; and Porphyry
(232-304), his pupil; (2) The Syrian school, represented by
Jamblichus (+330); and (3) The Athenian school, of which
Plutarch the younger (350-433) and Proclus (411-485) are the
chief figures.
A. Harnack, article on " Neoplatonism " in Britannica, and History
of the Dogma; Bigg, Neoplatonism, and Christian Platonists of Alex-
andria; Whittaker, The Neoplatonists; R. M. Jones, Studies in Mys-
NEOPLATONISM 127
tical Eeligion; Hatch, cited p. 105; Dill, Roman Society from Nero
to Marcus Aurelius; A. Drews, Plotinus und der Untergang der antiken
Weltanschauung; works of Susemihl and Heinze, cited p. 105; Matter,
Simon, Vacherot; also works on p. 123.
Plotinus was born in Lycopolis, Egypt, in 204, and studied philosophy
under Ammonius Saccas in Alexandria for eleven years. In 243 he
went to Rome, where he established a school; but he
did not put his philosophy in writing until he was fifty Plotinus
years old. After his death (269), his pupil Porphyry
revised and published his manuscripts, with a biography of his teacher,
arranging them in six Enneads, or series of nine writings each. This
work has come down to us.
Edition of works by Volkmann ; translations of selections by Thomas
Taylor, now in Bohn Library.
God is the source of all existence, of all oppositions and differ-
ences, of mind and body, form and matter, but is himself devoid
of all opposition and difference, absolutely one, one in the sense
of excluding all plurality and diversity. He is the One that
contains everything, — infinity, the first causeless cause, — from
which everything is produced, from which everything emanates;
for plurality always presupposes unity; unity is prior to all
being and beyond all being. He is so transcendent that what-
ever we say of him merely limits him ; hence we cannot attribute
to him beauty or goodness or thought or will, for all such attri-
butes are limitations and really imperfections. We cannot say
what he is, but only what he is not. We cannot define him as
being, for being is thinkable, and what is thinkable implies
subject and object, and is, therefore, a limitation. He is higher
than beauty, truth, goodness, consciousness, and will, for all of
these depend on him. We cannot conceive him as thinking,
because this implies a thinker and a thought; even a self-
conscious being, who thinks himself, divides into subject and
object. To say that God thinks and wills is to limit him by
what he thinks and wills, and, therefore, to rob him of his
independence.
Although the world is from God, he did not create it, for
creation implies consciousness and will, or limitation, and God
did not decide to create a world. Nor is the world an evolution
from God, for God is the most perfect. The universe is an
emanation from God. an inevitable overflow of his infinite power
128 GREEK PHILOSOPHY
or actuality. Plotinus employs several similes to make his mean-
ing clear. God is an infinite spring from which the stream
flows without exhausting its infinite source; or, God is the sun
from which the light radiates without loss to the sun. He uses
these illustrations to indicate the absolute power and independ-
ence of the first principle. The cause does not pass over into,
or lose itself in, its effect; the effect does not limit the cause;
the effect is non-essential so far as God is concerned. The world
depends on God, but he does not depend on the world. The ani-
mal continues as it was, after having given birth to offspring.
The farther we are from the sun, the nearer we are to dark-
ness (matter). Creation is a fall from the perfect to the im-
perfect. The farther down we go in the scale of being, the
greater imperfection, plurality, change, and separation we find.
Every later stage is the necessary effect of the preceding one, —
its copy, its shadow, its accident. But every later stage also
strives for the higher, turns back to its source, finds its purpose
or goal in that which went before.
Different stages may be distinguished in the process of ema-
nation: pure thought or mind (rovS)t soul, and matter. On
the first stage, God's being divides into thought
and ideas' that is' God thinks th(mgnts> he con-
templates the pure ideal cosmos (xoff^ioZ vorjroS).
Thought and its ideas, subject and object, are, however, one at
this stage, not separate in time or space: in the divine mind
the thinker and his thoughts are one and the same. This is as
it should be if God's thinking is to be perfect truth, for truth
implies the oneness of thought and its object. God thinks his
own thoughts, which flow from his very essence: in the divine
mind the activity of thought, the thinker, and the thought are
one and the same, not separate. His thought is not discursive,
passing from idea to idea, from premise to conclusion, but in-
tuitive, static, as it were, contemplating the system of ideas as
a whole, and all at once. There are many ideas, — as many as
there are particular things in the phenomenal world, — and they
differ from one another, but they form a unified system, as with
Plato. The absolute unity of the first principle (God) is re-
flected in this system of many different ideas.
For each particular object in the sense-world, there is an
NEOPLATONISM 129
idea in the mind of God. Hence, pure thought is the pattern
or model of the phenomenal world ; it is a spaceless and timeless,
a perfect, eternal, and harmonious intelligible world. But it is
not merely a pattern ; the ideas are efficient causes ; every stage
in the process of emanation is, as we have seen, the cause of
the succeeding one.
The soul (tyvxrf) is the second stage in the divine emanation,
and proceeds from pure thought; wherever there are ideas or
purposes, they must seek to realize themselves, to produce some-
thing. It is the effect, image, or copy of pure thought, and, like
an effect or copy, less perfect than the original. It is super-
sensuous or intelligible; it is active and has ideas; it possesses
the power of thought, though in less complete form than pure
thought, being discursive; it is self-conscious, though beyond
the need of perception and memory. There are two phases of
the soul: it is turned in the direction of pure thought, and it
is turned in the direction of the world of sense; in the former
case, it acts as thought: it contemplates pure ideas; in the
latter, it is impelled to bring order into matter: it has desire.
The first phase Plotinus calls the world-soul, the second phase
he calls nature; and sometimes he speaks as if there were two
such wrorld-souls : the second emanating from the first like a ray
of light, and constituting the unconscious soul of corporeal exist-
ence. As soul having ideas, looking mind- ward, it is indivisible ;
as soul with the desire to animate the objects of the phenomenal
world, it is capable of division.
But the soul cannot realize its desire to exercise its powers, to
act and to form, without something to act on; it produces
matter. Matter, as such, has neither form, quality, power, nor
unity; it is absolute impotence and privation, the principle of
evil. It is farthest removed from God; there is no trace in it
of God, it is darkness. We can form no image of it; all we
can do is to assume it as the necessary substrate behind the
phenomena of changing qualities, as that which persists in our
passing world of sense. Upon this matter the efficient powers
or souls which are contained in the world-soul and identical with
its ideas, act, fashioning it into a sensuous image or copy of the
intelligible world contained in the divine intelligence. These par-
ticular powers or souls which impress themselves upon matter,
130 GREEK PHILOSOPHY
as it were, thus producing particular sensible objects in space
and in time, are themselves all comprehended in the indivisible
world-soul; neither they nor the world-soul exist in space or are
spread out; the spatial arrangement of objects is due solely to
the matter in them. The beauty, order, and unity of the phe-
nomenal universe are due to the world-soul, which harks back
to God.
Plotinus conceives the emanation of the world from the world-
soul as a necessary consequence of its nature, not as a process
that has begun in time, in response, say, to an act of will.
The three stages: the emanation of the world-soul, the creation
of matter, the forming of matter into bodies, constitute one proc-
ess, which abstract thought can analyze into three phases, but
which are one eternal and indivisible act. With Aristotle, there-
fore, Plotinus teaches the eternity of the universe. At the same
time, he tells us that matter can receive its forms only succes-
sively, and that the world-soul creates time in order that it may
operate. He likewise accepts the Stoic doctrine of periodical
recurrence. How these views are to be reconciled, he does not
say: the general thought he seeks to impress is that the world
has always been and always will be, and that the world of sense,
as a whole, is eternal, though its parts change.
The soul of man is a part of the world-soul, and as such super-
sensuous and free. Originally, before its incorporation, it con-
templated the eternal vov? in mystical intuition,
Human Soul .,.,-, ^ -, -, , . ..
it pointed God-ward and knew the good; but it
turned its gaze earth-ward, body-ward, and so fell. This fall
is in part the necessary consequence of the world-soul's desire
to fashion matter, partly the result of an irresistible impulse
for a life of sense on the part of the particular soul itself. In
this way the soul has lost its original freedom, for its freedom
consists in turning in the other direction, away from sensuality,
in accordance with its higher nature. If it fails to do this,
that is, if it remains steeped in the bodily life, it becomes
attached to another human, animal, or plant body after death,
according to the degree of its guilt. The part of the soul which
radiates into the material body, however, is not the real self,
but merely a shadow of it, the irrational, animal part of the
soul, the seat of the appetites and sense-perception, the source
NEOPLATONISM 131
of sin and even of virtue. The true self consists of thought
(vov?) and logos; it can realize its mission only by turning
from the sensuous life to thought, and, through it, to God. But
this return to God is possible in this earthly life only on rare
occasions.
In order to reach the goal, the ordinary virtues of the phi-
losophers will not suffice. Moderation of impulses is not
enough, the soul must purge itself of all sensu- .
ality, free itself from the contamination of the y
body (KaSapffiS). There is, however, a still higher stage to
be reached than purification : this is only a preparation for theo-
retical contemplation, or the immediate intuition of ideas ; theory
is superior to practice, because it brings us nearer to the vision
of God. The highest stage, however, union with God, cannot be
realized even by thought of this exalted kind ; it is possible only
in a state of ecstasy (sxffTaffi?), in which the soul transcends its
own thought, loses itself in the soul of God, becomes one with
God. This is the mystical return to God.
This system is a combination of Greek philosophy and Ori-
ental religion. It is theistic in teaching a transcendent God, pan-
theistic in conceiving everything, down to the lowest matter, as
an emanation of God. It is religious idealism : the final goal of
the soul is to find rest in the mind of God, and though this is
impossible of attainment in this life, man should prepare for
it by keeping his mind on God, by freeing himself from the
shackles of sense.
Plotinus does not reject polytheism ; gods, too, are manifesta-
tions of the Divine. He also believed in the existence of good
and evil demons in the sublunary regions, and in the possi-
bility of psychic action in the distance : the entire universe being
spiritual, it seemed natural that spirits should act upon one
another sympathetically. Many of his successors exaggerated
these superstitions, defended the popular polytheism, attacked
the Christian religion, and reveled in magic and theurgy.
Porphyry of Tyre (232-304), the pupil of Plotinus, published the
writings of his teacher with an account of his life.
His object was to give an exposition of the phi- Porphyry
losophy of Plotinus rather than to develop it. He of Tyre
lays greater emphasis than the master on asceticism and
the popular religion as means of purification, and accepts all kinds of
132 GREEK PHILOSOPHY
superstitious beliefs and practices (demonology, prophecy, idolatry,
magic, and theurgy) for the same reason. He also wrote a biography
of Pythagoras, commentaries on some of Plato's and Aristotle's works,
an Introduction to the Categories (of Aristotle), an outline of the
philosophy of Plotinus, a Letter to Anebo on Demons, and fifteen
books Against the Christians. The Introduction, which played an im-
portant role in the philosophy of the Middle Ages, the Outline (in
Latin translation), the biographies of Plotinus and Pythagoras, the
Letter, the fragments of a small commentary, are still extant.
Jamblichus of Chalcis (+330), who is a follower of Neopythagorean-
ism as well as of Neoplatonism, makes use of philosophy largely as a
defense and proof of his polytheistic religion. Super-
Jamblichus stition plays a still greater role in his doctrines than
in those of Porphyry. Among his writings are: On the
Pythagorean Life, Exhortation to Philosophy, and commentaries on
Plato and Aristotle.
Among the followers of Jamblichus were Julian the Apostate (Em-
peror from 361-363), who attempted to restore the old religion; The-
odorus of Asine; Themistius, an excellent commentator of Plato and
Aristotle; Macrobius; Olympiodorus ; and Hypatia, who was put to
death by Christians in Alexandria (415), an able expositor of the
works of Plato and Aristotle. One of her pupils was Synesius, who
later became a Christian bishop.
Neoplatonism was revived in the fifth century by Proclus (410-485),
the head of the Academy at Athens. He was succeeded by Marius,
Isidorus, and Damascius. In 529 the school at Athens
Close of was closed by an edict of the Emperor Justinian, and
School at the history of Greek philosophy came to an official end.
Athens After this time, some good commentaries on the writings
of Plato and Aristotle were published by Simplicius,
the younger Olympiodorus, Boethius, the author of the well-known
Consolations, and Philoponus. The works of Boethius as well as his
translations of Aristotelian writings and of Porphyry's Introduction
contributed largely to the knowledge of Greek philosophy in the early
Middle Ages (see p. 163).
But there was no more life in this philosophy, its efforts to resuscitate
the old polytheism and to save the old civilization were vain ; it had
outlived its usefulness. The future belonged to the new religion against
which it was so bitterly contending; and, by a strange irony of fate,
this new religion, in its attempt to conquer the intellectual world, made'
an ally of the philosophy of the Greeks.
PHILOSOPHY OF THE MIDDLE AGES
RISE OF CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY
17. BEGINNINGS OF CHRISTIANITY
We have traced the development of Greek philosophy from
its mythological beginnings down to its decline into theosophical
speculations and fantastic cultus. We found it
turning, at the end, to ethical and theological dis-
cussions, to the problem of man's origin and
destiny, his relation to God and the world, his fall and his
deliverance from sin. The interest in such questions grew in-
tense during the days of the Roman Empire, not only among
philosophers, but among the educated classes in general, as the
great popularity of the Oriental religions and of the systems
of thought influenced by them plainly shows. But the Greek
mind had lost its originality and vigor, and it was impossible
u to revive the corpse of philosophy by breathing into it the
spirit of Orientalism."
During the last period of Hellenic speculation, a new religion
which possessed many elements to recommend it to the times,
was making converts in the Roman world. This re- .
ligion, which had sprung from the soil of Judaism,
preached the gospel of a father-God who is merciful and just and
loves all his children alike, and promised the redemption of
mankind through Jesus Christ, his Son. It taught that no man
was too lowly to be saved, that there was hope for all, that Christ
would come again to establish his kingdom, first on earth and
then in heaven, but, whether on earth or in heaven, it would be
a kingdom of righteousness and love. It taught that, on the
judgment day, the wicked, rich and powerful though they might
be, would be confounded, and the pure in heart, however poor
and lowly, would enter into glory. In offering deliverance from
the sinful world and a future life of blessedness, Christianity
188
134 PHILOSOPHY OF THE MIDDLE AGES
struck a popular chord and satisfied a longing of the age. The
conditions of deliverance were not made dependent on external
and accidental goods, but on change of heart, repentance, and
love of God and man. The Pharisaic conception of the right-
eousness of the letter is transformed by the founder of Chris-
tianity into the doctrine of the righteousness of the spirit. What
is done should be done from love and worship of God and not
from fear; purity of heart is of more avail, in his sight, than
external observance of levitical rules and practices, the inner
spirit of greater worth than outward forms. There is but one
way of reaching salvation and that is to rid oneself of evil pas-
sions, of envy, anger, hatred, and revenge ; to forgive even those
that hate us, for it is better to suffer wrong than to do wrong.
Love and forgiveness take the place of hate and revenge; man
shall love his neighbor as himself, and every human being is his
neighbor.
With its spiritual monotheism, its doctrine of a life to come,
its gospel of love, and the example of the suffering Christ, the
new religion appealed to the Roman world-
Christianity kingdom. And as the number of its converts
Culture^ increased among the cultured classes, it could not
ignore the philosophical conceptions rooted in the
civilization in which it had to make its way. Indeed, Chris-
tianity, as it appeared in Palestine, owed its origin, in part at
least, to this civilization; Judaism had not been able to resist
the influences,— ethical, political, social, religious, and intellec-
tual, — which pervaded the great Roman Empire ; and the Chris-
tian revolt was one of the results. The new world-religion
arrived when the times were fulfilled. Among the
made its appearance possible were the existence of a .universal
empire ; the growing spirit of cosmopolitanism and brotherhood,
which Stoicism had done so much to inculcate; the conception
of a spiritual deity taught by the philosophers; the doctrines
of immortality contained in the popular Greek mysteries and
Oriental religions; and the Jewish ideal of a personal God^
which succeeded in awakening the religious spirit where the
abstract notions of the metaphysicians had failed. Christianity
was, in a measure, a child of its age, a child of Judaism and
Hellenic-Roman civilization. But the influence of the age did
BEGINNINGS OF CHRISTIANITY 135
not cease with its emergence into the world ; in addressing itself
to the Greeks and Romans of the times, it gradually assimi-
lated the culture of the world to which it brought its tidings.
Had the Jewish-Christian section of the new religion, which
interpreted it as a phase of Judaism, triumphed, it is not un-
likely that Christianity would have been buried beneath the walls
of Jerusalem.
In order to deliver its message effectively, Christianity had
to solve a number of important problems. It had to justify its '
faith to reason, to defend itself against the attacks of the pub-
licists and philosophers who in time came to take notice of
it, and to show the reasonableness of its teachings. It was neces-
sary for its leaders to meet their opponents on their own ground,
to make use of the philosophical conceptions familiar to their
minds, to fight them with their own intellectual weapons, — their
own philosophy. Such defenders of the faith, or Apologists,
came when they were needed. But it also became necessary
to define the creed, to formulate articles of faith, to establish
a body of doctrine or dogmas. Here, again, minds trained in
philosophy were of service in giving rational expression to the
traditional beliefs of the Christian communities; and in this
work, also, Greek thought exercised a significant influence on
Christianity. The dogmas were officially defined by the great
councils of the Church, but before agreement could be reached,
much work had to be done: many solutions were offered and
rejected, and many interpretations of the faith struggled for the
victory. The victorious creed became the orthodox creed, and
the thinkers who played important parts in defining it were
called Fathers of the Church.
A. Harnack, What is Christianity? transl. by Saunders, and Ex-
pansion of Christianity, transl. by Moffatt ; Pfleiderer, Origin of Chris-
tianity; Development of Christianity; and Primitive Christianity;
McGiffert, History of Christianity in Apostolic Age; Gibbon's Rome,
chap, xv ; Mommsen, History of Rome (especially the volume on the
provinces); Lecky, op. cit., vol. I; Friedliinder, op. cit.; Wendland,
Die hellenistisch-romische Kultur. See also: Cheyne, Encyclopedia
Biblica; Hastings, Dictionary of the Bible, and Encyclopedia of Reli-
gion and Ethics.
After the establishment of the fundamental doctrines and the
triumph of Christianity as an organized State Church, came the
136 PHILOSOPHY OF THE MIDDLE AGES
period of philosophical construction, — the elaboration of a phi-
•i losophy the subject-matter and guiding principles of which were
determined by the dogma. This philosophy, which
PhSfh constitutes the largest part of the philosophy
of the Middle Ages, or Christian Philosophy,
ii had for its aim the exposition, systematization, and demonstra-
tion of the Christian dogmas, — the construction of a theory of
the world and of life on a Christian basis. The thinkers who
performed this service were called Schoolmen and their systems
Scholastic Philosophy.
In all the cases we have mentioned, Greek philosophy was
drawn upon for help in the solution of the problems. But the
attitude of mind was not that of the ancient thinkers: their
object had been, in the main, to give a rational explanation of
the universe independently of the popular religion; they ap-
proached the task in a more or less scientific spirit, often even
in a spirit antagonistic to the prevailing creed. The School-
men, on the other hand, accepted the truths of Christianity as
beyond dispute; these formed the starting-point and regulative
principles of their speculation ; and these they sought to render
intelligible and reasonable, or to prove. In order to succeed,
they had recourse to such systems of Greek thought as best
suited the end in view; with them, therefore, philosophy was
placed in the service of religion; it became the handmaiden of
theology (ancilla theologice).
"Within the limits set by Christian dogma, the niind was left
free to exercise its skill ; so long as it did not conflict with estab-
lished truths, human reason could interpret the world as it
pleased. In the course of time, however, the intellect began to
free itself from its theological tether and to seek satisfaction
outside of the circumscribed territory ; the scholastic attitude
and method proved unsatisfactory, and attempts were made to
construct systems on a more independent basis. From another
side objections were also urged against the entire rationalistic
movement : the dogmas and the whole ecclesiastical system were
criticised and the effort made to transform the inner religious
life of the people, with the Bible and the conscience as the guide
and standard. These tendencies towards reforming the theo-
retical and practical phases of organized Christianity culmi-
DEVELOPMENT OF CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY 137
nated in the two great preludes to the modern era: the
Renaissance and the Reformation.
Consult, besides the general (especially the text-books of Stockl and
Turner) and special works mentioned on pp. 4, f . : Paulsen, System of
Ethics, Book I, chaps, ii, iii, iv, vi; de Wulf, History of Medieval
Philosophy, transl. by Coffey, and Scholasticism Old and New; A.
Harnack, History of Dogma, transl. by Buchanan; Townsend, The
Great Schoolmen; H. 0. Taylor, The Classical Heritage of the Middle
Ages, and The Medieval Mind, 2 vols.; Poole, Illustrations of the His-
tory of Medieval Thought; Lecky, History of European Morals;
T. C. Hall, History of Ethics Within Organized Christianity; Brett,
History of Psychology; Baeumker in Allgemeine Geschichte der Phi-
losophie, mentioned p. 4 (excellent short account) ; Eicken, Geschichte
und System der mittelalterlichen Weltanschauung; Picavet, Esquisse
d'une histoire des philosophies medievales; Prantl, Geschichte der Logik
im Abendlande, 4 vols.; Stockl, Geschichte der Philosophic des Mittel-
alters, 3 vols.; Haureau, De la philosophic scolastique; Morin, Dic-
tionnaire de philosophic et theologie scolastiques ; Baeumker and others,
Beitrdge; Grabmann, Geschichte der scholastischen Methode, 2 vols.;
Siebeek, Geschichte der Psychologie von Aristoteles bis Thomas von
Aquino; histories of Christian ethics by Gass, Luthardt, Ziegler;
A. D. White, A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology;
Strunz, Geschichte der Naturwissenschaften im Mittelalter; Ebert,
Allgemeine Geschichte der Litteratur des Mittelaters. Robinson, In-
troduction to the History of Western Europe; Emerton, Medieval
Europe; Adams, Civilization during the Middle Ages; Cambridge
Medieval History.
Paulsen, German Universities, transl. by Thilly and Elwang; Rashdall,
Universities of Europe in the Middle Ages; Denifle, Universitdten im
Mittelalter; books of Munroe and Graves mentioned p. 5.
18. DEVELOPMENT OF CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY
As has been stated, the new religion was soon compelled to
define its doctrines, to defend them, and to construct a Chris-
tian theology declaring its attitude toward the
prevailing Jewish and Hellenistic modes of ^rlv
thought. The system best adapted to the imme-
diate purpose at hand, in the beginning of the Christian era,
was the Jewish-Greek philosophy which we have already out-
lined. " The allegorical explanation of the Old Testament be-
came an indispensable means of combining the new faith with
the old revelations," says Zeller, " and the logos-doctrine of
Philo, which was fused with the Jewish-Christian Messianic
belief, formed the center of the dogmatic movement in Chris-
tian theology for centuries to come."
138 PHILOSOPHY OF THE MIDDLE AGES
We find the beginnings of Christian dogmatic theology in the
writings of the Apostle Paul and his school. He was the first
to offer a Christian theology or a philosophy of history on a
Christian basis. The Epistles ascribed to him betray the influ-
ence of conceptions similar to those made use of in the so-called
Wisdom of Solomon (doubtless known to him) and developed in
the philosophy of Philo ; Christ is identified with God 's Power
and Wisdom, the Logos ; he preexisted as the archetypal man,
but was created by God. The same notion is brought out in
Clement's Epistle to the Corinthians (93 to 95), the Barnabas
Epistle (96 or 97), the Shepherd of Hermas (about 140), the
Fourth Gospel, and in the writings of Ignatius (115).
In these ideas we have a fairly well-defined theology. The
historical elements of Christianity are interpreted in the light
of the Greek logos-doctrine; religious and philo-
Gnoshcs ,. . . . , , ' , *
sophical elements are welded together in a way to
emphasize the religious aspect: the Logos is a personality, the
son of a living Father, not a cold philosophical abstraction. It
was quite natural, however, that other thinkers, with a stronger
bent for speculation, should have sought to interpret the new
religion according to their philosophical preconceptions, to
rationalize it, to transform faith into knowledge (yvcoffi?,
gnosis). This work was done in the second century by the
Gnostics, as they have been called. Philo the Jew had inter-
preted Judaism in the light of Greek philosophy, and had tried
to reconcile the thoughts of the Greek metaphysicians with those
of the Jewish teachers. The Gnostics endeavor to do the same
for Christianity; they speculate upon their faith, and offer a
philosophy of Christianity and a Christian philosophy, a har-
mony of faith and knowledge, religion and science.
We have here an embryonic scholasticism, crude and fan-
tastic though it may be. It was asserted by these Christian
Philonists, as we might call them, that their doctrines had been
transmitted by Jesus to such of his followers as were able to
receive them, that is, as secret or esoteric teachings for the
educated. They taught that Christianity was an entirely new
and divine doctrine, Judaism a corrupt form of religion, the
revelation of an inferior being, and heathenism the work of evil
spirits. The Jewish God, or Demiurge, they regarded as a
DEVELOPMENT OF CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY 139
false God, opposed to the kingdom of light, or the abode of the
highest spirits, and to the true God. Christ, one of the highest
spirits, entered a human body in order to free the spirits of
light imprisoned in matter by the Demiurge. Those able to
comprehend the genuine teachings of Christ become gnostics,
or pneumatic beings, and are eventually delivered from their
material bondage, asceticism being one of the means of escape.
Such as fail to free themselves from sensuous matter perish
with it, while the literalists (psychic beings) go to the heaven
of the Demiurge. The world is the result of a fall; matter is
the principle of evil; the exoteric doctrine is contained in the
creed, the esoteric doctrine is a secret tradition.
Chief among the Gnostics are: Cerinthus (115 A.D.), Saturninus
(125), and Valentine (+160). The system of Marcion, who formed
a church at Rome, in 144, and accepted as canonical the Gospel of
St. Luke and ten Pauline Epistles, contains teachings resembling
Gnosticism, but emphasizes faith instead of knowledge and cannot,
therefore, be assigned to this sect.
Special works on the Gnostics by H. L. Mansel, Neander, Baur,
Matter. Cf. W. Schultz, Dokumente der Gnosis, which contains Ger-
man translations of the sources, and the article in the Britannica by
Bousset, where, also, bibliography is given.
It is evident, however, that the Gnostics were not equal to
their task: instead of a philosophical system, they offered a
" semi-Christian mythology." Besides, their doctrines were in
conflict with the prevailing conceptions of the teaching of Jesus ;
their repudiation of the Old Testament, their distinction be-
tween an esoteric and exoteric Christianity, their conception
of Jesus as a man whose body is used by a heavenly Christ, a
creature far beneath God and even beneath the angels, their
belief in specially endowed natures or pneumatic beings, and
their allegorical interpretations, were all antagonized by the
Apologists and other conservative leaders of Christianity and
denounced as heresies. At the same time, the Gnostic movement
exercised a great influence on the new religion and its theology.
It gave an impetus to the philosophical study of the faith or
theology. Some of its fundamental ideas, which came from Greek
philosophy, found their way into the works of the early writers
of the Church, and so became a factor in the evolution of the
dogma.
140 PHILOSOPHY OF THE MIDDLE AGES
The Apologists did not differ from the Gnostics in their
general aim to render the new religion intelligible; they, too,
A i • appealed to philosophy in their efforts to defend
the faith against the heathen as well as against the
fantastic interpretations of Gnosticism. Christianity was, for
them, both philosophy and revelation; its truths were of super-
natural origin and absolutely certain, but they were rational
truths, even though they could be comprehended only by a
divinely inspired mind. In the words of Harnack: " The con-
viction common to them all may be summed up as follows:
Christianity is philosophy, because it has a rational content,
because it gives a satisfactory and universally intelligible answer
to the questions which all true philosophers have endeavored
to answer ; but it is not philosophy, indeed it is the direct oppo-
site of philosophy ... in so far as it is revealed truth and,
hence, has a supernatural, divine origin, upon which alone the
truth and certainty of its teaching ultimately rests. ' ' *
The Apologists were acquainted with the literature and phi-
losophy of their times and addressed themselves to the educated
classes. Indeed, nearly all the early leaders of the churches
were men who, after their conversion, took up the cudgels for
the new religion and sought to win favor for it among their
own people. This is why the philosophical element generally
predominates in their writings, and why the purely religious
phase is so often placed in the background.
Among the leaders in this field are: Justin the Martyr (+166),
Tatian (born about 130), Athenagoras (wrote about 170), Theophilus
(Bishop in 180), Irenams (born 120-130), Hippolytus (died after
235), Minucius Felix (second century), Tertullian (160-240), Cyprian
(200-258), Clement of Alexandria (+216), and Origen (185-254). The
movement culminated in the catechetical schools, perhaps the first of
which was established in Alexandria by Pantsenus, formerly a Stoic
philosopher, in 180. The object of these schools was not only to defend
the new religion and demonstrate its reasonableness, but to reduce the
teaching to systematic form for the benefit of the clergy, whose duty
it became to instruct the pagan and Jewish proselytes in the prin-
ciples of the Christian religion. Origen, the greatest leader of the
Alexandrian school, worked out a comprehensive Christian theology in
which the influence of Neoplatonism, which had its home at Alex-
andria, is strongly marked.
* Dogmengeschichte, p. 89 ; Outlines of History of Dogma, transl. by
Mitchell, p. 121.
DEVELOPMENT OF CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY 141
Collections of the writings of the Fathers (Latin and Greek) edited
by Migne, 1840, ff.; de Gerhardt and others, 1875, ff.; new edition,
Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum by Vienna Academy
(since 1866) ; Collection of Greek Fathers of first three centuries by
Prussian Academy (since 1897) ; English transl. in The Ante-Nicene
Christian Library, ed. by Roberts and Donaldson, and in Library of
Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, ed. by Schaff and Wace.
The fundamental thought in the writings of the Apologists
is this: The world, though perishable, exhibits traces of reason
and order, and points to one eternal, unchange-
able, good and just First Cause, the source of all life Teachings
and being. This principle transcends all life and Apologists
being : the sublimity, power, wisdom, goodness, and
grace of God are beyond all human notions, beyond all descrip-
tion. Yet the First Cause of all creation must be rational ; reason
must always have been potential in him as a part of his inner
nature ; and to the presence of Reason, or the Logos, in God, are
due the order and purpose in the universe. In other words,
jreggjgiLand goodness lie at the root of the world, and God is the
eternal and abiding principle in all change.
By an act of free will God emits the Logos: the Logos pro-
ceeds from him as the light proceeds from the sun. And as the
light emitted from the sun does not separate from the sun, so
the divine Reason does not separate from God in the procession ;
by giving birth to the reason in him, God does not lose his
reason; the Logos remains with the Creator, subsists with the
source whence it sprang. At the same time, the Logos is con-
ceived as an independent personality, — identical with God in
essence, but not numerically, — a second God who has been eter-
nally with God. The Logos became man in Jesus Christ, Christ
being the incarnate Logos, " the word made flesh/' The Holy
Ghost is another emanation from God ; i.e., the prophetic spirit,
which springs from God, is conceived as an entity.
We have in these conceptions the personification of divine
reason with which we have become familiar in the Greek phi-
losophy of religion: reason is the organ by which the world
is fashioned and through which God indirectly acts on the world.
The transcendency of God is emphasized, and the attempt is also
made to save the independence of the Logos: the Logos is con-
ceived as eternally with God, as co-eternal with him, as the phrase
142 PHILOSOPHY OF THE MIDDLE AGES
goes, as potential in him, as identical with him in his very
nature ; and yet the Father is said to be the source of his being
and activity (Irenseus), hence he would seem to be subordinated
to the Father, — a creature. Moreover, he becomes a person by
God's will, which would imply that there was a time when he
was not, which, again, would make him a creature. Origen un-
dertakes to solve this difficulty by combining both ideas and
teaching that the Logos is eternally created. The act of creation
is not an act in time, but an eternally present one, semel et simul .
the Son is eternally and continuously created.
The creation of the world is explained after the Greek models
God is the ground and purpose of all things: from him they
come and to him they return. The Logos, however, is the pat-
tern, or archetype, or prototype, of all created beings; which
means, everything is created in the image of reason and by the
power of reason or divine \ intelligence. We may put it this
way: the Creator fashioned the world from formless matter,
— which he created out of nothing, — after a pattern or rational
plan which he carried in his mind. This system of thoughts is
conceived by the Apologists as a personal entity, which, as an
active cause, forms, preserves, and controls everything.
Creation is the result of God's love and goodness and for the
benefit of man. According to the majority of the Apologists,
creation is an act in time; according to Origen, God creates
eternally, and creatures have always existed. The universe is
for him, as it was for Aristotle, eternal, but the world now ex-
isting has had a beginning and will pass away, to be replaced
by other and different worlds.
The world was made for the sake of man. The goal of man,
however, is not this world, but the hereafter. Other-worldliness,
world-flight, the withdrawal of the soul from the world of sense
to God, is the highest good. The resurrection of the body and
soul (or spirit) in some form or other, is taught by all the
Apologists; sometimes soul and body are both regarded as mor-
tal, immortality being bestowed on them as an act of divine
grace, according to the works of the soul (Justin) ; sometimes
man is held to possess, in addition to body and soul, a higher
spirit which is immortal and through which body and soul share
in immortality (Tatian) ; sometimes this spirit is said to be
DEVELOPMENT OF CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY 143
conferred from above upon those who control their pas-
sions.
Another teaching common to the Apologists is that of free •
will and the fall of man. God created spirits with the capacity
to distinguish between good and evil and the power of freedom
to choose between them. Some chose to disobey God, to turn
flesh- ward and away from God, for which sin they fell to a
lower level of life in carnal bodies. Man may regain his lost
estate by leading a Christian life and through divine grace,
through the revealed truth of the Logos. On the day of judg-
ment, after a sojourn in Hades or Purgatory, the just will enter
eternal life, and the unjust be forever rejected. Origen, how-
ever, believed in the final redemption of all. The thought run-
ning through this teaching is that, in sinning, the first man or
a heavenly spirit, as the case may be, brought sin into the
world, for which mankind is suffering, but that there is hope
for our ultimate redemption if we will only turn away from the
things of sense and seek to be reunited with God.
The fundamental article of faith declares that the human
race is redeemed by Jesus Christ, the Son of God, that the Son
of God came to deliver man from sin. This simple proposition
gave rise to a number of problems over which the Christian
theologians debated for centuries to come, and which received
official settlement only after long and bitter controversies. The
proposition contained three important notions: God, Jesus
Christ, and man. How shall we conceive God the Father, the
Son of God, and human nature in the scheme of salvation ? How
are these beings related to one another: the Father and the Son,
or Logos ; the Son and the man Jesus ; and God and man ?
The logos-doctrine, which appears so prominently in early
Christian theology, did not penetrate into the rank and file of
the early Church. The simple-minded Christian
of the first centuries, living in a polytheistic com- Doctrine
munity, believed in the Father, Son, and Holy
Ghost without interpreting his faith metaphysically; for him
Jesus the man was somehow the Son of God, and the Holy Ghost
another supernatural being: the metaphysical nature and rela-
tion of these beings to one another and to God, he did not
144 PHILOSOPHY OF THE MIDDLE AGES
attempt to fathom. The intellectual leaders of the Church
in their endeavors to defend the faith against Gnostics and pagar
philosophers, were carried farther and farther into the specu
lations of the Greek schools, until they finally hellenized the
Gospel. It was quite natural that the logos-doctrine shoulc
have met with serious opposition in many quarters and thai
efforts should have been made to reach a less metaphysical inter
pretation of the fundamentals of the faith. Many sects arose
which sought to express the teachings of Christianity in a fora
intelligible to those not familiar with theological speculations
The doctrine which had the largest following among Christiar
bodies from 130 to 300 was Modalism, which was called Patri
passianism in the Western Roman world and Sabellianism ir
the East. According to the former, God assumed flesh, became
man and suffered in the flesh; according to the latter, Goc
manifests himself in three successive ways or powers, as Father
Son, and Holy Ghost. In either case, the three persons are
one and the same God in different forms or modes.
But these views did not prevail against the logos-theology ; bj
the end of the third century the philosophical theology hac
triumphed; Harnack says, " it even read its articles into the
creed." The thinkers all succumbed to the influence of Origen
His successors made the faith so philosophical that it became
unintelligible to laymen; the purely cosmological and philo-
sophical elements were emphasized at the expense of the idea
of salvation, — formula* were established in which the name oi
Christ was not even mentioned. The Neoplatonism of Origen 's
system threatened to swamp Christianity.*
The question of the relation of the Logos to God, or of the
Son to the Father, formed the subject of a great controversy
at the Council of Nicaaa, in 325, between the Arians, the follow-
ers of Arius, and the Anti-Arians, of whom Athanasius after-
ward became the leader. According to Arius, Christ is a crea-
ture of God, endowed with free will, which God foresaw he
would use for good, and, therefore, conferred on him the dignity
of a God at his creation. According to Athanasius, the Son,
as the principle of salvation, is begotten, not made, by the
Father; co-eternal with the Father, of one substance with the
* Harnack, Outlines of History of the Dogma, pp. 193, ff.
DEVELOPMENT OF CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY 145
Father (homoousios) ; sharing fully in the nature of the Father,
without loss to the Father and without ceasing to be another
person. In the historical Jesus, the Logos-God, or the Son,
was united, in essence, with a human body ; the incarnation was
a complete incarnation. The Holy Ghost is a third being; the
one Godhead is a trinity of the same substance, consisting of
three persons identical in nature.
The Anti-Arians won the victory at the Council; the Arian
doctrines were condemned and Arius and his followers excom-
municated. The words " begotten, not made, being of one sub-
stance with the Father " were inserted in the creed which has
come to be called the Nicene creed. An unsuccessful attempt
was later made to effect a compromise between Arianism and
Athanasianism by declaring God and Christ to be, not of the
same substance (homoousios), but of like nature (homoiousios) ,
and failure to agree on this point led to a division between the
Roman and Greek Churches.
Both parties to the controversy had sought support for their
views in the Neoplatonic philosophy of Origen; and the ortho-
dox interpretation, no less than the defeated theory, is based
on the logos-doctrine.
Another question to stir up controversy was the problem of
the relation of the man Jesus to the Logos- God, the Christological
problem. Many answers were offered and many factions formed
in support of the different theories. The interpretation that
Christ had two natures, * ' each perfect in itself and each distinct
from the other, yet perfectly united in one person, who was
at once both God and man," was accepted by the Synod of
Chalcedon, in 451, and became the orthodox dogma.
After the establishment of the dogma at Nicaea, Christian philosophy
was studied chiefly in the school of Origen, at Alexandria. The ortho-
dox doctrines were adopted, in the main, and such teachings in Origen's
system as conflicted with them rejected. Among the representatives of
the school who assisted in the work of reconstruction, were Gregory
of Nyssa (+394), Basil the Great (+379), and Gregory of Nazianzen
(+390). Neoplatonism, as taught by Plotinus, also had a large follow-
ing, among the leaders being: Bishop Synesius (+430), Bishop
Nemesius (c. 450), JSncas of Gaza (c. 530), Zacharias Scholasticus,
Johannes Grammaticus, and Johannes Philoponus, all of the sixth
century. The Neoplatonic work, falsely attributed to Dionysius the
Areopagite, appeared at the end of the fifth century.
146 PHILOSOPHY OF THE MIDDLE AGES
A third question demanded an official answer: What is the
place of man in the scheme of salvation ? According to one view,
which was widespread, the whole human race had
Free Will been corrupted by the sin of the first man or a
Original Sin ^a^en angel; and divine help, in some form or
other, was needed to redeem mankind. The fun-
damental article of faith that Christ had come down from heaven
for our salvation seemed to favor such an interpretation: if
it was necessary to deliver man from sin, then evidently he
could not save himself, he was a slave to sin and by nature a
sinner (original sin) or had become a sinner in some way; at
any rate he was not free. This conception received support
from the Manichaeans, a numerous sect accepting the teachings
of the Persian Mani (+277), who read Persian dualism and
Gnosticism into the Scriptures and combined Christianity with
the doctrines of Zoroaster. They taught that the principle of
light in man was under bondage to matter, the principle of
darkness, and that the soul could be purified and enabled to
return to the kingdom of light whence it came, only by asceti-
cism, by abstention from meat, wine, marriage, property, and
labor. But it was possible to read a different view into the
article of faith : Christ came to save man from sin. Sin implies
guilt, guilt implies responsibility on the part of the guilty per-
son ; only a being who is free to choose between right and wrong
can be a sinner. Hence, if man sinned, he must have been free.
The same conclusions were reached in another way. God is all-
powerful and man, therefore, weak and unfree, incapable of
saving himself from sin; only a miracle can deliver him. Or:
God is absolutely good and just, and cannot, therefore, be re-
sponsible for sin ; hence, man himself must be the author of sin,
that is, free.
Pelagius, a monk, came to Rome, in the year 400, with a doc-
trine opposed to the notion of original sin: God is a good and
just God, and everything created by him good; hence, human
nature cannot be radically evil. Adam was free to sin or not
to sin ; his sensuous nature, which is evil, determined him, and he
chose sin. Sin, however, cannot be transmitted from generation
to generation, because every man has free will : sin implies free-
dom. Freedom is the original act of grace, the first gift
WORLD-VIEW OF AUGUSTINE 147
bestowed by a good God; hence, man needs no help, he can
resist sin and will the good. And yet, the example of Adam's
sin was baneful; the imitation of his bad example has led to
a habit, which it is difficult to overcome, and which is respon-
sible for man's fall. But, the churchman asked: If man is not
enslaved by sin, if his freedom of choice has not been destroyed,
what part can divine grace and the Christian religion play in
his redemption? The Pelagians answer: It is by an act of
divine grace that knowledge is revealed (in Scripture, in the
teachings and example of Jesus, and in the doctrines of the
Church) which will lend support to the human will in choosing
the good. Baptism and faith in Jesus Christ are necessary to
admission into the kingdom of heaven. God, being omniscient,
knows exactly what choices men are going to make in their lives,
—how they will use their power of freedom, — and determines
beforehand the rewards and punishments to be meted out
(predestination).
19. WORLD-VIEW OF AUGUSTINE
The Pelagian teaching is opposed by Augustine, the greatest
constructive thinker and the most influential teacher of the early
Christian Church. In his system the most im7
portant theological and philosophical problems of Au^u£
his age are discussed, and a Christian world-view developed
which represents the culmination of Patristic thought and be-
comes the guide of Christian philosophy for centuries to come.
It is owing to the significance of Augustine 's views for medieval
philosophy, as well as for the Christian theology of the Refor-
mation and the modern period, that we shall consider his system
in its different phases.
Aurelius Augustinus was born in Tagaste, Northern Africa, in 353,
of a pagan father and a Christian mother, Monica, who exercised a
profound influence on her son. He became a teacher of rhetoric, first
in his native city, later at Milan (384-386), and devoted himself to the
study of theological and philosophical questions, which carried him
from Manichaeism to skepticism, and left him unsatisfied. In 386 he
began to read some of the writings of Plato and the Neoplatonists,
which gave stability to his thought, and came under the influence
of the eloquent Bishop Ambrose of Milan, whose sermons touched his
heart. After his conversion in 387 he returned to Tagaste, where he
148 PHILOSOPHY OF THE MIDDLE AGES
lived for three years (388-391) according to monastic rules, and wai
ordained to the priesthood. In 396 he was raised to the bishopric oJ
Hippo, in Africa, which he held until his death in 430, devoting hii
great gifts to the development and propagation of Catholic doctrine.
Among the works of Augustine are: De libero arbitrio; De vert
religione; De prcsdestinatione et gratia; De trinitate; De civitate Dei
Confessiones; Retractiones ; and Letters.
Works in Migne's collection, vols. XXXII-XLVII; transl. ed. ty
Dods, 15 vols.; also in Sehaff's Library, vols. I- VIII. McCabe, St
Augustine and his Age; Boissier, La fin du paganisme; writings ty
Bindemann, A. Dorner, Reuter, Bohringer in his Church History, vol
XI, Martin.
Characteristic of the spirit of the entire Christian age is th<
Augustinian view that the only knowledge worth having is tin
knowledge of God and self. All the other sciences
^0&G> metaphysics, and ethics, have value only ii
Knwed e
so far as they tell us of God. It is our duty tc
understand what we firmly believe, to see the rationality of oui
faith. " Understand in order that you may believe, believe ii
order that you may understand. Some things we do not be
lieve unless we understand them; others we do not understanc
unless we believe." Besides natural knowledge, faith in divine
revelation is a source of knowledge of God. Intelligence ii
needed for understanding what it believes; faith for believing
what it understands. Reason, to be sure, must first decid(
whether a Tevelation has actually taken place. When faith has
comprehended the revelation, reason seeks to understand anc
explain it. We cannot, however, understand everything we
believe, but must accept the truths of faith on the authority oi
the Church, which is the representative of God on earth.
We know that we exist; our thinking and existence are in-
dubitable certainties. And we know that there is eternal anc
immutable truth: our very doubts prove that we are conscious
of truth, and the fact that we call a judgment true or false
points to the existence of a world of truth. Augustine here
conceives truth, after the Platonic fashion, as having real exist-
ence, and the human mind as possessing instinctive knowledge
of it. Sometimes he speaks as if we envisaged the divine ideas.
at other times he says that God creates them in us. In either
case, truth is objective, not a mere subjective product of the
human" mind; there is something independent and compelling
WORLD-VIEW OF AUGUSTINE 149
about it; whether you or I have it or not, it is and always will
be. The source of this eternal and changeless world of truth
is God; indeed, the divine mind is the abode of the Platonic
world of ideas, forms, archetypes, or essences, even of the ideai
of particular things.
The impelling motive in Augustine's theology is the Neopla-
tonic conception of the absoluteness and majesty of God and
the insignificance of his creatures, considered apart
from him. God is an eternal, transcendent being,
all-powerful, all-good, all- wise; absolute unity, absolute intel-
ligence, and absolute will; that is, absolute spirit. He is abso-
lutely free, but his decisions are as unchangeable as his nature ;
he is absolutely holy and cannot will evil. In him willing and
doing are one: what he wills is done without the help of any
intermediate being or Logos. In him are all ideas or forms
of things ; which means that he proceeded rationally in creating
the world and that everything owes its form to him. Augus-
tine accepts the Athanasian doctrine of the Trinity, although the
illustrations which he uses to make it clear are tainted with
Sabellianism.
God created the world out of nothing; it is not a necessary v
evolution of his own being, as the pantheistic Neoplatonists
hold, for this transcends the nature of his creatures. His crea-
tion is a continuous creation (creatio continua), for otherwise
the world would go to pieces : it is absolutely dependent on him.
We cannot say that the world was created in time or in space,
for. before God created the world there was neither time nor
space; in creating, he created time and space; he himself is
timeless .and without space. Yet, God's creation is not an eternal
creation ; the world has a beginning ; creatures are finite, change-
able and perishable. ^Jjod also created matter^ it is not earlier
tfrfln-tke^form, though prior to it in nature, Jhat is, we have
to presuppose matter logically as the basis of the form. Since
God is omnipotent, every conceivable thing, even the most in-
significant, must be present in the universe.
In order to prove divine omnipotence, Augustine is driven to
the position that God is the cause of everything. In order to
prove his goodness, it is necessary to exclude evil from the world
or explain it away. Creation is a revelation of God's goodness;
-j
150 PHILOSOPHY OF THE MIDDLE AGES
he created the universe on account of his infinite love. (But, —
Augustine hastens to add, for fear of depriving the Deity of
absolute power, — he was not bound to create, his love did not
compel him ; it was an act of his free will. ) Every kind of exist-
ence is, therefore, in a sense, good ; only we should not judge its
value from the standpoint of human utility. If God has cre-
ated and predetermined everything and is at the same time
an absolutely good being, he has willed everything for the best
of his creatures, and even evil must be good in its way. Like
the shadows in a picture, it belongs to the beauty of the whole ;
evil is not good, black is not white, but it is good that evil is.
Or, it is conceived as a defect, as privation of essence (privatio
substantice) , as an omission of the good; in this sense, if there
were no good, there could be no evil. Good is possible without
evil, but evil is not possible without the good; for everything is
good, at least so far as it has any being at all. Privation of good
is evil because it means an absence of something nature ought
to have. Nor can moral evil mar the beauty of universal crea-
tion. Moral evil springs from the will of man or fallen angels ;
it is the result of an evil will,- which, however, is nothing posi-
tive; hence, it merely represents a defective will; it, too, is
privation of good (privatio boni). The worst evil is privatio
Dei} the turning away from God, or the highest good, to the
perishable world. God could have omitted evil from the scheme
of things, but he preferred to use it as a means of serving the
good; the glory of the universe is enhanced by its presence
(optimism). He foresaw, for example, that man would turn
from the good to sin; he permitted it and predetermined his
punishment. That is, in order to save God's goodness along
with his omnipotence, Augustine (1) denies the existence of real
evil or makes it relative; (2) defines it as a privation of the
good; (3) shifts the responsibility for it to man.
Man, the highest creature in the visible world, is a union of
soul and body. This union is not the result of sin ; the body is
not the prison-house of the soul, and evil. The
soul is a simple immaterial or spiritual substance,
entirely distinct in essence from the body; it is the directing
and forming principle, the life of the body ; but how it acts on
the body is a mystery. Sensation is a mental, not a physical
WORLD-VIEW OF AUGUSTINE 151
process. Sense-perception, imagination, and sensuous desire
are functions of the sensitive or inferior soul ; memory, intellect,
and will, of the intellectual or superior soul or spirit, which is
in no wise dependent on the body. All these functions, how-
ever, are functions of one soul : the soul is a unity, three in one,
the image of the triune God. Since the will is present in all
modifications of the soul, we may say that these are nothing but
wills.
The soul is not an emanation from God; each man has his
own individual soul. Nor did souls exist before their union
with bodies (preexistence). How they arose, Augustine leaves
unsettled; it is a problem he is unable to solve. He finds it
hard to decide in favor of any of the views common in his day :
that God creates a new soul for every child that is born
(creationism) or that souls are generated from the souls of
parents in the same way, and at the same time, as bodies from
bodies ( traducianism ) .
Although the soul has a beginning in time, it does not die.
Augustine proves its immortality by the usual arguments of his
age, which go back to Plato. Still, although the soul is im-
mortal in the sense of continuing to exist, it is not necessarily
immortal in the sense of realizing eternal blessedness. The
eternal blessedness of the soul in God cannot be demonstrated:
our hope in it is an act of faith.
goaL4a_union vith God, that is, a reli-
gious, mystical ideal : the vision of God. Such a union cannot
take place in an imperfect world, but only in a
future life, which is the true life. Our earthly
life is but a pilgrimage to God; in comparison with eternal
blessedness, it is not life, but death. We have here the char-
acteristic pessimism of early Christianity with respect to the
visible universe, and buoyant optimism so far as the hereafter
is concerned : contemptus mundi on the one hand, and amor Dei
on the other. The dualism between the good God and the evil
world, however, Augustine seeks to reconcile by his theory of
evil, which we have already considered and according to which
there is no absolute evil. The way is also shown by which the
ethical dualism between the highest good and our workaday mo-
rality may be bridged.
152 PHILOSOPHY OF THE MIDDLE AGES
By love we are united with God, the highest good j hence love
is the supreme virtue, the source of all the other virtues: of
temperance or self-control, which is love of God as opposed to
love of the world; of fortitude, which overcomes pain and suf-
fering by love; of justice, which is the service of God; and of
wisdom, which is the power of right choice. Love of God is
the basis of true love of self and of others. It is the love of
God alone that makes the so-called pagan virtues genuine vir-
tues; unless inspired and prompted by this love, they are noth-
ing but " splendid vices."
The love of God is the work of divine grace acting within:
a mystical process taking place in the sacraments of the Church
under the influence of God's power. Faith, hope, and charity
are the three stages in moral conversion, love being the highest.
" Whoever loves right, doubtless also believes and hopes right."
" Without love faith can do nothing; nor is love without hope,
nor hope without love, nor either without faith."
In this teaching lies the possibility of a more positive atti-
tude toward earthly life and human institutions than seemed
possible under the ideals of primitive Christianity. The early
Christians had assumed a negative attitude toward human in-
stitutions: marriage, the affairs of State, war, the administra-
tion of justice, commercial pursuits, and so on. But with the
development of an organized Church and the Christianization
of the Roman Empire, a change became necessary: the imme-
diate result of this change was a kind of oscillation between
world-denial and world-affirmation. We find it in Augustine:
he wavers between the ascetic ideal and the worldly ideal. His
attitude is the characteristic attitude of medieval moralists.
Thus, he recognizes the right of property; he does not agree
with the old Fathers that property is based on injustice, that
all have an equal right to property, that wealth is a " damnable
usurpation " (Ambrose). He also regards rich and poor alike
as capable of salvation. Nevertheless, he looks upon the posses-
sion of private property as a hindrance to the soul, and places
a higher value upon poverty. Let us, therefore, abstain from the
possession of private property, he says, or if we cannot do that,
let us abstain from the love of possession. The same dualism
confronts us in the estimate of marriage and virginity: mar-
WORLD- VIEW OF AUGUSTINE l$S
riage is conceived as a sacrament, and yet the unmarried state
is the highest.
His conception of the State reveals the same thing. The
earthly State is based on self-love and even contempt of God
(contemptus Dei) ; the City of God, on love of God and contempt
of self. Nevertheless, the temporal State is an ethical com-
munity with the mission to promote earthly happiness, and
justice reigns in it. But its goal is relative, while that of the
Church is absolute ; hence, the State is subordinate to the Church ;
the authority of the Church is infallible, it is the visible appear-
ance of the kingdom of God.
In short, we find in Augustine a twofold ideal. The highest
good or perfection is a transcendent good,, which even the Chris-
tian is unable to realize in the flesh, being still under the sway
of carnal concupiscence : consequently, his perfection consists
in love of God, in the good will. A certain degree of perfection,
however, a kind of holiness, may be reached by the performance
of certain external works: venial sins may be wiped out by
prayer, fasting, alms. Yet the supreme and true goal is, after
all, renunciation of the world3 withdrawal from social life,
asceticism, imitation of Christ. The monastic life remains, for
Augustine, the Christian ideal.
The leading trait of this ethical teaching is its idealism. The
greatest thing in the universe is not the material aspect of exist-
ence, but spirit ; the greatest thing in man is not body, not his
sensuous-impulsive nature, not the satisfaction of appetite, but
spirit*
Augustine opposes the Pelagian theory of the will. Man was,
indeed, free to sin or not to sin in Adam ; God not only created
him free, but also endowed him with supernatural
gifts of grace : immortality, holiness, justice, free- t^^ry] °
dom from rebellious desire. But Adam chose to
disobey God and thereby not only lost the divine gifts, but I
corrupted the entire human race, so that it has become a ' ' mass j
of perdition. " The first man transmitted his sinful nature,/
and the punishment necessarily connected with it, to his off-'
spring, for he represented the whole human race. And now it
is impossible for man not to sin (nan posse non peccare) : he
went into sin free and came out of it unfree. Adam's sin is
154 PHILOSOPHY OF THE MIDDLE AGES
not merely the beginning and example of sin, it is original,
hereditary sin. The result of it all is that the entire human
race stands condemned, and no one will be saved from merited
punishment except by the mercy and unmerited grace of God.
God alone can reform corrupted man. He does not select the
recipients of his grace according to their good works, — indeed,
the works of sinful man cannot be good in the true sense of
the term, — only those whom God has elected as marks of his
grace can perform good works: " the human will does not
achieve grace by an act of freedom, but rather achieves freedom
by grace." That is, God can bring about such a change in the
human soul as will give it the love of the good which it pos-
sessed before Adam fell. The knowledge and love of the high-
est good, or God, restores to man the power to do good works,
the power to turn away from the life of sense to God : in other
words, the power of freedom, the will to emancipate himself
from the flesh. Freedom means love of the good; that is, only
the good will is free.
The thought underlying this teaching is that unless a man
has a notion of the good, unless he knows what is truly good
and loves it, he is lost. Some men have the good will, others
are without it. Augustine's problem is to account for its ap-
pearance in some persons and not in others, and he explains it
as a free gift of God.
Why God should have chosen some for eternal happiness and
others for eternal punishment is a mystery; but there is no
injustice in his choice, since man has forfeited any claim he
may have had to salvation. Yet, is not predestination identical
with fatalism ; does it not mean that God has determined before-
hand who shall be saved and who destroyed, and that his choice
is purely arbitrary ? Predestination is the eternal resolve of God
to lead this or that man to eternal life by the infallible means
of grace. Predestination implies foreknowledge of his choice.
But that has nothing to do with the man's freedom, Augustine
thinks: he was free to choose eternal life, he did not choose it;
God knew that he would not, and has decided beforehand whom
to save. Here, again, we have an example of Augustine's con-
ception of the absolute power of God; he is unwilling to limit
divine freedom in the slightest degree : God can do as he pleases
DARK AGES 155
with man, and he has settled from all eternity what is going
to happen to every individual. Man has had his chance in
Adam; he abused the privilege, and God knew he would abuse
it; but he was under no compulsion to go wrong and he has
no right to complain if he is not among the elect. Nevertheless,
if he truly loves God, if he has the holy will, he is redeemed.
Those whom God has chosen for redemption constitute the
City of God, and those who are chosen for destruction form
the city of this world, the kingdom of evil. Human history rep-
resents a struggle between the two kingdoms, the last stage of
which is the period inaugurated by Christ, through whom divine
grace is bestowed. The kingdom of God reaches its perfection
in the Christian Church: it is the kingdom of God on earth.
No one can be saved outside of the Church, although not every
one in it will be saved. Who is to be saved, no one knows.
The battle between the forces of good and evil will end in the
victory of the righteous; then will follow the great Sabbath,
in which the members of the City of God will enjoy eternal
blessedness, while the children of evil will suffer eternal punish-
ment in the eternal fire together with the devil.
BEGINNINGS OF SCHOLASTICISM
20. DARK AGES
Patristic philosophy reached its climax in the system of Au-
gustine, which was the last great product of classical-Christian
civilization and a heritage bequeathed by dying
,..,.,,,. _, New Peoples
antiquity to its barbarian successors. The century
that had given birth to this work also witnessed the downfall of
the Western Roman Empire and the rise to political power of
the young and vigorous peoples of the North. The Visigoths
took possession of Gaul and Spain, the Vandals overran Africa,
and the Ostrogoths placed themselves on the throne of the
Caesars (476). The problem now became to amalgamate Roman-
Christian culture with the notions and institutions of the Ger-
manic peoples, a task which required a thousand years to
complete. During this period, called the Middle Ages, a new
156 PHILOSOPHY OF THE MIDDLE AGES
civilization is slowly developed from the mixture of materials
contributed by the different human factors involved, and a new
political, social, intellectual, and religious order arises. How
thoroughgoing was the process of transformation going on, may
be seen from the evolution of new languages, new states, new
customs and laws, new religions, new forms of life of every kind ;
the old civilization disappeared in the great melting-pot of Euro-
pean races. The completion of the process marks the beginning
of the modern era.
That this work did not proceed very rapidly is not surprising ;
the traditions and institutions of the past could not be assimi-
lated except by slow degrees. No people changes its life all at
once, and no people is ever completely transformed. Before
becoming the bearers of the civilization offered by Roman Chris-
tianity, the barbarous tribes had many lessons to learn; they
were obliged to assimilate the new culture with their own organs ;
it had to pass into a barbarian soul with a long history of its
own. Nor is it surprising that the higher culture of the old
world should have fallen into neglect and that the field of phi-
losophy, which the Christians had in part appropriated and
cultivated, should have lain fallow for many centuries. It was
no time for the construction of metaphysical and theological
systems ; the age was confronted with serious practical problems
in every department of human activity. Besides, philosophy is
a man's business, and the new peoples were still in their school-
days. The very elements and instruments of knowledge had
first to be acquired before they could appreciate the highest
achievements of a cultivated race. The immediate problems were
pedagogical, and the learned literature of the period, from Au-
gustine down to the ninth century, was largely limited to text-
books on the seven liberal arts and compendia of Christian
dogmatics.
Philosophy, tethered as it was to Christian theology, was
merely preserving the traditions of the past. In the more culti-
vated Eastern Empire interest in theological questions was well-
nigh universal, but it expressed itself in fruitless dogmatic con-
troversies and in the production of encyclopedic manuals or
systematized collections of the dogmas, like that of John of
Damascus (around 700). In the West, scientific, logical, and
DARK AGES 157
philosophical text-books and commentaries were written by Mar-
tianus Capella (around 430), Boethius (480-525), and Cassio-
dorus (477-570), while Isidore of Seville (+636) and the
Venerable Bede (674-735) achieved an easy fame for learning
by compiling compendia remarkable only for their meagerness
of original thought. For several centuries there were practically
two distinct literatures running along side by side, the classical
and the Christian ; for the hybrid Christian works many educated
Greeks and Romans had nothing but contempt. Of the classical
philosophy, which continued along the lines of Stoicism, Neo-
pythagoreanism, and .Neoplatonism we have already spoken in
our account of Greek thought.
With the conversion of the educated classes in the Roman
Empire, and the development of the ecclesiastical organization,
the Christian clergy had gradually assumed the
intellectual leadership which formerly rested in the
philosophers' schools, and had become the custo-
dians of learning; nearly all the great writers in the East and
West belonged to the clergy. At the beginning of the Middle
Ages, however, with the ascendency of the Germanic races, the
torch of knowledge flickered dimly, and the secular Christian
clergy, recruited now, for the most part, from the sons of bar-
barians, found neither pleasure nor honor in the cultivation of
Greek philosophy, literature, and art. The_ seventh and eighth
centuries constitute perhaps the darkest period of our Western
European civilization, a period of boundless ignorance and bru-
tality, in which the literary and artistic achievements of the
classical past seemed destined to be lost in the general ruin. It
was during this bleak age that the monasteries became the ref-
uge, not only of the persecuted and oppressed, but of the despised
and neglected liberal arts. In them, what had survived of
literature, science, and art was being preserved and cultivated;
manuscripts were copied and the love of higher spiritual ideals
kept alive. The monasteries also established schools, and gave
instruction, meager and barren though it was. A more hopeful
epoch began when Charlemagne, in order to encourage education,
called scholars to his realm and founded schools in which the
seven liberal arts (grammar, rhetoric, logic, arithmetic, geome-
try, astronomy, and music) were taught: Paul the Deacon (the
158 PHILOSOPHY OF THE MIDDLE AGES
historian of the Lombards), Einhard, Angilbert, and, greatest
of all, the Anglo-Saxon Alcuin (735-804), a pupil of the monas-
tic school at York, who became the Emperor's chief adviser in
matters of education, and who seems to have succeeded in arous-
ing a lively interest in philosophical questions at his monastic
school at Tours. Alcuin himself wrote text-books on grammar,
rhetoric, and dialectics, — the trivium, — and a work on psy-
chology that shows the influence of the Platonic-AugustiniaD
conceptions. Among his pupils were Fredegisus (author of
De nihilo et tenebris') and Rabanus Maurus (776-856), com-
pilator and text-book writer, who has been called the creator ol
the German schools.
No work of any importance to the history of thought appeared,
however, until the middle of the ninth century, when John Scotus
Erigena (or Eriugena) published a book which may be regarded
as the continuation of Patristic philosophy and the forerunner
of a new era in the history of Christian thinking. To this period,
which has received the name of Scholasticism, we shall now
turn, outlining first the general characteristics of the Middle
Ages.
Church, Beginning of the Middle Ages; P. Munroe, History of Edu-
cation; Graves, History of Medieval Education, chaps, i-iv; Mullinger,
The Schools of Charles the Great; Lecky, op. cit., chap, iv; Gaskoin,
Alcuin; West, Alcuin and the Eise of Christian Schools; Werner,
Alcuin und sein Jahrhundert. Feasy, Monasticism ; Wishart, Short
History of Monks and Monasteries; Gasquet, English Monastic Life;
Zockler, Askese und Monchtum; Heimbucher, Orden und Kongrega-
tionen, 3 vols.; A. Harnack, Monasticism, transl. by Kellett and
Marseille.
21. SPIRIT OP THE MIDDLE AGES AND CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY
During the Middle Ages, the words authority, obedience,
subordination, form important terms in fne vocabulary of life.
In politics, religion, morals, education, philosophy,
0 science> literature, art, — in every sphere of human
activity, — the influence of organized Christianity
is supreme. As the vice-gerent of God on earth and the source
of revealed truth, the Church becomes the guardian of education,
the censor of morals, the court of last resort in intellectual and
SPIRIT OF THE MIDDLE AGES 159
spiritual affairs, indeed the organ of civilization and the bearer
of the keys of heaven. Since she receives the truth from God
direct, what need is there of searching for it: what need of
philosophy except as the handmaiden of theology? Human
reason is limited to systematizing and rendering intelligible the
revealed truths or dogmas of the Christian religion. The indi-
vidual is subordinate to the Church in his religious beliefs and
practices, the Church stands between him and his God; in all
the important matters of life and death, the shadow of the cross
appears. There is no salvation for the individual outside the
great City of God, which watches him from the cradle to the
grave and even gives him his passports to heaven. Education,
too, is a function of the ecclesiastic hierarchy: to be sure, who
should teach God's truth but the mediator through whom it is
revealed; and who, besides, exercise the censorship over human
conduct but the supreme earthly authority of right and justice ?
The Church likewise holds herself superior to the State and
seeks to apply her theory in practice, as witness her conflicts
with the German Emperors; as the sun is to the moon, so is
the Church to the State. The ambition of Pope Innocent III
(1198-1216), under whom ecclesiastical power reached its climax,
was to be the master of the world. The State itself in time comes
to assume the same attitude of authority toward the people:
kings rule by divine right and subjects are divinely ordained
to obey. "Within the body politic the individual finds himself
under restraint and discipline, socially, politically, economically :
for the great mass obedience is the law of life, subjection of self
to the authority of some group: obedience to the ruler, obedi-
ence to the lord, obedience to the guild, obedience to the master,
obedience to the head of the family. Authority and tradition
are superior to public opinion and the individual conscience;
faith, superior to reason; the corporation, superior to the per-
son ; and the caste, superior to the man.
The philosophical thought of this period mirrors the spirit
of the times. Tradition and authority play a leading role in
it; scholars swear by the Church, by Augustine,
Plato or Aristotle, by their monastic orders or by scholasticism
their schools. Assuming the truth of the church
doctrines and yet feeling a strong desire for speculation, they
160 PHILOSOPHY OF THE MIDDLE AGES
endeavor to harmonize, wherever they can, by reading the Chris-
tian faith into their philosophies or their philosophies into the
Christian faith. But the faith is the beginning and the end of
their labors, theology the crown of all knowledge, the royal
science. And even where knowledge is dumb, where reason
stumbles, the truths of religion are still believed, all the more
firmly believed by some because of their mystery; and specu-
lative theology is either cast aside as futile or consolation sought
in the principle of a twofold truth, — truth of reason and truth
of faith.
Patristic philosophy had been occupied in developing and
formulating the articles of faith and organizing them into a
rational system. Scholasticism is confronted with a fixed body
of established doctrine when it enters upon the scene ; the proc-
ess of fermentation had practically come to an end. It is con-
fronted, likewise, with an organized hierarchy, ready and able
to defend its truths against all dissenters with the weapons
of Church and State. The problem now is to work out a system
of thought that will square with the dogmas, that is, harmonize
Science and Faith. The schoolmen, like the Greek philosophers
before them, aim at a rational explanation of things ; only they
approach the task with a definite preconception of the goal.
Certain fundamental truths are already known; the scheme of
salvation is itself a universal fact ; the business of the philosopher
is to interpret it, to connect it with the rest of our knowledge
or to render it intelligible. The assumption of the medieval
thinker is either that the truths of religion are rational, that rea-
son and faith agree, that there can be no conflict between divine
revelation and human thinking; or that, even though some of
them may transcend human reason, they are, none the less, guar-
anteed by faith, which is another source of knowledge. Under
such circumstances, a number of alternatives are possible. The
thinker may start out with the Christian world-view and prove
it with the help of philosophy or some particular system of
philosophy ; or he may develop a system of philosophy of his own
in harmony with Christian principles ; or he may give his atten-
tion to problems that have no direct connection with theology.
In any case, however, the dogma will be the regulative principle ;
the schoolman will not knowingly accept as true a proposition
SPIRIT OF THE MIDDLE AGES 161
contradicting an essential article of faith, at least not without
offering some explanation leaving the truth of the dogma unim-
paired. He may satisfy himself, in some way, that both propo-
sitions are true even though contradictory, but he will not drop
the dogma.
The purpose of scholasticism determines its method : in so far
as it consists in the demonstration of propositions already ac-
cepted, it will largely employ deduction. The
nature of these propositions, and the need of prov- Characteris-
ing them, account for several other characteristics Scholasticism
of scholastic philosophy. The object of chief in-
terest to the schoolman is the transcendent world, the world
of God, the angels, and the saints; his thought is fixed not so
much on things of this phenomenal order as upon the invisible
realm of spirits. This explains the great importance of theology
and the relative unimportance of the natural and mental sci-
ences in scholasticism. It also explains the failure of the
schoolmen to occupy themselves with an empirical study of
subjects in which they had an interest, namely, psychology and
ethics. They did not care so much about how the soul acts, as
about its ultimate nature and destiny ; and that, in their opinion,
could not be learned by analyzing its contents. Nor did it seem
possible to appeal to the world of experience for an answer to
the questions of ethics. The highest good is the blessed life in
God, that is settled ; but there are no empirical means of finding
the way to such a life : it is bestowed by divine grace upon those
who do the will of God. Obedience to the will of God is the
standard of right and wrong ; what his will is cannot be discov-
ered from an analysis of experience; it is a divine revelation.
Scholastic ethics cannot abandon the field of theology.
The truth is, the world about which the schoolman is chiefly
concerned is not perceivable by the senses; he is dependent on
his thinking for the knowledge of which he is in search. Logic,
therefore, is a most important study for him, particularly de-
ductive or syllogistic logic: the logic of the method which he
employs in his pursuit of truth. In this field the schoolmen
evinced great subtlety, not only in analyzing logical processes,
but, especially, in developing conceptions which have become a
part of our intellectual heritage, — for better or for worse. The
162 PHILOSOPHY OF THE MIDDLE AGES
theory of knowledge did not make great strides with them : the
possibility and the limits of knowledge did not, as a rule, strike
them as problematical; they cherished an abiding dogmatic
faith in the ability of reason to reach a certain kind of truth.
The nominalists, to be sure, took up the question of the validity
of knowledge, but the nominalists are no longer genuine
schoolmen.
We can distinguish in scholasticism several important phases.
We have already called attention to John Scotus Erigena, who
may be regarded as the precursor of the movement,
Scholasticism although his system is by no means a typical
scholastic system. The period beginning with the
ninth and ending with the twelfth century is largely influenced
by Platonic conceptions; Platonism, Neoplatonism, and Augus-
tinianism are the dominant philosophical forces. Ideas or uni-
versals are conceived, in the Platonic sense, as the real essences v
of things and as prior to things (universalia sunt realia ante
res). This is Platonic realism, of which Anselm is the leading
representative. The thirteenth century witnesses the rise of
Aristotle's philosophy; Christianity allies itself with the great
Greek thinker; universals are now conceived as real, not, how-
ever, as prior to thmgs7"But in them (universalia sunt realia in
rebus}. This teaching is called Aristotelian realism. The thir-
teenth century is the period of comprehensive systems ; the lead-
ing thinkers being Albert the Great and Thomas Aquinas. The
period of bloom is followed by a period of decline (from the
scholastic standpoint) in the fourteenth century; universals are
now regarded, not as the essences of things, but as mere con-
cepts in the mind or as mere words or names (nomina) : par-
ticular things alone are real (universalia sunt realia post res).
This is nominalism. John Duns Scotus and William of Occam
are the leaders of this movement, the consequences of which are
destructive of scholastic presuppositions. For scholastic realism
the universe is, as it was for Plato and Aristotle, an ideal uni-
verse, a system of ideas or forms, which are somehow mirrored
in the phenomenal world as the essential qualities of things. It
is a rational, logical world, and can, therefore, be thought out:
the reason expressed in it is the same reason that reveals itself
in the human mind. The forms, which make the objects of a
SPIRIT OF THE MIDDLE AGES 168
class what they are, agree with our thoughts or universal notions.
Now, if such universal ideas are merely thoughts in our heads
or, worse yet, mere names, if there is nothing real corresponding
to them, in things or apart from things, then we can have no
knowledge, through them, of things, no rational knowledge of
the universe and universals. Belief in the power of reason to
reach truth is weakened or breaks down entirely. The philosophy
of the Middle Ages, in other words, does not remain true to its
scholastic principles, and scholasticism loses its vogue in the .
fourteenth century.
This means that the union between reason and faith, philoso-
phy and religion, becomes less firm. The view that the doctrines
of faith and the deliverances of reason agree, is gradually modi-
fied. It is held, either that some of the dogmas can be explained
or rendered intelligible and that others transcend reason; or
that none can be explained, that they are not objects of philo-
sophical knowledge at all, that the truths of religion lie beyond
the reach of reason, that reason cannot fathom them. The latter
view amounts to the abandonment of scholasticism as such and
leads to the deliverance of philosophy from servitude to dog-
matic theology.
The sources on which the early schoolmen depended were Patristic
literature, Greek philosophy, and, later, Arabian and Jewish specula-
tions. The Greek philosophical material at their «
disposal, down to the middle of the twelfth century, k
consisted of Latin translations of : parts of Plato's Timceus (by Cicero
and Chalcidius), Aristotle's Categories and Interpretation (by Bo-
ethius), Porphyry's Introduction to the Categories (by Boethius and
Victorinus). Plato's Meno and Phcedo were translated in the twelfth
century, Nemesius, On the Nature of Man, in the middle of the eleventh.
Of Latin philosophers they knew the writings of Boethius, Martianus
Capella, Cassiodorus, Claudianus Mamertus ; Victorinus, On Definition;
Apuleius, On Plato's Doctrine; Pseudo-Apuleius, Asclepius; Macro-
bius; the Pseudo-Dionysius ; Isidore of Seville. Aristotle's Analytics
and Topics became known in translation after 1128, and the meta-
physical and physical works about 1200.
Cf. Turner, History of Philosophy, p. 243; Ueberweg-Heinze, Ger-
man edition, Part II, § 21, fine print, § 18, fine print. For special
bibliography on Scholasticism see Ueberweg-Heinze, § 19, and Picavet,
Philosophies medievales, pp. xv-xxxiv.
164, PHILOSOPHY OF THE MIDDLE AGES
22. JOHN SCOTUS ERIGENA
At the end of the fifth century a collection of writings appeared which
were falsely attributed to Dionysius the Areopagite, the supposed first
Bishop of Athens, but which breathe the spirit of Neoplatonism. They
aroused great interest and exerted a profound influence on medieval
thought. Among those who came under the spell of their mystical
pantheism was John Scotus Erigena, who translated them into Latin
and reared a system of philosophy upon their foundation. He was
born in Ireland in 810, educated in the Irish schools, and called by
Charles the Bald to head the Schola Palatina at Paris. The date of
his death is unknown, though he is supposed to have lived until 877.
His philosophy is presented in his work De divisione natures.
Works in Migne, Patrologia Latina, vol. CXXII. (The works of the
pseudo-Areopagite, in Greek and Latin, in Migne, Patrologia Grceca,
vols. Ill and IV; English translation by Parker.)
Poole, Medieval Thought; A. Gardner, John the Scot; monographs
by Taillandier, Huber, Stockl, Noack.
Scotus Erigena identifies theology and philosophy, authority
and reason, faith and knowledge, holding that the truths of reli-
gion are rational truths. True religion and true
Knowledge philosophy are the same. Faith is not the mere
credulous acceptance of a proposition, but such
acceptance as is supported by reason ; it is a rational, intelligent
faith. The dogmas, he thinks, are truths which have been dis-
covered by reason and transmitted by the Fathers of the Church.
In order to justify his rationalistic position, Scotus is compelled
to make frequent use of allegory in interpreting Scripture and
the writings of the church authorities.
The theology of Scotus moves in the familiar atmosphere of
Neoplatonism and Augustinian ideas. God is the beginning,
. middle, and end of all things ; from him they come,
in him and through him they exist, and to him they
will return. He created the world out of nothing, or out of
himself, the causeless first cause ; or, as Scotus expresses it : Na-
ture (as God) is an uncreated creator, the uncreated creating
principle (natura creans}. He created the world according to
the plan or eternal patterns in his mind (the Logos), which is
an expression of his being: his intelligence is responsible for
the form and order in things, and continues to act on them ; or,
as Scotus puts it: Nature (as Logos) is a created creator, while
nature (as the things produced by the Logos) is created and non-
JOHN SCOTUS ERIGENA 165
creative. Everything, physical as well as mental, will return
to God and be eternally at rest, for he is the ultimate goal of
all creation; in this sense, Scotus calls nature (God) the un-
created and non-creating. God, as being, is Father; as Logos,
or wisdom, Son; as life, Holy Ghost.
The universe is an expression or product of God's essence:
everything, — his thought, the Logos, the phenomenal world, —
proceeds from him. But the manifestation is not separate from
God ; it is not something cast off, but the living garment of God.
God and his creation are one; he is in his creation and his
creation in him. They are one and the same in the sense that
he reveals himself in creatures; the invisible and incomprehen-
sible One makes himself visible; he that is without form and
quality gives himself form and quality. The universe appears
to man as a divided, manifold, and plural universe, as a theo-
phany; but, in principle, it is one single undivided whole, a
whole in which all opposites are reconciled.
God, then, is immanent in the world; but he is also tran-
scendent. That is, Scotus is unwilling to conceive the universe
as exhausting or even diminishing the divine nature. It is only
a partial unfolding, and there is infinitely more than is ex-
pressed. Just as one light can be seen and one voice heard by
many persons without loss to the light or voice, so all things
share in divine existence without depriving God of the fullness
of his being. Consequently, whatever terms we may employ fail
to describe him: he is beyond anything language can express,
far beyond all the categories of thought. Yes, to predicate any-
thing of him is to limit him ; to affirm one quality is to negate
another. He is superessential : he transcends goodness, deity,
truth, eternity, and wisdom. In this sense he is the ineffable,
incomprehensible, unknowable, undefinable principle, of whom
nothing and yet everything (his expression, the way he manifests
himself) can be predicated.
From this pantheistic doctrine it would follow that man, too,
is a manifestation of the divine principle, but Scotus is not
ready to draw the conclusion : it would imply human determinism
and impute evil to God. Man is more than phenomenal body,
he is the microcosm, a living spirit, and responsible for his fall
from God self ward. God cannot be the cause of evil; there is
166 PHILOSOPHY OF THE MIDDLE AGES
no idea of evil in God. Evil is but the privation of good, as
Augustine had taught. Through a union with human nature,
the Logos helps to redeem men, some being united with God,
others brought back to their original love of God.
As all things come from God, so all strive to return to him:
he is both the source and goal of their existence. The return
to God is made possible by mystical exaltation, by
Mysticism , ,. , . ,. . ,
contemplating his divine nature, by rising above
sense and reason and keeping before our minds nothing but the
incomprehensible transcendency of his being. In this state of
mystical ignorance, we plunge into the divine darkness and
lose ourselves in its life.
Scotus Erigena may be called a forerunner of scholasticism
in so far as he aims to render the Christian conceptions intel-
ligible by inserting them into a universal system, and in so far
as his philosophy contains the germs of medieval realism. His
thinking, however, was far too independent, and his teachings
too little in harmony with orthodox views, to find a welcome
among the Christian scholars of his time: it was not to be
expected that they would prefer the pseudo-Areopagite to Au-
gustine. More in accordance with the demands of the age was
the work of his contemporary Paschasius Radbertus, who pre-
sented Augustinian thoughts in simplified form.
23. PROBLEM OF UNIVERSALS : REALISM AND NOMINALISM
The appearance of John Scotus was but a momentary spark
of light in the medieval darkness ; after his death came another
long interval of intellectual quiet. The teachers of
Shi e *ke " seven liberal arts " continued to present the
traditional dialectics in the time-honored text-
books, and did not expend their efforts in the construction of
theologies. They had their Augustine to fall back on, and, if
pantheistically inclined, could revel in the pantheistic mysticism
of the pseudo-Dionysius, whose writings were now available in
a Latin translation by Scotus Erigena, or study the books of
Scotus himself. In their logical studies, however, they were
giving some attention to a question which had a bearing on the
theory of knowledge and metaphysics; and which was destined
REALISM AND NOMINALISM 167
to become the paramount issue in the history of scholasticism.
The question was, as Porphyry phrased it in his Introduction,
whether universals (genera and species) are real substances or ex-
ist merely in the mind, whether in case they are realities they are
corporeal or incorporeal, and whether they exist apart from con-
crete sensible things or in them. It was the problem of the sub-
stantiality of the Platonic ideas and Aristotelian forms, a problem
that had played such a significant part in the theories of the great
Greek philosophers. The various logical treatises which had been
transmitted to the period we are now considering, gave different
answers to the question. Some declared for Platonic realism
(universals are realities prior to things), some for Aristotelian
realism (universals are realities in things), others for nomi-
nalism (universals are mere names for particular things, not
prior to them, nor in them, but after them). Porphyry was a
decided realist; Boethius, Macrobius, and Chalcidius took mid-
dle ground, while Martianus Capella was a clear and outspoken
nominalist. John Scotus himself was a realist: he conceived
universals as existing prioiL.tQ .particular objects a§_wjelL_as in
them; the phenomenal world, as an expression of the thought
of God, cannot exist apart from them. Such views were also
held during the ninth and tenth centuries in more or less unde-
veloped form, but not definitely worked out until later. Many
of the logicians, unacquainted with Aristotle's works, accepted
the Aristotelian conception that particulars are the true realities,
but interpreted it in a vague nominalistic sense; they did not "
make clear to themselves exactly what nominalism implied.
Barach, Geschichte des Nominalismus vor Eoscellin.
To be mentioned in this connection are: Eric of Auxerre; his pupil
Remigius; the work Super Porphyrium by a pupil of Rabanus
Maurus, — all of the ninth century; Poppo, Reinhard, Notker Labeo
(+1022), Gerbert (died 1003 as Pope Sylvester II), Fulbert (1029),
Berengar of Tours (+1088). The interest in these subjects became
so keen that some of the more conservative churchmen protested
against the attempts of the dialecticians to subordinate the teachings
of Scripture to the authority of dialectics; and Petrus Damiani (1007-
1072) declared that logic should be ancilla Domini, the handmaiden
of the Lord.
The full significance of the teachings of realism and nomi-
nalism and their bearing on metaphysics and theology were not
168 PHILOSOPHY OF THE MIDDLE AGES
understood until the second half of the eleventh century, — not
until they had been practically tried out, as it were. Roscelin *
taught a pronounced nominalism and made it the
Nominalism basis of his interPretation of the Trinity. His
argument was as follows : Particular substances
alone exist, general concepts are mere names and words by
means of which we define particular objects. Hence, there is
no single reality corresponding to the general name Qod; the
notion of the Godhead, which we apply to the Trinity, is a mere
name or word. There is not one substance God, but three par-
ticular substances or persons, who, however, are equal in power.
This view was in direct opposition to the official trinitarian
doctrine and aroused great indignation and opposition. The
Council of Soissons (1092) condemned Roscelin 's
Realfenf °'' interpretation of the Trinity and compelled him
to recant. Although nominalism as such was not
included in the condemnation, it lost prestige and did not
reappear until the fourteenth century. The schoolmen adopted,
instead, Platonic realism, which, though modified and developed
in various ways, remained the dominant conception throughout
the twelfth century. It was well suited to ward off just such
attacks as Roscelin had made on the Trinity, and to give rational
support to the entire Church doctrine. If universals are real,
if they are not mere tags or labels for groups of particular
things, then the notion of the Trinity can mean more than the
sum of three persons. The dispute over the question of uni-
versals was more than a logical quibble; far-reaching meta-
physical and theological implications were involved in the
answers. The view that our general concepts, our logical
thoughts, are not mere subjective ideas in the mind, but have
a reality of their own apart from the mind, implies that the
universe is rational and knowable. It implies that truth is not
mere subjective opinion, but that there is objective truth, uni-
versally valid truth, and that it is the business of philosophy
to realize it in conceptual thought. It implies that there exist,
besides particular individual phenomena which arise and pass
away, permanent realities, which never die. The scholars of the
Church found in this conception a splendid foundation upon
* See Picavet, Roscelin.
ANSELM OF CANTERBURY 169
which to rest their entire intellectual and ecclesiastical structure.
God is such a universal idea, superior to and outlasting mere
phenomenal existence ; mankind is such a universal reality, which
was corrupted in Adam and made whole again in Christ; the
Church is such an abiding entity over and above the temporal
members who compose it: an ideal whole not affected in its
essence by the coming and going of its parts. We see, it was
not by a mere whim that the orthodox churchmen shelved nomi-
nalism and rallied around the standard of Platonic realism: they ,
chose the doctrine which gave the Christian world-view and
scheme of life a meaning in their eyes.
DEVELOPMENT OF SCHOLASTIC REALISM
24. ANSELM OF CANTERBURY
Anselm (1033-1109), Archbishop of Canterbury, opposes the
nominalistic heresies of Roscelin in a system of thought based
on Platonic and Augustinian principles. He is the
true type of the schoolman ; firmly convinced of the
truth of the dogmas and yet possessed of a strong philosophical
impulse, he seeks to prove to reason what has to be accepted on »
authority. He bravely includes in his attempt to rationalize the
faith not only such general propositions as the existence of God,
but the entire church scheme of salvation, the Trinity, the
Incarnation, and the redemption of man. We must believe the
Catholic doctrine, — that is beyond cavil, — but we should also
try to understand what we believe, understand why it is true;
remembering always, however, that where intelligence fails us,
it behooves us reverently to bow to faith.
Among Anselm's works we mention: Monologium; Proslogium; Cur
Deus homof These and the monk Gaunilo's criticism of Anselm's
ontological argument, translated by S. N. Deane.
Church, St. Anselm; Rigg, St. Anselm; Rule, Life and Times of St.
Anselm; Pere Ragey, Histoire de St. Anselme, and St. Anselme pro-
fesseur; de Verges, St. Anselme; also books by Hasse, Remusat,
Mohler (transl.).
Anselm bases his celebrated proofs for the existence of God
on the Platonic conception that universals have an existence
170 PHILOSOPHY OF THE MIDDLE AGES
independent of particular objects, (fin his Monologium (written
about 1070) he makes useljbf the cosmological argument, which
had already been employed by Augustine, and which need not
be repeated here. In his Proslogium, however, he offers another
proof, also based on Platonic realism, the so-called ontological
proof, with which his name has become linked in the history of
thought. This proof consists in deducing the existence of God
from the concept of God, in showing that the very idea of God
implies his existence. The idea of God is the notion of some-
thing, greater than which nothing can be thought, that is, the
idea of a perfect being. Now, if God did not exist, this idea
would not be the idea of the greatest thing thinkable; there
would be something greater still. The idea of a being having
existence is the idea of a more perfect being than the idea of
one having no existence. Hence, God as the most perfect being
must exist. That is what Anselm means by saying the perfec-
tion of God implies the existence of God.
This conclusion, however, does not follow from Anselm 's
premises. His reasoning proves no more than that when we
think of a being as existing, we are thinking of a being that is
more perfect than a non-existent being. The notion of an ex-
isting being is the notion of a being that has more qualities than
a being conceived as not having existence. He does not prove
that God exists, but merely that the idea of an existing God
connotes or means more than a mere subjective idea of God.
And looked r * logically, this is true ; but it does not necessarily
follow from the notion of a perfect being, which notion carries
with it the idea of existence, that such a being exists. It must
not be forgotten, however, that the ontological argument will
seem cogent to any one accepting the realistic presupposition
that universals have an extra-mental reality.
The fallacy in Anselm 's argument was exposed by the monk
Gaunilo in his anonymously published book Against the Reason-
ing in Anselm' s Proslogium. The being of God in the mind, he
declares, is the same as the being of any other thing in the mind,
that is, so far as it is thought. In the same way in which
Anselm proves the existence of God, one might prove the exist-
ence of a perfect island. Thomas Aquinas more than a hun-
dred years later also subjected this argument to careful analysis.
ANSELM OF CANTERBURY 171
It was, however, frequently used in scholastic philosophy, — for
example, by William of Auxerre and Alexander of Hales.
In the book Cur Deus homo? (written 1094 and 1098) Anselm
offers his theory of the scheme of redemption, which he conceives
as a conflict between the justice and mercy of God. The fall
of Adam brought with it the sin of the entire human race. God 's
justice demands satisfaction, but his love prevents him from
inflicting the punishment or suffering necessary to set things
right. Christ, the God-man, who is innocent of sin, sacrifices
himself for man, thereby satisfying the demands of justice.
The application which Roscelin had made of nominalism em-
phasized the interest in the question of universals among his
contemporaries and successors. Anselm criticises
the nominalistic view from the standpoint of
realism, which, as we have pointed out, is admirably
suited to his orthodox purpose : universals are real ; the particu-
lar objects constituting a class form a real unity; " the many
men in the species are one man," he says; " the many persons
[in the Trinity], each single one of whom is perfect God, are
one God." The question arises, What is the relation of this
universal to the particular objects; what part do individuals
play in the scheme? William of Champeaux (1070-1121) holds
that the genus and species to which an individual belongs are
completely present in every individual, and individuals differ
from one another merely in their accidental properties, i.e., they
do not differ essentially at all. Abelard pointed outito him that,
in that case, the same substance would have different, and even
contradictory, properties; it would, for example, be in different
places at the same time. If human nature is completely in Soc-
rates, it cannot be in Plato; if, however, we say it is also in
Plato, then Plato must be Socrates, and Socrates must be in
Plato's place as well as in his own. William afterward modified
his theory ; he had not intended to deny the essential difference
of individuals, and most likely did not see the difficulties in
which the realistic interpretation of logical categories involved
him.
According to the work De generibus et speciebus, the author of
which is unknown, but which is referred to the early part of
the twelfth century, the universal inheres, not in the individual
172 PHILOSOPHY OF THE MIDDLE AGES
as such, but in all the individuals of the same species. Thus,
the common element which inheres in all the particulars of a
class is matter; that which differentiates it from other particu-
lars of the same class, its individuality, is the form.
25. PETER ABELARD AND THE SCHOOLMEN OP THE TWELFTH
CENTURY
The most interesting figure among all these schoolmen is Peter
Abelard (Abcelardus or Abeillard), who was born, 1079, in Pallet,
and died in Paris, 1142, after many conflicts with
the Church. He was a man of remarkable talents
and the most brilliant teacher of his time. He employed a method
which consisted in giving, after every important thesis dis-
cussed, the views of opposing authorities (dicta pro et contra)
and leaving the solution of the problem to the reader himself,
with suggestions of the principles for deciding the question.
His pupil Peter the Lombard followed this method in a text-
book on Theology which became the model for all succeeding
medieval works of the kind.
Among Abelard's works are: Epistolce; Introductio ad theologiam;
Ethica; Sic et non; Dialogus inter philosophum, Judceum ct Christianum;
Historia calamitatum (autobiography). Edition of works by Cousin,
2 vols. ; theological writings in Migne, vol. CLXXVIII. McCabe,
Abelard; Remusat, Abelard, 2 vols.; Hausrath, Abelard; Th. Ziegler,
Abelard (Zeller-Festschrift, 1884).
Abelard seems to occupy middle ground between the nomi-
nalism of Roscelin and the original form of William's realism
(both had been his teachers), but does not offer a definite solu-
tion of the problem. He opposes the view that universals are
real ante res except in the mind of God; we cannot predicate
a thing of a thing, and we can predicate a universal of many
things, hence a universal cannot be a thing. Nor is the uni-
versal a mere word as such ; it is a word only in so far as it is
predicated of a class of objects, that is, in relation to the objects
denoted; universals are, therefore, not words (voces] but
sermones. Perhaps he meant by this that universal ideas, which
connote the properties common to a class of objects, are concepts
in the mind, and that the terms or words used to express such
PETER ABELARD 173
concepts are sermones. This would be the view called concep-
tualism, which has been given as Abelard's meaning; but he
does not seem to have worked it out. He was chiefly interested
in showing that universals are not entities apart from things,
as well as that there are essential differences between things.
It is not unlikely that Abelard was in doubt himself as to the
correct view; his great admiration for both Plato and Aristotle
perhaps made him feel that both were right. What he par-
ticularly desired to emphasize was that our thinking should be
of things, that the purpose of speech is to express thought, but
that thoughts must conform to things.
In his work on Theology, which was condemned at the Coun-
cil of Sens, in 1140, Abelard emphasizes the need of examining
our faith in order that it may not be a blind faith, and to this
end he recommends training in logic and the use of logical
methods in theology. _^e^sjon__sjwuld_j^eceole_Jail^ we ought
to see the reasonableness of it. On the other hand he evidently
believes that a strict logical proof of the dogmas cannot be
offered, and makes their acceptance an act of free will, for which
we are to be rewarded in the future life by a knowledge of the
grounds of faith. ' This shows how firmly Abelard was held in
the grip of the scholastic method ; in spite of the independence
of his thought and his respect for reason, his attitude is essen-
tially scholastic: reflect upon the dogma as profoundly as you
can, do not accept it until you have inquired into its reasons,
but after you have doubted and inquired, and it still does not
appeal to you, make up your mind to accept it nevertheless, for
accept it you must.
The part of his Theology which aroused the greatest opposi-
tion and led to the condemnation of the book was his doctrine
of the Trinity. In the Trinity, he said, the Father is the One,
or Goodness; the Son is the Logos, or the mind of God (rove),
containing the ideas; and the Holy Ghost is the world-soul.
He also characterizes the three persons as the power, wisdom,
and good will of God.
In his ethics Abelard emphasizes the importance of the good
will. The Tightness and wrongness of an act lie not in the
deed, but in the intention of the agent ; the act as such is indif-
ferent, as are also natural inclinations to evil, which are due.
174 PHILOSOPHY OF THE MIDDLE AGES
to original sin. " God considers not what is done, but in what
spirit it is done; and the merit or praise of the agent lies not
in the deed, but in the intention." Sin consists in our consent
to evil recognized as such by us, — in willing what we know to
be wrong, — and is, therefore, an act of free will. Morality, in
other words, is a matter of conscience. So long as the agent acts
in accordance with his conscience, in conformity with what he
thinks is right, he may err, but he does not sin. His act is
truly virtuous, however, only in case what he thinks is right
is right, in case his subjective conviction agrees with objective
principles of right. Abelard has in mind the distinction between
subjectively moral and objectively moral acts. In a broader
sense, everything is sin that is contrary to what is right, but
in the narrow sense, only the conscious and voluntary pursuit of
evil is sin.
But why is it sinful to consent to what is thought to be wrong ?
Because such consent implies a downright contempt of God,
a disobedience of the divine will, a violation of his commands,
and that is the greatest of all sins. A good will is one that is
prompted by the love of God and acts in obedience to divine
command. Such commands themselves Abelard regards as arbi-
trary deliverances of divine freedom; they differ for different
times, but obedience to them is moral and is required. Here,
again, we see how, in spite of occasional symptoms of inde-
pendent thinking, the spirit of scholasticism will out at last.
The school of Chartres, of which Bernard of Chartres (died be-
tween 1124 and 1130) and his brother Thierry (+1150) were the heads,
rru o u i and which counted among its followers Bernard of
f p? °° Tours, William of Conches (+1154), Gilbert of Poitiers
(+1154), Walter of Mortagne (+1174), and Adelard
of Bath, studied and sought to develop the Platonic doctrines, so far
as they were known at that time, sometimes in connection with Aris-
totle's views. Aristotle's Analytics, Topics, and Fallacies first became
known to the schoolmen in Latin translations (1128). The school of
Chartres exhibited a keen interest, not only in dialectical studies, but
also in astronomy, mathematics, medicine, physics, physiological and
psychological questions, books on which were being translated from the
Arabic. A realism similar to Plato's was accepted by those who dis-
cussed the logical problems : universals, or concepts of genera and
species (according to Bernard of Tours, also notions of particular
things), exist in purity in the divine mind. To them matter in some
way owes its form. Bodies are said to subsist in them as water exists
MYSTICISM AND PANTHEISM 175
in the bed of a river ; or " native forms " are introduced to explain
bodies, — forms which are related to the pure ideas in the divine mind
as a thing is to its pattern; — or the nature of the relation is left unde-
termined. Material objects manifest the form or idea obscurely. The
intellect can attend to the forms or common qualities in bodies by ab-
straction. Cf. Ueberweg-Heinze, op. cit., § 25.
We have called attention to the method employed by Abelard in his
teaching and writings, that of stating the opinions (sententice, sentences]
of different authorities on the subjects under discussion. „.,,
The method was not a new one ; it had been followed in a ~ e
number of text-books of theology, which were called k
Sentences or Summaries of Sentences (Summce sententiarum} ; among
others in Robert Pulleyn's (-(-1150) Sententiarum libri octo and Hugo
of St. Victor's Summa sententiarum. (The writers of such books were
also called Summists.) Peter Lombard (+1164), making good use of
all these works, published a book Libri quatro sententiarum, which
formed the basis of theological instruction for centuries, and won for
its author the title magister sententiarum. The four books of this work
discuss: God as the absolute Good; creatures; incarnation, redemption,
and the virtues; the seven sacraments. Other Summists of this period
are Robert of Melun, Hugo of Rouen (+1164), Peter of Poitiers
(+1205), and Simon of Tournai. Alain of Lille (+1203, Alanus ab
insulis) presents the subjects taken up in the Sentences in the form of
a dogmatic system. In his De arte fidei catholicce and Eegulce theo-
logicce he employs the mathematical-deductive method, attempting to
base theology on fundamental principles. In spite of his rationalistic
ideal, however, Alain frequently betrays skeptical and mystical tend-
encies. The doctrines of the Church are more certain than all our
worldly sciences, but not absolutely certain. Faith, too, has its merit;
if they were absolutely certain, there would be no merit in believing
them.
The Englishman John of Salisbury (c. 1115-1180), to whom we are
indebted for information concerning many schoolmen of his age,
criticises the entire scholastic movement as dealing with jojjn o£
fruitless controversies, and demands the reform of logic gaijgburv
in his Metalogicus. He is in favor of realistic studies in ^
education, and of the absolute independence of the Church from the
State, in his book Policraticus. All knowledge, he thinks, ought to be
practical; whatever does not help us either in acting on nature or in
doing our duty, is useless. Our true good lies in a pious life; we
should believe in the doctrines of the Church, even though we cannot
prove them.
Works edited by Giles, 5 vols., and by Migne, vol. CXCIX ; Policrati-
cus by Webb, 2 vols. Schaarschmidt, Johannes Saresberiensis.
26. MYSTICISM AND PANTHEISM
The philosophical-theological movement which we have been
describing has as its aim the rational interpretation of the Chris-
176 PHILOSOPHY OF THE MIDDLE AGES
tian universe, — of the universe as the orthodox Churchman con-
ceives it. The presupposition is that the purpose, nature, and
operation of God can be made intelligible to reason,
Mysticism JV
that a system can be constructed on the basis
of the Christian articles of faith. We have here a dogmatic
rationalism or intellectualism, regulated by the official church
doctrine. Scholasticism as a completely rationalized church
theology, however, never gained undisputed possession of the
Christian world ; alongside of it, and often within it, we discover
an anti-theological current, a kind of reaction against the over-
rationalization of the faith, a yearning for a more practical
expression of the religious life. For this movement religion is
not merely philosophy of religion ; it finds its satisfaction not ID
theorizing about the faith, but in experiencing it ; its chief desire
is not to prove the existence of God and to define him, but tc
enter into other than intellectual relations with him. This mys-
tical line of thought represents the conservative Augustiniar
element in Christianity ; and it is a fact that the leaders of the
first school of Mystics were monks in the Augustinian cloister of
St. Victor at Paris.
According to the mystics, God is not reached by dialectics, or
logic, but in mystical contemplation; and it is the function of
theology to tell us how such a state may be realized. Laying
stress, as they do, upon the inner faith of man, upon the experi-
ences of the soul, they naturally become interested in a more
empirical study of the soul than had been customary. Mysticism
is practical theology, theology teaching the art of mystical con-
templation. But the mystics have their rational theology as well ;
in it, however, the superrationality of the faith is emphasized.
As the school develops, mystical contemplation is accentuated
and even exaggerated: for Richard of St. Victor it is far supe-
rior to knowledge; according to Walter, logic is the source of
all heresies: faith not only transcends knowledge, but contra-
dicts it. Walter wrote a book Against the Four Labyrinths of
France (In quaiiuor labyrinthos Francice), meaning Gilbert,
Abelard, Peter the Lombard, and Peter of Poitiers, all of whom
he regarded as heretics.
The chief representatives of orthodox or church mysticism are
Bernard of Clairvaux (1091-1153), Hugo of St. Victor (1096-1141),
MYSTICISM AND PANTHEISM 177
Richard of St. Victor (+1173), and Walter of St. Victor. The
mysticism of the twelfth century was continued by Thomas Gallus
(1216) and Bonaventura (1221-1274). Meister Eckhart (1260-1327),
Johannes Tauler (1300-1361), and Johannes Ruysbroek (1293-1381)
are pantheistic mystics, whose teachings are condemned by the Catho-
lic Church as heretical.
Works in Migne's collection. Translation of Bernard's works, 4
vols., by Bales.
Vaughan, Hours with the Mystics, 2 vols.; Gregory, Introduction to
Christian Mysticism; R. B. Jones, Studies in Mystical Religion; Svan-
son, Christian Mystics; von. Hugel, The Mystical Elements of Re-
ligion, 2 vols. ; Delacroix, Etudes de I'histoire et de psychologic du
mysticisme; the works of Gorres, Helfferich, Noack, Preger, and
Schmidt.
The highest goal for the mystic is " the mysterious ascension
of the soul to heaven, the sweet home-coming from the land of
bodies to the region of spirits, the surrender of the self in and
to God." The road to this goal leads beyond sense-perception
and even conceptual thought to contemplation, in which the ideal
object appears to the soul in its immediacy. There are three
stages of knowledge : cogitatio, meditatio, and contemplation the
very highest stage is superrational and prasterrational, bearing
the rnind to the profoundest mysteries of religion. In its most
exalted form (alienatio mentis), the individual consciousness
comes to rest in contemplation. All that man can do is to pre-
pare himself for this mystical " plunge into the ocean of infi-
nite truth, ' ' and then to wait for it : it is an extraordinary favor
of God.
The ideal of the orthodox thinkers of the twelfth century was
to rationalize the faith, and to this end they had recourse to
logic and metaphysics. Their undertaking rested .
on the desire to understand the things which the
Church taught and they believed. The traditional theology based
itself upon realistic preconceptions, which seemed to bring the
results of philosophical thought into harmony with the doctrines
of the Church. But even when men reason from the same prem-
ises, different conclusions often follow; their results do not
always agree. This is what happened constantly iii the dogma-
making period of Christianity; and it happened every now and
then during the ages following. John Scotus, Roscelin, and
Abelard did not succeed in making their thoughts square ex-
178 PHILOSOPHY OF THE MIDDLE AGES
actly with the official requirements. Among the heresies whic
attracted thinkers, pantheism had never quite lost its power:
found expression in Sabellianism, in the pseudo-Dionysius, an
in Scotus Erigena; and the Mystics were not far from it. T<
ward the close of the twelfth century, it appeared again and mad
some progress. Its chief representatives were: the Abbe
Joachim of Floris (+1202), Amalric or Amaury of Benne
(+1206), who taught theology at Paris, and David of Dinar
(died circa 1200), of whose life we know very little. These par
theists reached their conclusions quite simply by deducing wha
they regarded as the logical consequences of Platonic realisn
If universals are real, then the highest universal, God, must b
the most real being and everything else an expression of th
divine essence (just as the highest genus in logic comprehends al
possible species and individuals). Amalric seems to have taughl
with John Scotus, that the world of changing and divisible phe
nomena, which has come from God, will ultimately return t
God and abide in him as one unchangeable individual.
Such pantheistic teachings found favor with many, and a sec
of Amalricians was formed that spread over Switzerland ani
Alsace. The Church condemned the doctrines, exhumed the bod;
of Amalric, who had been forced to recant before his death, an<
eradicated the sect. In 1225 it condemned Scotus Erigena as ,
heretic. In 1210 a provincial council at Paris prohibited th
Physics of Aristotle, which had found its way at last into th
Western world in a Latin translation from the Arabic. All thi
is evidence of the growth of a spirit of independence. The hu
man mind was again getting ready to try its wings.
27. SYMPTOMS OF UNREST
We find, then, at the end of the twelfth century, besides thi
predominant scholastic philosophy, a number of opposing tenden
cies. Some of the more conservative orthodox
cnurcnmen are opposed to the traditional systen
as laying too much stress on dialectics: for then
it is not strict enough. Some thinkers, more independent thai
the schoolmen, reach conclusions antagonistic to the official Chris
tian scheme of thought ; for them it is too strict. Others assume
SYMPTOMS OF UNREST
179
a skeptical attitude with respect to all attempts to construct a
rational theology, either because they distrust reason as an ally
of an inner living faith or because the prevailing philosophical
discussions do not seem to them to have any bearing on the real
practical problems of the Church. In many quarters the desire
is felt for further knowledge concerning the relation of general
ideas or universals to the world of particular objects; this de-
sire develops into an interest in natural science, which is fed
by Latin translations of Arabian scientific books.
There were symptoms of unrest; the problems and difficulties
were multiplying, and many were beginning to see how hard it
was to demonstrate not only the positive dogmas of
the Church, but the general propositions of theol-
ogy as well. In spite of their bold syllogistic con-
structions, schoolmen often confessed that the conclusions, though
more certain than any worldly knowledge we might possess, still
fell short of absolute rational certainty. And yet
tal conviction remained that the universe was a rational universe,
that God acted intelligently and for the best, that there was truth
if only one could make it out. But the goal of the search was
fixed ; it was sacrilegious and dangerous to tamper with the dog-
mas; there stood the powerful organization of the Church with
its awful spiritual and temporal weapons, ready to discipline
those who wandered too far afield. The intellectual activities
of Christendom, too, were gradually made corporate and organic ;
out of the cathedral and monastery schools grew the universities,
or corporations of scholars engaged in the study of theology and
philosophy, medicine and law; and certain monastic orders
formed compact philosophical schools, which, like the old Greek
schools, continued for centuries to teach their favorite doctrines.
Paris, the great international university, which owed its exist-
ence to the union of the theological school of Notre Dame and
the school of logic at St. Genevieve, received its charter inJl:20S.
The Dominican and Franciscan orders became the great teaching
orders of the thirteenth century, nearly all the distinguished
teachers and writers of that age belonging to the one or the other.
These agencies, the Church, the universities, and the monastic
orders, cooperated in the work of securing the traditional doc-
trines of Christianity. The business of the individual thinker was
180 PHILOSOPHY OF THE MIDDLE AGES
to make reason and faith agree: this was not philosophy, but it
was the task made necessary by the preconceptions of the times,
and it was the path of least resistance.
The age was not ready to give up the dogmas nor was it com-
petent to construct a system of thought independently of reli-
gious and philosophical tradition ; an adequate knowledge of the
facts of experience was lacking. Empirical science was at a low
ebb, modern scientific methods were unknown; the age was a
book-age, and the books were wanting from which such a knowl-
edge might be obtained. Paulsen makes the statement that if
our modern scientific text-books had suddenly been showered upon
the Greeks, they would not have known what to do with them.
The remark is applicable to the Middle Ages: they, too, had to
work out their own salvation.
Cf . histories of universities mentioned p. 137 ; Turner, op. cit., p. 321 ;
Graves, Medieval Education, chaps, viii, ix, and bibliography given
there.
It was during the period we have been describing that a new
world began to open up to Western Christendom, and that a new
impetus was given to the study of scholastic phi-
° l°s°Pny- Greek works on mathematics, astronomy,
and medicine; the writings of Aristotle and some
of his Greek commentators (Alexander of Aphrodisias, Themis-
tius) ; and the most celebrated Arabian and Jewish philosophers
and commentators of Aristotle were becoming known in Latin
translations from the Arabian texts.* These books were eagerly
studied and at first interpreted, after the Arabic fashion, in the
spirit of Neoplatonism.
The new Aristotelian literature was viewed with suspicion by
the Church, partly, no doubt, on account of the odor of pan-
theism with which its Arabian expounders had surrounded it.
At any rate, we find that the study of Aristotle's Physics and
Metaphysics is expressly prohibited by the statutes of the Uni-
versity of Paris in 1215, and that Pope Gregory IX again for-
bids the use of the Physics in 1231, — until the work can be ex-
* Around the year 1150 John Avendeath and Dominic Gundisalvi trans-
lated the chief works of Aristotle and Jewish and Arabic books from the
Arabian into Latin. Nearly all the works of Aristotle, in such translations,
became known during the years 1210 and 1225.
ARABIAN PHILOSOPHY 181
amined and expurgated. These prescriptions, however, do not
seem to have had more than a passing effect ; the books were read,
and the foremost scholars of the period began to write commen-
taries on them. Translations from the original Greek versions
of the chief works of the great Peripatetic were made later on
in the century, and the genuine Aristotle came in time to be
distinguished from the Neoplatonic counterfeit of the Arabians.
Robert Greathead, Bishop of Lincoln (+1253), had translations
made, especially of the Nicomachean Ethics (1250). William of Moer-
becke (-f-1281) translated the works (including Politics). Henry of
Brabant translated certain works (about 1271). In 1254 the Physics
and Metaphysics became parts of the curriculum of the University of
Paris, the same university that had condemned the writings forty years
before. Aristotle came to be regarded as " the rule of truth, as it were,
in which nature demonstrated the highest perfection of the human
mind," and as " the precursor of Christ in natural things as John the
Baptist had been in matters of grace." Great encyclopedias appeared,
based on the new philosophy, composed by Gundisalvi of Segovia
(twelfth century), William of Auvergne (+1249), Robert Kilwardby
(+1278), and the greatest of all, Vincent of Beauvais (+1264).
CULMINATION OF SCHOLASTICISM
28. ARABIAN PHILOSOPHY
Western Europe first became acquainted with the Aristotelian
writings through translations from the Arabian texts, and
through the systems and commentaries of Arabian
CrPPPK
philosophers who interpreted Aristotle in the spirit gources
of Neoplatonism. The followers of Mohammed, in
their zeal to convert all unbelievers to the teachings of Islam,
had set out to conquer the world (632) ; by the year 711 Syria,
Egypt, Persia, Africa, and Spain were in their hands. In Syria
the scholars of the new militant religion became acquainted with
the Aristotelian philosophy, which, tinctured with Neoplatonism,
had for centuries formed the chief object of study in the Eastern
Empire, among Christian theologians and heretical philosophers
alike, and had been carried to Syria by the exiled Nestorian sect.
Arabic translations were made, first from the Syrian, later from
the Greek texts, not only of Aristotle's works, but of the works
of commentators like Alexander of Aphrodisias, Themistius,
182 PHILOSOPHY OF THE MIDDLE AGES
Porphyry, and Ammonius, as well as of Plato's Republic,
Timceus, and Laws (876). The Arabians also studied transla-
tions of Greek works on mathematics, astronomy, medicine, and
other natural sciences, and made valuable contributions to some
of these fields. Aristotle came to the Arabian scholars in the
Neoplatonic dress in which his later commentators had clothed
him; it was owing to this fact, as well as to the existence of
pseudo- Aristotelian books of Neoplatonic origin (which masquer-
aded under his name), that little difficulty was found in inter-
preting the Peripatetic philosophy in terms of the emanation-
theory.
DeBoer, History of Philosophy in Islam, transl. by E. Jones; Shah-
rastani, History of Eeligious and Philosophical Sects; Goldziher, Islam
and Jewish Philosophy in Allgemeine Geschichte der Philosophic, men-
tioned p. 4; M. Eisler, Judische Philosophie des Mittelalters, 3 vols.;
M. Joel, Beitrdge zur Geschichte der Philosophic, 2 vols.; Neumark,
Geschichte der judischen Philosophie; works by Munk and Dieterici.
Bibliographies in Goldziher and Ueberweg-Heinze, Part II, §§ 28, 29
(which contain good accounts of Arabian and Jewish philosophy).
With the help of this literature the scholars of Islam suc-
ceeded in placing their religion on a philosophical basis and
creating a scholastic system not unlike, in its aim,
School to that of the West With them as with the Chris'
tians, the pivotal problem was the relation of divine
revelation to human knowledge and conduct ; the purpose of their
science was to bring the teachings of the Koran into harmony
with the deliverances of reason, or to rationalize the faith.
The questions which, at an early date, led to controversy among
them were the relation between divine predestination and human
freedom, and the relation of the unity of God to his attributes.
The orthodox party accepted the teachings of the Koran with-
out any attempt to justify them: there is one omnipotent, om-
niscient God, who has predetermined everything. Objections
were urged against the traditional orthodox views by dissenters,
or free-thinkers (called Mutazilites), who made reason the test
of truth. These thinkers came to feel the need of a philosophy,
and so drew upon various Greek theories in support of their
views, without, however, at once constructing a system of their
own. In the tenth century there arose within the rationalistic
ARABIAN PHILOSOPHY 183
school a reaction against philosophy and in favor of orthodoxy ;
both the Aristotelian conception, with its passive contemplative
God and its eternal universe, and the Neoplatonic emanation-
theory were rejected as out of harmony with the Islam notion
of a personal Creator of the world. The Asharites, as these
reactionaries were called (after their leader Ashari, 873-935),
showed a great preference for atomism, with the essential prin-
ciples of that theory left out. Atoms were conceived as con-
tinuous creations of God while the notions of causation and the
uniformity of nature were discarded in order to save the abso-
lute, arbitrary power of God and the possibility of miraculous
interference.
The part of the rationalistic school which remained faithful
to philosophy developed a number of systems, in which Aris-
totelian and Neoplatonic, sometimes Neopythagorean, elements
are combined in varying proportions. Some of these emphasize
the Neoplatonic aspects, bringing the practical, ethical, and reli-
gious teachings to the front; others accentuate the Aristotelian
thoughts, insisting on the study of logic as a preparation, and
construct their metaphysics on what seems to them a natural-
scientific basis.
A. typical example of Arabian Neoplatonism is the Encyclo-
pedia of Sciences, a series of fifty-one treatises, which was
produced in the tenth century by members of a religious-
philosophical order called the Brothers of Sincerity, and which
exercised great influence throughout the Mohammedan world.
This popular society, which reminds us of the old Pythagorean
order in Italy, had as its ideal the perfection of the human soul
in the likeness of God by means of philosophical study. Its
ethical-religious teaching was based on the Neoplatonic
emanation-theory, according to which all things flow from, and
return to, the absolute unity of God. Man, the copy of the
universe, the microcosm, must free himself from the bondage of
matter and return,*purified, to the source from which he sprang.
The Encyclopedia culminates in occultism; the final part is
given over to serious discussions of astrology, magic, alchemy,
and eschatology.
In the book on the Refinement of Morals, Ibn Miskaweihi
(+ 1030) presents an ethical system which is a curious mixture
184 PHILOSOPHY OF THE MIDDLE AGES
of Platonic, Aristotelian, and Neoplatonic ideas. In Sufism the
mystical side of Neoplatonism is emphasized: the phenomena]
world is an illusion and matter the lowest emanation of Deity
by asceticism and ecstasy the soul penetrates the veil of illusion
and is merged in God. Buddhistic influences are observable in
that form of Sufism which teaches the absolute absorption oi
the individual soul in nothingness.
The other branch of the Arabian school, the chief representa-
tives of which in the Orient are Alkindi (+870), Alfarabi
. (+950), and Avicenna (+1037), insist on the im-
portance of logic as an introduction to the stud}
of philosophy, and emphasize the necessity of grounding meta-
physics on a study of nature. But their conception of natural
science is extremely crude, being shot through with fantastic
notions, religious superstitions, and occult theories of all kinds
The interpretation of dreams, theurgy, alchemy, astrology, and
natural magic are regarded by these men of science as legitimate
parts of natural science; they believe in astral spirits, which
they identify with the angels of the Koran and the Bible, and
nearly all of them are mystics. The only subjects not infected
with superstition are logic and mathematics. That these think-
ers, for the most part, failed to grasp the real teachings of Aris-
totle and interpreted them as Neoplatonic, is not remarkable;
it was no easy task to discover the genuine Aristotle under the
mass of Neoplatonic commentaries and interpretations under
which he had lain buried for centuries.
In their logical studies, the Arabian philosophers generally
exhibit good judgment and dialectical skill. They too are inter-
ested in the question which formed so important a part oi
Christian scholasticism, the question of universals. According
to Alfarabi, universals have no existence apart from particulars,
they are in things; but even individual forms have a place in
the mind. Avicenna, likewise, holds that they do not exist as
separate entities prior to things, except in the mind of God;
in our own minds they exist after things, as abstractions from
particulars ; and they exist also in things, but not unmixed with
their accidents.
In their metaphysics, Alfarabi and Avicenna make concessions
to the demands of their religion. They try to weaken the Aris-
ARABIAN PHILOSOPHY
185
totelian notion of an eternal universe by making a distinction
between necessary and potential existence. The eternal origi-
nal being, which with Aristotle they conceive as intelligence (the
primary and only direct product of God), is necessary and un-
caused; everything else depends for its existence on this cause
and is conditioned, — that is, is potential in God. The evolution
of a world from its ground is a process of emanation. For
Alfarabi, matter is a phase of this process ; for Avicenna, mat-
ter is eternal and uncreated. But according to both, creation
means the actualization or realization of the potential in matter ;
form is somehow given to matter by God; God seems to place
forms, as potencies, in matter and then to realize them, or bring
them out, by means of his active intellect. This is, according
to Alfarabi, a process in time; with Avicenna, the emanation
of the lower from the higher is an eternal process, on the ground
that the effect must be simultaneous with the cause, which is
eternal; hence, the universe is eternal.
One of the numerous emanations from God is active or cre-
ative thought, the spirit of the lunar sphere, which gives every-
thing the form it has been prepared to receive. And it is
through this universal active intellect that the potential intel-
lect is realized, or knowledge brought out in man. According
to Alfarabi, the human intellect, thus actualized, becomes a
simple immortal substance.
The goal of philosophy is to know God and to be like God,
so far as this is possible. It can be reached, according to
Avicenna, by instruction as well as by divine illumination;
Alfarabi, however, regards a mystical union of the soul with
God as "an old wives' tale."
Arabian philosophy comes to an end in the Orient at the
turning point of the eleventh century. Algazel (+1111) at-
tacks the teachings of the philosophers in the
interests of the popular religion, in his book,
Destruction of the Philosophers, and denies n
the competence of philosophy to reach truth. He
misses in the systems the doctrines especially emphasized by
Islam orthodoxy: the theory of creation, the doctrine of per-
sonal immortality, and the belief in the absolute prescience and
providence of God, — the view that God knows and foresees all
186 PHILOSOPHY OF THE MIDDLE AGES
the minute occurrences of life and can interfere with them at
any time. The appearance of Algazel's work not only silenced
the philosophers, but led to the burning of their books by the
public authorities.
Arabian philosophy, however, continued its existence and
flourished in the Moorish caliphate of Spain, particularly at
Cordova, the seat of a celebrated school at which
School Mohammedans, Jews, and Christians studied with-
out interference. The most important among the
Arabian thinkers in the West are: Avempace (+1138),
Abubacer (+1185), and Averroes (Ibn Roshd, 1126-1198).
These men were physicians as well as philosophers. In the
greatest of them, Averroes, whose ideas influenced Christian
scholars, Arabian thought reaches its culmination.
Avempace denied individual immortality, regarding as im-
mortal only the universal intellect which manifests itself in
particular human minds. He also opposed mysticism; the ideal
is, indeed, to rise beyond the lower stages of soul-life to com-
plete self-consciousness, in which thought becomes identical with
its object, but this goal is reached not by ecstasy, but through
a gradual and natural development of our mental functions.
With this Abubacer largely agrees in his philosophical romance,
in which he describes the gradual evolution of the natural ca'
pacities of a human being, living alone on a desert island, and
his final union with God by means of asceticism and ecstasy.
Averroes had a high opinion of Aristotle, regarding his
intellect as the perfection of the human mind. His chief ambi-
tion was to reproduce the true Aristotle, an ambition, however,
which he can hardly be said to have realized. The task was
impossible for him, — partly owing to the Neoplatonic precon-
ceptions with which he approached the interpretation of the
great Greek's teachings, partly because of the desire, charac-
teristic of nearly every medieval philosopher, to accommodate
his theories to the demands of his religion. At any rate, Aver-
roes accepts the fundamental dogmas of the corrupted Aris-
totelianism of Islam: the emanation-theory and the doctrine of
the universal intellect.
Forms, he teaches, are implicit in matter; not superadded,
as Alfarabi and Avicenna had held, but unfolded, or evolved,
ARABIAN PHILOSOPHY 187
or realized, by the action of higher forms, of which the highest
is the divine intellect. Creation, in the ordinary sense, is there-
fore rejected. There is ^pne^ universal active mind, which influ-
ences particular individuals and brings them to knowledge.
This is explained by Averroes in the following manner: Indi-
vidual souls are naturally predisposed to such influence; by the
action of the universal active mind the predisposed soul becomes
a potential mind and so has implicit intelligence. The union
of the universal mind with a soul capable of receiving it, yields
an individualized soul: just as the sunlight is individualized or
particularized by striking a body capable of receiving light,
so a soul, capable of receiving intelligence, is individualized
by the entrance into it of the universal spirit. By further action
of the universal mind on this individualized soul, the knowledge
implicit in the latter is made explicit or realized ; it rises to the
highest self-consciousness, and in this form becomes one with
the universal spirit or absorbed in it (mysticism) ; it becomes
a phase or element in the mind which is common to all human
beings. In this sense, and in this sense only, is the individual
soul immortal, not in the sense of personal immortality; the
universal spirit alone is immortal. The universal mind itself
Averroes conceives as one of the many emanations of God ; it is
an emanation of the spirit or mover of the sublunar sphere.
With all of the Arabian philosophers of his school, Averroes
holds that the common man cannot grasp the whole truth,
that in religion it is given to him in symbols which the
philosopher interprets allegorically, but which the common man
takes literally. Hence, a thing may be true in philosophy that
is not true in theology, and vice versa. Thus, Averroes affirms
that he necessarily infers the unity of intelligence by reason,
but firmly holds to the opposite view by faith. — Averroes was
accused in his old age of teaching doctrines harmful to Mo-
hammedanism and banished from the court of the Calif of
Cordova, whose physician he was.
It is not hard to understand why the Christian Church re-
ceived with distrust the philosophical gifts of the Arabians.
She had pantheistic heresies of her own to contend with, and
had no desire to open the doors to the heresies of the
infidels.
188 PHILOSOPHY OF THE MIDDLE AGES
The different tendencies of Arabian thought which have been de-
scribed above, greatly influenced, and are reflected in, the Jewish
j • i philosophy of the Middle Ages. Avicebron (Solomon
Phil sonhv ^n Gebirol), who lived in Spain during the eleventh
century, offered a compendium of Neoplatonism in his
book called Fons vita, which became widely known among the school-
men of Europe. The greatest Jewish philosopher of the period was
Moses Maimonides of Cordova (Mose ben Maimun, 1135-1204), a fol-
lower of Aristotelianism and the author of Guide for the Errant
(Moreh Nebuchim). He accepts the authority of Aristotle for the
sublunar sphere, but turns to Jewish revelation for knowledge of the
divine, upholding the doctrine of creation out of nothing and the
notion of an all-wise Providence in human affairs. He also teaches
the freedom of the will and the immortality of the soul (that is, of the
acquired active intellect :
29. PREDOMINANCE OP ARISTOTLE
Although the study of the Aristotelian philosophy gave
scholasticism a new lease on life, it did not at once produce any
great change in the philosophical conceptions of
and°Stotle the times* Indeed> {i was because Aristotle could
be used to strengthen the prevailing scholastic
system that he was so readily accepted. The chief aim of the
schoolman had always been to harmonize religion and philoso-
phy ; here now was a complete system of thought, the most
developed product of Greek wisdom, ready at hand to form
one of the partners of the union. It embraced all the branches
of human knowledge, it reached definite conclusions, it presented
them in clear and precise language, it had a fixed terminology ;
it impressed the schoolmen, as it impresses every one, as the
work of calm impersonal reason. It satisfied the scholastic bent
for dialectics, giving reasons for and against every important
thesis; it was the work of the master of logic.
And there was much in the content of the teachings them-
selves that fitted in with the demands of the School ; and where
agreement seemed to end, the scholastic mind had no difficulty
in compelling harmony by convenient interpretations or by
modifying doctrines to meet the church view. Aristotle taught
the existence of a purely spiritual God, distinct from the uni-
verse and transcending it, yet the first and final cause of it:
a theistic and dualistic conception which corroborated the Chris-
tian view. He offered a thoroughgoing teleological theory of
PREDOMINANCE OF ARISTOTLE 189
nature, one that always appeals to common-sense and one that
was particularly attractive to an age beginning to take an interest
in the study of nature. Here, then, seemed to be a system that
organized the field of human knowledge as completely as the
dogmatic system aimed to organize the field of revealed knowl-
edge. It is not surprising that the " prince of those who know "
soon became the greatest authority in " natural things," and
that scholasticism now undertook to use him as a support for
the Christian world-view.
There were, it is true, serious points of difference between
the Aristotelian system and the Christian philosophy, differences
which made themselves felt in the course of the history of
scholasticism. Aristotle taught the eternity of the universe, the
Church creation out of nothing; he did not teach personal im-
mortality, the Church did; his ethics was naturalistic, the
Church's supernaturalistic. But where differences and difficul-
ties showed themselves, the schoolmen harmonized, reconciled,
modified, and supplemented to suit their needs, with brilliant
results, as we shall see.
The traditional theological movement of the twelfth century,
however, did not come to an end with the advent of Aristotle,
The church dogma had developed under the influ-
ence of Platonic conceptions, and the Augustinian
theology, which represented the first great syn-
thesis of orthodox thought and Greek philosophy, continued to
exercise an important influence. The function of the School,
at the beginning of the thirteenth century, was to assimilate
the new material as best it could, to transform it in accordance
with its own constitution, — only to be itself gradually transformed
ifc^the process. Some of the Christian teachers, however, are
ver$ little affected by the new philosophy, remaining true, in
the main, to twelfth-century traditions. Among these are Alex-
ander of Hales ( + 1245) and Henry of Ghent (+ 1293). Others,
like Albert the Great and Thomas of Aquin, seek a synthesis
of the traditional theology with Peripatetic thought; still
others, like Siger of Brabant (+1282), aim at a pure Aristo-
telianism, as they understand it. The line of progress for the
immediate future lies in the direction of the union of Peripa-
tetic philosophy with the past achievements of scholasticism.
190 PHILOSOPHY OF THE MIDDLE AGES
Alexander of Hales (+1245), an English Franciscan monk
was the first to make use of the new teachings in a book o
Sentences (Summa universce theologice) in order to prove th<
dogmas. Questions are asked and answered, and the answer
demonstrated, syllogistically, by references to authorities. A
authorities in matters of faith he regards the Latin Fathers
Ambrose, Augustine, Jerome; also the Venerable Bede, Alcuirj
Anselm, the Victorines, Peter the Lombard, Bernard of Clair
vaux; as authorities of reason, Plato, Aristotle, Alfarabi
Avicenna, Algazel, Cicero, Macrobius, Boethius, and Cassiodorus
In his theology, metaphysics, and psychology, Alexander betray
his Augustinian leanings, as well as his failure to penetrat
very deeply into the thought of the new movement.
Albert of Bollstadt was born in Lauingen, Wurtemberg, 1193, studie<
philosophy, mathematics, medicine, and theology at the universities o
* iv , Padua and Bologna, and entered the order of th
Dominicans (1222). He won great fame as a teacher o
philosophy at Paris and Cologne, and became known as Albert th<
Great. He died 1280. Albert wrote commentaries on Aristoteliai
writings, the Scriptures, and Sentences; philosophical works and theo
logical works : De causis et processu universitatis; De unitate intellects,
contra Averroem; Summa theologies; Paradisus anim<z.
Works in 36 vols. J. Sighart, Albertus Magnus, transl. by Dixon
v. Hertling, Albertus Magnus; Feiler, Die Moral des Albertus Magnus
Albert was the first doctor of the Church to offer a scholastii
system based on Aristotle's philosophy. Arabian influences
however, are clearly discernible in his work. In discussing prob
lems having a theological bearing, he also follows the Guid*
for the Errant (Moreh Nebucliim) of Moses Maimonides, whicl
seems to be more in harmony with the orthodox position thai
his other authorities. He showed a keen interest in natural
scientific studies, and has often been called the precursor o:
Eoger Bacon in this field. In spite, however, of his insistenci
on experience in the study of nature, he relapses into the com
mon scholastic habit of looking at it through the eyes of Aris
totle. Albert is noted for the breadth rather than for the deptl
of his learning, being inferior to his great pupil, Thomas o:
Aquin, in critical acumen and speculative grasp.
Philosophical subjects, Albert says, should be treated philo
sophically, and theological subjects theologically. This tendency
THOMAS AQUINAS 191
to separate the two fields, which foreshadows the doctrine of two-
fold truth, is the result of a growing conviction on the part of
many schoolmen that certain dogmas, like the doctrines of the
Trinity and the Incarnation, cannot be demonstrated logically.
The principle that nothing can come from nothing, for example,
is true in physics, but not in theology; it is true of particular
or secondary causes, but not true of ultimates. Augustine is
his chief authority in matters of faith and Aristotle in natural
science and rational theology, although he admits that the Greek
thinker is not always in agreement with dogmatic theology.
Albert's thought was developed and perfected, in a masterly
manner, by his pupil Thomas, whose comprehensive system will
serve as the best example of thirteenth-century scholasticism.
30. THOMAS AQUINAS
Thomas, the son of Count Landolfo, of Aquino, was born 1225 or 1227
at the ancestral castle near Naples, and was taught by Benedictine
monks in the monastery of Monte Cassino. At an early age he joined
the order of the Dominicans, against the protests of his father, and
continued his studies at Paris and Cologne, where he became a pupil
of Albert the Great. After the completion of his academic apprentice-
ship, he taught theology and philosophy at Cologne, Paris, Bologna,
Rome, and Naples, changing his residence frequently, and devoted
himself to the construction of the greatest Catholic system of thought
that has ever been offered. He died in 1274. He was called by his
contemporaries the angelic doctor (doctor angelicus) and was canonized
by Pope John XXII in 1323.
Thomas wrote commentaries on many works, among them Aristotle's,
and many philosophical and theological monographs. His chief works
are : Summa theologize; Summa contra Gentiles; De regimine principum
(his only in part).
Edition of works published by Pope Leo XIII; transl. of Summa
theologies by Rickaby, Ashley. Vaughan, St. Thomas of Aquin; Ser-
tillanges, St. Th. d' Aquin, 2 vols. ; Werner, T. von Aquino, 3 vols.;
Jourdain, La philosophie de T. d' Aquino; books by C. Schneider;
Schiitz, Thomas-Lexikon.
The system of Thomas is typical of the movement we have
been describing. Its fundamental aim is to demonstrate the
rationality of the universe as a revelation of Go<j-
In its general outlines it agrees with the L Angus- an(J geology
tinian metaphysics, accepting as guiding princi-
ples the teachings which had become the heritage of the Church.
But it adopts Aristotle's method and operates throughout with
192 PHILOSOPHY OF THE MIDDLE AGES
Aristotelian conceptions: we hear again of actus purus, for
and matter, actuality and potentiality, the four kinds of caus;
tion, and other Peripatetic principles of explanation. Witha
no attempt is made to weaken the validity of the church dogim
or the ecclesiastical means of salvation ; the naturalism of Ari
totle in no wise interferes with the supernaturalism of the Chri
tian scheme of thought, so that no complaint can be made again;
the strict orthodoxy of St. Thomas.
Philosophy, according to Thomas, passes from facts to Go<
theology from God to facts. He follows Albert in his distin
tion between reason and faith: dogmas like the Trinity, tl
Incarnation, original sin, the creation of the world in time, tl
sacraments, cannot be demonstrated by natural reason ; they a:
not objects of philosophy, but matters of faith, revealed truth
— beyond reason, but not contrary to reason. We cannot pro1'
them nor can we disprove them, but we can disprove objectioi
to them. No necessary proof can be offered, for example, thi
the world was created in time; that is a matter of revelatio
otherwise we should not know it ; but there is nothing unreaso:
able in the doctrine. Only in case we already believe in thei
articles of faith, can their reasonableness, their probability, the
plausibility, be made clear. Any attempt to give a ration
proof of the mysteries of religion really detracts from faitl
there would be no merit in believing only what can be demoi
strated to reason. Faith is a matter of will ; the will comman<
acceptance ; this compulsion Thomas explains as an inner instin
(God invites us to believe) or as coming to us from without, i
the result of miracles.
The separation of revealed theology from natural or ration
theology and philosophy was officially recognized by the UD
versity of Paris in a decree * ' that no teacher of philosophy sha
consider any one of the specifically theological questions." '.
has since been accepted by orthodox Christianity, Catholic !
well as Protestant. /Thomas rendered a service to philosophy t
making a distinction which eventually led to the elimination <
such questions from philosophical discussions ; Duns Scotus ar
his followers went a step farther in also withdrawing ration
or natural theology from the jurisdiction of reason and turnir
^all problems concerning God over to faith.
THOMAS AQUINAS 193
Thomas's attitude on this question finds its partial explana-
tion in his method and theory of knowledge, in which he largely
follows Aristotle. GjmuinaJoiowledge is concep-
tual knowledge. Concepts, however, have their knowledge
basis in sense-percejptiqn : there is nothing in the
intellect that was not first in sensation. The soul has different
functions or faculties, the faculty of sensation, the faculty of
active intellect (intellectus agens), and the faculty of potential
intellect (intellectus possibilis). It is by virtue of such powers
that the soul can function in different ways, the like being
assimilated to the like. Through sensation it receives copies or
forms of particular objects, or " sensible species." In order to
be known or received by the potential intellect, which is entirely
independent of the body, or hyperorganic, the sensible copy
must be freed from everything material or corporeal in it. This
is done by the active intellect, which fashions the sensible copy
into an intelligible copy by abstracting from it such elements as
conform to the nature of this intellect, for the soul can assimi-
late only what is conformable to its nature. The intelligible
copy or " intelligible species," as Thomas calls it, is, therefore,
not the copy of a particular object in space and time with all
its accidental properties, but contains only the essential quali-
ties; through it the potential intellect knows or conceives the
universal notion of the thing. The mind could not know if
it were not for sensation; nor could it know if it did not have
the natural predisposition for forming universal notions on the
occasion of sensation. Thomas points out both the sensational
and conceptual phases of our knowledge in this teaching, both
its particular and its universal aspect. He also emphasizes the
active or spontaneous nature of our thinking and also indicates
its a priori character : the mind is predisposed to act in certain
ways; indeed, to think in universal terms. Knowledge is im-
plicit in it; it is made explicit when the mind is aroused to
action.
Through the action of external objects on the soul, the raw
material of knowledge is received and elaborated by the higher
faculties of the mind into conceptual knowledge. Genuine
knowledge, or Science (scientia), therefore, has its basis in sense-
perception, in experience, and we can know only what we ex-
194 PHILOSOPHY OF THE MIDDLE AGES
perience. Consequently, it is necessary for the philosopher t
make the world of experience the starting-point of his explam
tion, to rise from an analysis of experience to the principle;
or essence, or being of things. Such a science of being is met?
physics. We abstract from the particular objects their commo:
qualities, or think in universals. Hence, we can have Scienc
only where universals are possible, only where there are pai
ticulars with common qualities. Since spiritual beings fori
each its own species, we can have no universal notions of sue
beings, no genuine knowledge of them.
Since Science has the universal for its object, universals mus
be real, otherwise there could be no truth. But universals ar
. not real in the sense of existing apart from pai
ticular objects: they are not " subsisting " thing:
i.e., they do not exist as entities. The universal exists in pai
ticular objects as the one in the many, as the essence of thing!
or their quidditas, their whatness, as Thomas calls it. At th
same time, Thomas, like Albert, agrees with Aristotle in cor
ceiving ideas or forms or universals as immanent in the min
of God; they are both that and abstractions from things in th
mind of man.
Forms or universals are, therefore, necessary principles o
explanation in metaphysics. They do not, however, taken b
themselves, account for the world of natural objects ; with Aris
totle, Thomas introduces a second principle, matter: nature i
a union of form and matter. The nature or substance of
corporeal being consists of form and matter: bv^ubstanc
Thomas means that through which a thing is what it is ; natura
objects are what they are through matter and form. With th
help of these two principles, Thomas attempts not only to accour
for the order and purposiveness in nature, but also to. explai:
the existence of particular objects, or the plurality and diversit
of things. Some realists regarded the form as responsible fo
the existence of particular individual objects, as the principle o
individuation ; according to Thomas, matter is the principle o
individuation. The diversity of individuals of the same specie
depends on differences of bodily constitution; the materi
signata or materia individualis, or definite quantity of matte
which a particular natural object has, together with all th
THOMAS AQUINAS 195
particular accidents peculiar to this particular quantum of mat-
ter, makes the particular individual object just what it is. In
the case of man, it is because the soul is connected with a par-
ticular organic body that he is this particular person. Socrates
is Socrates and no one else because of the particular matter pecu-
liar to him.
Besides the forms wThich inhere in matter (inherent or mate-
rial forms), there are forms which can exist by themselves, which
do not need matter in order to be real (subsistent forms).
Among such are pure spiritual beings, or angels, and human
souls. Their substance or nature, that through which they are
what they are, is not matter and form, but form alone: they
individualize themselves, owe their individuality to themselves.
God is pure form, pure actuality. We have a knowledge of
God by faith, but we can also reach a knowledge of him by
reasoning, in the manner already indicated; such
knowledge, however, is indirect or mediate knowl-
edge. In all our reasoning we pass from the known to the un-
known, from the effect to the cause, from the conditioned to the
unconditioned. We infer the existence of God from his crea-
tion, we can prove it only by the a posteriori method. Thomas
rejects the ontological argument of Anselm and makes use of
a number of proofs already employed by Aristotle, Augustine,
and the Arabian philosophers, (a) Everything that is moved
requires something to move it, every effect implies a cause:
there must, therefore, be a first unmoved principle of motion,
otherwise we should be compelled to go on ad infinitum in the
causal series, and never reach the end. There must be some-
thing that exists per se, by itself, that does not need anything
else through which it exists. (Aristotle.) (b) Natural objects
are merely contingent, or possible; it is not necessary that this
or that particular object exist; there must, however, be some-
thing that is not merely possible, but real, or necessary, some-
thing that forms the ground or basis of the contingent or pos-
sible, something that is absolutely necessary. (Alfarabi.)
These two arguments constitute what Kant later called the cos-
mological argument, (c) Things form a graduated scale of
excellence; there must be a highest form or degree of perfec-
tion to complete this series of more and less perfect objects.
196 PHILOSOPHY OF THE MIDDLE AGES
And since everything is caused by the first cause, the first cause
must be the most perfect cause, the most perfect being, the cause
of all perfect things in the universe. (Augustine.) (d) Every-
thing in nature realizes an end or purpose. Such action implies
an intelligence to guide it ; a purposeful universe implies a great
purposer, an intelligent God. The last two proofs are teleo-
logical proofs; they were in common use among the Greeks and
the schoolmen.
God, therefore, is the first and final (purposive) cau.se of the
universe. He is pure actuality or energy; if he were mere po-
tential being, something else would be required to make him
actual or real, and he would not be the first cause. As pure
actuality, God is absolutely simple and absolutely perfect; he
is also absolute intelligence : absolute consciousness and absolute
will.
God created the world, matter included, out of nothing. For,
if God is the first cause of all things, he must be the cause of
both matter and form. And since he is pure spirit unmixed with
matter, matter could not have emanated from him; he must have
created it out of nothing. It cannot, however, be demonstrated
that the world had a beginning in time, any more than it can
be demonstrated that it had no beginning; both views are pos-
sible. Creation from nothing simply means that the world owes
its existence to God, that God is its necessary cause; it does
not imply either temporal or eternal creation. We are, there-
fore, dependent on revelation for the belief that the universe
had a beginning in time. Time began with the creation of
the world. God not only created the world, but is responsible
for its existence at every moment of time : his creation is a con-
tinuous creation. He has chosen this world as the best of all
possible worlds. He can will only the best, since his will
is determined by the good. His purpose in creation is to reveal
himself in all possible ways, hence he creates all possible grades
of being.
God created nature, human souls, and angels. Angels are pure
immaterial spirits, there being as many species of angels as
there are individual angels. Natural objects are
corporeal, in them form inheres in matter; there
are plant souls and animal souls, but they have no existence apart
THOMAS AQUINAS 197
from matter. Man is both pure spirit and matter; he is one
person, two principles of being in one complete substance. The
soul, however, is an immaterial " subsistent " form, the en-
telechy of the body. It is intelligent, sensitive, and organic:
the formative or vital principle of the body, the moving prin-
ciple, the sensitive principle, and the intellectual principle. It
is one soul possessing different capacities or functions. The
embryo has the organic and sensitive soul; the intellectual soul
is added at birth, — God creates the soul as soon as the body is
predisposed or ready to receive it. Intelligence and will con-
stitute the essence of the human soul and differentiate it from
other souls. Although it is intimately united with an organic
body, its intellectual aspect is hyperorganic, wholly free from
the body. In other words, the human being is a union of mind
and body; the two are intimately connected, but evidently not
so inextricably bound together as form and matter in nature in
general. The soul is an intelligent, sensitive, and vital prin-
ciple, a trinity which forms and moves the body predisposed
to such action, as well as feels, thinks, and wills.
The intelligent soul can, therefore, exercise its functions with-
out a body ; it is immortal : ' ' after the dissolution of the body
it can remain active/' There is not one universal intelligence,
as the Arabians held; if there were, man would be neither a
rational nor a moral being, his thinking and willing would be
the work of something distinct from him. The individual soul
continues to exist after death in all its parts, as intellect, sense-
soul, and organic soul, — for these constitute one single soul; —
and forms a new body for itself like its old one.
The arguments for immortality used by Thomas are the old
Platonic arguments which had become the common property of
the Christian and Arabian world. The human soul knows uni-
versals and is, therefore, immaterial, hence separation from the
body cannot destroy it; and since it is an actual form (a living
principle), it cannot perish, for actuality (life) implies con-
tinued existence. Moreover, the soul's desire for immortality
is another reason for its imperishableness ; every natural desire
must be satisfied.
Corresponding to sensible knowledge and supersensible or
rational knowledge, man has sensuous desire and rational desire
198 PHILOSOPHY OF THE MIDDLE AGES
or will. He is not absolutely determined in his desires an
actions by sense-impressions like the brute, from without, as
were ; but has the faculty of self-determination : it lies in h
power to act or not to act. But in order that the will may di
cide, it must have before it the notion of the good. Hence, ii
telligence moves the will ; but it does not compel or coerce tl
will, it moves it by placing before it its own object, that is, ii
purpose or end. The will, on the other hand, is " the prhr
mover in the kingdom of the soul " in the sense that it promp
intelligence and sensibility to action; over organic life it hj
no control. Intelligence and will, therefore, mutually determir
one another, according to Thomas, but the intellect takes prec
dence over the will. The will is determined by what intelligen<
conceives to be the good, by a rational purpose. This, howeve
is not compulsion ; compulsion exists where a being is inevitabl
determined by an external cause. Man is free because he
rational, because he is not pushed into action by an extern;
cause without his consent, and because he can choose betwee
the means of realizing the good or the purpose which his reasc
conceives.
The ethics of Thomas is a union of Aristotelian and Christia
thoughts. It rests on the thought that God made everythin
for a purpose, — for the purpose of revealing h
goodness in creation, — that the nature of everythir
points in the direction of this purpose, and that every creatui
will realize the divine idea and reveal the goodness of God I
realizing its true being. The highest good, therefore, objective!
considered, is God; subjectively viewed, that is, for creature
it is their greatest possible perfection, or likeness to Goi
Thomas agrees with Aristotle that the supreme good for mai
which he calls blessedness (beatitudo) , consists in the realiz,
tion of his true self. Irrational beings are determined by nati
ral or sensuous impulses, implanted by God, to realize the
goal; while rational beings seek to realize it consciously an
voluntarily. The highest form of action is speculation or coi
templation, and the highest object of speculation is God. Henc
man realizes his true self, — his perfection and the highest bles
edness, — in the knowledge of God. But there are many ways c
knowing God. We have a kind of natural, immediate, unr
THOMAS AQUINAS
199
fleeting knowledge of God; this, however, cannot give us com-
plete happiness because it is not perfect activity. We may attain
a knowledge of him by reasoning, but not all human beings can
reach it in this way, and, besides, it is not certain enough. We
may know him by faith, but faith depends on will, and lacks
self-evidence. The highest knowledge of God is intuitive: this
is attained only in fhe hereafter and endures forever; it yields
supreme happiness and is the supreme goal of human striving.
They are most like God who know God as God knows himself.
We have here the Christian completion of the Aristotelian
idea. For Aristotle the supreme good was speculative knowl-
edge, philosophy, the pure contemplation of God. The phi-
losopher, or wise man, after all, was his ideal. For Thomas, too,
knowledge of God is the highest good, but it is gained by in-
tuition : it J£_a beatific vision, possible only in the life to come.
In this sense It is a sujpernatural good; supernatural, also, in
the sense of being a supernatural gift of grace. Since blessed-
ness is nothing but the attainment of the highest good, there
can be no blessedness without happiness (delectatio) accom-
panying it. Love is another concomitant of blessedness: we
cannot see God without loving him.
Thomas does not confine himself to the discussion of the
summum bonum in his ethics, but enters upon a careful analysis
of moral conduct and a full treatment of the virtues. Acts are
callecf moral which are the result of deliberation and choice ;
the acts, in other words, of free, rational beings. The goodness
or badness of an act depends on the object it aims at, the pur-
pose or intention of the agent, and the circumstances. These
must conform to the rule of reason, which is the principle of
human conduct. The supreme criterion of moral conduct is
the reason of God, the eternal or divine law (lex (sterna), the
laws of the Old and the New Testament. The law of the Old
Testament has an earthly goal, demands just works, and has fear
for its motive ; the law of the New Testament has a heavenly goal,
demands holiness of will, and its motive is love. The law of
God, however, is not an arbitrary law ; God cannot will anything
but the good. Besides the eternal law, there is natural or human
law (lex naturae), the law which is written on our hearts.
Hence, in order to be good, an act should conform to reason
200 PHILOSOPHY OF THE MIDDLE AGES
quickened by divine law or natural law, as the result of instruc
tion or infusion.
Conscience is explained by Thomas in the medieval fashion
The intellect is speculative and practical ; reason is endowed wit!
both practical and theoretical principles. As the faculty of mora
principles, reason is called synteresis. The synteresis furnishes
the major premise of a syllogism : All evil ought to be avoided
an inferior reason or the Bible informs us that adultery is evil
conscience (syneidesis) draws the conclusion that adultery ough
to be avoided.
It is to be remembered that the immoral character of ai
external act depends exclusively on the will; an act may b<
good as such, but it may be turned to an immoral purpose anc
so be bad. An external act, however, which as such is evil cai
never be made good by the will directing it to a good end
That is, Thomas does not preach the doctrine that the end justi
fies the means. As to the so-called " passions of the soul," thi
appetites of sense, these are not always morally bad; they ar«
so only when they fail to conform to the rule of reason.
Thomas follows Aristotle in his treatment and classificatioi
of the virtues, supplementing this, however, with Christian
conceptions. No virtue is inborn; all virtues may be acquire*
by the performance of virtuous acts. Such acquired virtues leai
to imperfect or incomplete happiness, which is possible in thi
life. In order to realize eternal blessedness, a supernatura
principle of grace must be added to the soul by God, a highe
form which makes possible a higher perfection and a highe
being. Certain supernatural virtues are poured into man, o
infused, by God: the three theological virtues, faith, hope, am
charity. Without these, the supernatural goal cannot be reached
The ethical virtues, too, in order to help us in realizing the lif
of blessedness, must needs be implanted by God; as mere ac
quired virtues they are of no avail in this regard. Love i
the highest of the infused virtues, the perfect form of all th
virtues.
The contemplative life is, as we have seen, the highest, th
most blessed, and the most enjoyable life. The state of con
templation can be reached even in this world. Through th
illuminating influence of God a state of rapture may be prc
THOMAS AQUINAS 201
duced, in which the soul is freed from the senses and its organs,
and lost in pure action (mysticism). The contemplative life
is not only superior to the practical life, but also more merito-
rious. It is grounded on the love of God, while the practical
life is grounded on the love of man. In so far as the active
life aims at outward acts, it is a hindrance to the speculative
life ; in so far as it is engaged in the control of the senses, it is a
help to it.
The safest and quickest way to blessedness is the total aban-
donment of earthly goods and the seeking of eternal life. This
course cannot be commanded, it can only be advised: there are
certain evangelical counsels (consilia evangelica} , poverty,
celibacy, and obedience, by following which a higher perfection
is attained. For Thomas as for Augustine and, indeed, for all
the priests of the Church, the monastic or ascetic life is the ideal
life; this, however, is only for the few; for the great mass o£
men, who live in the world, a lower limit is set.
The contrast between Greek and medieval ethics, to which at-
tention has already been called, is plainly marked in the moral
philosophy of Thomas Aquinas. For the Greek philosopher the
highest good is always some phase or achievement of our earthly
human life, be it virtue or happiness ; something, moreover, that
may be attained in a perfectly natural manner, through the
exercise of virtue and with the aid of human reason. Accord-
ing to the medieval theologian, the highest good is not a life in
the world, — this earthly existence is but a pilgrimage to God, —
but eternal blessedness in the life to come. And the attain-
ment of the goal does not follow naturally and necessarily from
the performance of virtuous conduct, but depends on the super-
natural grace of God himself. The ideal good man is not the
wise man, but the holy man, the man who, inspired by love and
respect of God, does the will of God completely. The state
of holiness can be best attained in the monastery, away from
the temptations and complications of the world.
Evil Thomas regards, with Augustine, as privation. In so far
as a thing acts according to its nature, which is good, it cannot
cause evil. Evil is due to defective action on the part of the
form, or cause, or to the defective state of matter, the effect.
In the case of moral evil, the defect lies in the will, which lacks
202 PHILOSOPHY OF THE MIDDLE AGES
the direction of the rule of reason and of the divine law. A'
things aim at good, hence when they realize evil, it is outsid
of their intention. This is particularly true of free rations
beings. Whatever they strive for, they regard as good. It ma
be evil; it is not because it is evil, however, that they desire i'
but because they view it sub ratione boni.
Thomas caps his ethical system with a doctrine of salvatio
that follows Augustine and the orthodox theology. In the Ari?
totelian metaphysics, the lower stages of existence are conceive
as the matter of the next higher stages, which are forms in relg
tion to them ; and so on to the end of the series. Thomas make
use of this thought in calling the natural man the matter an
preparation for the spiritual man, the man in whom the grac
of God operates and who, therefore, can rise to a still highe
state of perfection than is possible to the Aristotelian mar
Through Adam's sin man's nature was corrupted and his guil
transmitted to his descendants (original sin), and only divin
grace can redeem him. The sacraments of the Church are th
organs or instruments through which God bestows his grace
God endows those with grace who are to be saved. This doe
not abolish the freedom of the will, in Thomas's opinion, be
cause grace can act in man only with the cooperation of hi
will. God is not responsible for man's failure to return to him
he foresees that certain persons will abuse their freedom an<
do evil; he permits it and predestines such persons for punish
ment. The goal of all ethical and religious progress, howevei
is universal resurrection, in which is included the resurrectioi
of the body.
In his theory of the State, Thomas fuses Aristotelian concep
tions with the ideals of the Christian polity already set fort!
. . in Augustine's City of God. Man is a politica
being and seeks life in society. The purpose of al
government is the common weal ; this is possible only in a society
in which there is internal unity or peace and security agains
external foes, and can be best attained by a centralized govern
ment or a monarchy. The monarchy must be so constitute(
as to prevent tyranny ; but even in case of extreme oppression
regicide and revolution are never justifiable. The remedy shouk
be sought by legal means, in accordance with the constitution,—
ANTI-SCHOLASTIC TENDENCIES 203
for the political order is a divine order; — when that is not pos-
sible, the outcome must be left with God.
The Prince should keep in view the divine purpose and enable
his subjects to realize the highest good. But since the highest
good of mankind is eternal blessedness, the Church and its head,
the Pope, who is God's vicegerent on earth, are superior to the
secular power. In spiritual affairs, therefore, the temporal
rulers are subordinate to the priests; they are vassals of the
Church, and their subjects do not owe them loyalty after they
have been excommunicated. The State is no longer regarded as
the result of the sinful nature of man, as in Augustine's City
of God, but is a divinely established institution.
Among the followers of Thomas we mention: ^Egidius of Lessines
(1278), Gottfried of Fontaines (circa 1283), ^Egidius Colonna
(+1316), Thomas of Strasburg (+1357), Herve de Nedellec (+1323),
Thomas Bradwardine (+1349), Capreolus (+1444), Dominicus of
Flanders (+1500), Thomas de Vio (Cajetanus, +1534). The poet
Dante (1265-1321) is an enthusiastic follower of the Thomistic teach-
ings in his Divina Commedia.
A modified Thomism is taught by the Jesuit Molina, Gabriel Vasquez
(+1604), and Francis Suarez (+1617). Francis Vittoria (+1546)
and Banez (+1604) advocate the original Thomistic views.
The Dominicans made Thomas " the doctor of the order " in 1286.
The Jesuits adopted the Thomistic teachings at the foundation of their
order by Loyola (1534), but later departed from them. Pope Leo
XIII, the predecessor of the present Pope, made the philosophy of
St. Thomas the official philosophy of the Catholic Church and ordered
the publication of a new edition of his works. Thomism is to-day the
leading philosophical system in Catholicism: the teachers and writers
of the Church base themselves on Thomas.
31. ANTI-SCHOLASTIC TENDENCIES: MYSTICISM, PANTHEISM, AND
NATURAL SCIENCE
In addition to the great scholastic systems of Albert and
Thomas, we find in the thirteenth century the same supplemen-
tary and antagonistic movements which we noted . .
in our survey of twelfth-century thought: mysti-
cism, logical and scientific studies, and pantheism continued to
attract many scholars of the Church.
John Fidanza (1221-1274), called Bonaventura, a pupil of
Alexander of Hales, belonged to the Franciscan order, in which
204 PHILOSOPHY OF THE MIDDLE AGES
Augustinianism was popular. Although he wrote Sentences
and exegetical works, he is particularly noted as a mystic. His
leanings are toward the Augustinian-Platonic mode of thought,
and his mysticism does not essentially differ from that of the
school of St. Victor. His chief mystical work is the Itinerarium
mentis ad Deum.
The way to God leads from cogitatio through meditatio to
contemplatio. In contemplation we pass through several stages:
we contemplate God in the corporeal world, then in our own
inner life, and rise from this to the immediate vision of God
himself. On the highest stage the soul transcends itself, enters
upon a state of holy ignorance, and becomes one with the divine
will through love. The preparation for such a state of ecstasy,
which is a gift of divine grace, is a life of holiness and prayer.
As the supreme form of Christian perfection, Bonaventura, who
was himself a member of the mendicant order of St. Francis
of Assisi, regards the ascetic life in the monastery with its vows
of poverty, chastity, and obedience.
See works on Mysticism mentioned p. 177.
Among the writers who occupied themselves with the study of logic
and grammar are William of Shyreswood (+1249), Lambert of
f • Auxerre (-(-1250), and Petrus Hispanus (most likely
identical with Pope John XXI, who died 1277). Peter
wrote a text-book on logic, Summulce logicales, which largely follows
Aristotle and Boethius, and which for centuries remained an authorita-
tive work on the subject. Nicolas of Paris (who taught at Clos-
Bruneau, 1250-1263) combined grammar and logic in his Synca-
tegoremata.
As has been pointed out before, a certain interest in natural
science went along with the chief intellectual business of the
Middle Ages, which was scholastic philosophy.
Scienc^ During the thirteenth century the occupation with
scientific studies continued; although Eoger Bacon,
one of the leaders in the movement, complains of the scant
attention paid to such things outside of Oxford. Among those
whom we have already mentioned as encouraging an interest
in nature were Adelard of Bath and Albert the Great. In Eng-
land the mathematical and physical sciences were cultivated.
Albert, Vincent of Beauvais, and Roger Bacon devoted them-
selves to geographical studies. The scientific men of the times
ANTI-SCHOLASTIC TENDENCIES 205
believed that the earth was a sphere, a view which the Church
condemned. It was supposed that the Mediterranean basin occu-
pied the center of the earth, and that India could be reached
by the sea route westward; indeed, Columbus died in the belief
that he had discovered the western part of India.
The names which have been recorded in the list of students of sci-
ence are: Alexander Neckam (+1217), Alfred Sarchel (who wrote a
treatise on the motion of the heart, about 1225), John Peckham
(+1292), Roger Bacon (+1294), Witelo (born about 1230), and
Dietrich of Freiberg (a teacher at Paris from 1265-1269). In Witelo
and Dietrich the natural-scientific interest is combined with Neoplatonic
leanings.
The most original and independent figure of this group is
Roger Bacon (+1294), a curious mixture of the medieval and
modern scholar. Roger, who was a Franciscan monk and re-
ceived his training at Oxford and Paris, devoted himself espe-
cially to the study of mathematics (which he regarded as the
foundation of all scientific study and in which he included
arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music) and the physical
sciences, among which he enumerates perspective, judiciary and
operative astronomy, alchemy, agriculture (plants and animals),
medicine, astrology, and magic. He also regarded the study of
languages, Greek, Hebrew, Arabic, and Chaldean, as indispensa-
ble to theology and philosophy. Metaphysics is the science of
first principles. Roger recorded his thoughts in an encyclopedic
work, the Opus majus.
Opus majus edited by Jebb, Bridges; unpublished writings by
Brewer; other unpublished writings by Steele; an unpublished frag-
ment of Opus tertium by Duhem; Essays by Watt.
Charles, R. Bacon, etc. ; H. Siebert, R. Bacon; E. Fliigel, R. Bacons
Stellung in der Geschichte der Philosophic; Parrot, R. Bacon et ses
contemporains ; Werner, I sychologie, and Kosmologie des R. Bacon;
Vogl, Physik R. Bacons.
Of the two methods of knowledge, demonstration and experi-
ence, Bacon lays stress on the latter, " for without experience,
nothing can be sufficiently known." Experience, however, is
twofold: human or philosophical, which depends on the external
senses, and inner illumination or divine inspiration, through
which we reach " knowledge not only of spiritual things, but
206 PHILOSOPHY OF THE MIDDLE AGES
of corporeal matters and the sciences of philosophy." By means
of such inner experience we may also rise, through seven stages,
to a condition of ecstasy or mystical knowledge " of spiritual
things and of all human sciences," in which he who has the
experience .snris much of which man is not permitted to speak.
We see ,, w far removed this attitude of Bacon 's is from
the moder v!< «uception of science. With much that is modern,
he offers a ,[, ss °f fantastic ideas and superstitions: astrology
is mixed ^ teod tronomy, magic with mechanics, alchemy with
chemistry the doctrine of twofold experience opens the
door to all ^aus of possibilities harmful to the development of
experimental science. The important thing, however, is that
Bacon actually busied himself with nature and that he empha-
sized the need of observation in this field.
In his Augustinian-Platonic philosophy, Eoger followed the
teaching which was becoming a tradition of his order, combining
with it Arabian speculations.
In addition to its mystical and natural-scientific tendencies,
which did not always accommodate themselves to scholasticism,
the thirteenth century exhibits signs of opposi-
tion to the entire church philosophy. Under
the influence of Averroism, a number of thinkers distin-
guish between philosophical truth and theological truth,
holding that though these may contradict one another, each
is true in its own sphere. Some of the heretical proposi-
tions developed in this way were condemned in 1240 by
the Bishop of Paris. John of Brescia advanced a number of
heresies in 1247 and made the plea that they were offered not
as theological but as philosophical truths. Again, in 1270 and
in 1277, the Bishop of Paris (Etienne Tempier) rejected the
doctrine of twofold truth and condemned a long list of theses
taught in the Faculty of Arts in the University of Paris, among
them propositions denying the Trinity, the resurrection of the
body, the suffering of the soul by fire, the supernatural nature
of ecstasies and visions, creation in time, and the need of grace
as means to happiness. Around the same time Siger of Brabant
tried to show the impossibility of demonstrating a number of
propositions, which were " theologically " self-evident, by prov-
ing their opposites: for example, that there is no God, no cer-
JOHN DUNS SCOTUS 207
tain knowledge, no moral responsibility, no principle of contra-
diction, and that a heavy object not supported will not fall.
The example of Raymond Lully (1235-1315; Ars brevis, Ars
magna), who opposed such heresies, shows that faith in the
capacity of reason to solve all problems had not
disappeared. In his opinion, reason not only
reaches no conclusions contradicting the Christian
faith, but is able to demonstrate with absolute certainty all the
mysteries of religion. He invented what he calioi :;' the great
art, ' ' a method by means of which one might ' ' Wittidut the effort
of learning and reflection give information concerning all ques-
tions of knowledge." The method consisted in placing a series
of nine concepts and questions on seven movable concentric
disks and manipulating the disks in such a way as to produce
answers. With this barren mechanical device he succeeded in
winning a large and enthusiastic following, which continued to
believe in the " great art " down to the seventeenth century.
(Cf. Kercher, Raimund Lullus.)
DECLINE OF SCHOLASTICISM
32. JOHN DUNS SCOTUS
Although the Thomistic philosophy became the official doc-
trine of the great Dominican order and gained many adherents,
its supremacy did not remain undisputed. The
Franciscan schools, whose first great teachers,
Alexander of Hales and Bonaventura, although
not repudiating Aristotelianism, followed their Augustinian-
Platonic traditions, opposed many of the arguments and conclu-
sions of the new system, and soon Christian scholars were
divided into two rival camps. The Franciscans emphasized the
practical, emotional, mystical, personal, and devotional side of
religion ; for them the intellect was of less importance than the
will, the ethical-religious content of Christianity more signifi-
cant than theoretical constructions of the faith. It was natural
that many critics and opponents of the new scholasticism should
have sprung from this order. There were a number of possible
208 PHILOSOPHY OF THE MIDDLE AGES
directions for dissenters to take: first, to attack certain princi-
ples of the dominant philosophy; second, to reject the union
of Christianity with Aristotelianism as unsuccessful; third, to
deny the demonstrableness of the faith; fourth, to deny
the possibility of scholasticism altogether. By adopting the first
three of these positions, John Duns Scotus paved the way for
the acceptance of the fourth and thus assisted in the overthrow
of the scholastic system.
Among those who joined the opposition to Thomism, we name the
following, some of whom have already been mentioned in other con-
nections: Peckham, Warro, Kilwardby (+1278), William Lamarre (who
wrote Correctorium fratris TTioma, 1284), Richard of Middletown
(+1300), Henry of Ghent (1217-1293), Siger of Brabant (+1282),
Matthew of Aquasparta (+1302), Peter John Olivi (+1298), Roger
Bacon (+1294), William Durand of St. Pourgain (+1332).
The spirit of opposition to the Thomistic system found expression
in the thought of John Duns Scotus (born c. 1265), a native of England
TV Q , or Ireland and a member of the Franciscan order. The
Duns ocotus 1 -i , 0 i • i • ,i . i TT
exact place and date of his birth are not known. He
studied at Oxford, showing an aptitude for mathematics, and became
a teacher at Oxford, Paris, and Cologne, where he died in 1308. His
fame rests not so much on his constructive ability as on his dialectical
acumen and skill as a critic, his title, " the subtle doctor," being well
earned. He was influenced by Roger Bacon and Alexander of Hales,
and regarded Augustine and Anselm as the highest authorities. The
Franciscans made him the doctor of their order.
Among his works are: Opus Oxoniense and Opus Parisiense (lecture-
notes published by his pupils at Paris) ; Quastiones quodlibetales.
Ed. of works, Lyons, 1639 ; Paris, 26 vols., 1895.
Hagenbach, History of Doctrines, transl. ; Werner, J. Duns Scotus;
Seeberg, Die Theologie des Duns Scotus; Kahl, Die Lehre vom Primat
des Willens bei Augustinus} Duns Scotus und Descartes.
The thinking of Duns Scotus is based on the following pre-
suppositions : The dogmas are beyond dispute ; faith is the basis
of the highest truth; love is the fundamental
Rnowled e yirtue ; faith and love are based on the will ; they
are the conditions of the vision of God ; hence, the
will is superior to the intellect. He agrees with Thomas that
there can be no conflict between the truths of faith and the
truths of reason ; and he, too, makes use of philosophical knowl-
edge in support of his own theories and in criticism of those of
his opponents. In his opinion, also, reason is incapable of ex-
JOHN DUNS SCOTUS 209
plaining the mysteries of religion and should be supplemented
by faith. But Duns Scotus goes farther than Aquinas in nar-
rowing the sphere of reason ; his mathematical studies had taught
him what real demonstration meant, and he did not consider
propositions pertaining to divine nature, divine purpose,
divine prescience and predestination, the immortality of the
soul, and the like, susceptible of rational demonstration or
the arguments for them valid. Here, he held, faith alone can
give us certainty; it does not entirely exclude doubt, but
it does exclude convincing doubts. The aim of theology is not
to reveal the plan of salvation; its aim is practical, not theo-
retical. Without a revealed doctrine, with which theology con-
cerns itself, we could not know the purpose of God with respect
to man ; no science can tell us that. Theology has its own prin-
ciples and the highest object (God) ; hence, it takes precedence
over all the sciences. Philosophy, too, has its own principles
and is an independent science; it is, in no way, subordinate to
theology. In this teaching a clean separation is made between
revealed theology and philosophy, which, consistently adhered
to, leads to the emancipation of philosophy from its servitude
to theology. Duns Scotus made the separation in the interest
of faith, but in doing so he opened the way for the liberation
of philosophy. He was so thoroughly convinced of the truth of
revealed theology that he feared no danger from thought;
reason, if properly employed, was bound, in his opinion, to be
in harmony with religion ; although it could not demonstrate the
dogmas, it could, at least, not disprove them. For thinkers
less firm of faith than Scotus, there were other possibilities:
reason might reach results conflicting with the dogma, in which
case they could either accept or pretend to accept both reason
and faith or abandon the dogma. Every one of these alterna-
tives was chosen.
In his doctrine of universals Duns Scotus largely follows the
theory of his time, which Thomas, too, had accepted. Universals
exist before things, as forms in the mind of God;
in things, as their essence or general nature; and
after things, as abstract concepts in our minds.
Universals are not mere ideas; conceptual knowledge is real
or has a real object; otherwise all science would be reducod to
210 PHILOSOPHY OF THE MIDDLE AGES
mere logic. The principle that governs our philosopher is that
thought and reality agree, that logical notions and distinctions
are not mere acts of thought, but have a reality corresponding
to them; it is not necessary, however, that the correspondence
between knowledge and objects be one of identity, that the one
should be the copy of the other. We could not think at all if
we did not begin with particular objects; yet, starting as we
do, we think in universal terms. And we distinguish logically
between the genus and the species ; the genus necessarily implies
the species and a species necessarily implies individuals. Every
individual differs from other individuals of the same species ;
there is an individual difference differentiating individuals from
one another, as there is a specific difference differentiating
species. We can go no further, we cannot divide the individual :
every individual or particular thing is an indivisible unity,
it is the ultimate reality, the last form to which no other can
be added. The individual difference is what constitutes this
particular individual; just as the species is the genus plus the
specific difference, so the individual is the species plus the
individual difference. The universal nature or essence or what-
ness (quidditas) is here supplemented by the individual nature,
by thisness (htecceitas, as later followers expressed it). Just
as man proceeds (logically) from animal by the addition
of the specific difference, humanity, to life, so Socrates
comes from man by the addition to the universal and specific
essence, of the individual character (Socratitas) . This indi-
vidual difference, Duns Scotus declares, is the principle of indi-
viduation, and not matter, as Thomas had taught. The par-
ticular thing is what it is, not because of the matter in it, — if
that were so, the members of the same species would all be the
same, — it is what it is because of its individualized nature, its
individuality. This difference is not a thing (res), nor is it
merely a logical distinction. It is not a separate entity added
to the general characteristics of objects, but a quality or form
or character going with these general characteristics, — inherent
or immanent in them.
By analyzing universals or general concepts we finally reach
individuals; but we can also pass upward until we come to
the most universal concepts, the highest of which is being (ens),
JOHN DUNS SCOTUS 211
which transcends all others, for we can predicate it of everything
else. Besides this, there are other transcendent concepts; they
are the most general predicates which we can apply to things:
unity, goodness, truth; identity and diversity; contingency and
necessity; actuality and potentiality, etc.
With Thomas, Duns Scotus holds that we can infer the
existence of God only from his works or a posteriori, — the
proof is potential in every created spirit, one
that every reason can make actual, — but that
divine omnipotence or creation out of nothing cannot be
proved. God is pure form or energy or actuality; everything
in him is explicit, nothing merely potential, otherwise he
would not be perfect and absolutely spiritual. In God knowl-
edge is a living intuition of everything real and possible, an
explicit actuality. From the fact of the world we infer a first
cause to which it is a necessity of thought to ascribe conscious
knowledge and purpose. We cannot, however, deduce a priori
God's intelligence from his divine nature or being. Only such
arguments as are based on a posteriori reasoning have rational
certainty ; all other forms of speculation followed by the school-
men of his day Duns rejects. For the same reasons we can
ascribe will to God ; he wills himself absolutely, his will is
infinite : in a single act he can will everything possible to him,
and he is absolutely free to will or not to will. This is incon-
ceivable to human reason, but it is a Christian conception. God
willed the world and must have willed it eternally, otherwise
there would have been a time in which he did not will it, which
would imply change and imperfection in God.
Everything else in creation is a union of form and matter,
actuality and potentiality; all created spirits, the angels in-
cluded, and the human soul, have matter as well as form. (This
doctrine was one of the points of dispute between the Scotists
and the Thomists.) What Scotus means is that potentiality
implies materiality of some sort, that only the actual or realized
spirit (God) is pure. We can conceive of matter (materia
prima) as the nature common to all things.
The psychology of Duns Scotus, like the rest of his philosophy,
shows many points of agreement with Thomas's. Form and
matter, soul and body, however, constitute a substantial unity
212 PHILOSOPHY OF THE MIDDLE AGES
in man. But the soul itself, as we have just stated, is a union
of form and matter; and the body, too, as the particular body
of a particular soul, has its form. Duns also holds
that the different powers of the soul are distin-
guished from the essence of the soul and from one another
formally, not really: there is one soul with different powers, or
functions as we should say. Another difference became the
ground of controversy between Thomists and Scotists. Al-
though Thomas recognizes the importance of the will in the
economy of the soul, the intellect takes precedence in his system
over the will; as the most abstract and simple function, it is
the higher faculty, the distinguishing mark of the rational be-
ing; it determines the will with respect to the highest good,
as we have seen. With Duns Scotus the will is superior to the
intellect. The will would cease to be will if it were necessarily
determined by knowledge. It has power of assent (velle) and
denial (nolle). Imagination and intelligence are the inevitable
preconditions (causce sine quibus non) of acts of will, but not
the determining causes: the will can decide in favor of
temptations of sense or in favor of the moral law, the prin-
ciples of morality (syntercsis) ; it is a free will (liberum
arbitrium).
If this is so, then the will can, without the aid of divine grace,
act in accordance with the demands of natural morality. Duns
accepts this conclusion, but points out that eternal life cannot
be won without faith, hope, and love, which are gifts of grace,
and which enable the will to perform the acts demanded by God.
For Thomas eternal blessedness consists in the contemplation
of God; for Scotus it is centered in an act of will, in that func-
tion in which we are directly united with God, and that is love,
which is an act of will. The vision of God is the material cause,
or condition, of blessedness. The purpose of knowledge is will;
will or love is an end in itself. Thomas says, if we had our
choice between intellect without will and will without intellect,
we should choose the former; Scotus says we should choose the
latter. The will is the higher, nobler, more worthy faculty of
the soul, it is absolutely free in its action and not determined by
the idea of the good ; it chooses the good freely.
Duns Scotus applies these thoughts to his notion of God. In
JOHN DUNS SCOTUS 213
God, too, the will is superior to the intellect, he is not deter-
mined by his reason. Hence, we cannot know his
purposes and understand his acts by rational de-
ductions from principles. It was not necessary
for him to create a world, and he could have created a different
one from this if he had so willed. Nor is he bound by the order
he has established; he can change it, at will, without incurring
guilt. Whatever he wills and establishes is right (lex recta).
The universe, therefore, is not rational in the sense of being
the necessary outcome of rational thought; if it were, we could
reason the whole thing out ourselves, think the thoughts of God
after him, as it were.
Similarly, the divine commandments which concern our life
in the world and our relations with one another are not neces-
sary commandments : God does not command us to act in certain
ways because the rules are self-evident to reason or necessary;
no, they are necessary because God prescribes them. He could
have made a society in which murder and polygamy and the
violation of property rights would not be wrong. We cannot
deduce these laws from an absolute moral law, we cannot derive
them from the command of brotherly love, because they do not
follow necessarily from it, and, besides, the law of love is not
a law of nature; nor can we prove that the love of God is a
law of nature. Duns does, however, regard certain laws of the
Decalogue, the first four commandments, as necessary. In prin-
ciple, this, of course, amounts to an abandonment of the entire
theory of the arbitrary will, for if God is bound by necessary
laws in any case, he is not absolutely free. Scotus justifies the
exception in this way: That man should have no other gods
but God, that he should not take his name in vain, that he
should worship him, are self-evident laws ; they follow from God 's
love of himself, and God must love himself ; they are not merely
the commands of an arbitrary will.
Since God is omnipotent, his decrees must be fulfilled. Among
his irrevocable decrees are the reward of the good and the pun-
ishment of the wicked. But who in particular is to be rewarded,
who punished, is not settled. Here we are dealing with par-
ticular decisions, not general laws, and, in these cases, God may
change his mind, will otherwise, since he is absolutely free. The
214 PHILOSOPHY OF THE MIDDLE AGES
divine will is absolutely just because what it wills is absolutely
just.
Among the pupils of Duns Scotus are John de Bassolis, Antonius
Andrese (+1320), Francis de Mayronis (+1325), and Walter Burleigh
(+1337).
.-
33. NOMINALISM
Thomas and Scotus both limited the sphere of provable truth.
Doctrines which had been regarded as demonstrable by school-
men before them, were relegated to the domain
Rational Of authority and faith. Scotus went even farther
Universal ^an Thomas in this direction, as we have seen ; he
not only circumscribed the boundaries of phi-
losophy, but subjected the arguments which had been offered in
support of Christian dogma and natural theology to a searching
and destructive criticism. We find him exercising a strict cen-
sorship over the intellectual activities of the schoolmen, distin-
guishing carefully between what is valid and what is invalid in
their reasonings, and keeping thought within what appeared to
him its legitimate bounds. He does not lack confidence in
human reason ; indeed, he has an abiding faith in it and employs
the methods of logic in theology as well as in philosophy. But
he clearly understands that the articles of faith, though capable
of rational treatment when once we are in possession of them
(through revelation), cannot be acquired and demonstrated by
the unaided natural reason.
This view suggested to some thinkers a further and more
radical advance: they simply wiped the field of provable theo-
logical truth from the scholastic map. Nothing in theology can
be demonstrated, they held ; theology is not a science at all, the
dogmas are not only incapable of proof, they cannot even be
rendered intelligible. Instead of endeavoring to rationalize
them, we should obediently believe them; though there may be
neither rhyme nor reason in them, they are true nevertheless;
it is meritorious to believe what cannot be demonstrated.
Another line of thought was suggested by the realistic teach-
ings of Thomas and Scotus. If the particular object is, as
Scotus says, the " ultimate reality," if individuality consists
NOMINALISM 215
not merely of accidental characteristics, but is the final realiza-
tion of the universal, then the particular object is the true and
the most real reality and, for us, the only object of scientific
study. And such a study reveals the fact, so it was argued,
that general concepts or universals are not real in the scholastic
sense at all, but mere abstractions of the thinking mind, mere
ways of expressing qualities which are common to many par-
ticular things. Here we have the revival of a doctrine which
appeared at the threshold of scholasticism (Roscelin), and which
also marks its end: nominalism.
Among those who drew these conclusions and laid the foundations
for a new nominalistic philosophy are the Franciscan Peter Aureoli
(+1321) and the Dominican William Durand (+1332), once a fol-
lower of Thomas. The great leader of the movement, however, called
by his followers the " venerable inceptor " and " invincible doctor,"
was the English Franciscan, William of Occam, or Ockam (born about
1280). He was probably a pupil of Duns Scotus at Oxford, and it
is certain that he taught at Paris for a few years. In the conflict which
was raging in his day between Church and State, he sided with the
nationalists and enjoyed the protection of Louis of Bavaria, at whose
court he died in 1347.
Among his books are four books of Sentences; Summa totius logices;
Quodlibeta septem; Centiloquium theologicum; and works on the Power
of the State and the Church.
Lowe, Der Kampf zwischen dem Realismus und Nominalismus, etc.;
Schreiber, Die politischen und religiosen Doktrinen unter Ludwig dem
Baier.
According to William of Occam, only particulars exist and
all our knowledge begins with particulars. Hence follows the
importance of what he calls intuition, or percep-
tion, through which we become aware of the exist-
ence of a thing and which we express in judgment
(actus intellectus). We abstract from the particular objects
the qualities common to them, and so form concepts or uni-
versals. We have no special faculty of the mind, or intellect,
for this; we naturally abstract when two similar objects are
presented to us. Such universals, however, exist merely as ideas
or thoughts in the mind, and are expressed in words or conven-
tional signs: they signify many particular similar things. Sci-
ence, therefore, is wholly concerned with signs or termini (the
term = the word plus its meaning) . This does not mean, how-
216 PHILOSOPHY OF THE MIDDLE AGES
ever, that our judgments are concerned with ideas only; they
are always concerned with things.
Universals, consequently, have no existence outside the mind,
they do not exist in things; to assume it, as the realists do, is
to make entities of abstractions, or to hypostatize ideas, and
will, besides, involve us in all kinds of absurdities. Entia non
multiplicanda prceter necessitate™, (" Occam's Razor ") : enti-
ties or principles should not be unnecessarily multiplied, Wil-
liam says, — a thought already expressed by Peter Aureoli. Nor
do universals exist, in the mind of God, as substances or entities ;
they are the knowledge which he has of things; like ourselves,
he has knowledge of particular things, which alone have real
existence.
Intuitive knowledge includes, besides sense-perception, a
knowledge of our own inner states, — " intellections, acts of will,
joy, sorrow/' — which is more certain than sense-perception.
We do not, however, gain a knowledge of the nature of the soul
in this way, but merely observe its activities. In addition to
such direct knowledge we have, also, what Occam calls " ab-
stractive " knowledge, by which he means the knowledge we
acquire by deductive reasoning or the syllogism, and which is
necessarily true. The principles forming the basis of our argu-
ments, however, are derived from experience by induction. Ex-
perience, then, is the source of our knowledge, and all knowl-
edge that transcends experience is a mere matter of faith. It
is impossible to demonstrate the existence of God either onto-
logically (Anselm) or from experience. Even the latter method
does not yield more than probability, as all the principles which
it employs, such as the notion of the impossibility of an infinite
regressus, are unproved assumptions. Still, the existence of God
is probable on rational grounds, whereas the articles of faith
cannot be rendered intelligible to reason. It is impossible to
rationalize the Christian dogmas ; all we can do is to believe
them. Hence, there is no such thing as a science of theology;
we are wholly dependent on revelation for the certainty of the
truths of religion. Philosophy and theology do not play into
each other's hands.
God is an omnipotent being, bound by no law, free in thought,
will, and action. He could have established other rules of mo-
NOMINALISM 217
rality than those which have been prescribed: there is nothing
self-evident about them, they are binding on us only because
he has willed them. In us, as in him, the will is superior to the
intellect.
We find in these views the abandonment of the fundamental
principles from which scholasticism had started out. The goal
had been the rationalization of the Christian faith,
the union of philosophy and theology. It is now Nominalism
declared that the undertaking is not only presump-
tuous, but futile, that scholastic theology is a
pseudo-science, that the entire contents of faith are inaccessible
to reason. The pious Franciscan who promulgated these
thoughts, and those who accepted his teachings as a whole, held
all the more obstinately to their faith in the wreck of theology,
but men of different temperament refused to give up the at-
tempt to rationalize their universe. The battle between the
Thomists and Scotists was now transformed into one between
realists and nominalists, and was carried on with extreme bit-
terness. The University of Paris prohibited the use of William
of Occam's books in 1339, and rejected nominalism in 1340; more
than a century later (1473), all the teachers at the University
were bound by oath to teach realism. Other universities, how-
ever, were established, in which the nominalists found ample
opportunity to express their opinions: Prague in 1348, Vienna
in 1365, Heidelberg in 1386, Cologne in 1388; and the contro-
versy lasted over a hundred years.
Among the followers of Occam are: John Buridan (died c. 1350),
who discussed the freedom of the will; Albert of Saxony (-f!340), who
wrote on logic and physics; Robert Holcot (+1349); Gregory of
Rimini (+1358); Nicolas d'Oresme (+1382); Marsilius of Inghen
(+1392); Heinrich Hembucht (+1397); and Gabriel Biel (+1495),
who gave a systematic exposition of William's teachings and is called
the " last of the schoolmen."
Pierre d'Ailly (+1425) regarded inner perception as more certain
than sense-perception and recognized the scientific certainty of de-
ductive reasoning, based on the principle of contradiction, such rea-
soning as is employed in mathematics. Robert Holcot insisted on the
consistent development of philosophical thought, regardless of its
consequences for the dogma. Nicolas of Autrecourt criticised the no-
tion of causality and, opposing Aristotle, accepted the atomistic theory
and the doctrine of the eternal recurrence of worlds. John Gerson
(1363-1429) based his mysticism on nominalistic premises, and em-
218 PHILOSOPHY OF THE MIDDLE AGES
phasized the importance of revelation, penitence, and faith as means
of knowledge. Raymond of Sabunde attempted to reconcile nature
and revelation, or to prove the doctrines of Christianity by reference to
the divine revelation in nature.
34. MYSTICISM
We have frequently shown, in considering the different tend-
encies characteristic of the Middle Ages, how mysticism accom-
panied scholasticism as a shadow. Many minds
Orthodox refused to be satisfied with a science of God that
Mystics™ brought them no nearer to God ; a theology meant
nothing to them that could not give them personal
experiences in which they might come into communion with
divine being. The current of theological thought in the four-
teenth century was altogether favorable to this religious move-
ment : the more impotent reason became to grasp and explain the
mysteries of religion, the greater emphasis could be laid on
feeling and will.
During the fourteenth century we find two branches of mys-
ticism, a Latin mysticism, which is submissive to the Church
and follows the path marked out by the Victorines and Bonaven-
tura ; and Germanic mysticism, which assumes a more independ-
ent attitude toward the doctrines and government of the Church.
To the former branch belong Pierre d'Ailly (1350-1425), his
pupil John Gerson (1363-1429), and Raymond of Sabunde, who
wrote Theologia naturalis sive liber creaturarum (c. 1434). The
Germanic school includes Eckhart or Eckehart (1260-1327) ;
Heinrich Seuse or Suso (1300-1366) ; Johannes Tauler (1300-
1361) ; the anonymous author of the German Theology; and the
Dutch mystics: Jan van Ruysbroek (1293-1381); Gerhard de
Groot ( + 1384) ; the Brothers of the Common Life; and Thomas
a Kempis (Thomas Hamerken of Kempen, 1380-1471), the cele-
brated author of the Imitation of Christ.
See the works on the Mystics and Mysticism mentioned on p. 177;
also Pfeiffer, Deutsche Mystiker des XIV. Jahrhunderts (contains the
works of Eckhart and his predecessors). Eckhart's writings and ser-
mons, edited by Biittner. See A. Lasson, Meister Eckhart; also Las-
son's excellent account of Eckhart in Ueberweg-Heinze, op. cit., § 38.
For bibliography on German Mystics see Ueberweg-Heinze, ib.
MYSTICISM 219
The greatest figure in the whole movement is Meister Eckhart,
who was a Dominican teacher and died in the prison of his
order. Although the Thomistic system forms the
metaphysical groundwork of his mysticism, Neo- Eckhart
platonic elements, which had their source in the
writings of the pseudo-Dionysius, are strongly marked. In his
Latin writings Eckhart presents his views in more technical
form and in connection with scholastic tradition, while in his
German sermons and tracts he gives a more personal, emo-
tional, and popular treatment. It was through the latter, in
which the ethical and psychological teachings are strongly em-
phasized, that he exercised his great influence; his significance
appears, as Lasson has said, when he is appealing to the congre-
gation and not to the School. His interest, however, is always
speculative; he does not, like most mystics of the fourteenth
century, lay chief stress on the mystical absorption in God, but
offers a rational interpretation of the whole Christian scheme
of life. His mysticism is an intellectual mysticism.
With Neoplatonism, Eckhart regards Deity as an inconceiv-
able, indefinable spiritual substance, as a limitless potency in
which all things are united. The beginning and the end is the
hidden darkness of the eternal Godhead, unknown even to itself.
Conceived in this transcendent sense, as the inexpressible being,
God cannot reveal himself; he becomes manifest only in the
Trinity. In an eternal process the three persons flow out of,
and back into, the divine nature. The Deity can become God
only by thinking himself, and in order to think himself he needs
the Trinity and the world. God must know himself, act and
communicate himself, and will the good. All this Eckhart con-
ceives as a timeless changeless process; he applies human cate-
gories to the Absolute, and then withdraws them again as un-
suitable to a transcendent being.
The Absolute is the ground of the world; in him dwells the
system of eternal ideas, as the work of art in the mind of the
artist. The world is an eternal creation. God was not God until
ideas were; in this sense all things are in God, and God in all
things. The finite mind perceives plurality; the timeless and
spaceless mind sees all things whole: in God's mind everything
is an eternal now. In order to avoid pantheism, Eckhart dis-
220 PHILOSOPHY OF THE MIDDLE AGES
tinguishes from the unified ideal world a world of creatures,
a copy of the other, a temporal world created out of nothing;
it is the overflow of the divine essence, as it were, and yet
contained in the divine essence; it is in God and yet not
identical with God, its imperfections do not touch him. God can-
not be conceived without creatures; he can no more do without
them than they without him. In the soul of man, however, he
finds his true rest.
Knowledge is the highest function of the soul ; and the high-
est stage of this knowledge is superrational. It is a supernatural
contemplation, transcending space and time; seeking to become
one with its object, God, it rises beyond the plural, the temporal,
and the external. The soul is able to accomplish this by means
of a divine ' ' uncreated spark ; "its union with the divine mind
is not our own act, but the act of God in us. The whole proc-
ess of knowledge is an ascent from particulars to unity ; it does
not stop until it has passed beyond all differences and has entered
" the silent desert into which no difference has ever penetrated,
which is immovable and supreme over all oppositions and
divisions. ' '
Morality consists in bringing the soul back to God. In order
to realize the purpose, man must negate his individuality, which,
after all, is a mere accident, a nothing: " put off the nothing,
and all creatures are one." " Whoever would see God must
be dead to himself and buried in God, in the unrevealed desert
Godhead, to become again what he was before he was." " The
highest degree of self-estrangement is poverty. He is poor who
knows nothing, desires nothing, and has nothing. So long as a
man still has the will to do God 's will or craves God or eternity
or any particular things whatsoever, he is not yet quite poor,
and not yet quite perfect." " Act for the sake of acting, love
for the sake of loving ; and even if there were no heaven or hell,
love God for his goodness." " Morality consists not in doing,
but in being." Love is the principle of all virtues, it strives
for the good, it is nothing but God himself. Salvation does not
depend on outward forms of conduct like fasting and mortifying
the flesh. Only the spirit in which the deed is done is good;
hence all virtues are one, there are no degrees of virtue. The
right act will follow from the right principle. So long as you
THE PROGRESS OF FREE THOUGHT 221
can do anything that is contrary to God's will, you do not yet
possess the love of God. It is not to be understood that a person
should spend all his time in contemplation ; mere contemplation
would be selfishness. If any one, in a state of ecstasy, knew of
a poor man needing relief, it would be far better for him to put
an end to his ecstasy and serve his needy brother.
Through grace man becomes reunited with God. By becom-
ing an individual I give God his goodness and am constantly
giving it to him, for I am making it possible for him to commu-
nicate himself. God cannot know himself without the soul;
in so far as I am immanent in the essence of Deity, he performs
his works through me; and everything that is an object of his
understanding, that am I. In returning to God, I become one
with God again; God has become man in order that I may
become God.
The followers of Eckhart neglected the speculative side of mysticism,
in which he was particularly interested, and emphasized the practical
religious side. The substance of Eckhart's mysticism is reproduced
in a book, composed in Frankfurt on the Main, and later discovered
by Luther, who published it under the title A German Theology (Eine
deutsche Theologie). It made a deep impression upon the great re-
former.
35. THE PROGRESS OF FREE THOUGHT
It was the mission of the Middle Ages to prepare the new
peoples for the reception and continuation of classical Chris-
tian civilization. The task was undertaken by the
Church, who acted as the spiritual ward of these Rationalism
peoples. But it inevitably came to pass that the
child should grow into manhood and that the days of tutelag*
should end. This time had now arrived, and we enter upon a
new phase of the history of philosophy. It must not be sup-
posed, however, that there was a sudden break, — such breaks
rarely occur in history, — the new period was simply the outcome
of a long process of evolution and carried over from the past
many of the characteristics of that past. Scholasticism itself
had been the result of a yearning for rational insight, of a desire
to understand and find reasons for what it believed. It repre-
sented the same spirit of reflection and inquiry which had led
222 PHILOSOPHY OF THE MIDDLE AGES
to the construction of great metaphysical systems in the golden
age of Greek thought. It is true, the goal of its search was
fixed by faith : philosophy served as its handmaiden ; but within
its circumscribed bounds human reason had a fairly free swing.
The attitude of the Middle Ages toward rational knowledge is
by no means the same as that of the early Christians. Primitive
Christianity did not glorify the intellectual achievements of man
or expect to enter the kingdom of heaven through the portals of
speculative reason. " Where is the wise? where is the scribe?
where is the disputer of this world? " St. Paul asks, " hath
not God made foolish the wisdom of this world ? For after that
in the wisdom of God, the world by wisdom knew not God, it
pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that
believe." This is not the spirit of the scholastic Middle Ages.
The Fathers and the doctors of the Church are eager to under-
stand, they are bent on rationalizing their faith; they desire
to know God by wisdom. They did not study the world as
we study it, they did not pursue truth in the independent man-
ner of the Greeks, but that was because they were so thoroughly
convinced of the absolute truth of their premises, the doctrines
of the faith. These were their facts, with these they whetted
their intellects, these they sought to weld into a system. Their
interest lay in a transcendent world and in the relation of our
earthly life to the spiritual kingdom ; the occurrences of nature
left them cold except in so far as they saw in them the workings
of the divine plan. What cared they for petty details so long
as they understood the really valuable transcendent truths?
The Church did not oppose scientific studies as such ; it was con-
vinced that no facts could be discovered which would not prove,
the great and fundamental truths, and so it brushed them aside.
It must also be remembered that the spirit of independence;
and opposition to authority was never entirely extinguished,
though it lay smoldering for a long time. It mani-
Nationalism fested itself in the political sphere in the struggle:?
of Church and State, which began early and wen;
carried on with fierceness on both sides. The victory passed
from popes to emperors and kings and back again. The reign
of Gregory VII (1077) marks a triumph for the Church: Henry
IV of Germany goes to Canossa to do penance and to pay homagj
THE PROGRESS OF FREE THOUGHT 223
to the Pope. The power of the Church reached its climax dur-
ing the papacy of Innocent III (1198-1216) ; but from that
time on it declined. Philip IV of France (1285-1314) met with
success in his war with Pope Boniface VIII and caused the
removal of the Papal See to Avignon, where it remained from
1309 to 1376. It was during this period that nominalism and
German mysticism, two independent movements, made such
headway. The great schism in the Papacy lasted from 1378 to
1415; during these years two popes ruled; at one time three.
The Babylonian captivity at Avignon and the schism were ter-
rible catastrophes to the Church; how could she claim either
temporal or spiritual supremacy when she was divided against
herself? The unfortunate situation suggested to the University
of Paris the idea of a national Church; if the world could go
on with two popes, why might not each nation have its own
primate? Objection was also raised to the absolutism of the
Pope within the Church itself, and the demand made that since
the Church is superior to the Pope, he ought to be subordinate
to a Council.
Here we have the struggle between nationalism and ecclesias-
ticism and between democracy and absolutism. Back in the
twelfth century Arnold of Brescia had opposed the temporal
power of the Church and established a republic in Rome, but
it was short-lived and Arnold died on the scaffold (1155). At
first the church writers side with the Church, but gradually
opposition arises within her ranks against the temporal power
of the Roman See.
Among those favoring Church supremacy were nearly all the old
orthodox schoolmen, and, during the fourteenth century, Augustinus
Triumphus (+1328) and Alvarus Pelagius (+1352). Dante (12G5-
1321), in his De monarchia, favors the supremacy of the Emperor in
worldly affairs, and of the Pope in spiritual affairs. Joachim of
Floris, William of Occam (+1347), Wyclif (1327-1384), and Mar-
silius of Padua (+1343), all oppose the temporal power of the Church.
Marsilius teaches an imperialistic theory of the State, the doctrine
of popular sovereignty, and the contract theory.
Lecky, History of the Rise of Rationalism in Europe, chap, v; E.
Jenks, Law and Politics in the Middle Ages; Gierke, Political Theories
of the Middle Age, transl. by Maitland; Bryce, Holy Roman Empire}
Robertson, Regnum Dei; Troeltsch, Die Soziallehren der christlichen
Kirchen.
224 PHILOSOPHY OF THE MIDDLE AGES
It must also be remembered that the heretical tendencies
which began with the attempt to make a platform for Chris-
tianity never disappeared. We have had occasion,
Tendencies *n Bracing the evolution of the dogma, to speak
of numerous sects whose teachings were antagonis-
tic to orthodox doctrines. Marcion (c. 130), an extreme adher-
ent of the Pauline faction of the new religion, who condemned
everything Jewish and Petrinic, became the father of a move-
ment that continued in some form or other for centuries. We
find the descendants of the Marcionites, the Paulicians, in
Armenia and Asia Minor from the fifth century onwards; the
Bogomils in Bulgaria from the tenth on. In the eleventh cen-
tury, a sect called Cathars or Cathari, with similar teachings,
appeared in Southern France. For centuries the Church waged
a relentless war against the Albigenses, as this sect came to be
named, and with the aid of the terrible Inquisition succeeded
in destroying it, root and branch. In the twelfth century a
similar sect arose in Northern Italy, the Waldenses, founded by
Peter Waldo in 1170, which, under the name of the Vaudois,
is in existence to-day. Waldo emphasized the doctrine of justi-
fication by faith, preached repentance, favored sermons rather
than ritual, opposed the confessional, dispensations, relics, wor-
ship of saints, and transubstantiation. He made the Bible the
criterion of faith, and had the New Testament translated for
general study.
In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries we have the great
reform movements inaugurated by Wyclif (1327-1384) in Eng-
land and continued by John Huss (1369-1415) in Bohemia.
Wyclif opposed the church system, saint-worship, celibacy of
the clergy, monasticism, the mass, transubstantiation, hier-
archical government, the primacy of the Pope ; he demanded a
return to the original congregational organization and the inde-
pendence of Church and State. With the desire for religious
reform came a desire for political and social reforms: Wat
Tyler in England and Thomas Miinzer in Germany become the
leaders of social revolution.
Signs of a similar independence of thought are found in
those who refuse to accept the orthodox philosophy. We have
already spoken of the pantheism of Scotus Erigena, which was
THE PROGRESS OF FREE THOUGHT 225
anathema to the Church, and of the pantheists Joachim of Floris,
Simon of Tournay, Amalric of Bennes, and David of Dinant,
who exhibited a remarkable freedom in their think-
ing. The pious mystics of St. Victor shake the
very foundations of scholasticism in denying
the possibility of a union of reason and faith, science and
religion. Even among the regular schoolmen we find liberal
tendencies in the twelfth century. The fact is when men begin
to think, they are apt, in spite of their orthodoxy, to run coun-
ter to the prescribed doctrine now and then. Anselm, whose
sole aim was to rationalize the faith, comes dangerously near,
at times, to contradicting the dogmas of the Church, as Augus-
tine and Scotus Erigena had done before him. Roscelin's re-
flections on universals landed him in an out-and-out heresy. The
entire life of Abelard impresses one as a conflict between intel-
lectual integrity and loyalty to the Church. Sparks of the
spirit of independence are visible in the writings of Bernard
of Chartres, William of Conches, Gilbert of Poiree, and John
of Salisbury, all bishops of the Church; and the discussions in
Peter the Lombard's Summa betray an intellectual curiosity
which augured well for the future of thought. Many of the
questions which the thinkers of the age considered with all seri-
ousness, seem barren and foolish to us, but that is because our
outlook on life has changed ; considered in connection with their
medieval religious background, they represent the workings of
the inquiring mind.
The thirteenth century turns from Platonic realism to Aris-
totelian realism. The interest which the age showed in Aristotle
was itself a sign of freedom of thought. Aristotle was a pagan,
and, besides, the knowledge of his writings had come to the
Western world from the " infidel " Arabians. The Church,
quite naturally, at first condemned his philosophy, but soon
adapted it to its needs, and made it the official ecclesiastical
system. The new world-view helped to strengthen the bonds of
union between reason and faith, which were being loosened at
the beginning of the thirteenth century. In this respect, it
is true, Aristotelianism served as an antidote to the liberal
tendencies of the age and stemmed the tide of free thought. At
the same time, it contained within itself elements that proved
226 PHILOSOPHY OF THE MIDDLE AGES
dangerous to scholasticism and encouraged the spirit of inde-
pendence. By placing a heathen philosopher on so high a
pedestal, the Church widened the intellectual horizon of men
and increased their respect for the achievements of antiquity.
The Aristotelian system also helped to arouse an interest in the
study of nature, and this in time proved to be a great stimulus
to free inquiry. It formed the bridge from Platonic realism
to nominalism and thus to modern science. Aristotle's phi-
losophy was naturalistic, Christian thought supernaturalistic ;
and although Thomas Aquinas attempted to supplement Aris-
totle's world- view by the introduction of supernaturalism, the
contradiction between the two lines of thought was there. And
when the contradiction was brought out, as it had to be brought
out sooner or later, the great respect in which Aristotle had
come to be held made his heterodox theories palatable.
Aristotle's philosophy, therefore, was a Greek gift after all,
and led to the dissolution of scholasticism. St. Thomas builds
on Aristotle and constructs a system that is satisfactory to the
Church. But Duns Scotus, too, who was not made a saint,
believes that he is carrying out the Aristotelian thought in
opposing the rationalistic, realistic, and deterministic concep-
tions of Thomas. By emphasizing the reality of particulars, as
he did, he tacitly assumed the importance of the particular
human being and the worth of the individual conscience. His
doctrines also paved the way for empiricism and nominalism.
If God is not determined by his reason to create the world,
then the laws of nature are not necessary, and cannot be deduced
by reason from the reason of God. Things are what they are
because God made them so ; they might have been otherwise and
may change whenever God so wills it. Hence, in order to know
what nature is and how nature acts, we must observe nature;
experience is the source of our knowledge. Moreover, if par-
ticulars are the ultimate realities, how else can we know them
except empirically?
William of Occam boldly developed certain implications of
the Scotian teaching and attacked the very foundations of
scholastic thought. If universals are not real, they are mere
words ; if theology is a barren science, let the Church cast it
off. Faith should take the place of reason. Let us dissolve the
THE NEW ENLIGHTENMENT 227
Church's alliance with reason and the world, and return to the
simple belief and the democratic organization of the spiritual
Church of Apostolic times.
Mysticism had always shown a distaste for ratio, al theology.
But in spite of their anti-rationalistic leanings, the mystics of
the twelfth and thirteenth centuries remained true to the estab-
lished doctrines of the Church. In the fourteenth and fifteenth
centuries, however, they became pantheistic and nominalistic,
as we have seen, and their teachings, though offered in the inter-
ests of a spiritual religion, contributed greatly to weaken the
scholastic system and the influence of the visible Church.
PHILOSOPHY OF THE RENAISSANCE
36. THE NEW ENLIGHTENMENT
The tendencies which we have outlined, — the development of
nationalism, the heretical currents of thought, mysticism, the
antagonism to the scholastic alliance of theology
and philosophy,— are the forerunners of two great
reform movements called the Renaissance and the
Reformation. The times were beginning to find fault with the
old traditions, the old language and literature, the old art, the
old theological systems, the old political relations of Church and
State, the old authoritative religion. The spirit of reflection
and criticism, which had been silently quickening, broke out in
open revolt against authority and tradition: in the revolt of
nation against Church, of reason against prescribed truth, of
the individual against the compulsion of ecclesiastical organi-
zation. The conflict between Church and State had been settled
in favor of the State, but within both Church and State them-
selves the desire for political, economic, religious, and intellec-
tual liberty was forming. It found partial realization in the
Renaissance and Reformation; later on it expressed itself in
modern philosophy and in all the influences which are still at
work in the struggle for human liberty and enlightenment.
Slowly but surely the authority of the Church is weakened in
the field of the mind, and the individual begins to assert his
intellectual independence. Reason displaces authority in phi-
228 PHILOSOPHY OF THE MIDDLE AGES
losophy, and philosophy cuts loose from guardianship. The
notion begins to prevail that truth is something to be achieved,
something to be won by free and impartial inquiry, not some-
thing to be decreed by authority. The interest of medieval
thinkers was largely centered on supernatural things: theology
was the crown of the sciences. The new age turns its gaze from
heaven to earth, and natural science gradually pushes its way
to the front. The same independent spirit manifests itself in
religion. The individual throws off the fetters of the Church
and appeals to the Bible and conscience as his standards. He
refuses to accept a human intermediary between himself and his
God, and longs for a personal communion with the object of
his faith.
f Consult the general histories of philosophy and special works men-
tioned on pp. 4, f. ; also the bibliography on the history of modern
philosophy given on p. 252; and the following: Fischer, History of
Modern Philosophy, vol. I, Introduction, chaps, v, vi; Paulsen,
System of Ethics, pp. 126, ff. ; W. H. Hudson, The Story of the Renais-
sance; Cambridge Modern History, vol. I; Graves, History of Educa-
tion during the Middle Ages, Part II, and Petrus Ramus; Munroe,
History of Education, chap, vi; Lecky, The History of the Rise of Ra-
tionalism in Europe; A. D. White, History of the Warfare of Science
with Theology; Symonds, The Renaissance in Italy, 7 vols. ; Burck-
hardt, The Culture of the Renaissance, 2 vols., transl. by Middleman ;
Voigt, Die Wiederbelebung des klassischen Altertums, 2 vols.; Carriere,
Die Weltanschauung der Reformationszeit; Hagen, Deutschlands lit-
terarische und religiose Verhdltnisse im Reformationszeitalter; Peschl,
Geschichte des Zeitalters der Entdeckungen; Troeltsch, Soziallehren der
christlichen Kirchen.
Bibliographies in Ueberweg-Heinze, Part III, vol. I, §§ 2, ff. ;
Falckenberg, History of Modern Philosophy, pp. 15-63; and Cam-
bridge Modern History, vol. I.
When the age turned its back upon the past and yearned for
new things, two ways lay open to it: it could either create new
forms of life and art and thought or revert to
antiquity for its models. The latter course was
chosen first. Accustomed as the medieval mind had been to
authority and tradition, it was unable at once to strike out
new paths for itself. The intellectual reformers turn to classical
antiquity for inspiration; the culture of Greece and Eome is
revived or reborn (Renaissance) and humanity is rediscovered
(Humanism).
NEW PHILOSOPHIES 229
With the fifteenth century comes the awakening of the West-
ern world to an appreciation of the long neglected heritage of
classical civilization. A hundred years before, the Italian poets
Dante (1265-1321), Boccaccio (+1375), and Petrarch (+1374)
had cultivated a taste for the classics, and had used the mother-
tongue as a literary instrument. Laurentius Valla (1406-1457)
now purifies the barbarous Church Latin and makes Cicero and
Quintilian the models for Latin style. Manuel Chrysoloras
(+1415) is the first Greek to become a public teacher of the
Greek language and literature in Italy ; and his pupil Leonardus
Aretinus (+1444), the translator of Platonic and Aristotelian
works, arouses a widespread interest in Greek studies among
the Italians. In 1438 and, later, after the fall of Constantinople
(1453), Greek scholars flock to Italy, and the treasures of art
and literature which had been preserved, enjoyed, and studied
in the Eastern Empire while the Occident was steeped in
11 Gothic barbarism " are revealed to the willing pupils in the
West. Humanism finds its way into the ecclesiastical and secu-
lar courts, and spreads until even ' the universities are touched
by its influence. The Popes themselves are affected by the new
culture; Nicolas V (1447-1495) founds the Vatican Library,
Julius II (1503-1513) rebuilds the Church of St. Peter, and it
is said of Leo X (1513-1521) that he found more pleasure in
the study of the classics than in Christian theology. Interest
is aroused in human achievements; man is glorified, human
genius exalted, and human talents no longer counted as insig-
nificant or despicable, hence the honors showered upon the poets,
orators, and historians of the times. Art and architecture are
humanized, as it were : medieval art, expressive of the spirit of
world-denial, suffering, and death, gives way to the art of the
Renaissance, which is an expression of the natural joy of life.
37. NEW PHILOSOPHIES
Several features are noticeable in the philosophy of the Re-
naissance. At first the systems of the ancient Greeks are studied
and imitated. The entire scholastic method is .
attacked as barren word-wisdom and dialectical
hair-splitting, and efforts are made to introduce a new logic.
Here and there original theories are offered, but they are gen-
230 PHILOSOPHY OF THE MIDDLE AGES
erally crude and inevitably relapse into the old traditional way
of looking at things. The scholastic elements are, however,
gradually sloughed off; the ancient patterns are no longer
slavishly followed, thought becomes more independent and origi-
nal, until, at last, we reach the phase of development which is
called modern philosophy.
The first important task to be undertaken was the study of the ancient
philosophers. A Greek named Pletho came to Italy in 1438 to par-
ticipate in a council called together at Florence to discuss the union of
the Eastern and Western Churches. Persuaded by Cosmo di Medici
to remain in Italy, he established the Florentine Academy (1440) for
the purpose of teaching and defending the Platonic philosophy. The
entire body of Plato's works now for the first time became accessible
to Western scholars, and reformers were enabled to place a rival in the
field against the church philosopher Aristotle. But they interpreted
the great idealistic system, after the fashion of the entire East, as
Neoplatonism. Pletho's Hellenism was so intense that he sought to
revive the old Greek cult in an allegorized Neoplatonic form. He
wrote a work comparing the doctrines of Plato and Aristotle.
Pletho is followed in the school by Bessarion (author of a work
Against the Calumniators of Plato, 1469), who defends Plato against
his Aristotelian compatriots, Gennadius, Theodorus Gaza, Georgius of
Trebizond. His pupil Marsilius Ficinus (1433-1499), a Florentine,
who regards Plato's philosophy as the quintessence of wrisdom and the
key to Christianity, succeeds him. Marsilius edits and translates
Plato and the Neoplatonists, and writes commentaries on them. All
these thinkers are opposed to the church system of philosophy.
The only original system of thought offered in the fifteenth
century, one that does not follow the beaten track of scholasti-
cism, is that of Nicolas of Cusa (Krebs of Kues or
ofiCCusa Cusa' 1401-1464)- Nicolas was educated by the
mystical Brothers of the Common Life at Deventer,
studied mathematics, jurisprudence, and theology at Heidelberg
and Padua, and became a Bishop and Cardinal of the Church.
Like many philosophies of the Renaissance and even an earlier
period, the Cusan's world- view is a mixture of medievalism and
modern thought. It shows the influence of German mysticism,
Neoplatonism, and the Pythagorean number-theory, and oscil-
lates between pantheism and the Christian dualistic conception
of God and the world.
De docta ignorantia, 1440; De conjecturis, 1440; De pace sen con-
cordantia fidei, 1453 (a remarkable example of the spirit of religious
NEW PHILOSOPHIES 231
tolerance. See G. L. Burr, " Anent the Middle Ages," American His-
torical Beview, vol. XVIII, No. 4). Bibliography in Falckenberg,
History of Modern Philosophy, and in Uebenveg-Heinze, op. cit., Part
III, vol. I, § 7.
Nicolas shares the nominalistic view of the incompetence of
reason as a source of knowledge of God. He holds, however,
that we can have an immediate intuition of him, a ' * vision with-
out comprehension," as the mystics taught, and that this may
be reached by ecstasy. It is a state of learned ignorance (docta
ignorantia), in which discursive thought is transcended. God
is the infinite substance of all that is real in things; in him
essence and existence, potentiality and reality are one ; he is pure
and infinite actuality, absolute potentiality, absolute knowledge,
absolute will, absolute goodness. In him all contradictions are
comprehended; he is the coincidence of opposites, and cannot,
therefore, be grasped by conceptual thinking. Indeed, nega-
tions alone are true and affirmations inadequate in theology.
Nicolas is unwilling to qualify God in any way: the infinite
God can be attained only by one who knows that he is ignorant
of him.
The world is the explication of God, unity differentiated into
plurality; it is the copy of God, an animated whole, in every
part of which he is present in the fullness of his power. He
is the maximum in that he is unlimited and embraces all things ;
he is the minimum in so far as he is present in every particular
thing. In this sense, " each actual thing is a contraction of
all things," God being potential in it. All this is thorough-
going pantheism. But left as it stands, it would be pure heresy,
and Nicolas tries to square his theory with orthodox dualism
by conceiving the world as different from God: the essence of
things is not the same as the divine essence; they are finite
and do not completely realize the divine ideas; they are con-
tingent and do not follow necessarily from God's being.
Other thinkers were becoming acquainted with the real Aristotle
and beginning to note the differences between him and the scholastio
conception of him, which had been influenced by the The True
Neoplatonic interpretations of the Arabians. The Aristotle
Aristotelians split into two parties, some following
Averroes, others Alexander of Aphrodisias, in the interpretation of the
Peripatetic system. In a tactful way they antagonized the Aristotle
232 PHILOSOPHY OF THE MIDDLE AGES
of the Church. Thus, Pietro Pomponazzi (1462-1524), a professor at
Padua, in his book De immortalitate animce, 1516, declares that Aris-
totle did not teach personal immortality, that such a thing is physically
impossible and morally unnecessary.
Other works of Pomponazzi: On Magic; On Fate, Free Will, etc.
See Douglas, Psychology and Philosophy of Pomponazzi.
A school of Averroists existed in Northern Italy (Padua), largely
composed of physicians and natural scientists, who interpreted Aris-
totle in the Averroistic sense, accepting the doctrine of one universal
intellect and denying the immortality of the soul. When the new
Aristotle became known, however, the school changed its position, and
followed the interpretation of Alexander of Aphrodisias.
Other representatives of Aristotelianism were Porta (+1555), Scaliger
(1484-1558), Cremonini (1552-1631), and Rudolph Agricola.
An attempt is also made to reconcile Platonism and Aristotelianism;
from the Platonic side by John Pico of Mirandola, and from the
Aristotelian side by Andreas Ca3salpinus (1519-1603). Otker thinkers
of the times seek to revive Epicureanism and Stoicism; and the latter
in its Roman form became quite popular with the educated classes.
The Spaniard Ludovieo Vives (1492-1540) opposes not only
the scholastic system, but its entire method of substituting au-
thority for experience. The nominalistic philoso-
Reform of p^y }e(j ^Q way ^0 such a view. He severely
Science and ...
Philosophy criticises scholastic sophistry and the different
sciences in his dialogue Sapiens and in his main
work, De disciplinis. Instead of confining ourselves to the study
of Aristotle in natural science, he thinks we should make inde-
pendent investigations of nature ; instead of indulging in meta-
physical speculations, we should observe the phenomena them-
selves,— experiment and reflect on them. He also recommends
an empirical study of the soul; we ought to inquire not into
the essence of the soul, but attempt to discover how it acts.
Vives also offers a metaphysic in which, as in scholasticism, the
notion of God forms the central doctrine. He shows the nomi-
nalistic influence, however, in his critical attitude with respect
to the solution of ultimate problems, placing greater value on
the ethical significance of belief in God and the immortality of
the soul than on the arguments advanced for them.
Petrus Ramus (Pierre de la Ramee, 1515-1572)', who was influ-
enced by Vives, attacks also the Aristotelian logic in his
Animadversions on Aristotle's Dialectics, 1543, accusing it of
corrupting the natural logic of the human mind, and holding
the great Greek thinker responsible for the barren dialectical
PHILOSOPHY OF NATURE 233
method current in the universities. In the Institutions of Dia-
lectics, published at the same time, he offers a new Ipgic, which
is to be an art of disputation (ars disserendi), and
shall consist in first finding a principle and then ^»e torn?
establishing its proof. In a later work he rejects
the Organon ascribed to Aristotle as spurious and calls himself
the only genuine Aristotelian. In criticising the scholastic
methods of instruction and demanding educational reform, he
is the forerunner of Bacon, Descartes, Locke, and, indeed, of
nearly all the early modern philosophers who had chafed under
the curriculum of the School. He, more than any one else,
expresses the spirit of humanism in the field of education.
38. PHILOSOPHY OF NATURE AND NATURAL SCIENCE
We have spoken in the preceding pages of the interest in
the study of nature which was beginning to manifest itself in
this age of enlightenment. The desire to unravel ^
the mysteries of the external world assumes a fan-
tastic and charlatanical form in many of the bolder spirits of
the times. Instead of employing the method of observation and
experiment, they hope, in their impatience, to force the secrets
of nature by occult means, by a special inner revelation superior
to sense-perception. To this group belong the Platonist John
Pico of Mirandola (+ 1494), his nephew Francis (+ 1533), and
Reuchlin (De verbo mirifico, 1494). They are .enthusiastic
students of the Jewish Cabala, or secret emanation-theories,
which had been studied by the Jews from the ninth century
on, and which were popularly supposed to go back to Abraham.
Others, not content with penetrating the secrets of nature in
this way, are eager to gain power over it, to compel it to do
their bidding. But regarding it, as they do, as the manifesta-
tion of occult forces, they believe it possible to control natural
phenomena by coming into communion with these spirits. They
expect to accomplish their purpose by means of secret arts and
symbols, mystic formulae of all kinds, or by discovering the hid-
den numbers in which, according to the Pythagorean teaching,
the book of nature is written. This is magic or theurgy. Since
the planets, too, are under the domination of spirits, astrology
234, PHILOSOPHY OF THE MIDDLE AGES
forms an important part of the doctrines of such lovers of the
occult. They are also deeply interested in the magical trans-
formation of metals, the art of making gold, or alchemy.
Alchemy was placed in the service of medicine, and all kinds of
secret compounds and tinctures, mixed in the most fantastic
ways, were used to cure disease. In short, the entire movement
was a search for the philosopher's stone, with the aid of which
the profoundest secrets of nature were to be fathomed and com-
plete control gained over it.
Agrippa of Nettesheim (1487-1535) and Theophrastus of Hohenheim
(1493-1541), called Paracelsus, were leading figures in this group of
wonder-men. Among later followers of Paracelsus are: R. Fludd
(+1637), John Baptista van Helmont (1577-1644), and Francis
Mercurius van Helmont (1618-1699).
The philosophical foundation of Paracelsus 's conception of
nature is Neoplatonism. Man is the microcosm, hence we can
understand the universe only by studying man, and man only
by studying the universe. Man possesses an elementary or
terrestrial or visible body, a sidereal or astral or invisible body
(the spirit), which comes from the sidereal region, and a soul,
which has its origin in God. Hence, there are three great
sciences: philosophy, astrology, and theology. These with
alchemy form the basis of the science of medicine, and the
physician should have knowledge of all of them. The so-called
four elements, earth, water, fire, air, are composed of three basal
substances, sal (the solid principle), mercury (the liquid), and
sulphur (the combustible). Each of the four elements is ruled
by elemental spirits, earth by gnomes, water by undines, air by
sylphs, and fire by salamanders. Each particular thing has an
archeus ruling it, and disease is the checking of this vital force
by opposing terrestrial and astral forces. The secret of medicine
is to support this vital force against its enemies by means of
alchemy and magic.
This fantastic conception of nature, which presents a curious
mixture of supernaturalism and naturalism, of mysticism and
science, is finely portrayed by Goethe in his Faust. In Faust
the spirit of the Renaissance is personified ; the insatiable thirst
for knowledge, the primitive methods of gaining it, the medieval
prejudices and superstitions, the ensuing skepticism, the keen
PHILOSOPHY OF NATURE 235
longing for the exuberance of life, — all these are characteristics
of the man standing at the turning-point of two eras.
There was nothing to cause astonishment in doctrines of the
kind put forth by Theophrastus and his ilk. The view of nature
as the abode of occult magic forces chimed in with the popular
beliefs. Miracles were not unusual, saint after saint performed
them during his life, and his relics exerted magic influence
after his death. And men who occupied themselves with the
hidden forces or the black arts could do wonderful things! At
the end of the fifteenth century, a theologian named Jacobus
Sprengel wrote a book on witchcraft, Malea malefica, in which
he discussed, with all seriousness and in a scientific manner, the
causes of witchcraft, its effects, and the remedies to be used
against it.
In spite of its extravagances and superstitions, this move-
ment may be said to mark progress. It is an attempt to study
and control nature, and a precursor of modern science. The
followers of the magic arts are still enamored of the occult
theories and practices of medievalism, but their faces are turned
toward the future. In the course of time the extravagant ele-
ments are stripped off, one by one; alchemy evolves into chem-
istry, astrology into astronomy, magic into experiment; and
the mystical Pythagorean number-system fosters a taste for
mathematics. It was an astrological motive that induced
Copernicus to inquire into the mathematical order of the
heavens. The longest way round is sometimes the shortest way
home.
Cf. Lecky, Rationalism; A. D. White, Warfare of Science with
Theology; Kiesewetter, Geschichte des neuern Occultismus; Rixnw and
Siber, Leben und Lehrmeinungen beruhmter Physiker, etc.; Strunz,
Paracelsus; A. Lehmann, Aberglaube und Zauberei.
In Italy we find a number of nature-philosophers who, though
not entirely free from the old superstitions, such as alchemy
and astrology, showed the true scientific spirit.
Thus Girolamo Garden, or Cardan (1501-1576), a
celebrated physician, mathematician, and scientist,
tries to explain all things naturally. There are three elements,
not four: earth, air, water; fire is not a substance at all, but an
236 PHILOSOPHY OF THE MIDDLE AGES
accident (property) produced by heat, which is produced by
motion. The world has a soul, which is identical with light and
heat.
De subtilitate rerum; De varietate rerum; De vita propria (an in-
teresting autobiography).
Bernardino Telesio (1508-1588; De rerum natura) has as his
aim the reform of natural science, which is to be independent
of Aristotle and the ancients and based on observation. Although
his philosophy far surpasses the other nature-systems of the Re-
naissance, it is not free from Greek influence; traces of the
Pre-Socratic " physiologers " and touches of the Stoic meta-
physics are noticeable in it. He uses as his principles of ex-
planation matter (which was created by God and remains con-
stant in quantity) and force, with its opposing elements, heat
and cold. Heat causes expansion and rarefaction in matter,
and is the source of all life and motion ; cold contracts and con-
denses, and is the cause of all fixity and rest. The universe owes
its existence and changes to the constant opposition between these
two principles. Even the soul (spiritus) is explained mechan-
ically and materially by Telesio; it is a fine stuff consisting of
heat, seated in the brain but diffused over the entire body by
means of the nerves. It is the principle that holds the parts
of the organism together and causes their motion. In addition
to the material soul there is an immortal soul, which is super-
added by God. In his ethics Telesio teaches that self-preservation
is the sole object of man's striving.
Telesio was the founder of a natural-scientific society at
Naples, the Telesian Academy. Francis Patrizzi (1529-1597)
combines Neoplatonism with the Telesian principles.
The interest in external nature, which so frequently, revealed
itself during the Middle Ages and assumed such curious shapes.
culminated in the scientific movement of which
Scientific Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519), Copernicus (1473-
1543), Galileo (1564-1641), Kepler (1571-1630)
and Newton (1642-1727) are the chief representatives. Her*
the occult and magic elements are completely eliminated, anc
the attempt made to explain the phenomena of nature in a per
fectly natural way. The old Aristotelian principles of explana
PHILOSOPHY OF NATURE 237
tion, forms or essences working on matter and causing it to
realize the end or purpose of the form, are discarded for the
mechanical explanation: all natural occurrences are caused by
the motion of bodies, according to fixed laws. The secret of
the planetary motions is revealed by mathematics: Kepler dis-
covers the orbits of the planets, and astrology becomes astronomy.
Robert Boyle (1627-1691) introduces the atomic theory into
chemistry and, though himself an alchemist, puts the quietus
on alchemy. This entire anti-teleological line of thought reaches
its climax in the Darwinian theory of the nineteenth century,
which seeks to explain organic forms causally and mechanically,
without appeal to vital force or purpose of any kind in the
things or outside of the things.
See the histories of natural science; also Lange, History of Material-
ism; Hoffding, Modern Philosophy, vol. I, pp. 161, ff. ; and works
by Lecky, White, Rixner and Siber cited p. 235. Bibliography in
Ueberweg-Heinze, Part III, vol. I, § 7.
Galileo was thoroughly acquainted with the theories of
Democritus, whom he considers superior to Aristotle in philo-
sophical acumen. All change he regards as nothing but change
in the relation of the parts of objects ; there is neither origin nor
decay in the strict sense, everything being the result of the move-
ment of atoms. Sensible qualities are subjective and are based on
quantitative relations; all qualities are explained by quantities.
Hence mathematics, which deals with quantitative relations, is
the highest science : ' * the book of the universe is written in
mathematical characters." Whatever we can measure we can
know ; what we cannot measure we cannot know ; we can reduce
the relations of motion to mathematical formulae, hence we can
explain occurrences in terms of motion and its laws. These
laws, which form the basis of the study of mechanics, are dis-
covered and formulated by Leonardo, Kepler, and Galileo. The
work of Galileo and Kepler establishes the Copernican or helio-
centric theory of astronomy, according to which the earth is no
longer conceived as the immovable center of the universe, but,
with all the planets, revolves around the central sun, which moves
on its axis. The Copernican theory, though at first favorably
received by the Church, was condemned as * ' pernicious to Catho-
238 PHILOSOPHY OF THE MIDDLE AGES
lie truth " and placed on the Index in 1616. Galileo was forced
to recant the Copernican theory in 1633, and remained under the
surveillance of the Inquisition until his death, 1641. With the
discovery by Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727) of the law of gravi-
tation in 1682, the theory is demonstrated : the laws which Kep-
ler discovered are found to be necessary consequences of the
law of gravitation.
Galileo rejects authority and mystical speculation in matters
of science and declares that all our universal propositions should
rest on observation and experiment. But, he says, experience
needs to be supplemented by the understanding ; induction itself
goes beyond experience. We embrace facts under laws ; we
reduce facts to their simple and necessary causes by abstracting
from the accidental circumstances ; all this is thought. The ideal
method of investigation is demonstration based on experiment,
observation, and thought.
Pierre Gassendi (1592-1655) renews the doctrines of Epicurus
and Lucretius, and opposes the corpuscular theory of the philosopher
Descartes. At the same time, he supplements his mechanical theory
with theological notions, making God the beginner of motion. Pere
Mersenne (1588-1648) and Robert Boyle (1627-1691) seek to recon-
cile Gassendi's atomism and Descartes's corpuscular view. Boyle in-
troduces atomism into chemistry, but regards atomism as an instru-
ment of method, not as a philosophical theory of the universe. The
world points to an intelligent creator and designer, who initiated the
motion. Newton held a similar theistic view.
39. GIORDANO BRUNO AND TOMMASO CAMPANELLA
In the writings of the Italians Giordano Bruno (1548-1600)
and Tommaso Campanella (1568-1639) we have comprehensive
systems of metaphysics, conceived in the spirit of the new age.
Bruno joined the Dominican order, but left it and journeyed from
city to city, a restless wanderer until he again set foot on Italian soil,
•D in 1592, when he was imprisoned by the Inquisition.
Refusing to renounce his convictions, he was burned at
the stake (1600) in Rome, after an imprisonment of seven years.
Delia causa, infinito, ed uno; De triplici, minima et mensura; De
monade, etc.; De immense, etc. Italian works edited by Croce and
Gentile; Latin by Tocco; unpublished writings ed. by Lutoslawski and
Tocco. German translations of complete works by Kuhlenbeck; Eng-
lish translations of Spaccio (Morehead)^ Eroici (L. Williams), and
BRUNO AND CAMPANELLA 239
Preface to Infinite (J. Toland). Plumptre, Life and Works of Bruno;
A. Riehl, G. Bruno, transl. by Fry; Alclntyre, Bruno; Gentile, Giordano
Bruno nella storia nella cullura. Bibliography in Ueberweg-Heinze,
Part III, § 7.
Bruno is impressed with the immensity of the new astronom-
ical universe, and regards the fixed stars as planetary systems
like our own. God is immanent in the infinite universe, the active
principle (natura naturans) ; he expresses himself in the living
world (natura naturata), which follows from him with inner
necessity. With Cusa, he conceives him as the unity of all
opposites, as the unity without opposites, as the one and the
many, whom the finite mind cannot grasp.
The old Aristotelian forms, however, are not discarded in the
system of Bruno. Each star is moved by a form or soul, and
there is soul and life in all things. Form without matter does
not exist, the two together constitute a unity; but forms arise
and pass away in matter. All particular things change, but the
universe remains constant in its absolute perfection.
To these teachings Bruno adds a doctrine of monads, or
monadology, that reminds us of the Stoic germ-theory. Things
are composed of uncaused and imperishable elementary parts
called monads, which are both mental and physical. The soul
itself is an immortal monad, and God is the monad of monads.
Tommaso Campanella (1568-1639) , too, was a Dominican monk,
and he, too, was persecuted by the Inquisition, having spent
twenty-seven years of his life in prison on account
of political ideals which he never attempted to put
into practice. He, also, is a child of his age in that his thoughts
both hark back to the past and point forward to the future. He
tells us to study nature directly and not from books, that all
our philosophical knowledge is based on sensation, that all higher
forms of cognition are merely different forms of sensation. At
the same time, nature is a revelation of God and faith is a form
of knowledge, — the source from which theology springs.
Philosophic* sensibus demonstrates; Universalis philosophia, etc.;
Civitas solis. Works ed. by d'Ancona.
In sensation we become aware of our own existence, of our
own states of consciousness, — of how things affect us, not% how-
240 PHILOSOPHY OF THE MIDDLE AGES
ever, of what they are in themselves. With Augustine before
him and Descartes after him, Campanella finds in consciousness
the pivot of certainty: whatever else we may doubt, we cannot
doubt that we have sensations and that we exist. Introspection
also reveals to us the three primal attributes of the soul : power,
cognition, and will (posse, nosse, velle), which, in perfect form,
are likewise the attributes of God, namely, omnipotence, om-
niscience, and absolute goodness. Campanella 's assumption here
is that since God is the ground of all things and man the little
world (parvus mundus), the divine qualities must attach to the
human soul in a finite degree. The same principles are present
in all being; in the lower forms of existence, however, that is,
when mixed with non-being, they appear as impotence, ignorance,
and malice. The world, in other words, is conceived, with Neo-
platonism, as a series of emanations from God ; he has produced
the angels, ideas, spirits, immortal human souls, space and bodies.
We have an immediate knowledge of God, and he reveals him-
self also in the Bible; but we can prove his existence from our
notion of an infinite being, an idea which we could not have
produced ourselves and which therefore implies an infinite cause.
This argument plays an important role in the later Cartesian
system.
In his City of the Sun (Civitas Solis) Campanella offers a
socialistic theory of the State that recalls Plato's Republic. It
is a State of enlightenment (a city of the sun) in which power
is governed by knowledge; the principle of equality prevails
in it, there being no class distinctions except according to knowl-
edge. Philosophers (priests) are the rulers, and it is to be a
universal papal monarchy with religious unity, dominating the
secular State. Education, which is to be universal and compul-
sory, will be based on mathematics and natural science, and the
pupils are to be trained for their different occupations. Cam-
panella also recommends learning by play, open-air schools, and
object lessons.
NEW THEORIES OF THE STATE 241
40. NEW THEORIES OP THE STATE; PHILOSOPHY OP RELIGION;
AND SKEPTICISM
The attempt is also made by the age to work out a new theory
of the State, one that shall be independent of theology and Aris-
totle, exhibiting, in this respect, the same opposi-
tion to authority and tradition that characterizes Scholastic
the other fields of thought. The orthodox school- j^g^*
men had defended the temporal power of the
ecclesiastical hierarchy and the subordination of State to Church.
Writers like Thomas Aquinas justified papal supremacy by argu-
ments resting upon Christian and Aristotelian premises. The
purpose of all human government, they held, is welfare ; a ruler
who serves that end is good, one who does not is bad and may be
deposed. Since the supreme welfare of a people is its spiritual
welfare, a sovereign who refuses to accept the Christian dogma,
or even places himself in opposition to the Church, endangers
the true good of his subjects, and such a course justifies re-
bellion. The Church is of divine origin; it is the vicegerent of
God on earth and the court of last resort in matters of faith,
and its function is to propagate the Christian religion. The
State is, therefore, in the last analysis, subservient to the Church,
and politics, like philosophy, is the handmaiden of theology.
See the histories of politics mentioned pp. 5, 223; also Hoffding,
op. cit.f pp. 38-58 ; Falckenberg, op. cit., pp. 39-48 ; Lecky, Rationalism,
chap, v; Giercke, J. Althusius und die Entwicklung der naturrecht-
lichen Staatstheorie; A. D. White, Seven Great Statesmen.
As has already been pointed out, this political theory and
the efforts to put it into practice were opposed by the secular
powers, and, in the centuries witnessing the decline
s xi. i_ ^ XT. v /^i_ - x- -x Machiavelh
of the papacy, by Catholic Christian writers them-
selves. During the period of the Renaissance and the Protestant
Reformation, the opposition to the Catholic idea grew stronger,
and the foundations were laid for the political theories which
have played such an important role in the history of the modern
era. The most radical attack came from the Italian diplomat
Nicolo Machiavelli (1469-1527), secretary of the Chancellery
of the Council of Ten at Florence, who had gained a discourag-
242 PHILOSOPHY OF THE MIDDLE AGES
ing insight into the political corruption of the Eoman Curia
and the Italian governments, and who presented his views in
his History of Florence (1532), Essays on the First Decade of
Livy (1532), and The Prince (1515).
Essay on Machiavelli in Cambridge Modern History, vol. I; Villari,
History of Machiavelli and his Times, 2 vols.
The ideal of Machiavelli was a united, independent, and sov-
ereign Italian nation, absolutely free from the domination of the
Church in politics, science, and religion. Christianity, he held,
discourages political activity on the part of the citizen and makes
him passive; hence, the old Roman religion, which developed
patriots, is preferable. The best form of government would be
a republic of the type so brilliantly exemplified in Sparta, Rome,
and Venice. But such a constitution is possible only where
public spirit exists; when men are pure, freedom is a necessity.
In times of corruption, however (like those in which Machiavelli
lived), an absolute despotism is needed to realize the ideal of
a strong and independent State, and civic freedom must be sac-
rificed. (How terrible the political conditions of his country
were, may be seen from a study of the history of the countless
petty despots of the Italian Renaissance.*) It is, therefore,
right for the Prince to employ whatever means will lead to the
nationalistic goal; force, deceit, severity, breach of the so-called
moral laws are all justified by the great end ; anything is pref-
erable to the existing anarchy and corruption. Machiavelli 's po-
litical thought is rooted in his abhorrence of the secular and
ecclesiastical politics of his day; in his pessimistic conception
of human nature, — which hunger alone makes industrious and
law good, — and in his longing for a rational commonwealth.
He saw no way out of the corruption and disorder of his ag3
except by meeting force with force, trickery with trickery, and
by fighting the devil with his own weapons; and he condemned
halfway measures in the pursuit of the goal. He justified i:i
theory what many politicians of Church and State have prac-
tised and continue to practise to this day, but he justified it onl y
because he saw no other way of saving the State.
* Cf . Burekhardt, The Culture of the Renaissance.
NEW THEORIES OF THE STATE 243
It became necessary to construct a political theory independ-
ent of theology and the Church and in harmony with the new
ideal of a sovereign State. The problem was not
merely theoretical ; the existence of different Chris-
tian sects naturally suggested the question of the
relation of these bodies to the State and the Prince, and made
a consideration of the meaning and source of sovereignty a prac-
tical necessity. In working out a new political philosophy, many
of the theories of the medieval thinkers to whom we have re-
ferred were utilized and developed: the contract theory, the
notion of popular sovereignty and the sovereignty of the ruler,
the idea of natural law and natural rights. Lines of thought
were marked out which led to the theories of Hobbes on the
one hand, and those of Locke and Rousseau on the other, and
found practical application in both absolutism and democracy.
Jean Bodin (1530-1596) teaches that the State rests on a
social contract by which the popular sovereignty has been ir-
revocably transferred to the ruler. Johannes Althusius (1557-
1638) regards the contract as conditional on the ruler's observ-
ance of his part of it; the sovereignty of the people cannot be
alienated, the authority of the ruling functionary or function-
aries is revocable ; and the prince who violates the contract may
be deposed or executed. The idea gains ground, partly owing to
religious oppression, that the State ought not to interfere with
the religious convictions of its citizens, and the right of revolu-
tion is upheld. Alberico Gentile (1551-1611) discusses the law
of war in his book (De jure belli, 1588), and Thomas More
offers a socialistic ideal of the State in his Utopia (1516).
The theory of absolutism, in moderate form, is accepted by
Hugo Grotius (Huig van Groot, 1583-1645), a leader of the
aristocratic party in Holland, and Samuel Pufendorf (1632-
1694). Grotius is the author of the celebrated work De jure
belli et pads (1625), in which he presents a theory of natural
rights that is an inheritance from Stoicism and Roman law. The
natural or unwritten law (jus naturale) is rooted in the rational
nature of man, it is unalterable and God himself cannot change
it; positive law (jus voluntarium or civile) arises in history, is
the result of voluntary enactment, and is based on the principle
of utility. Society owes its origin to the social nature of man,
244 PHILOSOPHY OF THE MIDDLE AGES
which is the source of love of neighbor and all other duties. In
society natural rights are limited by regard for social welfare;
whatever conduces to the existence of social life is also a natural
right. The State, therefore, rests on reason and human nature ;
it is not an artificial creation of God, but a natural institution.
It depends on the free consent of its members, that is, on con-
tract ; hence, the rights of the individual can never be abrogated.
The people has sovereignty but may surrender it, for all times,
to a monarch or a class. War between nations is justifiable only
in case of violation of natural rights, but should be carried on
humanely.
Translation of De jure belli by Whewell, 3 vols.
Other writers on politics are: Ayala, Oldendorp (+1561), Nicolas
Hemming (1513-1600), Alberico Gentile (1551-1611), Benedict Winkler
(+1648). Pufendorf is a follower of Grote and Hobbes, and intro-
duces the notion of natural law into Germany; sovereignty implies
unity of will and, therefore, the absolute right of the monarch.
Among the orthodox writers, the Protestants Luther and Melanchthon
conceived the State as of divine origin, while the Jesuits Bellarmin
(1542-1621) and Juan Mariana (1537-1624) advocated the contract
theory and the doctrine of popular sovereignty.
These theories reflect the evolution of political ideas and po-
litical institutions after the medieval period. In the Middle
Ages the State did not possess sovereignty in the
Evolution sense in which modern states possess it. The me-
Modern State ^ieval ruler na(* certain limited rights, and the
feudal lords had their rights, but there was fre-
quent conflict between emperors and kings and their vassals, and
the power of the ruler depended on the good-will of his vassals
and on his military strength. In Germany and in Italy the cen-
tralized State gradually divided into a loose federation of state?
after the breakdown of the feudal system and of the territorial
lords. In France the tendency was the other way, — from a
loose federation of states to a unified State or Nation with an
absolute king. England remained a centralized State, but the
king's power declined as the power of the people grew. In any
case, however, the idea of the sovereignty of the State was only
gradually developed, and it is only as the result of historical
evolution that the State becomes sovereign and extends its fune-
NEW PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION 245
tions, that is, becomes modern. The tendency at the beginning
of the modern era was towards absolutism, which reached its
climax in the last half of the seventeenth and the first half of
the eighteenth century (Louis XIV) ; the power of the ruler
was, theoretically, unlimited, the subject received whatever rights
he might have from the State, which was incarnate in the ruler :
L'etat, c'est moi, so Louis XIV declared. The notion of the
sovereignty of the State has remained intact ; but the opposition
to absolutism which was reflected in the theories of Althusius,
Locke, and Rousseau gained ground and ended in the estab-
lishment of the constitutional monarchies and democracies of
our era.
The new philosophy offers natural or rational instead of super-
natural explanations of things, as we have seen. It applies its
method not only in metaphysical systems, but also
in special fields of thought, among them politics Ne^
and religion. Herbert of Cherbury (1583-1648) of Rdi^on
presents a philosophy of religion based on a theory
of knowledge and independent of any positive or historical reli-
gion. He regards as rational or natural truths common to all
religions : that there is one God, that he ought to be worshiped,
that worship consists of piety and virtue, that we must repent
of our sins, and that there are present and future rewards and
punishments. These, in other words, are the beliefs to which
a natural man, unhampered by prejudices and following his own
reason, would come ; they are truths implanted by nature. They
belong to the group of notitice communes or universal notions,
which are of divine origin and have as their distinguishing
marks: priority, independence, universality, certainty, necessity
(in the sense of utility), and immediacy. This original natural
religion has been corrupted by priests, according to Herbert,
but has been restored by Christianity. It may be supple-
mented by revelation, but the revelation must be rational.
Herbert is the predecessor of the deists and the advocates
of the theory of natural or rational religion in the eighteenth
century.
De veritate, etc., 1624; De religione gentilium, 1645, transl. by Lewis,
1705; autobiography, ed. by S. Lee. Monographs by Remusat and
Guttler. Cf. Lechler, Geschichte des englischen Deismus.
246 PHILOSOPHY OF THE MIDDLE AGES
A note of skepticism similar to that heard in nominalism and
mysticism is found in a number of French thinkers of the Re-
naissance, who were influenced by Greek skeptical
writings. Thus Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592),
the author of the celebrated Essays, doubts the possibility of
certain knowledge, for reasons with which we have become fa-
miliar in our account of Greek skepticism. He despairs of
reason and recommends a return to uncorrupted nature and
revelation. Although we cannot have knowledge, however, he
urges, we can do our duty and submit to the divine commands.
According to Pierre Charron (1541-1603), the skeptical attitude
keeps alive the spirit of inquiry and leads us to faith in Chris-
tianity, the true religion. He emphasizes the practical ethical
side of Christianity. Francis Sanchez (+1632), too, denies
the possibility of absolute knowledge in the sense that finite
beings cannot grasp the inner essence of things or understand
the meaning of the universe as a whole, but holds that we can
know secondary causes through observation and experiment.
Later French skeptics are: La Mothe le Vayer (+1672) and
the Bishop Pierre Huet (+1721). Joseph Glanvil (1636-1680),
Hieronymus Hirnheim, of Prague (+1679), and, in a sense,
Pierre Bayle (1647-1706), author of the Dictionnaire historique
et critique (1695), belong to the same movement (see p. 291).
Montaigne's Essays, ed. by Courbet and Royer, transl. by Florio.
Cf. Levy-Bruhl, Modern Philosophy in France-, works on Skepticism,
p. 117; monographs on Montaigne by Stapfer, Dowden, Lowndes.
41. RELIGIOUS REFORM
The Italian Renaissance rebelled against authority and the
scholastic system, and found inspiration in the literary and
artistic products of classical antiquity. It was the
Spirit protest of the head against intellectual coercion.
Reformation ^^e German Reformation is a religious awakening
or renaissance : it is the protest of the heart against
the mechanization of the faith. As humanism had turned to an-
cient philosophy, literature, and art for help, so the religious
revival turns to the Bible and the simple faith of the early Fa-
thers, especially St. Augustine, for support. In place of scholastic
RELIGIOUS REFORM 247
theology, the elaborate system of works and indulgences, and
the ritualism of the cultus, the Reformation emphasizes inner
religion and heart- worship : justification by faith instead of justi-
fication by works. The Reformation joins the Renaissance in its
contempt of " barren scholasticism," its opposition to ecclesias-
tical authority and temporal power, and in its exaltation of the
human conscience ; but it does not go with it in its glorification
of the intellect nor share its optimistic joy of life. Luther had
come under the spell of the nominalistic mystics and looked upon
reason with primitive Christian suspicion, — reason is blind in
matters concerning the salvation of our souls; a thing may be
false in philosophy and true in theology, in a theology rooted in
faith, — and he despised the scholastic Aristotle no less than
the true Aristotle.
But in spite of the anti-rationalistic attitude of the vigorous
leader of the Reformation, the new religious movement fostered
the spirit of critical reflection and independent thought no less
than the Renaissance. In refusing to accept the Church as the
arbiter of Christian faith and in appealing to the Bible and
the conscience, it gave reason the right to sit in judgment on
the doctrines of religion and encouraged rationalism and indi-
vidualism. This is not what Luther aimed at, but it was an
inevitable practical consequence of his protest against the authori-
tative Church and the authoritative theology, a consequence
which Protestantism at large did not hesitate to draw. Indeed,
the reformers themselves differed in their interpretation of im-
portant Christian dogmas, and the new church soon divided into
separate sects: Luther accepts the mystical presence of Christ
in the Eucharist; Zwingli, the most liberal of the reformers,
regards the sacrament as a symbol ; and Calvin teaches the doc-
trine of predestination, which the Catholic Church had refused
to accept in spite of her respect for the great Augustine.
Although Luther had rejected scholastic philosophy as barren
word-wisdom, the new church soon felt the need of rationalizing
the faith ; in other words, of constructing a scholas-
tic system of its own. The appeal to the Bible and Scholasticism
the faith of primitive Christian times opened the
door to all kinds of fantastic sects, which interpreted the Chris-
tian teachings according to their own lights; this is what hap-
248 PHILOSOPHY OF THE MIDDLE AGES
pened in the case of the Anabaptists and Iconoclasts. With the
organization of a new church, a religious platform became a
practical necessity, and the movement which had sprung from
mysticism, and had arisen as a protest against the mechanization
of religion, now forgot its mystical origin and began to make
dogma itself. The theologian who undertook the work of con-
structing a " Protestant system " in Germany was Melanchthon
(1497-1560). He selected as most suitable for his task the Aris-
totelian world-view, " as that species of philosophy which has
the least sophistry and the right method." The Epicureans were
too godless for him, the Stoics too fatalistic, Plato and Neopla-
tonism too vague and heretical, the Middle Academy too skep-
tical. Luther, too, begins to see the need of a philosophical sup-
port for the Eeformation. Melanchthon writes the text-books of
Protestantism, using Aristotle as his guide, and becomes the
prceceptor Germanice. His books were used in Germany through-
out the seventeenth century. The philosophy of Nicolaus
Taurellus (Ochslein, 1547-1606) is a Protestant attempt to con-
struct a scholastic system on an Augustinian basis. Its opposi-
tion to Aristotelianism represents the protest of the Augustinian-
mystical wing of Protestantism against the official church
doctrine. The conception of the universe as an order governed
by law without divine interference shows the influence of the
new natural science. Calvin likewise goes back to Augustine,
as do also the Catholic Jansenists of Port Royal, while Zwingli
follows Neoplatonism.
Mysticism, however, continued to find a refuge among the
common people ; and its chief representatives, men like Osiander
( + 1552), Caspar Schwenkfeld ( + 1561), Sebastian
Mysticism of Frank (+1545), and Valentin Weigel (+1594),
B hme protested against the scholasticism and formalism of
the Reformation, as Luther himself had once thun-
dered against Rome. At the beginning of the seventeenth cen-
tury, mysticism again finds its voice in a comprehensive system
offered by an uneducated German cobbler, Jacob Boehme (1575-
1624), in his work Aurora.
Collected works ed. by Schiebler; selections from writings ed. by
Classen; transl. by W. Law; monographs by Martensen (transl.),
Deussen, and Lasson. Cf. books on Mysticism, p. 177.
RELIGIOUS REFORM 219
Troubled by the fact of sin in the world, Boehme attempts to
account for it as a necessary phase in the process of divine
self-expression. Everywhere in reality he finds oppositions and
contradictions: there is no good without evil, no light without
darkness, no quality without its difference. Since all things come
from God, he must be the primal ground of all opposition; in
him all contrarieties of nature must lie concealed. Conceived
as the original source of things, he is an undifferentiated, un-
qualified, motionless being : absolute quiescence, all and nothing,
the fathomless ground, the primal objectless mil. In order that
this principle may manifest itself and know itself, it must become
differentiated, it must have something to contemplate; as light
needs darkness to be revealed, so God cannot become conscious
of himself and express himself without an object. The divine
blind craving gives rise to the oppositions which confront us
in existence.
Significant in Boehme 's world-view are the teachings that the
universe is a union of contradictions, that life and progress im-
ply opposition, that the ground of all reality lies in a spiritual
principle (pantheism), that this principle is not fundamentally
intelligence (as Eckhart had taught), but a groundless will (vol-
untarism), and that existence is a procession from darkness
to light. Boehme attempts to trace the evolution of this process,
combining Christian theological ideas (Trinity, angels, fall of
Lucifer, fall of man, plan of salvation) with all kinds of fan-
tastic notions, derived from the magical nature-philosophy of
Paracelsus, which had found their way into German Protestant
mysticism. As in Neoplatonism, the process must retrace its
steps and return to its source : the concrete material world, which
is the result of Lucifer's sin and a caricature of God, finds its
way home to God ; the material garment is cast off, and God con-
templates the essence of things in their naked purity.
MODERN PHILOSOPHY
42. THE SPIRIT OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY
The history of the new era may be viewed as an awakening
of the reflective spirit, as a quickening of criticism, as a revolt
against authority and tradition, as a protest against
Character-is- absolutism and collectivism, as a demand for free-
Modern Era ^om *n thought, feeling, and action. The leaven
which had begun to work in the transition period
of the Renaissance and the Reformation continued active
throughout the following centuries and has not yet come to rest.
The political conflict was settled in favor of the State, and the
State gradually took the place of the Church as an organ of
civilization: ecclesiasticism gave way to nationalism. Within
the State itself there appeared a growing tendency towards con-
stitutionalism and democratic institutions, which is still alive:
the demand for equal rights and social justice is abroad
in every land. The spirit of independence which had raised
its voice against the authority of the Church in time attacked
the paternalism of the State, and the doctrine of political non-
interference became the ideal of the individualist. The same
spirit found expression in the economic sphere: slavery, serf-
dom, and the old guild system gradually disappeared, the indi-
vidual threw off his fetters, and demanded to be let alone (laisser
faire) in working out his economic salvation.
We are confronted with the same phenomenon in the empire
of the intellect, with the same antagonism to tutelage, the same
demand for a free field. Reason becomes the authority in science
and philosophy. As we pointed out before, the notion begins
to prevail that truth is not something to be handed down by
authority or decreed by papal bulls, but something to be acquired,
something to be achieved by free and impartial inquiry. And
the gaze is turned from the contemplation of supernatural things
to the examination of natural things, from heaven to earth, —
250
THE SPIRIT OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY 251
theology yields her crown to science and philosophy. The
physical and the mental world, society, human institutions, and
religion itself are explained by natural causes. What charac-
terizes the higher intellectual life of the period following the
Middle Ages is an abiding faith in the power of human rea-
son, an intense interest in natural things, a lively yearning
for civilization and progress. Knowledge, however, let it be
noted, is esteemed and desired not only for its own sake,
but also for its utility, for its practical value: knowledge is
power. Nearly all the great leaders of modern thought, from
Francis Bacon onward, are interested in the practical applica-
tions of the results of scientific investigation, and look for-
ward with an enthusiastic optimism to a coming era of
wonderful achievement in the mechanic arts, technology, medi-
cine, as well as in the field of political and social reform.
The individual likewise throws off the yoke of the Church
in religion and morals; the appeal to reason in matters of the
intellect is matched by an appeal to faith and the conscience
in matters of belief and conduct; he refuses to accept an inter-
mediary between himself and his God. However Luther may
have differed from the leaders of the Renaissance, the influence
of the Reformation eventually helped to quicken the spirit of
religious, moral, and intellectual independence and contributed
its share to the emancipation of the human soul from external
authority.
Modern philosophy, in its beginnings, breathes the spirit of
the modern times, the characteristics of which we have endeav-
ored to describe. It is independent in its search for truth, re-
sembling ancient Greek thought in this respect. It is rational-
istic in the sense that it makes human reason the highest author-
ity in the pursuit of knowledge. It is naturalistic in that it
seeks to explain inner and outer nature without supernatural
presuppositions. It is, therefore, scientific, keeping in touch
with the new sciences, particularly with the sciences of external
nature.
It is to be remembered, however, that although modern phi-
losophy arose as a protest against the old scholastic system, it
did not, and could not, completely break with the past. Traces
of the scholastic philosophy remain in its blood for a long time
252 MODERN PHILOSOPHY
to come. The early modern thinkers constantly criticize the
scholastic method, but many of the old conceptions are bodily
taken over by them, and influence both their problems and their
results. The theological bias is not entirely absent: Bacon,
Descartes, Locke, Berkeley, and Leibniz all accept the basal
doctrines of Christianity. It is true, we are not always able to
judge the candor of their protestations, but even insincerity in
this regard would be a proof of the theological influence.
Besides the works mentioned on pp. 4, f ., and p. 228, consult : Royct,
The Spirit of Modern Philosophy; Falekenberg, History of Modern
Philosophy, transl. by Armstrong; Hoffding, Brief History of Modern
Philosophy, transl. by Sanders, and History of Modern Philosophy,
2 vols., transl. by Meyer; Calkins, Persistent Problems of Philosophy;
Adamson, Development of Modern Philosophy; Fischer, History of
Modern Philosophy, 10 vols., parts transl. by Gordy, Mahaffy, and
Hough; Windelband, Geschichte der neuern Philosophic, 2 vols.; Zeller,
Geschichte der deutschen Philosophic seit Leibniz; Reininger, Phi-
losophie des Erkennens; Merz, History of European Thought in the
Nineteenth Century, 3 vols.
Special works: Kronenberg, Geschichte des Idealismus, 3 vols.;
Lasswitz, Geschichte der Atomistik, 2 vols.; Mabilleau, Histoire
d'atomisme; Baumann, Die Lehren von Raum, Zeit und Mathematik,
2 vols. ; Schaller, Geschichte der Naturphilosophie; Konig, Entwicklung
des Kausalproblems, 3 parts; Foster, History of Physiology; Cassirer,
Das Erkenntnisproblem in der Philosophic und Wissenschaft in der
neuern Zeit, 5 vols.; Grimm, Geschichte des Erkenntnisproblems; Vor-
lander, Geschichte der philosophischen Moral, Eechts- und Staatslehre;
Jodl, Geschichte der Ethik, 2 vols.; Dunning, Political Theories from
Luther to Montesquieu; Troeltsch, Sozialleliren der christlichen
Kirchen; Pfleiderer, Philosophy of Religion, transl. by Stewart and
Menzies, 4 vols.; Piinjer, History of Christian Philosophy of Religion,
2 vols., transl. by Hastie; Lecky, History of the Rise and Influence
of the Spirit of Rationalism in Europe; histories of civilization by
Buckle, Draper, Dean, Crozier. See also Cambridge Modern History,
the Britannica, and other encyclopedias. Selections from works of
philosophers by Rand.
Modern philosophies have been classified as rationalistic or
empiristic according as they accept reason (ratio) or experi-
ence (ep.7teipia) as the source and norm of
Empiricism knowledge. To avoid misapprehension, however,
Rationalism several points should be emphasized. (1) By ra-
tionalism we may mean the attitude which makes
reason instead of revelation or authority the standard of knowl-
edge. In this sense, all modern systems of philosophy are
rationalistic; indeed, it is this characteristic which enables ns
THE SPIRIT OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY 253
to classify them as modern. It is true, world-views are not want-
ing which seek the source of truth not in the intellect, but in
feeling, faith, or intuition, but these faith- or feeling-philoso-
phies, too, endeavor to construct theories which shall justify their
methods of reaching the truth and the objects of their faith to
reason. (2) We may mean by rationalism the view that genuine
knowledge consists of universal and necessary judgments, that
the goal of thought is a system of truths in which the dif-
ferent propositions are logically related to one another. This
is the mathematical notion of knowledge which is accepted by
nearly all the new thinkers as the ideal; whether they believe
in the possibility of realizing it or not, they consider only such
knowledge genuine as conforms to the mathematical model. (3)
The question is also asked concerning the origin of knowledge,
and this receives different answers in modern philosophy: (a)
Genuine knowledge cannot come from sense-perception or
experience, but must have its foundation in thought or reason:
there are truths natural or native to reason: innate or inborn
or a priori truths. Truths which have their origin in the mind
itself are valid truths. This view, too, has been called ration-
alism; though some writers prefer to name it intuitionalism or
apriorism. (b) There are no inborn truths : all knowledge springs
from sense-perception or experience, and hence so-called neces-
sary propositions are not necessary or absolutely certain at all,
but yield only probable knowledge. This view has been called
empiricism or sensationalism.
Empiricists may accept rationalism in the first and second
senses ; they may consider only such knowledge genuine as gives
us absolute certainty, and, at the same time, deny the possi-
bility of attaining real knowledge except perhaps in mathe-
matics. If by empiricism is meant that our world of experi-
ence is the object of philosophy, that philosophy has to interpret
the world of experience, then all modern philosophy is empirical.
If we mean by it that we cannot know without experience, that
pure thought, or thought absolutely independent of sense-
perception, is impossible, then, again, modern philosophy is
largely empirical.
Keeping all this in mind, we may characterize philosophers
as rationalists (apriorists) or empiricists (sensationalists) ac-
254. MODERN PHILOSOPHY
cording to the answers they give to the question of the origin
of knowledge. With these answers they generally connect their
answers to the question of the certainty or validity of knowl-
edge. Both schools of early modern times agree that sense-
knowledge is not absolutely certain; rationalists declare that
only rational or a priori truths, clearly and distinctly perceived
truths, are certain; empiricists generally deny that there are
such a priori truths, and hold that clearly and distinctly per-
ceived truths are not necessarily certain. We may, therefore,
classify Descartes, Spinoza, Malebranche, Leibniz, and Wolff as
\ rationalists; Bacon, Hobbes, Locke, Berkeley, and Hume as em-
piricists. The rationalists are the descendants of Plato, Aris-
totle, and the schoolmen in their general theory of knowledge;
the empiricists are the continuers of the nominalistic traditions.
It is to be borne in mind, however, that these thinkers are not
always consistent in carrying out their doctrines; we shall be
guided in our rough classification by their general attitude to-
ward the problem of the origin of knowledge.
Besides these movements, we find also the customary accom-
paniments with which we have become acquainted in medieval
philosophy: skepticism and mysticism (faith-philosophy), both
of which may develop from the soil of either empiricism or
rationalism. David Hume's skeptical conclusions may be re-
garded as the result of certain empirical presuppositions of
Locke, and Pierre Bayle's as the application of the rationalistic
ideal of Descartes. Mysticism may flourish in both fields, as we
have seen; many of the medieval nominalists were mystics, and
many modern mystics build upon rationalistic foundations. In
addition to all these currents, the old scholastic philosophy has
been continued by Catholic scholars.
ENGLISH EMPIRICISM
Special works on English philosophy: Sorley, Beginnings of
English Philosophy, in Cambridge History of English Literature,
vols. IV, ff. ; Forsyth, English Philosophy; J. Seth, English Philos-
ophers; Fischer, Bacon and his Successors, transl. by Oxenford; T. H.
Green, Introduction to Hume, in vol. I of Green and Grose edition
of Hume's works, and vol. I of Green's works; McCosh, Scottish
Philosophy; Pringle-Pattison, On Scottish Philosophy; Remusat, His-
FRANCIS BACON 255
toire de la philosophic en Angleterre; Lechler, Geschichte des englischen
Deismus; L. Stephen, History of English Thought in the Eighteenth
Century, 2 vols., English Utilitarians, and Essays on Free Thinking
and Plain Speaking; Lyon, L'idealisme anglais au XV III. siecle; Albee,
History of English Utilitarianism; Whewell, History of Moral Philoso-
phy in England; Mackintosh, Progress of Ethical Philosophy, etc.;
Selby-Bigge, British Moralists (selections from writings) ; Graham,
English Political Philosophy from Hobbes to Maine; Zart, Einfluss
der englischen Philosophic seit Bacon auf die deutsche Philosophic
des 18. Jahrhunderts. Cf. J. M. Robertson, Pioneer Humanists, Short
History of Free Thought, and Evolution of States.
43. FRANCIS BACON
Francis Bacon is, in many respects, a typical representative
of the new movement. He is opposed to the ancient authorities,
to Aristotle and Greek philosophy no less than to
the barren philosophy of the School. The eye of
the mind, he tells us, must never be taken off from
the things themselves, but receive their images truly as they
are. The past has done nothing; its methods, foundations, and
results were wrong; we must begin all over again, free our
minds of transmitted and inherited prejudices and opinions,
go to the things themselves instead of following opinions and
dealing in words, — in short, do our own thinking. The founda-
tion is natural science, the method induction, and the goal the
art of invention. The reason so little progress has been made
in twenty-five hundred years, is that the right methods of ac-
quiring knowledge have not been followed. Some use the method
of demonstration, but they start from principles which have
been hastily formed or taken on trust and are uncertain. Others
follow the way of sense, but the senses, left to themselves, are
faulty; still others despair of all knowledge, but this attitude,
too, is dogmatic and unsatisfactory. We must begin the work
anew and raise or rebuild the sciences, arts, and all human
knowledge from a firm and solid basis. This is the Great
Instauration.
- All these ideas are modern, as are also the supreme self-
confidence and optimism of our thinker. The very failures of
the past inspire him with the hope and belief that an era of
glorious achievement is at hand, that great things are going
to happen, that with the abandonment of the fruitless science
256 MODERN PHILOSOPHY
of the past the face of the earth and of society will be changed.
(See his New Atlantis.) The practical goal is constantly em-
phasized, " the end always to be kept in view is the application
of the truth acquired to the good of mankind."
Bacon did not advance the cause of natural science by his
own experiments nor, indeed, was he sufficiently acquainted
with mathematics to appreciate the work of the great astronomers
of the new era. And it can hardly be said that his theory of
method exercised an influence on experimental science ; science
was too far along for that: in his own country William Gilbert
(1540-1603), the well-known author of the book De magnet e,
1600, had employed the inductive method in his researches be-
fore the appearance of Bacon's writings on the subject. He
does, however, deserve the title of the trumpeter of his time,
which he applied to himself, for he gave conscious expression
to the new scientific spirit. He understood and emphasized the
importance of systematic and methodical observation and ex-
perimentation in natural science ; the other and most important
phase of it, mathematics, he mentions and considers essential,
but fails to make use of in his theory, simply because he does
not know how.
Francis Bacon (1561-1626) devoted himself to law and politics,
although, so he himself tells us, his chief interests lay along the lines
of the studies to which he gave his leisure hours. Important offices
and high honors were conferred upon him by Queen Elizabeth and
King James I, — he was made Baron Verulam and Viscount St. Albans,
and became Lord Chancellor. In 1621 he was accused of having
accepted gifts from litigants in his official capacity as a judge, an
offense which he confessed but which he declared had never influenced
his decisions. He was found guilty, sentenced to imprisonment, heavily
fined, and deprived of office, but received the king's pardon, and retired
to private life.
Among the English predecessors of Bacon were: Everard Digby
(+1592), professor of logic at Cambridge, who aroused an interest in
the study of philosophy in his country. His Neoplatonic doctrine,
which he combined with Cabalism, was opposed by Sir William Temple
(1553-1626), who followed the logic of Petrus Ramus and antagonized
Aristotle.
Bacon's celebrated Essays appeared in 1597, an enlarged edition
in 1625; the Latin translation of them bears the title Sermones fideles.
Among his other works are: The Advancement of Learning, 1605 (the
Latin, enlarged and revised edition being entitled, De dignitate et
augmentis scientiarum, 1623); Cogitata et visa, 1612; and the Novum
FRANCIS BACON 257
Organum, 1620, the new " organon " or instrument of knowledge, which
attacks the old Aristotelian logic and aims at a reform of logic; it
is written in aphorisms and is incomplete.
Complete works, in Latin and English, by Spedding, Ellis, and
Heath, 7 vols., 2d ed., 1870; reprint of philosophical works, 1 vol.,
by Robertson, 1905 ; English Works by S. Lee, 1905 ; numerous eds. of
particular works.
Spedding, Letters and Life, and Life and Times; Church, Bacon;
E. A. Abbot, Bacon; Fowler, Bacon; Nichol, Bacon; S. Lee, Great
Englishmen of the Sixteenth Century; Heussler, Bacon; Wolff, Bacon
und seine Quellen. ' XA-\
The fruitlessness of science and ph4iostrpny~m the past, Bacon
thinks, has been due to the absence of a proper method. The
unassisted hand and the understanding left to itself
possess but little power. We must devise a new
way of reaching knowledge, a new machine or
organ for the mind, a new logic, a novum organum. The old
logic is useless for the discovery of the sciences, it assists in
confirming and rendering inveterate the errors founded on vulgar
notions rather than in seeking after truth.
But before describing the method in detail, our reformer
insists that the mind clear itself of all false opinions, prejudices,
or idols, of which there are four kinds. The idols of the tribe
(idola tribus] are such as inhere in the very nature of the human
mind, among them being the notion of final causes (teleology)
and the habit of reading human desires into nature. The idols
of the den (specus] are peculiar to the particular individual,
to his peculiar disposition, his education and intercourse, his
reading, the authority of those whom he admires, and the like.
The idols of the market (/on) are the most troublesome of
all ; they come from the associations of words and names. Words
are often used as names of things which have no existence, or
they are the names of actual objects, but confused, badly de-
fined, and hastily abstracted from things. The idols of the
theater (theatri) are the result of false theories or philosophies
and the perverted laws of demonstration.
Of such idols the mind must be freed and cleared; it must
approach the task of knowledge pure and unadulterated. The
end aimed at, let it be remembered, is to discover principles
themselves, — not to conquer adversaries by words, but nature
by works. We cannot realize this end without knowing nature ;
258 MODERN PHILOSOPHY
in order to produce effects, we should know causes. Our present
syllogistic methods will noj/avail; our present sciences are but
peculiar arrangementk--or matters already discovered. The
syllogism consists of propositions, propositions of words, and
/ words are signs of notions. Hence, if the notions are confused
/ and carelessly abstracted from things, — and that is the case, —
/ there is no solidity in the whole superstructure. The notions,
t principles, and axioms used in the syllogism are all based on
\ experience, — as indeed all principles or axioms are, — but on
vague and faulty experience; they are hasty generalizations
from experience. Our hope, then, is genuine induction. We
must continually raise up propositions by degrees and in the
last place come to the most general and well-defined axioms, in
an orderly and methodical way. That is, we must combine the
experimental and the rational faculties.
Induction does not consist in simple enumeration, — that is
a childish thing. The aim of human knowledge is to discover
the forms, or true differences, or the source of emanation, of
a given nature or quality. By form Bacon means not what the
realists meant, notflabstract forms or ideas. Matter rather than
forms, he tells us, snould be the object of our attention ; nothing
exists in nature besides individual bodies which act according
to fixed law. In philosophy the investigation, discovery, and
explanation of this very law is the foundation as well of knowl-
edge as of operation. This law he calls the form, a term which
had come into general use; Telesio, whom Bacon mentions,
speaks of heat and cold as active forms of nature. The form
of heat is the law of heat, it is what determines or regulates
heat wherever heat is found, it is what heat depends on. Who-
ever knows the forms, understands the unity of nature in sub-
stances most unlike; he knows what in nature is constant and
eternal and universal, and opens broad roads to human power
such as human thought can scarcely comprehend or anticipate.
Bacon declares that the form or substantial self of heat is motion,
it is the motion of the small particles of the body. The in-
vestigation of forms (causes) which are eternal and immutable
constitutes metaphysics; the investigation of efficient cause and
matter, and of the latent process, and latent configurations,
constitutes physics. The application of the knowledge of forms
FRANCIS BACON
259
or fundamental laws of nature leads^to the highest kind of
invention. Bacon calls it magic, it is ^r^ctical metaphysics.
(Bacon is evidently thinking of thejirt of matin^ol The
application of knowl
s
The jnos/' important caused or la^s, then,)wh|ch sconce has
to dis^ovp are iorms, and ) these/ are JpundV by induction.
(1) Ttieftoii oj^natu^er^qtiaiity (heat, forj^xample) is such
that, giw»iiOerm7the quality infallibly fellows. It is, there-
fore, always present when the cftrality~is present, and universally
implies it, and is constantly inherent in it. (2) Again, the form
is such that if it be taken away, the quality infallibly vanishes.
Hence, it is always absent when the quality is absent, and implies
its absence, and inheres in nothing else. (3) Lastly, the true
form is such that it deduces the given quality from some source
of being which is inherent in more qualities, and which is better
known in the natural order of things than the form itself. All
this gives us the clue to our method of procedure. ( 1 ) A quality
being given, we must, first, consider all the known instances
which agree in the same quality though in substances the most
unlike (the so-called positive instances). This is the Table of
Essence or Presence (called by Mill the Method of Agreement).
(2) Then we must review the instances in which the given quality
is wanting (the so-called negative instances). The negatives
should be subjoined to the affirmatives, and the absence of the
given quality inquired of in those subjects only that are most
akin to the others in which it is present and forthcoming. This
Bacon calls the Table of Deviation or of Absence in Proximity.
It is Mill's Method of Difference. (3) Then we take the cases
in which the object of our inquiry is present in a greater or
less degree, either by comparing its increase and decrease in
the same object, or its degree in different objects. This is the
Table of Degrees or Comparative Instances, called by Mill the
Method of Concomitant Variations. Bacon mentions eleven
other helps to the mind in discovering forms, each of which
has its name : rejection, first vintage, prerogative instances, etc.,
but works out only three.
Bacon held that mankind must begin the work of science anew.
It was natural, under the circumstances, that he did not offer
260 MODERN PHILOSOPHY
a complete theory of the universe himself; his office was to
stake out the ground and to point the way to new achievements.
To this end he planned his great work, or In-
Philoso^h stauratio magna, consisting of six parts, only two
of which were completed : the Encyclopedia or Ad-
vancement of Learning and the Novum Organum. He divides
the field of knowledge, or * * the intellectual globe, ' ' into history,
poesy, and philosophy, according to the faculties of the mind
(memory, imagination, and reason), and subdivides each into
numerous specialistic branches.
Philosophy is the work of reason ; it deals with abstract notions
derived from impressions of sense; and in the composition and
division of these notions, according to the law of nature and fact,
its business lies. It embraces : primary philosophy, revealed the-
ology, natural theology, metaphysics, physics, mechanics, magic,
mathematics, psychology, and ethics. Primary philosophy busies
itself with the axioms common to several sciences, with what we
should now call laws of thought and categories. Metaphysics has
two functions: to discover the eternal and immutable forms of
bodies and to discuss purposes, ends, or final causes. Final causes
have no place in physics ; Democritus never wasted any time on
them, hence, Bacon declares, he penetrates farther into nature
than Plato and Aristotle, who were ever inculcating them. The
doctrine of final causes has no practical value, but is a barren
thing, or as a virgin consecrated to God. Mathematics is a branch
of metaphysics, — being a science of quantity, which is one of the
essential, most abstract, and separable forms of matter. Mathe-
matics and logic both ought to be handmaids of physics, but
instead they have come to domineer over physics. Mathematics
is of great importance to metaphysics, mechanics, and magic.
The philosophy of man comprises human and civil, or political,
philosophy. In the former we consider man separate, in the
latter joined in society. Human philosophy studies
of AIanP y body and soul, and their connection. Among its
topics are the miseries and the prerogatives or
excellencies of the human race, physiognomy and the interpreta-
tion of natural dreams, the effect of bodily states on mind
(madness, insanity) and the influence of mind on body, the
proper seat and habitation of each faculty of the mind in the
FRANCIS BACON 261
body and its organs, also " medicine, cosmetic, athletic, and
voluptuary. ' '
The human soul has a divine or rational part and an irrational
part. All problems relating to the former must be handed over
to religion. The sensitive or produced soul is corporeal, attenu-
ated by heat and rendered invisible, and resides chiefly in the
head (in perfect animals), running along the nerves and re-
freshed and repaired by the spirituous blood of the arteries.
The faculties of the soul are understanding, reason, imagination,
memory, appetite, will, and all those with which logic and
ethics are concerned. The origins of these faculties must be
physically treated. The questions of voluntary motion and
sensibility are interesting. How can so minute and subtle a
breath as the (material) soul put in motion bodies so gross and
hard? What is the difference between perception and sense?
Bacon finds a manifest power of perception in most bodies, and
a kind of appetite to choose what is agreeable, and to avoid
what is disagreeable to them (the loadstone attracts iron, one
drop of water runs into another). A body feels the impulse
of another body, perceives the removal of any body that with-
held it; perception is diffused through all nature. But how
far, he inquires, can perception be caused without sense (con-
sciousness) ? We see how hard it was for the new thinker to
get the old medieval notions of an animated nature out of his
bones.
Logic treats of the understanding and reason; and ethics,
of the will, appetite, and affections; the one produces resolu-
tions, the other actions. The logical arts are inquiry or invention,
examination or judgment, custody or memory, elocution or de-
livery. The study of induction belongs to the art of judgment.
Ethics describes the nature of the good and prescribes rules
for conforming to it. Man is prompted by selfish and social
impulses (as later writers called them). Individual or self
good, self-preservation and defense, differs entirely from the
social good, though they may sometimes coincide. The social
good is called duty. It is the business of the science of govern-
ment to discover the fountains of justice and public good.
Philosophy, in the broad sense, is the apex of the pyramid of
knowledge. It is founded on the just, pure, and strict inquiry of
264 MODERN PHILOSOPHY
practical utility of science or philosophy: the end of knowledge
is power. He denies completely the scientific character of the-
ology: there can be no science of God, no doctrine
Method °^ an^e^s- ^e a^so repudiates the spiritualistic no-
tion of the soul, which is a fundamental thought with
his contemporary Descartes and which Bacon had introduced into
his physiological psychology as a kind of appendage. He accepts,
instead, the new natural science of Copernicus, Galileo, and
Harvey, whom he regards as the founders of science, and fear-
lessly deduces the consequences of the mechanical theory in his
materialistic philosophy. Himself a student of mathematics,
Hobbes looks upon the method of geometry as the only one
capable of giving us sure and universal knowledge ; hence, natural
and political history are not sciences: such knowledge is but
experience, not ratiocination. His rationalistic ideal of knowl-
edge agrees with that of Galileo and Descartes, but he is, like
Bacon, an empiricist in his theory of the origin of knowledge.
He finds it difficult, however, to reconcile his rationalism with
his empiricism; the presence of both factors in the system is
responsible for many inconsistencies and uncertainties. As his
own chief contribution to thought, he himself regards his theory
of the State; civil philosophy, he proudly tells us, is no older
than his book De cive.
Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) studied scholasticism and the Aristo-
telian philosophy at Oxford, traveled extensively on the Continent
as the tutor and companion of young English noblemen, and became
acquainted, in Paris, with Descartes, Gassendi, and Mersenne. He
fled to France in November 1640, after the assembling of the Long
Parliament, returning in 1651 to make his peace with Cromwell.
Among his works are: Elementa philosophica de cive, 1642; De
cor pore, 1655; De homine, 1658; Leviathan (or the matter, form, and
power of a commonwealth, ecclesiastical and civil), 1651; Elements
of Law, Natural and Politic (consisting of Human Nature and the Body
Politic; written 1640), ed. by Tonnies, 1888; and the two treatises on
Liberty and Necessity, 1646 and 1654.
Works edited by Molesworth, 1839-45, five Latin and eleven English
volumes. Elements of Law, Behemoth, Letters, ed. by Tonnies, 1888,
1889; Tonnies, Hobbes-Analekten, 1904, ff. Selections from writings by
Woodbridge, Sneath, Rand, Selby-Bigge. Monographs on Hobbes by
G. C. Robertson, L. Stephen, Tonnies, Kohler, Lyon, Brandt.
Philosophy, according to Hobbes, is a knowledge of effects from
their causes and of causes from their effects; its method is,
THOMAS HOBBES > 265
therefore^artly synthetic, partly analytic. That is, we may
proceed from sense-perception or experience to principles (analy-
sis) or from p/rimary or most universal proposi-
tions, or principles which are manifest in them- ^nTwled^e
selves, to conclusions (synthesis). In order to be
genuine science oXtrue demonstration, reasoning must take its
beginning from true^principlea^mere experience not being Sci-
ence. Nominalist that/he is, Hobbes also defines reasoning as a
kind of calculation: tc§son is nothing but reckoning, that is,
adding and subtracting of the consequences of general names
agreed upon, for the marking and signifying of our thoughts.
The problem, therefore, ia to find a first principle, a starting-
point for our reasoning, a aause on which to ground all effects.
This Hobbes finds iiynotionl Every body the causes and effects
of which we can know, is subject-matter for philosophy. There
are natural bodies and artificial bodies, or the commonwealth,
a body made by man. Hence, we have natural philosophy
(physics and psychology) and political philosophy, which is
made up of ethics and politics proper. Primary or first philos-
ophy is a science of the fundamental principles or definitions
of all Science; it is a kind of prelude to the other branches,
treating of space, time, body, cause, effect, identity and differ-
ence, relation, quantity, and the like. .By analyzing particular
things we ultimately reach their most universal properties and
at once know their causes, since these are manifest of themselves,
all having but one universal cause, motion. The last things
cannot be demonstrated till the first are fully understood.
Hence, philosophy is the science of the motions and actions of
natural and political bodies, and everything can be explained
by motion, or mechanically : the nature of man, the mental world,
and the State, as well as the occurrences of physical nature.
Whence do these principles arise, how does our knowledge
originate ? The _priginal of all our thoughts is sense. Sensations
persist or are retained in memory (a " decaying sense "). The
memory of many things is experience. Images or thoughts suc-
ceed one another in the mind, and we have a train of thoughts,
which can be regulated by desire and design. The purpose of
speech is to transfer our mental discourse into trains of words,
which helps us to register our thoughts as well as to communicate
266 MODERN PHILOSOPHY
them to others. In the right definition of names lies the first
use of speech, which is the acquisition of Science. In Science
we use universal terms, but the things themselves are not
universal^ there is nothing called man in general (nominalism).
Hence, neither knowledge of fact nor knowledge of consequence
is absolute, but conditional.
Whereas Bacon emphasizes the part played by experience or
induction, Hobbes shows the need of demonstration or the de-
ductive method. But holding, as he does, that the principles
from which we reason have their source in sense, he loses his
firm faith in the possibility of any method to reach absolute
knowledge. Locke later on strengthens these doubts by declaring
that we can have no science of bodies at all.
Knowledge, then, has its origin in sense-impressions. Now,
what is sensation and how is it caused? We get through our
sense-organs different sensations : color, sound, taste, smell, touch.
These processes are caused by the action of some external object
on the organs of sense. Motion is produced in the organ and
carried over nerves into the brain and thence into the heart.
There a reaction ensues (an endeavor outward) which makes it
appear that there is some outward object. The sensations, Jhen,
are nothing but motions in the brain, or spirits, or some internal
substance of the head. The sensation or image or color is but
an appearance, an apparition unto us of the motion, agitation,
or alteration which the object worketh in the brain. Sensations
are not qualities of things themselves; they are but motions in
us. Now, since only motion can produce motion, there can be
nothing outside except motion. All sense is fancy, but the cause
is a real body. There is no similarity between the cause of the
k sensation and the sensation or appearance. The reality outside
is a moving reality; we perceive it as color or sound. Our
1$ picture of the world obtained through sense is not the real
world.
If this is true, how do we know what is the nature of the
world? Hobbes does not answer; the problem did not disturb
him; he dogmatically assumes with the scientists of his day
that the world is a corporeal world in motion. As we shall see
later, Descartes attempted to prove the existence of an extended
moving: reality deductively, from the self-certainty of conscious-
THOMAS HOBBES 267
ness, but the English empiricist was not troubled by skeptical
doubts with respect to things-in-themselves.
A real world of bodies in space exists; there is real space
besides imaginary space, or the idea of space produced by the
object; the real magnitude of a body causes the M
idea or phantasm of space in the mind; in this
sense imagined space is an accident of the mind. No body can
be conceived without the accident of extension and figure; all
other accidents, — rest, motion, color, hardness, and the like, —
continually perish and are succeeded by others, yet so that
the body never perishes. Motion is defined as a continuous re-
linquishing of one place and acquiring another. Motion can have
no other cause than motion. When one motion produces another,
that does not mean one accident goes out of one object into
another, it means that one accident perishes and another is
generated. A body is said to act or work on, that is to say, do
something to, another body, when it either generates or destroys
some accident in it. This is the relation of cause and effect.
The efficient cause of all change and motion is motion. Power
is not a certain accident that differs from all acts, it is called
power because another act shall be caused by it afterward. The
question of the beginning of motion cannot be answered by
philosophers, but by " those that are lawfully authorized to
order the worship of God." At the creation, God gave to all
things what natural and special motion he thought good.
There are not, as the schoolmen held, any incorporeal sub-
stances or spirits in addition to bodies. Substance and body
are the same thing, hence to speak of incorporeal substances is
to speak of incorporeal bodies, which is a contradiction in terms
or an absurdity of speech. Besides, if there were spirits or souls,
we could not know them, for all our knowledge is based on
sensation, and spirits are not supposed to work on sense. The
Bible does not teach that there is an incorporeal or immaterial
soul. Indeed, it rather favors those most who hold angels and
spirits to be corporeal. God himself, Hobbes is inclined to think,
is body or a corporeal being. That there is a God we know
and can prove in the causal way, but what he is we do not
know.
Hobbes offers various conceptions of the mind. Mind is
268 MODERN PHILOSOPHY
motion in the brain, or it is an internal substance in the head,
a subtle body. Images or ideas are motions in the brain and
heart, motions of a material substance. This is thor-
oughgoing materialism. But when he speaks of
mental processes as appearances or apparitions of motions, as
accidents of the mind, but " not like motions," he modifies his
materialism : states of consciousness here are no longer motions,
but the effects of motions. Such a view is called by modern
writers epiphenomenalism : consciousness is an after-appearance.
Besides the faculty or power of knowing, there is a motive
power, the power by which the mind gives animal motion to
its body. Motion proceeds from the head to the heart; when
it helps the vital motion there, it is delight or pleasure, when it
hinders it, it is pain. Pleasure and pain arouse appetite, or de-
sire, and aversion: appetite is an endeavor toward, aversion an
endeavor fromward something. Some appetites and aversions
are born with us (appetite for food), the rest proceed from ex-
perience.
What pleases a man he calls good, what displeases him, evil.
Men differ in constitution and, therefore, concerning the com-
mon distinction of good and evil. There is no such thing as
absolute goodness, it is always relative; even God's goodness
is goodness to us. All delight or pleasure is appetite, hence
there can be no contentment but in proceeding or progress.
Felicity or continued happiness consists not in having prospered,
but in prospering.
The imagination is the first beginning of all voluntary motion.
The alternate succession of appetite and aversion is called de-
liberation; in deliberation the last appetite or the last aversion
is called will: will to do and will not to do, or to omit. All
other appetites to do and to quit are called intentions and
inclinations, but not wills. Will in man is not different from
will in other animals. The causes of our appetites and aversions
are, therefore, also the causes of our will. Our will is the effect
of sense, memory, understanding, reason, and opinion. The will,
and each inclination during deliberation, is as much necessi-
tated and dependent on a sufficient cause as any event whatever.
The will is not free but caused; to call an agent free means he
has made an end of deliberating. A free agent is one who can
THOMAS HOBBES 269
do if he will, and forbear if he will; liberty is the absence of
external impediments. A man is free to act, but not free to
will as he wills, he cannot will to will. To say I can will if I
will, is absurd.
Now that we know the nature of man, we are ready to under-
stand the meaning of the State and law. We may study civil
and moral philosophy synthetically, that is, begin .
with principles, say, the knowledge of human
motives (motions of the mind), and deduce from them tha
necessity of establishing a commonwealth and rights and duties.
We can, however, also reach the principles analytically, by
induction, or by observing the motives in oneself. It is right
and reasonable for a man to use all means and do whatever
is necessary for the preservation of his body. He, therefore,
has by nature the right to all things, to do whatever he pleases
to whom he pleases, to possess, use, and enjoy all things he can.
Nature has given all things to all men, hence right and profit
(jus and utile) are the same thing. But in a state of nature,
where every man is striving for such power, where it is right
for every man to invade another man's right and to resist in-
vasion of his own, there will be a state of perpetual war of all
against all (bellum omnium contra omnes). In such a state of
war nothing can be unjust; the notions of right and wrong,
justice and injustice have there no place. Where there is no
common power, there is no law; where no law, no injustice.
Force and fraud are in war the cardinal virtues; justice and
injustice are qualities that relate to men in society, not in soli-
tude. Aristotle had taught that man is a social animal, that
the social instinct leads him to form societies. This Hobbes
denies: man is a ferocious animal: homo homini lupus; com-
petition of riches, honor, command, or other power, inclines
to contention, enmity, and war, because the way of one com-
petitor to the attaining of his desire is to kill, subdue, supplant,
or repel the other. In such a state of hostility and war, no
man can hope for sufficient might to preserve himself for any
time. Consequently, his desire for power defeats itself, it cre-
ite in which the very end he aims at is thwarted. And
tice and injury is something like an absurdity: volun-
tarily to undo that which from the beginning he has voluntarily
270 MODERN PHILOSOPHY
done. Nevertheless, although injustice is illogical or irrational,
Hobbes is not optimistic enough to believe that man is ruled by
reason; it is the fear of consequences that makes him keep his
word.
Hence, reason dictates that there should be a state of peace
and that every man should seek after peace
of reason, or law of nature, commands se
second, that he lay down his natural right ind be content with
as much liberty against other men as he would allow other men
The first precept
f -preservation ; the
peace and defense,
to make void that
against himself, if he thinks it necessary for
When he has laid it down, it is his duty no
voluntary act of his own. A man, however, jkransfers his right
in consideration of some right reciprocally transferred to him-
self, or for some other good. Consequently, no man can be
understood to transfer some rights, e.g., the rijght of self-defense.
He transfers his right for the very purpose ojf securing his life.
The mutual transferring of right is contract! Hence, the third
law of nature is that men perform the covenants made. In
this consists the fountain and original of justice, for where no
covenant has preceded, no right hasffbeen transferred, and no
action is unjust. But where there is fear qjn either part that
the covenants be not performed, the covenants are invalid, and
there can be no injustice. It follows that b^fqre just and unjust
can have any meaning, there must be somp [coercive power to
compel men equally to the performance of \ their covenants, to
compel men to perform them by the terror of some punishment.
Such power there is none before the erection of a common-
wealth ; hence, where there is no commonwealth there is nothing
unjust. There are other laws, but they car| all be subsumed
under the formula : Do not that to another wHjch thou wouldest
not have done to thyself. \—
j The laws of nature are immutable ancfeternal; injustice, in-
gratitude, arrogance, pride, iniquity, acception of persons, and
the rest can never be made lawful. For it can never be that
war shall preserve life and peace destroy it. The science of these
laws is the true and only moral philosophy. For moral philoso-
phy is nothing else but the science of what is g^n^ P"n^ evil
in the conversation and society of mankind. These laws
laws of nature because they are dictates of reason,
THOMAS HOBBES 271
are called moral laws because they concern men's manners, one
towards another; they are also divine laws in respect of the
author thereof.
The only way to erect a commonwealth and have peace is
to confer all the power and strength of men upon one man
or assembly of men, that they may reduce all their wills, by a
majority vote, into one will. This is more than consent or
concord, it is a real unity of them all, in one and the same
person, made by covenant, every man with every man. The
multitude so united in one person is called a commonwealth;
it is the greatjeviathan, the mortal god. He that carries that
person is the sovereign and has sovereign power.
\ The subjects cannot change the form of government, the
(sovereign power cannot be forfeited ; no one can protest against
ithe institution of the common sovereign, declared by the major-
\ty. He has the whole right of making rules (legislature), the
right of judicature, the right of making war and peace, choosing
counselors and ministers, rewarding and punishing, as well as
/the right of deciding the doctrines fit to be taught his subjects.
These rights are incommunicable and inseparable. Other rights
the sovereign may confer, e.g., the power to coin money. The
evils that may follow/from such absolute sovereignty are not
to be compared with the miseries and horrible calamities of
civil war, the dissolute condition of niasterless men.
The sovereign power may reside in one man or in an assembly
of men (monarchy, aristocracy, democracy). The monarchy is
the best form: in the king the public and private interest are
most closely united, and he can act more consistently than a body
of men. But the sovereign power ought always to be absolute,
however placed. Some things, however, the subject may refuse
to do : every subject has liberty in all things the right of which
cannot be transferred by contract; he is not bound to injure or
kill himself, confess his crime, kill any other man, etc. Among
such rights Hobbes does not include the right of religious liberty :
the religion of the subjects is determined by the State and is
obligatory upon subjects. God speaks in these days by his vice-
gods or lieutenants here on earth, by sovereign kings or such
as have sovereign authority as well as they. The appeal to the
private conscience causes trouble, we need a common tribunal
272 MODERN PHILOSOPHY
to decide how to act if we are to have peace. Hobbes's theory
of the State may be regarded as a philosophical defeuse of the
English monarchy of the Stuarts against the demands of the
people. The sovereign can do no injury, for he is my repre-
sentative. I have given him authority. He may commit iniquity,
but not injustice or injury in the proper meaning of the term.
The obligation of subjects lasts as long and no longer than the
power lasts by which he is able to protect them. The duty of
the sovereign consists in the good government of the people;
when his acts tend to the hurt of the people in general, they
are breaches of the law of nature or of the divine law (salus
populi suprema lex).
CONTINENTAL RATIONALISM
45. REN£ DESCARTES
Descartes, like Bacon, resolutely sets his face against the old
authorities and, like him, emphasizes the practical character
of all philosophy. * ' Philosophy is a perfect knowl-
The Problem , % „ Jl/' .. ,
edge of all that man can know, as well for the
conduct of his life as for the preservation of his health and the
discovery of all the arts." Unlike the English empiricist, how-
ever, he takes mathematics as the model of his philosophical
method: study logic, he tells us, and practise its rules by study-
ing mathematics. He offers not merely a program of human
knowledge, but seeks to construct a system of thought that may
possess the certainty of mathematics. In his conception of ex-
ternal nature, he is in agreement with the great natural scientists
of the new era : everything in nature, — even physiological proc-
esses and emotions, — must be explained mechanically, without
the aid of forms or essences. At the same time, he accepts the
fundamental principles of the time-honored idealistic or spiritu-
alistic philosophy and attempts to adapt them to the demands
of the new science: his problem is to reconcile mechanism and
the notions of God, soul, and freedom.
Ren6 Descartes (1596-1650) was born at La Haye, Touraine, th«
eon of a noble family, and educated by the Jesuits of La Fleche,
RENE DESCARTES 273
learning ancient languages, * scholastic philosophy, and mathematics.
In this latter study alone he found the certainty and clearness he
craved; the others did not satisfy him, and he abandoned them, upon
leaving school (1612), to seek only after such science "as he might
discover in himself or in the great book of the world." He traveled,
followed the diversions of high life, entered the armies of Maurice
of Nassau (1617) and General Tilly (1619), and mingled with all
sorts and conditions of men. During this entire period his intellectual
interests never flagged; indeed, we freqently find him in meditative
retirement, even at the headquarters of the army. The problem that
stirred him was how to reach such certainty in philosophy as char-
acterizes mathematics; and he prayed for divine illumination, vowing
a pilgrimage to the shrine of Loretto in case his prayer should be
answered. Leaving the army in 1621, Descartes devoted himself to
travel and study (1621-1625), and spent three years in Paris with
scientific friends (1625-1628); but feeling the need of solitude, he
withdrew to Holland, where he busied himself with the preparation
of his works (1629-1649). In 1649 he accepted the invitation of
Queen Christina of Sweden, who was deeply interested in philosophy,
and journeyed to Stockholm; the climate, however, undermined his
health, and he died after a year's sojourn (1650).
Among Descartes's works are the Discours de la methode (which
appeared with Dioptrics, Meteors, and Geometry in a series of Philo-
sophical Essays), 1637; Meditationes de prima philosophia (to which
were added objections by several learned men, Arnauld, Hobbes,
Gassendi, and others, together with rejoinders by the author himself),
1641; Principia philosophies, 1644; Les passions de I'ame, 1650. The
Discourse and Passions were written in French, the Meditations and
Principles in Latin. The book Le monde ou traite de la lumiere, begun
in 1630, was not published by Descartes; the condemnation of Galileo
by the Inquisition in 1632 deterred the timid and peace-loving philos-
opher from completing it. It and the Traite de I'homme appeared in
1664; the Letters, 1657-1667; posthumous works, 1701.
Works ed. by Cousin, in French, 11 vols., 1824-26 ; some unpublished
writings by Foucher de Careil, 2 vols., 1859-60; Adam and Tannery,
10 vols., 1897, ff.; French ed. of collected works, 1907, ff. Transl. of
Method, Meditations, and selections from Principles by Veitch (used by
us), and by Torrey; transl. of works by E. S. Haldane and G. Ross.
K. Fischer, Descartes and his School, transl.; monographs by
Mahaffy, Jungmann, Hoffmann, Liard, Fouillee; N. Smith, Studies
in Cartesian Philosophy; Boutroux, Descartes and Cartesianism, in
Cambridge Modern History, vol. IV, chap, xxvii; Rev. de met. el mo-
rale, July 1896, Descartes-number; Natorp, Descartes' Erkenntnisthe-
orie; Koch, Psychologic Descartes'; Heinze, Sittenlehre des Descartes;
Touchard, La morale de Descartes; Life of Descartes, by E. S. Haldane.
Levy-Bruhl, History of Modern Philosophy in France; Damiron,
Histoire de la philosophic du XVII. siecle; Bouillier, Histoire de la
philosophic cartesienne; Monchamp, Histoire du Cartesianisme en
Belgique; Iverach, Descartes, Spinoza, and the New Philosophy;
Schaarschmidt, Descartes und Spinoza.
274 MODERN PHILOSOPHY
The first part of true philosophy, according to Descartes, is
metaphysics, which contains the principles of knowledge, such
as the definition of the principal attributes of God,
Classification the immateriality of the soul, and of all the clear
Sciences anc^ simP^e notions that are in us. The second is
physics, in which, after finding the true principles
of material things, we examine, in general, how the whole uni-
verse has been framed; then, in particular, the nature of the
earth and of all the bodies most generally found upon it, as
air, water, fire, the loadstone and other minerals ; next the nature
of plants, animals, and, above all, man, in order hereafter to be
able to discover the other sciences that are useful to us. Thus,
all philosophy is like a tree, of which metaphysics is the root,
physics the trunk, and all the other sciences the branches that
grow out of this trunk, which are reduced to three principal,
namely, medicine, mechanics, and ethics. The science of morals
is the highest and most perfect, which, presupposing an entire
knowledge of the other sciences, is the last degree of wisdom.*
The first part of Descartes 's book on the Principles of Philosophy
contains the metaphysics, the other three parts take up " all
that is most general, in physics. ' '
Descartes 's aim is to find a body of certain and self-evident
truths, such as every one endowed with common-sense and the
faculty of reasoning will accept. Such knowledge
Method and the philosophy of the School has not been able to
Criterion of «?••.•, -!•«. • •
Knowledge afford; there are many different opinions on one
and the same subject, and we look in vain for cer-
tainty in this field. The other sciences, taking, as they do, their
principles from scholastic philosophy, can have nothing solid
built upon such unstable foundations. Instead of clear and
certain knowledge, we receive a lot of false opinions and are
involved in error and doubt. There is not a single subject
in philosophy that is not still in dispute. Hence, if we
would have anything firm and constant in the sciences, we
* With the Greek thinkers of the classical period and many of the great
philosophers who came after him, Descartes emphasizes the practical,
ethical significance of philosophy : " The study of philosophy is more
imperatively requisite for the regulation of our manners and for con-
ducting us through life than is the use ef our eyes for directing our
steps."
RENE DESCARTES 275
must get rid of these opinions and build anew from the bot-
tom up.
Instead of accepting the traditional views, we ought to study
the great book of the world. ' We shall never become philos-
ophers even though we should read all the reasonings of Plato
and Aristotle if we cannot form a sound judgment upon any
proposition." To know the opinions of others is not science, but
history; a man should do his own thinking. But how shall we
proceed in our attempts to reach clear and certain knowledge,
what method ought we to follow ? The example of mathematics
gives us a hint of the order to be pursued in our reasonings ; the
mathematicians alone have been able to find certain and self-
evident propositions. We accept without debate the statement
that twice two is four, or that the sum of the angles of a tri-
angle is equal to two right angles. If we could discover such
truths in philosophy, there would be an end of countless disputes
and controversies: we should be able to prove the existence of
God, the immortality of the soul, the reality of an external
world, and we should succeed in laying secure foundations for the
sciences.
How do we proceed in mathematics, what is the method pur-
sued? We begin with axioms, or principles which are self-
evident, which every one accepts who hears 'and understands
them. From these principles as our starting-point we deduce
other propositions which logically follow from them, and which
are just as certain as the former, provided no mistake has been
made in the reasoning. That is, we begin with simple proposi-
tions that are self-evident, and pass from these to more complex
ones ; our method is synthetic or deductive.
This method must be applied in philosophy. We should pro-
ceed from absolutely certain first principles, from propositions
which are clear and self-evident, and pass on to new and unknown
truths which are equally certain. We look in vain for such
truth in the traditional scholastic systems, for in them we re-
ceive nothing but a mass of divergent opinions. Besides, we
cannot accept any truth on the authority of others; we must
search after it ourselves, never receive anything as true which
we do not clearly and distinctly perceive to be so. And here
we should be on our guard. We have our prejudices, a lot of
276 MODERN PHILOSOPHY
transmitted notions which have been impressed upon us in our
childhood by our parents and teachers. Many of these opinions
have been found by experience to be false ; perhaps all of them
are. Neither can we have faith in our sensations, for these
often deceive us, and how do we know that they have anything
real corresponding to them? But are not our own bodies and
actions realities? No, we cannot be certain even of these; we
are often deceived, we dream, and in our dreams we believe we
have realities before us, whereas they are nothing but illusions.
Perhaps we are dreaming now, at this present moment ; we have
no marks by which we can with certainty distinguish between
waking and dreaming. For all I know, an evil spirit has made
me so that this world which I picture to myself, exists only in
my imagination; perhaps it has no existence outside my mind.
Even the demonstrations of mathematics may be doubted, for
we have sometimes seen men fall into error in such matters
and admit as absolutely certain what to us appeared false.
Besides, God, who is all-powerful, may have created us so that
we are always deceived even in the things we think we know best.
There is, then, no idea which seems certain to me. ' ' I suppose,
accordingly, that all the things which I see are false; I am
persuaded that none of those things which my deceptive memory
presents to me are true; I suppose that I have no senses; I
believe that body, figure, extension, motion, and place are nothing
but fictions of my mind. What is there then that can be thought
true? Perhaps only that nothing in the world is certain."
But one thing is certain, and that is that I doubt, or think;
of that there can be no doubt. And it is a contradiction to
conceive that that which thinks does not exist at the very time
when it thinks. Descartes does not here infer from an empirical
psychical fact: I think, hence I am; but reasons logically that
doubt implies a doubter, thinking a thinker, a thinking thing
(res cogitans) or spiritual substance; thus reaching what seems
to him a rational, self-evident proposition. To doubt means to
think, to think means to be ; cogito, ergo sum, I think, therefore
I am. " It is the first and most certain knowledge that occurs
to one who philosophizes in an orderly manner." Here is the
principle we have been seeking, — a certain, self-evident starting-
point for our metaphysics. This proposition also furnishes us
RENE DESCARTES 277
with a criterion or test of truth. It is absolutely certain, it is
true, it is clearly and distinctly perceived. Hence, I can estab-
lish it as a general rule that all things which are clearly and
distinctly perceived are true.
We now have a fundamental principle and a criterion of knowl-
edge. What else can we know ? It is doubtful whether anything
can be certain, so long as we are confronted with
the notion of a deceiving God ; we do not know as Proofs for
yet whether there is a God, and that he is not a
deceiver. This difficulty must be removed. Some
of our ideas appear to be innate, some are our own inventions,
most of them seem to be received from without. Certain ones
we regard as effects or copies of an external world. But all
this may be illusion. One of the ideas I find in myself is the
idea of God. Now, nothing can come from nothing, whatever
exists must have a cause for existing; this, too, is a self-evident
proposition. Moreover, the cause must be at least as great as
the effect, there must be at least as much reality in it as in the
effect. That which contains greater reality in itself, the more
perfect, cannot be a consequence of, and dependent on, the less
perfect. Hence, I myself cannot be the cause of the idea of
God, for I am a finite, imperfect being, and the idea is the idea
of a perfect, infinite being. Hence, the idea must have been
placed in me by an infinite being, or God, and God must exist.
This proof for the existence of God is not the ontological proof
of Anselm, but a causal proof, based on our notion of a perfect
being. \It is not argued that such a being exists because we
have a concept of him, but that the knowledge of such a being
necessarily implies, as the ground of this concept, a being greater
than the knower.
But, it may be urged, the notion of infinity is a mere negative
concept : the denial of perfection. It cannot be that, according
to Descartes, for the idea of finitude implies the idea of infinity,
or of God; how could I doubt or have desires if I did not have
in myself the idea of a being more perfect than myself, by
comparison with whom I recognize the defects of my nature?
Doubt implies a standard of truth, imperfection a standard of
perfection.
Again, I could not have been the cause of my own existence,
278 MODERN PHILOSOPHY
for I have an idea of perfection ; and if I had created myself,
I should have made myself perfect, and, moreover, I should
be able to preserve myself, which is not the case. If my parents
had created me, they could also preserve me, which is impossible.
Finally, it also follows from the very notion of God as a perfect
being that he exists. It is not in my power to conceive a God
without existence, that is, a being supremely perfect and yet
devoid of an absolute perfection. This is the ontological argu-
ment used by both Anselm and Augustine.
It is also unthinkable that the divine perfections, which I
conceive, should have more than one cause, for if these causes
were many, they would not be perfect ; to be perfect there must
be one cause only, one God. God must be self-caused, for if he
is the effect of another being, then that being is the effect of
another, and so on ad infinitum: we have an infinite regress and
never reach any effect.
The idea of God I have received from God ; it is innate. God
is not only the cause, but the archetype of our existence, he has
created man in his own image. It ought not to be wondered at
that God in creating me should have placed this idea in me, to
serve as the mark of the workman imprinted on his work. If God
did not exist, I could not possibly be what I am, nor could I
have an idea of God. We know more of God himself and of the
human mind than we know of corporeal objects. Reflecting
upon the idea of God, we perceive that he is eternal, omniscient,
omnipotent, the source of all goodness and truth ; the creator of
all things. He is not corporeal and does not perceive by means
of the senses, as we do. He has intellect and will, but not like
ours ; and he does not will evil or sin, for sin is the negation of
being. This is the usual theistic position with which we have
become acquainted in scholasticism. Descartes agrees with Duns
Scotus that we can accept reason only in so far as it does not
conflict with revelation. He also holds with Duns that God
could have arranged the world otherwise than it is ; likewise that
a thing is good because God makes it so ; he does not make it so
because it is good.
We have thus far discovered several self-evident truths: I
exist ; Whatever is clearly and distinctly perceived is true ; Noth-
ing can be without a cause; The cause must contain at least as
RENE DESCARTES , 279
much reality and perfection as the effect; God exists; God is
perfect, God cannot deceive us. But how comes it, then, that we
are ever deceived, that we ever err at all? In the
first place, the power of distinguishing the true from Error &
the false, which God has given us, is not infinite.
Moreover, error .depends on the concurrence of two causes,
namely, the faculty of ccfgnition and the faculty of election, or
the power of free choice, i.e., understanding and will. By under-
standing alone, I neither affirm nor deny anything, but merely
apprehend the ideas regarding which I may form a judgment;
no error, properly so-called, is found in it. Neither is the will
of itself the source of error, for it is exceedingly ample and
perfect in its kind. Errors are due to my failure to restrain
the will from judging a thing when I do not conceive it with
sufficient clearness and distinctness; by choosing the false in-
stead of the true and evil instead of good, the will falls into
error and sin.
Another problem demanding consideration is that of the ex-
ternal world. We imagine that there are bodies outside of us.
How can we know that they actually exist? We
have feelings of pleasure and pain, appetites, and
sensations, which we refer instinctively to bodily
causes. But since they often deceive us, we cannot prove the
existence of bodies from the existence of such experiences. Yet,
as we do not produce these states ourselves, they must be pro-
duced either by God or by the things outside. If they are pro-
duced by God, we are deceived, — for we are not aware that he
is their cause, — and God is a deceiver. God, however, is not
a deceiver, as has been shown, but a truthful being, and our sen-
sations must, therefore, be caused by real bodies.
What, however, are bodies ? Bodies exist independently of our
thinking ; they do not need our existence in order to exist. Such
an independent thing is called a substance. By substance we can
mean nothing else than a thing which so exists that it needs no
other thing in order to exist. In reality, there is only one such
being, God, substance in the absolute sense. We, therefore, have,
strictly speaking, one absolute substance, God, and two relative
substances, mind and body. These two exist independently of
ont another, but both depend on God. They are fundamentally
280 MODERN PHILOSOPHY
different from one another, and we know them only through
their attributes. The essential characteristic or property of sub-
stance, that which necessarily inheres in it, is called the attribute.
The attribute is the quality without which the substance cannot
be thought or exist. But the attribute can manifest itself in
different ways or modes or modifications. Substance and at-
tribute can be conceived without modes, but modes cannot be
thought without substance and attribute. We cannot conceive
figure without extension, nor motion except in extended space;
nor imagination, sensation, or will, except in a thinking thing.
We can, on the other hand, conceive extension without figure or
motion, and thought without imagination or sensation. \*The sub-
stance cannot change its attributes, but it can change its modes:
a body will always be extended, but its figure need not be the
same. Since there are no changes in God, there are no modes
in God.
What, then, are things as such? What we clearly and dis-
tinctly perceive in body is the essential attribute of body.
Sounds, colors, taste, smell, heat and cold are not attributes of
body : we are unable to conceive these clearly and distinctly, they
are confused; what I sense is not the body's true reality. The
attribute of body is extension, and nothing else; body and ex-
tension are identical. Extension is length, breadth, and thick-
ness, hence extension and space are identical. Every body is a
limited spatial magnitude. There is, therefore, no empty space
or vacuum : wherever there is space, there is body. Space is
infinitely divisible, there are no ultimate parts of space, hence
no atoms. The smallest parts of bodies are still further divisible ;
they are not atoms, but corpuscles, or molecules, as we should
say to-day. Nor can extension stop anywhere : the corporeal
world is infinite.
All the processes of the external world are modifications or
modes of extension ; extension may be divided without end, the
parts may be united and separated, whence arise different forms
of matter. All variation of matter, or diversity of form, depends
on motion. Motion is the action by which a body passes from
one place to another. It is a mode of the movable thing, not a
substance. All occurrence is transference of motion from one
part of space to another. " Motion is the transporting of one
RENE DESCARTES 281
part of matter or of one body from the vicinity of those bodies
that are in immediate contact with it, or which we regard at
rest, to the vicinity of other bodies." The physical world is
explained in terms of mechanics. There is no action in the dis-
tance, all occurrences are due to pressure and impact. Hence,
there must be a universal ether to account for the facts of
astronomy.
Body conceived as mere extension is passive and cannot move
itself; we must, therefore, have recourse to God as the first
cause of motion in the world. " God originally created matter
along with motion and rest, and now by his concourse alone
preserves in the whole the same amount of motion that he then
placed in it." This view of the prime mover was common in
the time of Descartes and after. Galileo and Newton both ac-
cepted it : it is the old Aristotelian conception.)1 To hinder divine
interference with the world, however, whic'h would mean the
abandonment of the mechanical theory and a relapse into scholas-
ticism, our philosopher holds that God has given the world a
certain amount of motion : motion is constant. We have here
the theory of the conservation of energy in germ. Bodies can-
not produce motion of themselves or stop it ; consequently, they
can neither increase nor decrease it, and hence the quantity of
motion and rest must remain the same.
Since God is immutable, all changes in the world of bodies
must follow according to constant rules, or laws of nature. All
laws of nature are laws of motion. All differences in bodies are
explained as different relations of the parts: solid bodies are
bodies in which the parts are united and at rest; fluids are
bodies in which the parts move.
Mind is diametrically opposed to body. The attribute of body
is extension: bodies are passive; the attribute of mind is think-
ing: mind is active, free. The two substances are
absolutely distinct: mind is absolutely without ex- &
tension, and no body can think. We cannot
conceive of mind or soul without thought: the soul is ret
cogitans; I have a clear and distinct idea of myself in so far
as I am only a thinking and unextended thing. Hence, it is
certain that I, that is, my mind, through which I am what I am,
is entirely and truly distinct from my body, and may exist with-
282 MODERN PHILOSOPHY
out it. I can clearly and distinctly conceive myself as entire,
without the faculties of imagining and perceiving, but I cannot
conceive these without conceiving myself, that is to say, without
an intelligent substance in which they reside. Imagination and
perception are, therefore, distinct from myself, as modes are
from things.* We clearly perceive that neither extension nor
figure nor local motion nor anything similar that can be at-
tributed to body, pertains to our nature, and nothing save
thought alone. And, consequently, the notion we have of our
mind precedes that of any corporeal thing, and is more certain,
seeing we still doubt whether there is any body in existence,
while we already perceive that we think.
What particularly attracted Descartes in this extreme dualism
was that it left nature free for the mechanical explanations of
natural science. Mind is eliminated from nature and given an
independent territory of its own. Physics is allowed to go its
own way ; all purposes or final causes are banished from it. A
division is made between mind and body similar to the division
made between theology and philosophy in scholastic days. This
teaching Descartes applies to the entire organic world, even to
the human body. The human body is, like the animal body, a
machine. The moving principle in it is the heat in the heart;
the organs of motion are the muscles; the organs of sensation,
the nerves. Animal spirits are distilled in the blood in the heart
and rise through the arteries into the brain, and thence into the
muscles and nerves. All the functions of the body follow natu-
rally, in this machine, from the arrangement of the organs, —
as necessarily as the movements of a watch or other automaton
follow from its pendulum and wheels. It is not necessary to
conceive in it any plant or sensitive soul or any other principle
of vital motion than blood and the animal spirits. D.escartes
repudiates the vitalism of Aristotle and the schoolmen, and offers
a thoroughgoing mechanical theory of organic nature.
If these two substances exclude one another, it would follow
that there can be no interaction between them: mind cannot
* In thought, however, Descartes includes will and evidently also such
higher emotions as are not the result of the union of body and mind. He
tells us in his Discourse on Method that a thinking thing is one that
doubts, understands, conceives, affirms, denies, wills, refuses, imagines aa
frell as feels.
RENE DESCARTES 283
cause changes in the body, and body cannot cause changes in the
mind. Descartes, however, does not draw the consequences of his
premises. There are certain facts which point to an intimate
union between body and mind in man : appetites of hunger and
thirst ; emotions and passions of mind which are not exclusively
mental affections; sensations of pain, color, light, sound, etc.
These we cannot refer to the body alone or to the soul alone, but
must explain by the close and intimate union of the two. The
union is not to be conceived as one like that of the pilot to the
vessel. My mind and my body compose a substantial unity. All
the sensations just mentioned are merely confused modes of
consciousness, the result of this union. That is, man is not a
pure spirit. Motion in animals, and often in ourselves, occurs
without the intervention of reason ; the senses excited by external
objects simply react to the animal spirits and the reactions are
mechanical, — the animal is nothing but a machine ; — but this is
not the case with human sensations. If I were merely a thinking
being, if my soul were not somehow intimately conjoined with
my body, I should, for example, know that I am hungry, but
not feel hungry. I should not have these confused modes of
consciousness.
Just how this intimate union is to be conceived, is not made
quite clear, however. Descartes warns us against confounding
mind and body with one another. Thought and extension, he
tells us, can be combined, in man, in unity of composition, but
not in unity of nature : the union should not be compared with
a mixture of two bodies. He teaches that " thought can be
troubled by the organs without being the product of them ";
sensations, feelings, and appetites are disturbances in the soul
resulting from its union with a body. In spite of the union,
however, body and soul remain distinct; God has put them to-
gether; he cannot rid himself of the power of separating them
or of conserving the one apart from the other. Descartes 's idea
here seems to be that the relation between mind and body is not
such that a physical state becomes a mental state, produces or
causes a mental state, or vice versa : the mind is simply troubled
by organic processes. His obscurity and vacillation on this point
are due to his desire to explain the corporeal world on purely
mechanical principles and at th« same time leave a place for
284. MODERN PHILOSOPHY
the action of a spiritual principle. The facts of experience point
to an intimate connection between the two worlds which his elear-
cut distinction between them seems to render impossible.
At other times, however, he accepts the theory of causal inter-
action without hesitation. The soul, though united with the
whole body, exercises its functions more particularly, or has
its principal seat, in the pineal gland of the brain. Movements
are caused by sensible objects in the animal spirits and trans-
ferred to the pineal gland ; in this way sensations are produced.
The soul can also move the gland in different ways ; this motion
is transferred to the animal spirits and conducted by them over
the nerves into the muscles. Here the relation of mind and body
is clearly conceived as causal : through the mediation of the pineal
gland a certain interaction is brought about between them.
The soul, according to Descartes, does not consist of separate
souls or faculties, but is a single principle expressing itself in
. various ways: the same soul that feels also rea-
sons and wills. He distinguishes between its active
and passive phases, the actions and passions of the soul, as he
calls them. The former are our volitions or acts of will, which
depend on the soul itself: I am free to will to love God, or to
think pure thought, or to create pictures of the imagination and
to move my body. The latter are sensations and their copies,
our appetites, pain, heat, and other bodily feelings, which are
referred either to external objects or to the body. The volun-
tary or active states are absolutely in the power of the soul
and can only be indirectly changed by the body, whereas the
passive states depend absolutely on their physiological causes
and can be changed by the soul only indirectly, except in cases
in which the soul is itself their cause. There are, however, other
states, or " perceptions," " of which we feel the effects as in
the soul itself." These are the sentiments of joy, anger, and
the like, which are passions in the restricted sense of the term;
they are perceptions or sentiments or emotions of the soul which
we refer particularly to it and which are caused, supported, and
strengthened by certain movements of the animal spirits. The
principal effect and use of such passions, however, is to incite
and dispose the soul to will the things for which they prepare
the body : fear incites the will to fly, courage to fight, and so on.
RENE DESCARTES 285
The passions proper have as their immediate cause the move-
ments of the animal spirits which agitate the pineal gland, but
they can sometimes be caused by the action of the soul, which
wills to conceive such and such an object; thus I may arouse
feelings of courage in myself by analyzing the situation.
The so-called conflicts between natural appetites and will are
explained as oppositions between movements, which the body by
its spirits, and the soul by its will, tend to excite in the pineal
gland at the same time. Every one can recognize the strength
or weakness of his soul by the outcome of such conflicts. But
there is no soul so feeble that it cannot, if well conducted, acquire
an absolute power over its passions. The power of the soul,
however, is inadequate without the knowledge of truth.
Descartes enumerates six primary passions : wonder, love, hate,
desire, joy, and sorrow, of which all the rest are species. They
are all related to the body; their natural use being to incite
the soul to consent and contribute to the actions which tend
to preserve the body or to render it in some way more perfect;
and in this sense joy and sorrow are the first to be employed.
For the soul is directly turned from harmful things only by the
feeling of pain, which produces the passion of sorrow, then fol-
low hatred of the cause of the pain and the desire to be freed
from the pain.
Our good and evil depend chiefly on the inner emotions ex-
cited in the soul only by the soul itself. So long as the soul
has something within to satisfy it, all the troubles which come
from without have no power to hurt it. And in order that it
may have this inner satisfaction, all that is needed is to follow
virtue exactly. We note here the Stoic influence on Descartes 's
ethics. Stoicism was the current ethical theory in the Renais-
sance and remained popular far into modern times.
Bacon had suggested a mechanical theory of mental states and
Hobbes had made mechanism the basis of his entire world-view.
Descartes attempts to apply it in detail to a large portion of our
psychic life. But he does not explain all our mental processes
in this way. Mind itself is a distinct entity, having the power
of understanding and will. Moreover, all the " perceptions," of
which Descartes speaks, — sensations, appetites, emotions, — are
states of mind, not motions ; and some passions are purely men-
286 MODERN PHILOSOPHY
tal, not caused by organic activities at all. The will is ind«-
pendent of bodily states and can of its own accord produce such
states. The will is free, and the ethical ideal of the soul is to
make itself free from external influences, to keep the reins in its
own hands.
The aim of Descartes is to reach clear and certain knowledge,
such certainty as arises when we judge that it is impossible for
_ a thing to be otherwise than we conceive it. We
Innate Ideas , .
have suck necessary knowledge in the demonstra-
tions of mathematics, and also in philosophy if we follow the
proper metho^: Certain truths are clearly and distinctly per-
ceived, though not equally by all men. Now, such knowledge
cannot spring from the senses; they do not tell us what things
are in4}>emselves or as such, but only how they affect us. Colors,
sounds, taste, odors, do not belong to the object. What the real
object is, what it is when stripped of the qualities the senses
ascribe to it, we can know only by clear and distinct thinking.
If we cannot derive true knowledge from sense-experience, if
genuine knowledge is the result of reasoning from certain basal
notions and principles, these must be inherent in the mind itself,
innate, or a priori. The mind has its own standards or norms,
which guide it in the pursuit of truth. Principles of knowledge
may become explicit only in the course of experience, that is,
as the mind exercises itself in thought, but they are somehow
present from the beginning. Descartes 's basal idea is that rea-
son has its natural norms; how they are present, he is not
sure ; here, again, he vacillates. By innate knowledge he some-
times means ideas or truths impressed upon the mind, princi-
ples which the soul finds in itself, and sometimes the native
power or faculty of the soul to produce such knowledge in the
course of human experience. The polemic of Locke against the
doctrine of innate ideas contributed to greater clarity and defi-
niteness with regard to the whole problem, and compelled ration-
alism in the persons of Leibniz and Kant to present the teaching
in a different form.
Descartes 's rationalism and apriorism did not hinder him from
paying ample attention to experience.* He did not work out
* Cf. Duboux, La physique de Descartes; Foster, History of Physiology
during the Sixteenth, Seventeenth, and Eighteenth Centuries.
SUCCESSORS OF DESCARTES 187
a systematic theory of knowledge ; he was interested in discover-
ing a method of truth rather than in a detailed discussion of
epistemological problems. In spite of his studied skepticism,
he was a dogmatist in the sense of believing in the competence
of reason to attain certain knowledge. He was a realist in ac-
cepting the existence of an external world, the true nature of
which, however, can be discovered only by rational thinking.
46. SUCCESSORS OP DESCARTES
The Cartesian philosophy presented many difficulties and pro-
voked a host of problems which kept thinkers busy for centuries
to come. If God and nature, it was held, are two
distinct and independent realities, as the theory p e, ,
demands, there can be no real converse between
them. Then God cannot impress the idea of himself upon the
mind of man, nor can man know anything of God. It is also
inexplicable how God, a pure spirit, should be able to impart
motion to matter. These perplexities Descartes sometimes seeks
to escape by distinguishing between the substantiality of God
and that of souls and bodies: God is the only real substance,
all things else are dependent on God, effects of his causality, his
creatures. In nominally abandoning the dualism inherent in
the system, our philosopher opens the way for the pantheism of
Spinoza. A similar dualism is created between God and man
when man is endowed with free will, as Descartes endows him,
without being able to explain the " great mystery " by his phi-
losophy. Another chasm yawns between man and nature, or
mind and body. If mind and body are totally distinct, how
can any communication take place between them ? By hypothesis,
interaction is impossible, and yet such interaction is assumed as
a fact. We have, therefore, a double contradiction here: body
and soul are independent substances, and yet God is the only
true substance, souls and bodies are his creations. Body and
soul are independent substances, and yet they act on one an-
other. Moreover, it was asked, if the bodies of animals are ma-
chines, why not human bodies f
The new philosophy is an attempt to harmonize the me-
chanical theory of modern science, which it was impossible to
288 MODERN PHILOSOPHY
ignore, with the spiritualistic theology and metaphysics which
had come in with Christianity. Nearly all of Descartes 's diffi-
culties are caused by his task of reconciliation; the function of
his successors consisted either in pointing them out or discover-
ing ways of escaping them. It was possible to avoid the dualism
of the system (1) by eliminating nature as an independent
reality and teaching absolute idealism (Malebranche) ; (2) by
eliminating mind as an independent reality and accepting mate-
rialism (Hobbes, La Mettrie, and the French materialists) ; (3)
by making both mind and matter manifestations of an absolute
substance, God or Nature (Spinoza). Or it was possible to
retain the dualism and frankly deny the possibility of inter-
action (parallelism). In addition to the metaphysical prob-
lems, questions concerning the origin, nature, and method of
knowledge demanded further attention; and in this work Eng-
lish empiricism and French sensationalism took the leading part.
The philosophy of Descartes met with bitter opposition from the
Jesuits (having been placed on the Index in 1663) and the Calvinists
in Holland, and was prohibited in the universities of France and
Germany. It gained followers, however, in the new Dutch universities,
particularly among the theologians, and in France, where it was taken
up by the Oratory of Jesus. Among those who were interested in
the metaphysical problems suggested by Cartesianism, especially in
the problem of the relation of mind and body, we mention: Regis
(1632-1707), De la Forge, Cordemoy, Clauberg (1622-1665), Bekker
(1634-1698), who tries to prove, on Cartesian principles, the im-
possibility of demonology, witchcraft, magic, and other superstitions,
and Arnold Geulincx (1625-1669). Clauberg holds that the spul
cannot produce movements in the body, but can direct such movements
as the driver guides his horses. Antoine Arnauld (1612-1694), author
(with Nicole) of Art de penser, or the Port-Royal Logic as it came
to be called, and a follower of Jansenism, accepted the philosophy of
Descartes.
Most of these Cartesians reject the theory of interaction, or
influxus physicus, as it was called, and have recourse to the will
I ,. of God in explanation of the body-mind relation.
Body and mind are distinct ; the will does not move
bodies ; how could it ? It is the occasion for such a change taking
place in the external world, which God himself brings about.
Nor can physical occurrences produce ideas in us : they are only
the occasional causes (causce occasionales] for God's producing
them in us. This view has been called Occasionalism. It is par-
SUCCESSORS OF DESCARTES 289
allelism, holding that mental and physical processes are not
causally related but run parallel to one another. We have here
the beginnings of the criticism of the notion of causation which
culminated in Hume's skepticism: how can a mental cause pro-
duce a physical effect, or vice versa?
Geulincx explains the matter somewhat differently. It is true,
he holds, we cannot act on the physical world nor can the
physical world act on us. Yet our volitions are not
the occasion for creating movements, nor move-
ments the occasion for creating ideas, by a spe-
cial act of God. Nor did God preestablish the harmony between
body and soul. God knows what I am going to will, although
my will is free; and the entire universe has been arranged in
accordance with that knowledge. " God in his infinite wisdom
has instituted laws of motion, so that a movement which is
entirely independent of my will and power coincides with my
free volition." Geulincx also deviates from Cartesianism in his
conception of knowledge: we cannot know things as they are
in themselves; God alone has knowledge of them, whereas we
know only our own ego.
Works by Geulincx: Saturnalia, 1653; Logica, 1662; Ethica, 1664, ff.;
Physica vera, 1688; Metaphysica, 1691. Edition of works by Land,
3 vols. Monographs by Land, van der Haeghen, E. Pfleiderer, Grimm,
Samtleben.
Nicolas Malebranche (1638-1715) looks at the problem presented
by Descartes from another angle. He was a member of the Oratory
of Jesus, among whom the doctrines of Augustine were
popular and who became greatly interested in Car- Idealism
tesianism. The reading of Descartes's Traite de
I'homme led him to devote himself to the study of the entire system.
Although his aim was the harmony of religion and philosophy,
Augustinianism and Cartesianism, his books were placed on the Index.
His chief works are: De la recherche de la verite, 1675; Traite de la
nature et de la grace, 1680; Traite de la morale, 1684; Entretiens sur
la religion et metaphysique, 1688; Traite de I 'amour de Dieu, 1697.
Works ed. by Simon, 4 vols. ; translations of a number of his books ;
monographs by Joly, Olle-Laprune, Novaro. See also E. Caird,
Essays on Literature and Philosophy; Pillon, V 'evolution de I'idealisme,
etc., in Annee philosophique, vols. IV and V.
If thought is something utterly distinct from motion, Male-
branche asks, how can motion produce sensation, and how can
290 MODERN PHILOSOPHY
mind perceive real extension if such there be ? The thing seems
impossible. Spiritual things are spiritually discerned, the like
knows the like only. What we see is not the real world or real
extension, but a world of ideas, an intelligible world, intelligible
or ideal space. The ideas are in God, and God is spirit with spir-
itual attributes only. A real body, or created space, cannot
affect mind; nothing but an ideal body, the idea of a body, can
do that. We see all things in God, not in an extended God, but in
a thinking God ; and the things wre see are ideas, not the extended
material objects themselves. Thus far, Malebranche 's theory
is an idealistic pantheism, and if he had stopped here, the ver-
dict of the historians of philosophy who call him a " Christian
Spinoza " might seem partly justified. He does not hold, how-
ever, that there is but one universal substance, but that there is
only one supreme Reason embracing the ideas of all possible
things. The material world is terra incognita; whether it exists
or not, he does not know. Its idea is the real immediate object
of my mind, and not matter itself; I cannot know that this
exists except through natural or supernatural revelation. " If
God had destroyed the created world, and would continue to
affect me as he now affects me, I should continue to see what I
now see; and I should believe that this (created) world exists,
since it is not this world that acts on my mind." We believe
in such a world because revelation tells us of its existence.
Malebranche 's system would be pantheism if he had rejected this
unknown counter-world whose face is turned away from us,
but it would be idealistic pantheism and not Spinozism.
Malebranche 's discussions of the problem of causation resem-
ble the criticisms later made by Hume, who examined the French
Platonist's doctrine. We cannot derive the notion of necessary
connection of cause and effect from outer and inner experience :
our right to assume such necessary connection lies in reason ; the
notion of necessary causation is implied in the notion of universal
being.
In Blaise Pascal (1623-1662; Lettres provinciates, 1657,
Pensees sur la religion, 1669), a gifted mathematician and
. physicist, mysticism is combined with a partial
skepticism. Pascal, who sympathized with the Jan-
senists of Port Royal, a reform movement within the Catholic
SUCCESSORS OF DESCARTES 291
Church inspired by Augustinian thoughts, accepted the Car-
tesian dualism with its mechanical conception of nature. He
also recognized the validity of certain first principles, e.g.,
the existence of space, time, motion, number, matter. But knowl-
edge of ultimates he declared to be beyond our ken; we know
neither the ground nor the goal of things. We cannot demon-
strate the existence of God nor the immortality of the soul;
philosophical proofs may perhaps lead us to a God of truth, but
never to a God of love. Reason, therefore, ends in doubt and
leaves us in the lurch when it comes to our deepest interests.
But in religious feeling we directly experience God and find
peace : ' ' the heart has its reasons which reason does not know. ' '
Since, however, everything natural, — human nature and human
society, — is sinful and corrupt, divine grace, revelation, and the
authority of the Church alone can save us.
Works ed. by Bossut; Pensees, by Brunsehvicg, 1904; transl. of
Thoughts and Provincial Letters by Kegan Paul. Monographs by
Tulloch, Boutroux, Girand, St. Cyr, Strowski (3 vols.), Cousin, Vinet,
Droz, Dreydorff; Roster, Ethik Pascals.
Pierre Poiret (1646-1719) accepted the mysticism of Jacob Boehme.
Francis van Helmont (1618-1699), a predecessor of Leibniz in his
monadology, is a mystic who was influenced by Platonism and cabalistic
lore.
Pierre Bayle (1647-1706; Dictionnaire historique et critique,
1695, Systeme de la philosophic, 1737) applies the Cartesian
criterion of clear and distinct knowledge as his ,
. . , , . ... . „ ,., Skepticism
test in a keen and searching criticism of philo-
sophical and theological dogmatism. With remarkable dialectical
skill he lays bare inconsistencies of fact and reason in the doc-
trines of religion and calls attention to the opposition between
reason and revelation, science and religion. Religion is thus lim-
ited to revelation, but revelation itself must submit to reason;
the historical facts on which it is based must be subjected to
critical examination. Religious and metaphysical theories, how-
ever, do not affect human morality.
Bayle influenced both Leibniz and Hume, and his Dictionary
was translated into German by no less a person than Gottsched,
one of the leaders of the Aufkldrung. His destructive criticism
proved most potent in the case of the philosophers of the French
Enlightenment of the eighteenth century, who, as a recent writer
292 MODERN PHILOSOPHY
says, drew copiously from his great work without mentioning
the author's name. In 1767 Frederick the Great wrote to Vol-
taire : * * Bayle began the battle. A number of Englishmen fol-
lowed in his wake. You are destined to finish the fight."
Delvolve, Eeligion, critique et philosophic positive chez P. Bayle;
articles by Pillon in Annee philosophique, 1896-1902; monographs by
Feuerbach, Botin.
47. BENEDICT SPINOZA
Descartes is a dogmatist and a rationalist: he believes in the
power of human reason to reach sure and universal knowledge.
. With the help of self-evident notions and principles,
which have their seat in the mind, he undertakes to
construct a universal theory as binding on reason as the proposi-
tions of geometry. Spinoza shares this faith; for him, too, the
goal of philosophy is the complete knowledge of things, and this
can be reached by clear and distinct thinking. If we proceed from
self-evident principles and prove every step in the argument,
we can fashion a body of truth as certain and universal as mathe-
matics. Descartes had given an illustration of the application
of the geometric method in the appendix to his Meditations.
Spinoza follows the same method in his early book on the expo-
sition of Descartes 's philosophy and in his chief work, Ethics.
He begins with definitions and axioms and proceeds to proposi-
tions which he demonstrates in the geometrical order, ordine
geometrico, each proposition occupying exactly the place in
the argument where it belongs. To the propositions are added
corollaries, which are necessary consequences of propositions,
and scholia, in which propositions are discussed more at length
and in less formal manner. His strict adherence to the mathe-
matical method greatly influenced Spinoza 's thought, as we shall
-see later on.
In aim and in method, then, Spinoza follows the example set
by Descartes. He is also interested in the same problems as his
predecessor, but seeks to solve them in a more consistent and sys-
tematic way. Descartes distinguishes sharply between God and
nature, mind and body: thought is the attribute of mind, ex-
tension the attribute of body. Nevertheless, he declares that God
is the sole independent substance, on which all other so-called
.
BENEDICT SPINOZA 293
substances depend, and that these have merely relative inde-
pendence. This idea Spinoza takes seriously and works out with
logical consistency. If substance is that which needs nothing
other than itself to exist or to be conceived, if God is the sub-
stance and everything else dependent on him, then, obviously,
there can be no substance outside of God. Then thought and
extension cannot be attributes of separate substances, but are
merged with these in God; they are attributes of one single
independent substance. Everything in the universe is dependent
on it; God is the cause and bearer of all qualities and events,
the one principle in which all things find their being. He is
the one thinking and extended substance, — the dualism of sub-
stances disappears, but the dualism of attributes remains. There
can be no interaction between the two attributes, between mental
and physical processes ; the two series are parallel to each other
and never intersect. And wherever there are mental processes,
there must be physical processes, and vice versa ; and the order
and connection of the physical realm is the same as the order
and connection of the psychic realm. Dualism gives way to
monism, theism to pantheism, interaction to parallelism.
Baruch (Benedict) de Spinoza (1632-1677) was born in Holland,
the son of a wealthy Portuguese-Jewish merchant. He studied the
Hebrew literature with the purpose of becoming a rabbi, but found
as little to satisfy him in Jewish scholasticism as Bacon and Descartes
had found in the Christian system. In his state of doubt he became
acquainted with the works of Descartes and renounced Judaism. Ex-
pelled from the synagogue (1656) and forced to leave Amsterdam,
he took up his abode in various Dutch towns and finally settled at
The Hague (1669), where he gained his livelihood by grinding lenses.
In his profound love of truth, his unselfishness, and his simple mode
of life, he exemplified the virtues of the philosopher. But his panthe-
istic system aroused intense and almost universal indignation, and
Spinoza was for centuries despised as an atheist. The only work of
his that appeared under his own name during his lifetime was the
exposition of Descartes's system, Cogitata metaphysica, 1663. The
Tractatus theologico-politicus, in which he critically examined the
Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch, and advocated freedom of thought
and the separation of Church and State, was published anonymously.
His posthumous works, including Ethics, Tractatus politicus, Tractatus
de intellectus emendatione, and Letters, appeared in 1677. A Dutch
translation of the Short Treatise (Tractatus brevis de Deo et homine
eiusque felicitate), his earliest work, was found in 1850; the original
Latin and Dutch texts are lost.
294
MODERN PHILOSOPHY
Best edition of works by Van Vlooten and Land, 2 vols., 1882-83.
Translations of chief works by Elwes, 2 vols.; of Ethics by White,
2d ed.; of Tractatus de intellectus emendations by White; of Cogitata
metaphysica by Britan; of Short Treatise by A. Wolf (with Life) ; of
Selections by Fullerton, 2d ed. (Elwes and White used in this book.)
J. Caird, Spinoza; Martineau, A Study of Spinoza; Pollock, Spinoza,
His Life and Philosophy, 2d ed.; Joachim, A Study of the Ethics of
Spinoza; Picton, Spinoza; Duff, Spinoza's Political and Ethical Phi-
losophy; K. Fischer, op. cit.f vol. I, 2; .Freudenthal, Lebensgeschichte
Spinozas, and Das Leben Spinozas; Meinsma, Spinoza en zijn Kring;
Erhardt, Die Philosophic des Spinoza; Wahle, Die Ethik Spinozas;
Dunin-Borkowski, Der junge Spinoza; Worms, La morale de Spinoza;
Brunschvicg, Spinoza; Couchoud, Spinoza. A history of Spinozism is
given in Erhardt's book, pp. 1-66, and a discussion of the different
interpretations in the Appendix, pp. 466-502.
The origin of Spinozism has been sought by different students of
his doctrines in different sources: in Averroism, in the cabalistic and
pantheistic literature of the Middle Ages, in the writings of the
Jewish scholars Moses Maimonides and Creskas,* in the speculations
of Giordano Bruno. Whatever influence any or all of these teachings
may have had on him, the indications are that the philosophy of
Descartes furnished the building stones of his system. The problems'
which occupy his attention, and which he tries to solve, are problems
which grew out of the theories of the great French rationalist, and
the pantheistic conception which characterizes his own solution was a
logical consequence of the Cartesian notion of God as the absolute
substance. It is possible, however, that the Neoplatonism of the
medieval Jewish thinkers led him to appreciate the pantheistic possi-
bilities of the Cartesian system.
The world is handled in the Spinozistic system like a problem
in geometry. Everything is said to follow from the first prin-
ciple or ground of the universe as necessarily as
the propositions of geometry follow from their
logical presuppositions. J»ust as in a mathematical deduction
the consequences are not mere temporal effects but as eternal as
the principle itself, so things follow from the first cause, not
as an evolution in time, but eternally, sub specie ceternitatis.
Time is a mere mode of thought, modus cogitandi, there is no
before and after, but only eternity. Causari = sequi, causa =
ratio; no distinction is made between rational or logical ground
and real ground. Thought and being are identical. In reality, one
thing follows another or is caused: the universe is a causal chain
in which each link is necessarily connected with the preceding
Method
* Maimonides holds that to conceive God as the bearer of many attributes
would destroy his unity, while Creskas defends this view.
BENEDICT SPINOZA 295
link, just as in a process of reasoning every conclusion is grounded
on premises. Moreover, just as a proposition is the necessary
consequence of some other proposition in a mathematical demon-
stration, everything is the necessary effect of something 'else in
nature : the whole is an interrelated system in which every mem-
ber has its necessary place. That is, the Spinozistic system is
strictly deterministic. Again, as there is no purpose or design
in mathematics, there is no purpose or design in nature ; in this
sense, the system is anti-teleological. How could there be design
in God? Thought is an attribute of the underlying substance,
as much so as extended nature, and cannot, therefore, precede
the latter as its final cause. Pro ascribe purpose to God is to
give precedence to thinking, and thinking, as an attribute or
manifestation of God, is on the same level with extension.
The Spinozistic system is presented in its most developed
form in the Ethics. The work is divided into five parts,
dealing with the following topics: (1) God,
(2) The Nature and Origin of Mind, (3) The
Nature and Origin of the Emotions, (4) Human
Bondage and the Power of the Emotions, (5) The Power
of the Intellect or Human Liberty. The starting-point of the
thought is the definition of substance. Substance is that which
exists in itself or independently of anything else, that which
does not need the conception of any other thing in order to be
conceived: nothing can be conceived without presupposing sub-
stance, while it can be thought without presupposing anything
else ; it is the absolutely independent underlying principle.
From the definition of substance certain consequences neces-
sarily follow. If substance is absolutely independent being, it
must be infinite, for otherwise it would not be independent.
There can be only one such being, otherwise, again, it would be
limited by others and not independent. It is self-caused, causa
sui, for if it were produced by anything else, it would be de-
pendent on that. It is, therefore, free in the sense that nothing
outside of it can determine it; it is self-determined in that all
its qualities and actions follow from its own nature as necessarily
as the properties of a triangle follow from the nature of a tri-
angle. Individuality or personality cannot be ascribed to sub-
stance, for these imply determination or limitation: all deter-
296 MODERN PHILOSOPHY
mination is negation. Hence, neither intelligence nor will,
in the human sense, belong to it ; it does not think and plan and
decide, it does not act according to conscious purpose or design :
such teleology is entirely foreign to its nature. " I confess," says
Spinoza, " that the view which subjects all things to the indif-
ferent will of God and makes them -depend on divine caprice,
comes nearer the truth than tfie view of those who maintain
that God /does everything for/' the sake of the good. For these
persons seem to place something outside of God which is inde-
pendent of him, to /which he looks as to a model while he is
at work, 01? at which he aims as if at a mark. This is, indeed,
nothing elseVthan subjecting God to fate, and is a most absurd
view of him whom we have shown to be the first and only free
cause of the essence and existence of things. "
This single, eternal, infinite, self-caused, necessary principle
of things is called God or Nature. God is not apart from the
world, as Descartes held, an external transcendent cause acting
on it from without (theism), but in 'the world, the immanent
principle of the universe. God is in the world and the world
in him, he is the source of everything that is (pantheism). God
and the world are one. Cause and effect are not distinct here ;
God does not create in the sense of producing something separate
from, and external to, himself, something that can exist apart
from him; he is the permanent substance or substratum or es-
sence in the things. As the active principle or source of all
reality, Spinoza, using an old scholastic term, calls him natura
naturans; as the plurality of objects, the effects or products of
the principle, he calls him natura naturata.
How else shall we define Nature, or God; what are the attri-
butes of universal reality? By attribute Spinoza means that
which the intellect perceives as constituting the
essence of substance. Some interpreters (Hegel,
Erdmann) understand by this that attributes are
forms of our knowledge, not really belonging to God, but at-
tributed to him by human thought. Others (K. Fischer) re-
gard them as real expressions of God's nature, not merely a?
human modes of thought, but actual properties of God. The
latter view is probably the correct one ; Spinoza, the rationalist,
accepted necessary forms of thought as having objective validity :
BENEDICT SPINOZA 297
what reason compels us to think has more than mental reality.
And yet he felt a certain hesitancy in applying definite quali-
ties to the infinite ground of things, all determination being
negation. But he tried to avoid this difficulty by predicating .-
of the infinite substance an infinite number of infinite attributes : i
every one of them, that is, infinite and eternal in its essence. •!
God is so great that he is conceived as possessing infinite quali-
ties in an infinite degree.
Of these infinite attributes, the mind of man can grasp but
two, extension and thought. Nature expresses itself in an infi-
nite number of ways, of which only extension and thought are
knowable by man, who is himself a physical and mental being.
God or nature, therefore, is (at least) both body and mind.
Wherever, then, there is space or matter, there is soul or mind,
and vice versa ; the two attributes, being essential to the nature
of substance, must be present wherever the substance is found,
and that is everywhere. Extension and thought are each infi-
nite in its own kind, but not absolutely infinite, that is, neither
thought nor extension is the sole attribute ; since there are many
other attributes of God, none of them can be called absolutely
infinite. These attributes are absolutely independent of one
another and cannot influence each other: mind cannot produce
changes in body nor the body changes in mind. " When two
things have nothing in common with one another, the one cannot
be the cause of the other ; for since the effect would contain noth-
ing that belonged to the cause, everything in the effect would be
a creation out of nothing." Spinoza here accepts the doctrine
of the occasionalists and Malebranche, that only like can pro-
duce like, that mind cannot produce motion nor motion mind.
We cannot explain the mental by the physical, as materialism
does, nor the physical by the mental, as spiritualism does. Both
the mental and the physical realms, the world of thought and .-
the world of motion, are manifestations of one and the same ;
universal reality, both having equal rank; neither is the cause
or the effect of the other, both are the effects of the same cause,
both flow from the same substance. The one indivisible nature
or God, regarded from one angle, is a space-occupying, moving
thing ; looked at from another, it is an ideal world. This is what
we now call psycho-physical parallelism. And the order and
298 MODERN PHILOSOPHY
connection in the one realm are the same as in the other. To my
notion of a circle there corresponds a real circle existing in
nature.
Attributes appear in specific ways or modes. Modes are de-
fined as " the affections or modifications of substance, or that
which is in another thing through which also it
Modes™ *s conceived." That is, a mode or modification
is always the modification of some thing ; it cannot
be conceived except as the mode of a thing. The attribute of
extension manifests itself in particular figured bodies, thought
expresses itself in particular ideas and acts of will. We never
have abstract thought as such, a barren stretch of thought, nor
abstract extension as such, but always particular ideas and par-
ticular bodies. We cannot, however, think the latter apart from
attributes, — motion or rest, for example, without extension; in-
tellect or will, without mind.
In one sense, modes are infinite and necessary, in another
sense they are finite and temporal. Species, for example, are
eternal, whereas the particular individuals pass away; particu-
lars perish, the genus remains. Intellects and wills, or persons,
have always existed and will always exist, but particular human
beings are born and die. The eternal infinite substance expresses
itself forever in definite ways, in an eternal and necessary system
of physical and mental forms, in a system of ideas and in a sys-
tem of bodies. Such an infinite and necessary system of ideas,
the totality of all ideas, Spinoza calls the absolutely infinite in-
tellect; the system of modes of extension he calls motion and
rest ; * the two together constitute the face of the whole uni-
verse. The face of the whole universe always remains the same,
although its parts undergo constant change. Nature, as a whole,
may here be compared to an individual organism, the elements
of which come and go, but whose form (face) remains the
same.
The particular finite objects and minds are not direct effects
of the substance of God; each finite thing has its efficient cause
in some other finite thing, and so on ad infinitum. The par-
* Motion and rest are the modes of extension. Spinoza assumes that
since there can be no motion without extension, extension must be the
ground of motion. And if extension is the ground of motion, then motion
is a mode of extension.
BENEDICT SPINOZA 299
tieular bodies form a chain of interconnected members, a strict
causal nexus, and the particular ideas form a similar chain.
The particular idea in my mind owes its existence to some other
idea, and so on; the particular physical object before me owes
its existence to some other physical object; if it had not been
for the one, the other would not be. It was not, however, essen-
tial to the universal substance that this or that particular one
should have been; neither one follows of necessity from the na-
ture of God. Yet not a single thought or body could exist were
it not for the permanent underlying reality to which all things
belong, of which all are states. Spinoza is well aware that we
cannot logically derive this or that particular thing, the finite
mode, from the notion of substance; that we can never deduce
particulars from concepts. Given the notion of an infinite ex-
tended and thinking substance, we cannot show that such and
such an individual necessarily follows. But we can say, Spinoza
believes, that given such a substance, thoughts and bodies neces-
sarily follow. As all the properties of the triangle follow from
the definition of the triangle, so all the properties of the uni-
verse follow necessarily from the substance. We cannot, how-
ever, deduce from the concept of the triangle the existence, num-
ber, size, and shape of different triangles. Similarly, we cannot
deduce from the notion of substance or God the existence, num-
ber, and properties of the different finite objects in the world,
the so-called modes or forms, in which substance appears, the
particular concrete men, plants, and bodies now existing. These
do not follow necessarily from the idea of substance, they are
contingent and accidental as regards God. Spinoza explains
them as effects of each other, as it were. Here we are confined
to the ordinary scientific explanations, which do not go very
deep ; rational explanation, sub specie ceternitatis, is out of the
question.
Conceived under the form of eternity, God is his infinite
attributes; conceived under the form of time, or through the
imagination, God is the world. To the senses and the imagina-
tion, nature appears in the form of isolated separate phenomena,
but that is a purely abstract and superficial way of viewing it ;
to the understanding, nature is one universal substance and the
particular phenomenon but a limited form of it, a negation of
300 MODERN PHILOSOPHY
all the other forms in which substance expresses itself. No
mode, then, can exist except as the mode or modification of a
substance; the substance is the abiding principle, the mode is
transitory. The particular mode, therefore, is not permanent,
it is but a temporal expression of the substance.
Spinoza's doctrine of modes is determined by his rationalistic
presuppositions. Logically, we cannot deduce the particular
modes from the notion of God, hence they have no true reality,
are not essential. And yet the essence of things, the universals
of scholasticism, are necessary ideas in God; besides, experience
seems to show that though particulars. do not endure, the classes
(species, genus) to which they belong do. The conclusion is,
therefore, drawn that modes are infinite, necessary, and eternal
in the sense that the face of the universe remains unchanged. But
it is hard to see why particular modes should not be necessary
consequences of substance since they have their source in it,
and since everything flows necessarily from it. Spinoza's trou-
ble is caused by his attempt to explain the universe logically.
Influenced by the method of geometry, he holds that things
follow eternally from the first principle, which would make
change and evolution impossible; experience, however, convinces
him that there is change. In order to do justice to both logic
and the facts, Spinoza invents the doctrine of necessary modes
and contingent modes.
According to Descartes, there are corporeal substances and
soul-substances, which act on one another. According to Spinoza,
there is but one substance or principle, on which
Human Mind ,, , ,, , . , -, , , , ,
all processes, both physical and mental, depend
and of which they are the processes. Hence, there can be no
such thing as a soul or ego, a spiritual substance that has
thoughts, feelings, and volitions; the mind consists of its
thoughts, feelings, and volitions. Such states are not effects of
bodies or of bodily processes ; ideas or states of mind correspond
to bodily processes, the two series are parallel; they are, how-
ever, processes of one and the same thing, expressed in two dif-
ferent ways. They do not influence one another, there is no
interaction between them.
All things, therefore, are modes or forms of matter, and modes
or forms of mind: all bodies are animate and all souls have
BENEDICT SPINOZA 301
bodies. Where there is body, there are ideas or mental phe-
nomena ; wherever there are mental processes, there are bodies.
The human mind is, therefore, called by Spinoza the idea of
the human body; the body or motion is an object or process
in space corresponding to an idea. The human body is very
complex, it is made up of many parts. So, too, the £uman
mind is composed of many ideas. The more complex a body,
the more adequate knowledge is possible to the mind correspond-
ing to it. The human mind is not only the idea of the body,
but is at the same time conscious of its own actions, or self-
conscious; hence Spinoza calls it " the idea of the idea of the
body/' or an " idea of the mind." The mind, however, knows
itself only in so far as it perceives the ideas of the modifications
of the body.
The order and connection of ideas is the same as the order
and connection of things ; the order and connection of the actions
and passions of the body is coincident with the order and con-
nection of the actions and passions of the mind. Every thing is
both mind and body, idea and ideatum. All ideas or thoughts
in the universe form a unified mental system corresponding to
the natural system. Every soul is a part of the infinite intellect,
which is composed of an infinite number of souls and ideas and
is an eternal mode of the thought of God. If all this is true,
and if the physical order or nexus is causal, the mental series
must also be causally determined.
Nothing can happen in the body that is not perceived by the
mind, that is, that has not a corresponding mental state. In
this sense, the human mind must perceive everything that hap-
pens in the human body. But it does not know the body itself,
nor that the body exists, except through ideas corresponding to
such modifications of the body. In the same way, it knows the
existence and nature of other bodies: because its body is af-
fected by other bodies. All such sense-perceived knowledge,
however, is not clear and distinct, but confused; we gain no
adequate knowledge of our own body or of external bodies
through these ideas. As often as the mind is determined from
without, by a chance coincidence, its knowledge is confused; it
is only when it is determined from within that it contemplates
things clearly and distinctly: then it beholds several things at
302
MODERN PHILOSOPHY
once, and is determined to understand in what they differ, agree,
or oppose one another.
We are here carried over into Spinoza's theory of knowledge,
which he discusses in Part II of the Ethics and in his work on
the Emendation of the Intellect. (1) Obscure and
Knowledge inadequate ideas have their source in the imagi-
nation ; they depend on sense-perception, and sen-
sations have as their object the modifications of the body.
Uncritical experience and mere opinion do not yield genuine
knowledge. (2) We also have adequate knowledge, clear and
distinct ideas, rational knowledge. Reason contemplates things
as they really are, knows their necessary connection, conceives
them under the form of eternity. It comprehends the universal
essences of things in the particular qualities which these things
have in common with all things, and understands these neces-
sary and eternal essences in their relation to God's being: such
knowledge is self-evident, it carries its own evidence with it ; in
this sense truth is its own criterion; even as the light reveals
both itself and the darkness, so truth illuminates itself and error.
(3) Intuitive knowledge Spinoza calls the highest kind of knowl-
edge; it is hard to say, however, just how it differs from the
preceding stage. By it everything is conceived as necessarily
grounded in God's being and following from it: ''it advances
from an adequate idea of the objective essence of certain at-
tributes of God to the adequate essence of things." The imagi-
nation does not see things whole; it loses itself in details, does
not grasp the unity of phenomena, does not understand their
meaning. It is the source of prejudice, illusion, and error; it
gives rise to the belief in so-called general ideas existing inde-
pendently of individuals, in final causes or purposes in nature,
in spirits, in a God having a human form and human passions,
in free will, and other errors. Eeason and intuitive knowledge
repudiate all such products of the imagination as inadequate;
they alone enable us to distinguish between truth and error.
Whoever has a true idea knows it.
Error Spinoza conceives as mere lack of knowledge. No idea
is as such either true or false; what makes it true or false is
the assumption of the presence of an object when it is not
present. There is lacking the knowledge that the idea is a
BENEDICT SPINOZA 303
mere idea, an illusion. " We form inadequate ideas because
we are a part of some thinking being, some of whose thoughts
form the essence of our soul in their entirety, others only in
part."
In so far as the soul knows ideas, it is intelligence Dr intellect,
in so far as it affirms and denies what is true and false, we call
it will. Neither the intellect nor the will is a fac-
ulty of the mind; there are no soul-faculties, only
ideas exist in the mind. The soul is reduced to
ideas, it is an idea of the body: it mirrors physiological proc-
esses. No distinction is made by Spinoza between knowing,
feeling or emotion, and willing. Volitions, too, are nothing but
ideas of things ; the particular act of will and the particular idea
are identical. Hence, intelligence and will are essentially the
same: the will is an idea affirming or negating itself. This act
of affirmation or negation (judgment) is not, as with Descartes,
an act of free choice, or capricious, but determined by the idea
itself. There is no such thing as free will; everything in
nature is determined, everything follows necessarily from the
universal substance. The human soul is merely a mode of the
divine thought; besides, every particular act of will is deter-
mined by another mode, as we have seen. Moreover, there is
no causal relation between mind and body : the will cannot move
the body. Everything physical obeys mechanical laws. The de-
cision of the will, desire, and the causal determination of the
body are one and the same thing ; considered under the attribute
of thought we call it decision, under the attribute of extension
we call it determination. Man thinks he is free because he is
ignorant of causes ; the falling stone would regard itself as free
if it were conscious. Because he thinks himself free, he forms
the ideas of praise and blame, sin and guilt. Spinoza identifies
human freedom with caprice or indeterminism ; in the case of
God, however, freedom means action in accordance with his
nature.
Will and intelligence, then, are identical. Corresponding to
the stages of the intellect: sensation or imagination and reason,
we have different stages of the will: passions and will proper.
The passions are confused and inadequate ideas corresponding
to physiological states, — the passive side of the human mind. To
304 MODERN PHILOSOPHY
our ignorance and confusion are due the passions of love, hate,
hope, and fear. In so far as the mind has clear and distinct
(adequate) ideas, in so far as it knows and understands, it is
not passive but active: it is rational will. In this sense, man
is evidently free; here he is not under mechanical compulsion
but under the sway of teleology, governed by purpose. How this
is possible in Spinoza's system is another question. He says:
" If we mean by a man acting under compulsion one who acts
contrary to his will, then I admit that we are in no wise com-
pelled in certain things and in so far have free will. ' ' Spinoza 's
main contention is against absolute freedom of choice or a
groundless will. When the soul comprehends the meaning of
things, or has adequate ideas, it has no passions and ceases to
be in bondage. The more confused a man's knowledge, the more
he is passion's slave, the more limited, the more impotent and
dependent he is. The clearer his knowledge, the more rational
he is, — the better he understands the universe in all its relations,
— the freer he will be from passions and the less dependent on
them. To know means to be free from hate and fear, anger and
envy, yea even from love and hope, pity and repentance. He
who knows the true causes of things or sees them in their nec-
essary relations to God, will love God: this intellectual love of
God (amor Dei] is the love of God for himself, for man is a
mode of God. And in so far as God loves himself, he also loves
men, for they are a part of him.
The passions are not errors of human nature, but properties
necessarily belonging to it, hence they must be studied as if
they were " lines, surfaces, and bodies." There are three fun-
damental passions: desire, joy, sorrow. The basis of all pas-
sion is the desire for self-preservation. Every thing strives to
maintain itself in its being; in man, too, there is such striving
(appetitus) to preserve the bodily and mental life. What hu-
man nature strives for, the human mind is conscious of; this
conscious striving is voluntas, will, when related to soul alone;
or cupiditas, conscious appetite, when related to soul and body.
What promotes our desires is good, the opposite bad. Every
man, therefore, aims to increase his being; when it is intensi-
fied, he feels joy, otherwise sorrow. Joy is the transition from
less to greater perfection; sorrow, the transition from greater
BENEDICT SPINOZA 305
to less. Joy is not perfection itself ; if a man were born perfect,
he would not have the feeling of joy. Man seeks to preserve
the joyful feelings and to rid himself of sorrow. We love the
causes of what pleases us, hate those injuring us. The cause
of a pleasure or pain conceived as future is hope or fear. The
individual believes he is the cause of his own acts, hence he feels
self-satisfaction when they are pleasant and remorse when they
are painful. The more pleasurable feelings are, the more active
they are: the more active we are and the more we feel our
power. Hence, such emotions as envy and pity are bad for us,
they lower our sense of power and our vitality. Like Descartes,
Spinoza is one of the forerunners of modern physiological
psychology.
The impelling motive of Spinoza's thought was ethical and
religious : ' ' the mind '& highest good is the knowledge of God,
and the mind's highest virtue is to know God."
The end can be attained only through philosophy ;
ethics must be based on metaphysics. The system
culminates in ethics: the title of our philosopher's chief work
is Ethics. With Hobbes, he starts out from egoistic premises,
but modifies them in such a way as to weaken their effect. Every
being strives to preserve its own being, and this striving is virtue.
Virtue^is, therefore, gower; everything that tends to diminish
tfiepower of the body or mind is bad : pity and sorrow are bad,
joy is good. Nature demands nothing contrary to nature, hence
it demands that every one love himself, his utility, and strive
for everything that leads to greater perfection. The power of
nature is the power of God himself; each individual, therefore,
has the highest right to all he regards as useful to himself and
to appropriate it in every way, whether by force, strategy, or
entreaties. With perfect right the larger fishes take possession
of the water and devour the little ones. So far, the doctrine
is bald egoism : might makes right. Spinoza, however, does not
stop here. Virtuous action is rational action: it is only when
the soul has adequate ideas, or knows, that it may be said to
be really acting. Passion is not power, but weakness, slavery.
Every man should seek what is truly useful to him, and reason
tells him that nothing is useful to the soul except what is a
means to knowledge. In life it is before all things useful to
306 MODERN PHILOSOPHY
perfect the understanding or reason; in this alone man's high-
est happiness or blessedness consists ; indeed, blessedness is noth-
ing else than contentment of spirit, which arises from the in-
tuitive knowledge of God. To perfect the undertanding is
nothing other than to understand God, God 's attributes, and the
actions which follow from the necessity of his nature.
Moreover, there is nothing more useful to a man, in his desire
to perfect his being, than unity of purpose among men, nothing
more excellent than that all should so, in all points, agree that
the minds and bodies of all should form, as it were, one single
mind and one single body. Nothing helps a man to preserve
his real being more than another rational man who seeks his
own true utility ; hence, men will be most useful to one another
if each will seek his own true good or act under the guidance of
reason. Consequently, men who are governed by reason desire
nothing for themselves which they do not also desire for the
rest of mankind, and hence are just, faithful, and honorable
in their conduct. Whatever is good for other men is also good
for me. Hence, love of enemy is good; hatred, anger, revenge,
envy, and contempt are evil. Humility, self-denial, remorse,
and hope are not good, though they may prepare weak-minded
persons for a more rational life.
In the state of nature every man has the right to do what
he can do ; might makes right. But conflict would arise in such
a situation, for men overshoot their powers, hence it is necessary
that men relinquish their natural rights in order that all may
live in peace (social contract). This is done in the State, which
limits natural rights and the caprice of the individual in the
interests of general welfare. It is only in organized society that
justice and injustice, merit and guilt have meaning; that is to
say, morality is justified on the ground that it makes social lif<3
possible.
Spinoza's ethics is individualistic in the sense that its funda-
mental motive is the desire for individual perfection or happi-
ness. A man should seek his own interest, his highest interest
is knowledge of the universe or God, which brings peace of mind ;
with this end in view it is to his interest to regard the welfars
of others. It is universalistic when it teaches that the highest
good of the mind is the knowledge of God and the highest virtu 3
JOHN; LOCKE 207
of the mind to know God. The supreme good is the love of God
which comes from an adequate knowledge of him.
Our highest good consists in the intellectual love of God,
which is eternal, like reason itself. The human mind cannot be
absolutely destroyed with the body, but something of it remains
which is eternal, as something remains of the body, which is
eternal. We feel and know by experience that we are eternal,
and this existence of the mind cannot be limited by time nor mani-
fested through duration.
The term God is variously employed in the Spinozistic system :
He is identified with the universe, or he is identified with his
attributes, or he is the absolute unified substance
with its infinite attributes, or he is the unified Q^10n °f
substance itself, higher than these attributes. His
real meaning most likely is that God is the universe con-
ceived as an eternal and necessary unity, an organic whole, a
unity in diversity.
Spinoza expressly denies personality and consciousness to God :
he has neither intelligence, feeling, nor will; he does not act
according to purpose, but everything follows necessarily from
his nature, according to law ; his action is causal, not purposive.
God's thinking is constituted by the sum-total of the ideas in
the world. He has the power or attribute of thought which
expresses itself in the absolutely infinite intellect or in the
eternal and necessary modes of thinking, and these, in turn,
express themselves in passing human minds. Spinoza sometimes,
however, speaks of God having a knowledge of his own essence
and of all that follows from it.
DEVELOPMENT OF EMPIRICISM
48. JOHN LOCKE
Hobbes, as we have seen, was a rationalist in his ideal of
knowledge. With Descartes he held that mere experience will
not give us certainty. At the same time, he agreed
with his compatriot Bacon that sensation is the
source of what we know. Here were two lines of thought which
308 MODERN PHILOSOPHY
did not seem to fit together in the system ; the sensationalistic
origin of knowledge appeared to undermine the validity of
knowledge, to destroy its certainty. Hobbes himself felt the
difficulty and was led by it to occasional skeptical conclusions
concerning physics. To John Locke this problem becomes the
all-important one; in him philosophy turns to the theory of
knowledge and undertakes an examination of the nature, origin,
and validity of knowledge, — an * ' essay concerning human under-
standing. ' '
John Locke (1632-1704) studied philosophy, natural science, and
medicine at Oxford. He was repelled by the scholastic methods of
instruction which still prevailed at the university, but found great
satisfaction in the writings of Descartes. For many years (1666-1683)
he was in the service of the Earl of Shaftesbury, as secretary and as
tutor to his son and grandson, and followed his patron to Holland
into exile. Returning to England (1689) after the deposal of James II
and the ascension of William of Orange to the throne, he held several
important public offices, and spent the remaining years of his life
(1700-1704) in the household of Sir Francis Masham, whose wife was
the daughter of the philosopher Cudworth.
Among his works are : An Essay concerning Human Understanding,
1690; Two Treatises on Government, 1690; Letters concerning Tolera-
tion, 1689, ff. ; Some Thoughts concerning Education, 1693 ; The Reason-
ableness of Christianity, 1695. The two treatises On the Conduct of
the Understanding and Elements of Natural Philosophy appeared
posthumously.
Collected Works, 1853; philosophical works, edited by St. John, in
Bohn's Library. Essay ed. by Fraser, 2 vols. ; Selections from Essay by
Russell.
Fox Bourne, Life of Locke, 2 vols.; monographs by Fraser, Fowler,
S. Alexander, Fechtner, Marion. Green, Introduction to Hume; Moore,
Existence, Meaning and Reality in Locke's Essay; Curtis, Locke's
Ethical Philosophy; Thilly, Locke's Relation to Descartes, Phil. Rev.,
IX, 6; Cousin, La philosophie de Locke; Ollin, La philosophic generale
de Locke; Bastide, Locke: ses theories politiques, etc.; de Fries, Sub-
stanzlehre Lockes; Keyserling, Willenstheorie bei Locke und Hume;
Crous, Religionsphilosophische Lehren Lockes; von Hertling, Locke und
die Schule von Cambridge; monographs on the relation of Locke and
Leibniz by Hartenstein, von Benoit, and Thilly. See also the general
works on English philosophy mentioned pp. 254, f., and Hibben, Phi-
losophy of the Enlightenment.
Philosophy, according to Locke, is the true knowledge of
things, including the nature of things (physics}, that which
man ought to do as a rational voluntary agent (practica, or
ethics), and the ways and means of attaining and communi-
JOHN LOCKE 309
eating such knowledge (semiotics, or logic, or critic). As the
most important of the three, Locke regards the problem of
knowledge, holding that before we set ourselves upon inquiries,
it is necessary to examine our own abilities and see
what our understandings are, or are not, fitted to Origin of
... _, . , . , . Knowledge
deal with. This he undertakes to do in his mam
work, Essay concerning Human Understanding. But, he de-
clares, to tell what is certain knowledge, what not, what the
limits of our knowing are, we^must first study the origin of
our ideas. Much depenOs on discovering the source from which
our knowledge springs, ibxif\jt i|s true, as Descartes and many
others held, that we have liXviflnate knowledge of principles,
there would seem to be ^»er^easBn for questioning its validity.
The problem of innate ideas isyiheraire, taken up by the Eng-
lish thinker in the first book^oi his Ittssay, which, however, was
written last.
Assuming that the mind must be conscious of its innate prin-
ciples, if there be any, — since nothing can be said to be in the
mind of which it is unconscious, — Locke proceeds to refute the
doctrine of inborn truth. There are no speculative or practical
principles present to the minds of men, and even if there were,
they might have been acquired in the same way as other truths.
If a principle can be imprinted on the soul without being known,
it is impossible to distinguish between what is native and what
not. It cannot be said that we first become aware of such
truths when we begin to exercise our reason, for children, the
uneducated, and savages are a long while in possession of their
reason without knowing them. Nor is immediate assent to a
proposition proof of its primitiveness. The moral laws, too,
cannot be called innate, for they are not self-evident or uni-
versally recognized, and do not impel men to action. What
to many peoples is sin, is duty to others. To say that such ideas
have been gradually obscured through prejudice, education, and
custom, is to deny their universal acceptance. If we hold that
they cannot be obliterated, they ought to appear in all men, and
most clearly in children and the uncultured, j That the idea of
God, on which Descartes lays suclj emphasis, cannot be innate
is proved by thejfcct that entire tribes either want the idea
and knowledge o^Beity or have no clear impression of him.
310
MODERN PHILOSOPHY
But even if all mankind everywhere had a notion of God, it
would not follow that the idea of him was innate. The ideas
of fire, the sun, heat, or number are not proved to be innate
because they are so universally received and known amongst
mankind. A rational creature reflecting on the visible marks
of divine wisdom and power in the works of creation, cannot miss
the discovery of a Deity.
In short, ideas and principles are just as little innate as the
arts and sciences. The mind, in its first being, is aplank tablet,
a tabula rasa, a " dark chamber," an " empty cabinet," " white
paper," void of all characters, without any ideas. The question
now is, how comes it to be furnished? Whence has it all the
materials of reason and knowledge? To this Locke answers in
one word, — from experience; in that all our knowledge is
founded; and from that it ultimately derives itself. The two
sources of all our ideas are sensation, through which the mind
is furnished with sensible qualities, and reflection, or internal
sense, which supplies the mind with ideas of its own operations,
such as perception, thinking, doubting, believing, reasoning,
knowing, willing. The first capacity of the human intellect is,
that the mind is fitted to receive the impressions made on it,
either through the senses by outward objects or by its own
operations when it reflects on them. By idea Locke means what-
soever the mind perceives in itself, or is the immediate object
of perception, thought, or understanding.
The ideas, thus received, are simple ideas, which the mind
has the power to repeat, compare, and unite, even to an almost
infinite variety, and so can make at pleasure new complex ideas.
But no understanding has the power to invent or frame one new
simple idea or destroy those that are in the mind. Some of these
simple ideas come into our minds by one sense only, e.g., ideas
o"f"color, sound, Cjtaste,' heat, cold, solidity; some convey them-
selves into the mind by more senses than one, e.g., space or ex-
tension, figure, rest, and motion (through sight and touch).
Some are had by reflection only, that is,, the min^ 'observes its
own actions about those ideas it has, and gets other ideas in this
way, e.g., it notices its operations of perception, retention (con-
templation and memory), discerning, comMJtig, compounding;
naming, and abstracting. Some ideas, finall^^e receive through
JOHN LOCKE 811
both sensation and reflection, as pleasure and pain, or uneasiness,
power, existence, unity, succession, or duration.
Most of the ideas of sensation are not the likeness of some-
thing existing without us, not exact images and resemblances
of something inherent in the object. The objects have the power
to produce certain ideas in us; we may call such powers quali-
ties. Now, some of these qualities belong to the objects them-
selves, are utterly inseparable from them; they are called by
Locke original or primary qualities; such are : solidity, extension,
figure, motion or rest, and number. Qualities which are nothing
in the objects themselves, but powers to produce various sensa-
tions in us by their primary qualities, as colors, sounds, tastes,
etc., are called secondary qualities.
All our simple ideas are received through the inlets before
mentioned; out of them all our knowledge is made, just as the
words are made out of the twenty-six letters of the alphabet.
External and internal sensation alone are the windows by which
light is let into the dark room of the understanding. But the
mind can, by its own power, put together these ideas it has
and make new complex ideas, which it never received so united ;
it can set two ideas by one another so as to take a view of them
at once, by which way it gets all its ideas of relations; and it
can separate them from all other ideas which accompany them
in their real existence, which is called abstraction. The mind is
passive in the reception of all its simple ideas, but exerts power
over them in the acts just described. The endless number of
complex ideas may be all embraced under three heads: modes,
substances, and relations.
Our ideas of modes are complex ideas which do not contain
in themselves the supposition of subsisting by themselves, but
are considered as dependencies on, or affections of, substances,
e.g., triangle, gratitude, murder. Simple modes are only varia-
tions or different combinations of the same simple idea, with-
out the mixture of any other, as a dozen or a score (addition of
units). Mixed modes are compounded of simple ideas of sev-
eral kinds, put together to make one complex one, e.g., beauty,
which consists of a certain composition of color and figure, caus-
ing delight or pleasure in the beholder. By taking the simple
idea of space ana combining it, we get the simple modes of
312 MODERN PHILOSOPHY
immensity, figure, place, infinite expansion; hours, days, years,
time and eternity, succession are simple modes of duration.
There are also simple modes of thinking or of the operations
of the mind.
Our ideas of substances, too, are complex ideas made up of
simple ideas, put together by the mind. The complex idea of
a substance consists of a combination of ideas of qualities, sup-
posed to represent a distinct particular thing, and the confused
idea of a support or bearer of these qualities. Thus, the idea
of the substance lead consists of this supposed or confused idea
of a bearer, to which are joined ideas of a certain dull whitish
color, certain degrees of weight, hardness, ductility, and fusi-
bility. We notice that a certain number of simple ideas got
from sensation and reflection constantly go together; we sup-
pose they belong to one thing and call them, so united, by one
name. We cannot imagine how these qualities (ideas) can exist
by themselves, so we accustom ourselves to suppose some sub-
stratum wherein they do subsist and from which they result;
which, therefore, we call substance. We have ideas of material
substances, spiritual substances, and of God.
The mind also gets certain ideas of relation from comparing
one thing with another, it brings or sets one thing by another,
as it were, carries its view from one to the other, or relates them.
All things are capable of relation, and all ideas of relation are
made up of simple ideas. The idea of cause and effect is the
most comprehensive relation wherein all things that do or can
exist are concerned; it is derived from sensation and reflection.
Our senses tell us that things change, that qualities and sub-
stances begin to exist, that they owe their existence to the ope
tion of some other being. We call that which produces any sim
pie or complex idea cause; that which is produced, effect: thus,
heat is the cause of the fluidity of wax. Cause is that which
makes any other thing, — either simple idea, substance, or mode,
— begin to be ; effect is that which had its beginning from some
other thing. Different kinds of causation are creation, genera-
tion, making, alteration. But to have the idea of cause and
effect, it suffices to consider any simple idea or substance as
beginning to exist by the operation of some other, without know-
ing the manner of that operation. — There are countless other
nb-
L
im-
us,
JOHN LOCKE 813
relations, relations of time, place, and extension, relations of
identity and diversity, moral relations, and so on.
The materials of our knowledge, then, are furnished to the
mind by sensation and reflection ; the mind acts on them and
makes complex ideas. The question arises, What
cognitive value have such ideas, what conditions Natyire and
must they fulfil in. .order to be knowledge? Ideas
should be clear and distinct, because confused and
obscure ideas make the use of words uncertain. Real ideas are
such as have a foundation in nature, such as have a conformity
with the real being and existence of things, or with their arche-
types. Our simple ideas are all real, not because they are all
images or representations of what exists, — only the primary
qualities of bodies are that, — but because they are all the effects
of powers without us. Mixed modes and relations have no other
reality but what they have in the minds of men, they are not
intended for copies of things really existing ; they are real when
they are so framed that there is a possibility of existing con-
formable to them. They are themselves archetypes, and so can-
not be chimerical unless inconsistent ideas are jumbled together
in them. But our complex ideas of substances are intended by
us to be representations of substances without us, as they really
are ; they are, therefore, real only in so far as they are such com-
binations of simple ideas as are really united, and co-exist, in
things without us. Ideas are adequate which perfectly repre-
sent the archetypes which the mind supposes them taken from,
while inadequate ideas are but a partial or incomplete repre-
sentation of these archetypes. Simple ideas and modes are
all adequate; but ideas of substances are all inadequate, be-
cause they desire to copy things as they really exist. Whenever
the mind refers any of its ideas to anything extraneous to them,
they are then capable of being called true or false; the mind
here makes a tacit supposition of their conformity to that thing,
which may be true or false.
Since all our knowledge is about ideas, knowledge is nothing
but the perception of the connection and agreement or disagree-
ment and repugnancy of any of our ideas. We perceive that
white is not black, that the idea of white and the idea of black
do not agree. There are different degrees of evidence in knowl-
314 MODERN PHILOSOPHY
edge. Sometimes the mind perceives the agreement or disagree-
ment of two ideas immediately by themselves, without the inter-
vention of any other ideas. This is intuitive knowledge. The
mind perceives at once that white is not black, that a circle is
not a triangle, that three are more than two. This is the clearest
and most certain knowledge that human frailty is capable of;
it need not be proved and cannot be proved, it is irresistible,
self-evident, and on it depends all the certainty and evidence of
all our knowledge. Sometimes the mind does not perceive the
agreement or disagreement between two ideas at once ; it does
not discover their agreement or disagreement until it has com-
pared them with one or more other ideas : this is mediate knowl-
edge, or reasoning, or demonstrative knowledge. This knowl-
edge by intervening ideas or proofs is certain, yet its evidence is
not so clear and bright, nor the assent so ready as in intuitive
knowledge. Every step, however, in this knowledge must have
intuitive certainty, in order that the conclusion may be certain.
Such demonstration we have in mathematics and wherever the
mind can perceive the agreement or disagreement of ideas by the
help of intermediate ideas. In intuitive and demonstrative
knowledge we have certainty; whatever comes short of one of
these is but faith or opinion, but not knowledge, at least in all
general truths.
But what shall we say of our knowledge of the external world ?
We have ideas of external objects, in the mind; that we have
them is as certain as anything can be. But is there anything
more than that idea ; can we certainly infer the existence of any-
thing without us, which corresponds to this idea ; is there a real
world outside? Sometimes we have ideas to which nothing
does correspond at the time, as in dreams. We are provided
with an evidence here which puts us past doubting ; that is, our
knowledge of the particular existence of finite beings without
us goes beyond bare possibility, and yet does not reach perfectly
intuitive or demonstrative knowledge. Locke calls it sensitive
knowledge. We have no self-evident knowledge of real exist-
ence except of ourselves and God; our own existence we know
by intuition, that of a God reason makes clearly known to us.
The notice we have by our senses of the existence of things
without us, though not so certain as intuitive knowledge or the
JOHN LOCKE 315
deductions of our reason, yet is an assurance that deserves the
name of knowledge. But, besides this assurance from our senses
themselves, we are confirmed by other concurrent reasons: we
cannot have them but by the inlet of the senses ; they differ from
memory-images; they are often accompanied by pain; they
corroborate each other's testimony.
What now is the extent of our knowledge : how far does it
reach? Since it is a perception of agreement or disagreement
of any of our ideas, it follows that our knowledge
cannot reach further than our ideas. Where ideas
are wanting, there can be no knowledge; we are
limited to the dull and narrow information received from some
few and not very acute ways of perception. But our knowledge
is even narrower than our ideas ; not only can we not go beyond
what we experience, but we neither have nor shall have the
knowledge of our ideas we desire to have. We do not experience
everything we are capable of experiencing nor do we understand
everything we actually perceive. Our ignorance is due, in the
first place, to a want of ideas. More perfect beings may have
more simple ideas than we have and more acute senses. Some
things are too remote for our observation (planets), others too
minute (atoms). Then, again, we cannot discover any necessary
connection between many of our ideas: we do not see what
connection there is between the figure, size, or motion of the
invisible parts of a body and the color, taste, or sound the body
has; we do not understand the relation between the yellow
color, the weight, the malleableness, the fixedness and the fusi-
bility of gold, so that knowing one or two or more of these
qualities, we can know that the others must be there. Given
the definition of a triangle, it will follow necessarily that the
sum of its angles is equal to two right angles: that is a self-
evident proposition, which is true of everything called a triangle
whether there is such a thing or not. But from my idea of
gold as a yellow metal having a certain weight, I cannot deduce
with certainty the fact that it is malleable. Observation tells
me that it is malleable, but that all gold is malleable is not a
self-evident truth. What I want is universal and self-evident
truths ; of these knowledge is made up, but I cannot have them
concerning all my experience.
316 MODERN PHILOSOPHY
Another thing to be remembered is that to be real knowledge,
my ideas must, in some way, agree with the reality of things.
Here, again, my knowledge is limited. All simple ideas repre-
sent things outside, because they must necessarily be the product
of things operating on the mind. There are bodies outside which
arouse in us the sensation white ; though we may not know what
it is that produces this sensation, and how it is done, yet there
is something there that does it. Our complex ideas, too, for the
most part, give us knowledge, but for another reason. They are
not intended to be copies of anything, nor referred to the exist-
ence of anything as originals ; they are patterns or archetypes of
the mind's own making. The mind of its own free choice com-
bines ideas without considering any connection they may have
in nature. If we remember this, we shall see that they give us
certain knowledge. Such knowledge we have in mathematics.
The mathematician forms an idea of a triangle or a circle ; these
are ideas in his mind, made by himself. The propositions which
he deduces logically from these definitions are true and certain.
If there is such a thing as a triangle, they are bound to be true
of it wherever it exists.
The case of our complex ideas of substances, however, is dif-
ferent. Our ideas of substances are supposed to be copies of,
and referred to, archetypes without us. If the qualities we put
together in our ideas of substance coexist in nature, if, for ex-
ample, there is something in nature having the qualities yellow,
malleable, fusible, fixed, etc., then the idea of substance is the
object of real knowledge. And we may say, whatever simple
ideas have been found to coexist in any substance may
with confidence be joined together again. But, it is to be
noted, we can make no universal propositions concerning sub^
stances, because we do not see any necessary connection between
the ideas put together. Experience tells us that certain
qualities coexist in an unknown bearer or substratum, but
we cannot discover the dependence of these qualities on one
another, and we cannot infer from the qualities we observe
going together what other qualities must go with them. There
is not a single general affirmation of gold that we can know to
be certainly true, true in the sense of being absolutely self-
evident. If we could discover a necessary connection between
JOHN LOCKE 317
malleableness and the weight of gold, we might make a certain
universal proposition in this respect, and say: All gold is
malleable; the truth of the proposition would be as certain as
the truth: The sum of the angles of a triangle is equal to two
right angles. There is another difficulty in the case of substances
which complicates the problem. The substances in nature are
not independent, isolated things ; their qualities depend, for the
most part, on many invisible conditions in nature. Whence the
streams come that keep all these curious machines in motion
and repair, how conveyed and modified, is beyond our notice and
appreciation. To understand them aright, therefore, we should
understand the universe as a whole. But we cannot even dis-
cover the size, figure, and texture of their minute and active
parts, much less the different motions and impulses made in and
upon them by bodies from without. Hence, we do not know
what changes the primary qualities of one body regularly pro-
duce in the primary qualities of another, and how; nor do we
know what primary qualities of any body produce sensations
or ideas in us. We do not perceive the necessary connection
between these primary qualities and their effects. Hence, we get
very little universal certainty here, and must content ourselves
with probability. For this reason we can have no perfect natu-
ral science. Of spirits we are even more ignorant. " As to a
perfect science of natural bodies (not to mention spiritual be-
ings), we are so far from being capable of any such thing that
it is lost labor to seek after it.1'
General certainty is, therefore, never to be found except in
the agreement and disagreement of our ideas. It is the con-
templation of our own abstract ideas that alone is able to afford
us general knowledge. We have no self-evident propositions as
to real existence (except in the case of God and ourselves), and
can build no science on them.
Most of the propositions we think, reason, discourse, and act
upon are such that we cannot have undoubted knowledge of their
truth. Yet some of them border so near upon certainty that
we make no doubt at all about them, but assent to them firmly.
There are different degrees and grounds of probability: con-
formity with our own experience and the testimony of others'
experience. The bare testimony of revelation, however, Locke
318 MODERN PHILOSOPHY
regards as the highest certainty ; our assent to it is faith. Faith
is a settled and sure principle of assent and assurance, and
leaves no manner of room for doubt or hesitation. Only, —
we must be sure that it is a divine revelation. And, therefore,
our assent can be rationally no higher than the evidence of its
being a revelation. No proposition can be received for divine
revelation if it be contradictory to our clear intuitive knowl-
edge; faith can never convince us of anything that contradicts
our knowledge. There can be no evidence that any traditional
revelation is of divine origin, in the words we receive it and in
the sense we understand it, so clear and certain as that of the
principles of reason. But things which are beyond the discovery
of our natural faculties, and above reason, are, when revealed,
the proper matter of faith. Thus, that the dead shall rise and
live again, is purely a matter of faith with which reason has
directly nothing to do.
We have heard Locke's answers to the questions concerning
the origin, validity, and limitations of knowledge; let us now
consider the general world-view on which his
thought is based. He did not work out a complete
theory of reality in any separate book, but his thought rests upon
philosophical presuppositions which may be discovered in his
Essay. In spite of the restrictions which he places upon knowl-
edge and his frequent skeptical misgivings, he adopts, with va-
riations, the metaphysics of common-sense which Descartes had
organized into a system.
The world is composed of substances: supports or bearers in
which powers, qualities, and actions inhere and from which they
flow; the grounds and causes of qualities and acts. Substances
are of two kinds, bodies and souls. The body is a substance whose
attributes are extension, solidity or impenetrability, and mo-
bility or the power of being moved. These are its primary
qualities, which we receive through our senses. Hence, there
can be space without body, or pure space, a vacuum ; we can con-
ceive space without solidity, and motion proves the vacuum. Be-
sides material substances, there exist spiritual substances, or
souls. The soul is a real being: we have a clear and distinct
idea of it. Its qualities are the power of perception or think-
ing and will or the power of putting the body in motion. These
JOHN LOCKE 319
qualities we know through reflection. Thinking, however, is
not the essence, but the action of the soul. The soul is an imma-
terial substance. I have as clear and distinct an idea of spir-
itual substance as I have of a corporeal substance; I frame the
idea of a bodily substance by putting together certain corporeal
qualities and supposing a support for them ; I form an idea of
soul-substance by reflecting upon the operations of my own mind,
as thinking, understanding, willing, knowing, and the power of
beginning motion, and joining these to a support or bearer. It
is as rational to affirm that there is no body because we have
no clear and distinct idea of the substance (bearer) of matter,
as to say there is no spirit because we have no clear and distinct
idea of the substance of a spirit. " Having as clear and dis-
tinct ideas in us of thinking as of solidity, I know not why
we may not as well allow a thinking thing without solidity,
i.e., immaterial, to exist, as a solid thing without thinking, i.e.,
matter, to exist, especially since it is no harder to conceive how
thinking should exist without matter than how matter should
think." Indeed, I know more certainly that there is a spiritual
being within me that sees and hears than that there is some
corporeal being without me. Besides, incogitative matter and
motion could never produce thought, and it is impossible
to conceive that matter, either with or without motion,
could have, originally in and from itself, sense, perception, and
knowledge.
Pure spirit (God) is only active, matter is only passive, but \
man's soul is both active and passive. It has the power to move
the body, as experience shows, and the bodies outside produce
changes in the soul ; indeed, all our ideas are due to the action
of the body on the mind. This is the theory of interaction. It
is true, we do not know how this is done, but neither do we
know how a body moves a body. Indeed, we have a much
clearer idea of the active power of moving, in spirit, than in
body. It is not easier to conceive an extended being than a
thinking being.
Mind and body exist as real beings, and they interact. Bodies
act on mind and produce sensations of color, sound, touch, solid-
ity, extension, etc. Of these, the secondary qualities do not
represent faithfully the reality outside ; objects are not colored
318 MODERN PHILOSOPHY
regards as the highest certainty ; our assent to it is faith. Faith
is a settled and sure principle of assent and assurance, and
leaves no manner of room for doubt or hesitation. Only, —
we must be sure that it is a divine revelation. And, therefore,
our assent can be rationally no higher than the evidence of its
being a revelation. No proposition can be received for divine
revelation if it be contradictory to our clear intuitive knowl-
edge; faith can never convince us of anything that contradicts
our knowledge. There can be no evidence that any traditional
revelation is of divine origin, in the words we receive it and in
the sense we understand it, so clear and certain as that of the
principles of reason. But things which are beyond the discovery
of our natural faculties, and above reason, are, when revealed,
the proper matter of faith. Thus, that the dead shall rise and
live again, is purely a matter of faith with which reason has
directly nothing to do.
We have heard Locke's answers to the questions concerning
the origin, validity, and limitations of knowledge; let us now
consider the general world-view on which his
thought is based. He did not work out a complete
theory of reality in any separate book, but his thought rests upon
philosophical presuppositions which may be discovered in his
Essay. In spite of the restrictions which he places upon knowl-
edge and his frequent skeptical misgivings, he adopts, with va-
riations, the metaphysics of common-sense which Descartes had
organized into a system.
The world is composed of substances: supports or bearers in
which powers, qualities, and actions inhere and from which they
flow; the grounds and causes of qualities and acts. Substances
are of two kinds, bodies and souls. The body is a substance whose
attributes are extension, solidity or impenetrability, and mo-
bility or the power of being moved. These are its primary
qualities, which we receive through our senses. Hence, there
can be space without body, or pure space, a vacuum ; we can con-
ceive space without solidity, and motion proves the vacuum. Be-
sides material substances, there exist spiritual substances, or
souls. The soul is a real being: we have a clear and distinct
idea of it. Its qualities are the power of perception or think-
ing and will or the power of putting the body in motion. These
JOHN LOCKE 319
qualities we know through reflection. Thinking, however, is
not the essence, but the action of the soul. The soul is an imma-
terial substance. I have as clear and distinct an idea of spir-
itual substance as I have of a corporeal substance; I frame the
idea of a bodily substance by putting together certain corporeal
qualities and supposing a support for them ; I form an idea of
soul-substance by reflecting upon the operations of my own mind,
as thinking, understanding, willing, knowing, and the power of
beginning motion, and joining these to a support or bearer. It
is as rational to affirm that there is no body because we have
no clear and distinct idea of the substance (bearer) of matter,
as to say there is no spirit because we have no clear and distinct
idea of the substance of a spirit. " Having as clear and dis-
tinct ideas in us of thinking as of solidity, I know not why
we may not as well allow a thinking thing without solidity,
i.e., immaterial, to exist, as a solid thing without thinking, i.e.,
matter, to exist, especially since it is no harder to conceive how
thinking should exist without matter than how matter should
think." Indeed, I know more certainly that there is a spiritual
being within me that sees and hears than that there is some
corporeal being without me. Besides, incogitative matter and
motion could never produce thought, and it is impossible
to conceive that matter, either with or without motion,
could have, originally in and from itself, sense, perception, and
knowledge.
Pure spirit (God) is only active, matter is only passive, but \
man 's soul is both active and passive. It has the power to move
the body, as experience shows, and the bodies outside produce
changes in the soul ; indeed, all our ideas are due to the action
of the body on the mind. This is the theory of interaction. It
is true, we do not know how this is done, but neither do we
know how a body moves a body. Indeed, we have a much
clearer idea of the active power of moving, in spirit, than in
body. It is not easier to conceive an extended being than a
thinking being.
Mind and body exist as real beings, and they interact. Bodies
act on mind and produce sensations of color, sound, touch, solid-
ity, extension, etc. Of these, the secondary qualities do not
represent faithfully the reality outside ; objects are not colored
S20 MODERN PHILOSOPHY
sounding, fragrant, savory; these are the effects produced on
the mind by extended solid objects; the ideas of extension,
solidity, and motion are copies of real existing things. Bodies
are solid extended things that move. But, so far as we conceive,
body is able only to strike and affect body; and motion, accord-
ing to the utmost reach of our ideas, is able to produce nothing
but motion. Hence, when we say it produces pleasure or pain
or the idea of color or sound, we are fain to quit our reason,
go beyond our ideas, and attribute it wholly to the good pleasure
of our Maker.
Locke here strikes a difficulty. The theory of mechanism
comes in conflict with the apparent facts of experience. If mo-
tion can produce nothing but motion, how can it produce states
of consciousness in us? God, he tells us, has annexed these
effects to motion which we cannot conceive motion to produce.
This is a relapse into occasionalism. It is equally difficult to
conceive how mind can start a motion, how the will can cause
an act to take place.
But these difficulties he brushes aside in other passages by
declaring that it is just as hard to understand how motion
produces motion as how motion produces sensation and sensa-
tion motion. Experience tells us, however, every moment that
the thing is done. He has occasional misgivings on these points,
as he has on the question of the immateriality of the soul. His
general thought is that mental processes cannot be the action
of bare insensible matter, that there could be no sensation with-
out an immaterial thinking being. There is within me some
spiritual being that sees and hears. At the same time, he is
sometimes in doubt about the nature of this being in us that
thinks. Perhaps it is material and perhaps a material being
can think. We do not know the real nature of any substance,
so how do we know that we have only solid beings that do not
think, and thinking begins that are not extended ? Possibly, we
shall never know whether any mere material being thinks or no.
We do not know in what thinking consists nor to what sort of
substances the Almighty has been pleased to give that power
which cannot be in any created being but merely by the good
pleasure and bounty of the Creator. God has annexed effects
to motion, we cannot conceive it; why could he not have given
JOHN LOCKE 321
to certain systems of created matter, put together as he thinks
best, some degrees of sense, perception, and thought?
These are some of the difficulties and inconsistencies in
Locke's system. But his theory remains, in the main, dualistic:
there are two substances, material and mental, " incogitative
and cogitative." In this he agrees with Descartes, except that
he makes solidity or impenetrability the attribute of body. He
also agrees with Descartes in accepting the " corpuscularian "
hypothesis as the best explanation of the facts. There are ex-
tremely small bodies, or atoms, having bulk, figure, and power of
motion. These insensible corpuscles are the active parts of mat-
ter and the great instruments of nature on which depend not
only all their secondary qualities, but also most of their natural
operations. But we have no distinct precise ideas of their pri-
mary qualities. No one has ever pretended to perceive their
distinct bulk, figure, or motion, and no one understands the tie
that binds them together. If we could discover the figure, size,
texture, and motion of the minute constituent parts of any two
bodies, we should know without trial several of their operations,
one upon another, as we do now know the properties of a square
or triangle. We do not know these things; we do not know
what bonds hold these corpuscles together, what cement makes
them stick together so firmly ; we do not know how one moves the
other, how motion is transferred to another. So that, after all,
this corpuscularian hypothesis very little advances our knowl-
edge of corporeal substances. So long as we do not see the
necessary connection between the qualities and powers of bodies,
our knowledge is scant. Consequently, there is no science of
bodies in the real sense of the term. At any rate, the atomic
theory is impossible as a world-view or universal theory.
Besides the two substances, body and mind, there is another
spiritual substance, God. We have no innate idea of God, but
we may, by the right use of our natural abilities, attain a
knowledge of God. It is as certain that there is a God as that
the opposite angles made by the intersection of two straight lines
are equal. We frame the idea of God, taking the ideas which we
derive from experience of existence and duration, knowledge
and power, pleasure and happiness, etc., and enlarge every one
of these with the idea of infinity ; and so putting them together,
322 MODERN PHILOSOPHY
make our complex idea of God. We do not, however, know his
real essence.
Locke offers the usual causal and teleological proofs of God's
existence. Man knows with certainty that he himself exists.
He also knows that bare nothing cannot produce real being.
Hence if there is real being, — and man knows that Tie is real
being, — there must have been something to produce it. More-
over, that which owes its being and beginning to another being
must have everything it has from the being that made it. The
eternal source of all being, then, must be the source and original
of all power, hence it must be all-powerful, and, for the same
reason, it must be all-intelligent. Unthinking matter cannot
produce a thinking being. If God has made the knowing beings,
he has also made the less excellent pieces of this universe, which
establishes his omniscience, power, and providence. However
we may conceive God, we cannot conceive him as material. But
even if he were, he would still be God. Nor can matter be
co-eternal with a co-eternal mind. If it be asked how we can
conceive God making anything out of nothing, Locke points
out that we cannot conceive how thought can produce motion,
and yet we do not deny it.
In agreement with his general standpoint, Locke offers an
empirical theory of ethics, which ends in an egoistic hedonism.
There are no innate practical or moral truths, any
more than there are such theoretical truths. We
make moral judgments without having any rules " written on
our hearts." Many men come to a knowledge of such rules,
and are convinced of their obligation, in the same way in which
they come to know other things. Others learn them from their
education, environment, and the customs of their country. The
fact is, we instil into the minds of children those doctrines which
we would have them retain and profess ; and our children, when
they grow up, find these truths present in conscience and regard
them imprinted by God and nature, and not taught by any one
else. Conscience is nothing but our opinion of the Tightness and
wrongness of our own actions in the light of such acquired moral
knowledge. " Morality is the relation of action to rules, the
agreement or disagreement of voluntary actions with some
law."
JOHN LOCKE 323
The question arises, How did such moral laws ever come to
be established, how has the knowledge of right and wrong been
acquired ? Pleasure and pain are the great teachers of morality,
according to our empiricist. Nature has put into man a desire
of happiness and an aversion to misery, and these are natural
tendencies, or practical principles, which influence all our ac-
tions; but they are inclinations and not truths of the under-
standing. We call that good which is apt to cause pleasure in
us, and evil that which is apt to cause pain. Every one con-
stantly pursues happiness and desires what makes any part of
it ; it is this desire or uneasiness which determines the will. Hap-
piness in its full extent is the utmost pleasure we are capable
of, and misery the utmost pain. Now, certain modes of conduct
produce public happiness and preserve society, and also benefit
the agent himself. God has joined virtue and public happiness
together and made the practice of virtue necessary to society.
Men discover these forms of behavior, and accept them as rules
of practice. Every one reaps advantage to himself from the
observance of the moral rules and, therefore, recommends them.
But it would be vain for one intelligent being to set a rule
to the actions of another if he did not have the power to reward
obedience and punish disobedience by some good or evil that
is not the natural consequence of the act itself. There would
be no need of a law where the natural consequences of actions
had sufficient motive force. The laws have rewards and punish-
ments, pleasure and pain, annexed to them by the will and power
of a law-giver, in order to determine the wills of men. There
are three sorts of laws, divine laws, the civil law, and the law
of opinion or reputation. The divine law is the law which God
has set to the actions of men, whether promulgated to them by
the light of nature or the voice of revelation. God has the power
to enforce this law by rewards and punishments of infinite weight
and duration in another life. Here we speak of duties and sins.
The civil law is the rule set by the commonwealth, and is accom-
panied by legal rewards and punishments. Here we have the
notion of crime and innocence. But the great majority of men
govern themselves chiefly, if not solely, by the law of fashion or
private censure. Commendation and disgrace are strong motives
to men to accommodate themselves to the opinions and rules of
324 MODERN PHILOSOPHY
those with whom they converse. No man escapes the punish-
ment of the dislike and censure of his fellows, who offends against
the fashion and opinion of the company he keeps and would
recommend himself to. Virtue is everywhere thought praise-
worthy; and nothing else but that which has the allowance of
public esteem is called virtue. It is with these laws or rules
that men compare their actions, and call them good or evil,
according to their agreement or disagreement with them. The
true sanction, however, of virtue, is the will of God; the will and
law of God is the only touchstone of morality.
In the main, virtues and vices are everywhere the same, and
correspond with the unchangeable rule of right and wrong which
the law of God has established. Obedience to the laws of God
secures and advances the general good of mankind; therefore
rational human beings, having a care for their own interest, could
not fail to commend the right and blame the wrong.
This is the old Greek hedonistic interpretation of morality,
supplemented by a narrow conception of Christian theology.
Virtue is nothing else but doing of good either to oneself or
others. The most lasting pleasures in life consist in health,
reputation, knowledge, doing good, and the expectation of eternal
and incomprehensible happiness in another world.
Locke shows how we derive our moral knowledge from experi-
ence. We may, however, he thinks, reach it by reasoning from
certain first principles, by demonstration. Morality is capable
of demonstration as well as mathematics. " The idea of a su-
preme Being, infinite in power, goodness, and wisdom, whose
workmanship we are, and on whom we depend ; and the idea
of ourselves, as understanding, rational beings, would, I sup-
pose, if duly considered and pursued, afford such foundations
of our duty and rules of action as might place morality among
the sciences capable of demonstration." " Where there is no
property there is no injustice, is a proposition as certain as any
demonstration in Euclid. " " Again : no government allows ab-
solute liberty; the idea of government being the establishment
of certain rules or laws which require conformity to them, and
the idea of absolute liberty being for any one to do whatever he
pleases, I am as capable of being certain of the truth of this
proposition as of any in mathematics."
JOHN LOCKE 325
In other words, we have an empirical knowledge of right and
wrong, a demonstrative knowledge, and a revealed knowledge, all
of which agree. God has so arranged it that, given a desire of
happiness, man will evolve a moral code. He has also endowed
him with reason which will enable him to acquire moral truth
by demonstration. And in the Scriptures he has revealed the
same laws which can be reached by experience and reason.
According to Locke freedom is not an idea belonging to voli-
tion or preferring, but to the person having the power of doing
or forbearing to do, according as the mind shall
choose or direct. We cannot say a man's will is
free, " it is as insignificant to ask whether a man's will be free,
as to ask whether his sleep be swift or his virtue square." The
will is one power or ability, namely, the power of an agent to
think his own actions and to prefer their doing or omission.
Freedom is another power or ability, the power to do or forbear
doing any particular action according as he himself wills. So
that when we ask, Is the will free? we are really asking, Has
one power another power? which is an absurdity. It is to ask,
Is the will a substance, an agent? The will is not a faculty or
substance. A man is free so far as he has power to think or not
to think, to move or not to move according to the preference or
direction of his own mind. Wherever he has not the power to
do or forbear any act according to the determination or thought
of the mind, he is not free though perhaps his act may be volun-
tary. It is some pressing uneasiness that successively deter-
mines the will and sets us upon those actions we perform. This
uneasiness is desire, it is an uneasiness of the mind for want of
some absent good. God has put into men the uneasiness of hun-
ger and thirst and other natural desires, to move and determine
their wills for the preservation of themselves and the continua-
tion of the species. The most pressing uneasiness naturally de-
termines the will. But what moves desire ? Happiness alone.
Locke's theory of the State is presented in his Two Treatises
on Government, the first of which is a refutation of Sir Robert
Filmer's (died 1653) absolutistic work, Patriarcha* In the
second he discusses " the true original, extent, and end of civil
* Patriarchal authority is a divine unalterable right of sovereignty, in-
herited from Adam. Algernon Sidney (1622-1683) refutes Filmer's Biblical
\v
326 MODERN PHILOSOPHY
government." He opposes the view that all government is ab-
solute monarchy, that kings have a divine right to absolute power,
and that mankind has no right to natural free-
Politics ,. ,,
dom and equality. Men are naturally in a state
of perfect freedom to order their actions and dispose of their
possessions as they think fit, within the bounds of the law of
nature, without asking leave, or depending on the will, of any
other man. They are also in a state of equality of nature, no
man having more power and jurisdiction than another. The
law of nature or reason teaches all mankind that, being all equal
and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life,
liberty, and possessions.* Every one is bound to preserve him-
self and to preserve the rest of mankind when his own preser-
vation comes not in competition. And in a state of nature
every one has a power to punish transgressions of that law of
nature, to preserve the innocent, to restrain offenders, and to
take reparation for injuries done him. Each transgression may
be punished to that degree, and with so much severity, as will
suffice to make it an ill bargain to the offender, give him cause
to repent, and terrify others from doing the like. ~^L
The state of nature is not (as Hobbes supposed) a state of
war, but a state of peace, good-will, and mutual assistance. God
made man so that convenience and inclination drove him into
society, and fitted him with understanding and language to
continue and enjoy it. But many things are wanting in a state
of nature : an established, settled, known law ; a known and im-
partial judge with authority; power to back and support the
sentence, when right, and give it due execution. We have
political or civil society whenever any number of men are so
united into one society as to quit every one his executive power
of the law of nature, and to resign it to the public: whenever
men enter into society to make one people, one body politic,
under one supreme government (contract theory).
proofs in his Discourse on Government. The poet Milton (1608-1674)
demands domestic, ecclesiastical, and political liberty. Barclay is the
great champion of the absolute monarchy. Locke largely bases himself on
the principles already laid down in Richard Hooker's Laws of Ecclesiastical
Polity, 1593.
* Locke drafted (1669) the first constitution for the Carolinas, which
King Charles II had bestowed upon a number of noblemen, among them
luocke's patron, the Earl of Shaftesbury.
JOHN LOCKE 327
Hence, absolute monarchy is inconsistent with civil society.
For if the prince holds both the legislative and executive pow-
ers, there is no common judge who may fairly, indifferently, and
with authority decide, and no standing rule to appeal to; the
subject is the slave of one man. No one can be subjected to the
political power of another without his own consent. When any
number of men have, by consent of every individual, made a
community, they have thereby made that community one body,
with a power to act as one body, which is only by the will and
determination of the majority. But after such a society has been
formed, every man puts himself under an obligation to every
one of that society to submit to the rule of the majority. Other-
wise, there would be no compact if he were left free and under
no other ties than he was before, in the state of nature. Unani-
mous consent is next to impossible. The governments of the
world that were begun in peace were made by the consent of the
people.
Man gives up his freedom and power, because the enjoyment
of it is very uncertain and constantly exposed to the invasion
of others ; for all being kings as much as he, every man his equal,
and the greater part no strict observers of equity and justice,
the enjoyment of the property he has in this state is very unsafe
and insecure. If it were not for the viciousness and corruption
of degenerate men, there would be no need of any society but
tthe state of nature. The great and chief end of men's uniting
Into a commonwealth is for the mutual preservation of their
lives, liberties, and estates. Hence the power of society can never
be supposed to extend farther than the common good.
The first and fundamental natural law, which is to govern even
the legislative itself, is the preservation of the society and (so
far as will consist with the public good) of every person in it.
The first and fundamental positive law of all commonwealths is
the establishing of the legislative power. This legislative is not
only the supreme power, but sacred and unalterable in the
hands where the community have once placed it ; nor can any
edict of anybody else have the force and obligation of a law,
which has not the sanction from that legislative which the public
has chosen and appointed. But the legislative power cannot be
absolutely arbitrary over the lives and fortunes of the people,
328 MODERN PHILOSOPHY
it is limited to the public good of society. The laws of nature
do not cease in society, they stand as an eternal rule to all men,
legislators as well as others. Hence, it has no right to enslave,
to destroy, or designedly to impoverish the subjects. Again,
the legislative cannot assume to itself power to rule by ex-
temporary arbitrary decrees ; standing laws are needed. Further,
the supreme power cannot take the subject's property without
his consent ; taxes can be levied only by consent of the majority.
Lastly, it cannot delegate the power of making laws to any other
hands.
It is not well that those who have powers of making the laws
should also have power to execute them. The federative power
is the power of war and peace, leagues and alliances, and all
transactions with all persons and communities without the com-
monwealth. The federative and executive powers are almost
always united, and it is best that they should be placed in one
hand. The executive has the supreme execution of the laws, and
should be exempt from subordination. But the legislative may
take both the executive and federative powers out of the hands
it has placed them in, when it finds cause, and to punish any
maladministration of the laws. The legislative is the supreme
power, but it is a fiduciary power to act for certain ends. So
the people have a supreme power to remove and alter the leg-
islative when they find it act contrary to the trust reposed in it.
But whilst the government exists, the legislative is the supreme
power. The power of choosing the legislative rests with the
people. Not the prince, as Hobbes taught, but the legislative is
the soul of the commonwealth, and the legislative represents
the people ; the people is the judge whether the prince or the
legislative act contrary to their trust.
Like all the great philosophers of the modern era, Locke
finds fault with the methods of instruction which had come
down as a heritage from scholasticism, and pre-
Education „ , A. , .,
sents a new program of education based on his
empirical psychology and ethics. The soul being at birth devoid
of all principles except the desire for pleasure and the power
to receive impressions, the problem of education must be to
learn by experience and to realize happiness. In order to solve
it, a healthy body and sound sense-organs are requisite ; by ex-
SUCCESSORS OF LOCKE 329
ercise and habit the body must be hardened; hence, the need
of physical training for the child and a frugal mode of life.
The individuality of the child is to be developed in a natural
manner; hence, private instruction is preferable. Locke also
emphasizes the importance of object lessons, of learning by play,
and of arousing the pupil's mental activities; study is to be
made a delight. Above all, the social end of education should
not be lost sight of : the youth is to be trained as a useful member
of society.
49. SUCCESSORS OF LOCKE
Locke's teachings form the starting-point of many lines of
thought, and his influence, like that of Descartes, extended far
beyond his age and the boundaries of his country.
The remark which Schiller once made of a great
man applies to him: he had marrow in his bones
to last for centuries. His Essay was the first attempt at a
comprehensive theory of knowledge in the history of modern
philosophy and inaugurated the movement which produced
Berkeley and Hume and culminated in Kant. His empirical
psychology became the source from which English associationism
(Browne and Hartley) and French sensationalism (Condillac,
Helvetius) drew their nourishment. His ethical philosophy was
continued and corrected by the work of Shaftesbury, Hutcheson,
Ferguson, Hume, and Adam Smith. His theory of education
influenced the great French author Rousseau and, through him,
the entire world. His political ideas found brilliant exponents
in Voltaire, Montesquieu's Esprit des lois, and a radical con-
tinuation in Rousseau's Contrat social; while the spirit of his
entire thought gave an impetus to the religious movement of
the deists in England and in France. In Locke the forces that
were making for enlightenment were concentrated and reflected
more faithfully than in any thinker before him. He represents
the spirit of the modern era, the spirit of independence and
criticism, the spirit of individualism, and the spirit of democ-
racy, the spirit which had sought utterance in the religious Ref-
ormation and in the political revolutions of the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries, and which reached its climax in the En-
330 MODERN PHILOSOPHY
lightenment of the eighteenth century. No philosopher has been
more successful than he in impressing his thought on the minds
and institutions of men.
Deism begins, as a vital movement, with Locke's book on the
Reasonableness of Christianity (1695). Locke had set up rea-
. son as the ultimate test of revelation; revealed
truths are absolutely certain, of that there is no
doubt, but human reason is the criterion of revelation itself.
"With Herbert of Cherbury, the great empiricist accepted as true
certain propositions of natural or rational theology; only, he
did not regard them as innate. The deists apply these Lockian
ideas, subjecting revelation to rational standards, and seek the
true revelations of God in the laws of nature. On this basis,
Christianity is fashioned into a rational religion ; it is not mys-
terious, it is as old as creation. John Toland writes Chris-
tianity not Mysterious (1696), a book which was condemned by
the Anglican Church. In his Letters to Serena (1704) and
Pantheisticon (1720), he accepts a nature-religion, which he
calls pantheism (a term coined by him). A. Collins writes his
Discourse of Free Thinking (1713), in which he opposes the
interference of the Church with critical discussions of the Bible.
Other deistic works are : Tindal, Christianity as Old as the Crea-
tion (1730) ; Woolston, Six Discourses on the Miracles of Our
Savior (1727-1730) ; Chubb, The True Gospel of Jesus Christ
(1738); Morgan, The Moral Philosopher (1737). Conybeare
(1732) and Joseph Butter (1736) defend revealed religion
against deism.
Stephen, History of English Thought in the Eighteenth Century,
2 vols. ; J. M. Robertson, Short History of Free Thought., 2 vols.;
Lechler, Geschichte des englischen Deismus. See bibliography in Britan-
nica under Deism.
In his account of the origin of knowledge, Locke distinguishes
between sensation and reflection; he also endows the mind with
certain powers or faculties which act on the mate-
rials of sense. The attempt is made by many of
his followers to explain all mental processes, reflection as well
as the faculties, as transformed sensations: reflection and the
powers of the understanding are reduced to sensation. Peter
SUCCESSORS OF LOCKE 331
Browne, Bishop of Cork (died 1735; The Procedure, Extent,
and Limits of the Understanding, 1728), presents this view,
which is worked out in detail by the French abbe, 6tienne de
Condillac (1715-1780) in his Trait e des sensations, 1754. Con-
dillac tries to show how a being endowed with but a single sense,
— smell, for example, — would develop, in turn, attention, mem-
ory, comparison, pleasure and pain, passion, desire, will. From
comparison, which is nothing but the multiplication of sensa-
tions, arise judgment, reflection, reasoning, and abstraction, that
is, understanding. Eeflection, or the ego, is simply the sum
of the sensations which we now have and those which we have
had. In order, however, to obtain the idea of an external world,
i.e., extension, form, solidity, and body, the sense of touch is
needed. This yields us knowledge of objective reality, — there
is something other than ourselves, — but what the nature of this
other is, we do not know.
Sensationalism, in some form or other, became popular in
England and in France, among its followers being: Hartley,
Priestley, Erasmus Darwin, James Mill, J. Bentham, Helvetius,
Condorcet, Volney, the Encyclopedists, and the materialists.
Charles de Bonnet (1720-1793) teaches a moderate sensational-
ism, but regards all mental operations, the higher as well as
the lower, as dependent on brain vibrations, which cause reac-
tions in an immaterial soul. Helvetius applies sensationalism to
ethics.
The law of the association of ideas (ideas are associated in
the mind in a certain regular order), which had been noticed by
Aristotle and Hobbes and discussed by Locke and Gay, was
elaborated and formulated into a philosophical system by David
Hartley (1705-1757; Observations on Man, his Frame, his Du-
ties, his Expectations, 1749). This law, combined with the doc-
trine that all our ideas are copies of sensations, has been
employed as the chief principle of explanation of mental life
by the followers of empiricism,— by Hume, Condillac, Priestley,
the Mills, Bentham, and many modern psychologists. In ethics,
it has been used to account for the moral sentiments : Man learns
to associate his pleasures with that which pleases him ; the moral
sentiments procure for us many advantages which we love, and
we gradually transfer our affections from these to the things
332 MODERN PHILOSOPHY
which procure them, and in this way come to love virtue for
virtue's sake.
Cf . works mentioned pp. 254, f ., and under Locke ; also, Bower, Hartley
and James Mill; Schoenlank, Hartley und Priestley: die Begrunder
des Associationismus ; Markus, Die Associationstheorien. Bibliography
in Ueberweg-Heinze, Part III, vol. I, § 22.
English empiricism derived the knowledge of right and wrong
from experience and based morality on the impulse of self-
preservation or the desire for happiness. Bacon,
it is true, had not overlooked the social instinct,
but Hobbes and Locke conceived human nature as fundamentally
egoistic and made morality a matter of enlightened self-interest.
Rationalistic thinkers like Cudworth, Clarke, and Wollaston
protested against such empirical and egoistic conceptions; to
deny that I should do for another what he in the like case should
do for me, Clarke said, "is as if a man should contend that
though two and three are equal to five, they are not equal to
two and three." Richard Cumberland (1632-1719; De legibus
naturce, 1672), who may be regarded as the founder of English
Utilitarianism, refused to accept the rationalistic doctrine of in-
nate moral knowledge, but he regarded the egoistic conception of
man, as a mere bundle of selfish impulses, as false : man has sym-
pathetic feelings, or benevolence, as well as selfish feelings. So-
cial life or the common welfare is the highest good, and we are
fitted for it by social feeling and rationality.
The English moralists succeeding Locke base our moral knowl-
edge, in the main, on feeling or impulse instead of reason or
innate ideas of right and wrong, but they regard these feel-
ings as native endowments of human nature. According to Lord
Shaftesbury (1671-1713; Characteristics, 1711), man possesses
self-affections and social affections ; virtue consists in the proper
balance between the two; and the moral sense tells us whether
they are in harmony or not. Francis Hutcheson (1694-1747)
works out these ideas in systematic form in his Inquiry into
the Ideas of Beauty and Virtue, 1725, and System of Moral
Philosophy, 1755, and is the first to make use of the formula:
" the greatest happiness for the greatest number." To the
same school belong : David Hume (Inquiry concerning the Prin-
SUCCE SORS OF LOCKE 333
ciples of Morals, li L), Adam Ferguson (Institutes of Moral
Philosophy, 1769), and Adam Smith (1723-1790), the author
of Theory of the Moral Sentiments, 1759, and Wealth of Nations,
1776, who finds the source and criterion of the moral law in sym-
pathy. All these writers do justice to the feeling-impulse side
of man 's nature : our ethical judgments and actions are rooted,
not in reason, but in feeling. Most of them are intuitionists :
either a native moral sense distinguishes between the worth of
motives and acts, or the moral judgment is based on the feeling
of sympathy. All of them regard the general welfare as the
highest good, which Cumberland and Shaftesbury conceive as
perfection, and the others as happiness, though the distinction
between perfection and happiness is not, as yet, clearly drawn.
Joseph Butler (1692-1752; Sermons upon Human Nature,
1726, Dissertation upon Virtue, Analogy of Religion, 1736) fol-
lows this school in its general teaching, but lays greater emphasis
on the conscience, which he conceives not as a feeling (moral
sense), but as a principle of reflection: " There is a superior
principle of reflection or conscience in every man, which distin-
guishes between the internal principles of his heart as well as
his external actions; which passes judgment upon himself and
them, and pronounces determinately some actions to be in them-
selves just, right, good, others to be in themselves evil, wrong,
unjust: which, without being consulted, without being advised
with, magisterially exerts itself, and approves or condemns him
the doer of them accordingly. ' ' Had it strength as it had right,
it would absolutely govern the world. He also finds in indi-
vidual happiness the ultimate rational standard, though not
the psychological motive of right and wrong. Conscience or duty
and self-love or interest, if we understand our true happiness,
always lead us the same way ; they are perfectly coincident, for
the most part in this world, but entirely and in every instance
if we take in the future and the whole. Our ideas of happiness
and misery are the nearest and most important to us ; they will
and ought to prevail over those of order and beauty and har-
mony and proportion, if there ever should be, as it is impossible
there ever should be, any inconsistency between them. When we
sit down in a cool hour, we can neither justify to ourselves the
pursuit of what is right and good, as such, or any other pursuit,
334 MODERN PHILOSOPHY
till we are convinced that it will be for our happiness, or at
least not contrary to it.
William Paley, in his Principles of Moral and Political Phi-
losophy, 1785, rejects the moral sense, and declares that actions
are to be estimated according to their tendency. Whatever is
expedient is right. " Virtue is the doing good to mankind, in
obedience to the will of God, and for the sake of everlasting
happiness."
In opposition to Shaftesbury, Bernard Mandeville (1670-1733;
The Grumbling Hive: or Knaves Turned Honest, 1705, The
Fable of the Bees: or Private Vices Public Benefits, 1714) tries
to show that selfishness (private vices) contributes more to the
public good than benevolence. The Frenchman Helvetius (1715-
1771; De I'esprit, 1758, De I'homme, 1772) follows Hobbes and
Mandeville in making egoism the sole motive of human action,
and enlightened self-interest the criterion of morals. The only
way to make a man moral is to make him see his own welfare
in the public welfare, and this can be done by legislation only,
i.e., by proper rewards and punishments. The science of morals
is nothing but the science of legislation. This theory is, after
all, the Lockian theory stripped of its theological additions.
This individualistic view, which is found in Locke and Paley,
and also affects Butler's theory, is reflected in the economic
theories of the French physiocrats (Francois
Economy Quesnay, 1694-1774; A. Turgot, 1727-1781) and in
Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations; all of these
oppose the old mercantile system which sprang up in Europe
at the close of the Middle Ages. The new political economy
is based on the idea that the individual has a natural right
to exercise his activity in the economic sphere with the least pos-
sible interference from society (laisser faire). The assumption
is that with unrestricted competition, the removal of unnatural
restraints (among them monopolies or privileges), the freedom
of exchange, the security of contract and property, enlightened
self-interest will succeed in realizing not only the good of the
individual, but also the public welfare. The conception of laissei
faire is an expression of the general theory of natural rights and
demands an open road for the individual in the pursuit of life
liberty, and happiness, holding that this will lead to social
GEORGE BERKELEY 835
justice : ' ' the simple and obvious system of natural liberty
establishes itself of its own accord " (A. Smith). The theory
rendered service in helping to discredit and overthrow the old
system and to deliver the individual from harmful restraints.
See works mentioned pp. 254, f., especially the histories of ethics and
politics; also: ed. of Shaftesbury's Characteristics by J. M. Robertson;
Fowler, Shaftesbury and Hutcheson; Gizicki, Philosophic Shaftesburys;
Rand, Life, Letters and Philosophical Regimen of Shaftesbury • ed. of
Butler's works by Gladstone; Collins, Butler; Farrer, A. Smith.
50. GEORGE BERKELEY
Bodies, according to Locke, produce sensations in the mind,
sensations or ideas of extension, solidity, motion, color, sound,
taste, smell, touch. Some of these are copies of ,
.... The Problem
things as they are, or primary qualities, others are
the effects on us of powers in things, but not exact representa-
tions. Sensations furnish the materials of the mind, the alphabet
of all our knowledge. The soul acts on them, arranging, uniting,
separating, and relating them ; and also reflects on its own opera-
tions. All our knowledge, therefore, is confined to the facts of
experience ; we have a direct knowledge only of our ideas. We
also know that there is an external world, but this knowledge
is not so self-evident as the knowledge of our own ideas.
Bishop Berkeley makes use of the basal teaching of Locke in
order to refute materialism and atheism. If the basis of our
knowledge is sensation and reflection, and we know only ideas,
how can we know a world of bodies, a material world without
us? We are limited, so far as matter is concerned, to our states
of consciousness ; we cannot compare our ideas with these corporeal
substances; we do not know what they are or that they are.
If there is matter and the Lockian theory is true, we cannot
know it; we become entangled in skepticism. Besides, if there
is an independent substance like matter and a world of pure
space, then there is an infinite, eternal immutable reality exist-
ing alongside of God and limiting God, yes, even suggesting the
non-existence of God. The belief in matter, therefore, leads to
atheism and materialism. The grounds of skepticism, atheism,
and irreligion lie in the view that matter or a world of bodies
exists. We can avoid these irreligious consequences only by
SS6 MODERN PHILOSOPHY
getting rid of the premise from which they spring : the assertion
that matter exists. We can explain the universe without such
a premise: given God, the supreme Spirit, and other spiritual
beings, we can account for all the facts. The paramount ques-
tion for Berkeley, therefore, is, Does a world exist without mind,
is there an independent world of matter?
George Berkeley (1685-1753), born in Ireland, studied at Trinity
College, Dublin, traveled, and became Bishop of Cloyne in 1734. In
1732 he was sent to Rhode Island to establish missions. Among his
works are: An Essay towards a New Theory of Vision, 1709, A
Treatise concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge, 1710, Three
Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous, 1713, Alciphron, or the
Minute Philosopher, 1732.
Works edited by A. C. Fraser, 4 vols., 2d ed.; Selections from
Berkeley, by Fraser. Fraser, Berkeley, and Berkeley, Spiritual Real-
ism; Simon, Universal Immaterialism; Gourg, Le journal philos. de
Berkeley (Commonplace Book).
It is a mistake, says Berkeley, to hold that our ignorance is
due to the limitations of our human faculties ; Providence usually
furnishes the appetites it may have implanted in
Knowledge creatures with the means of satisfying them, if
these appetites are rightly made use of. Hence, it
is to be supposed that the desire for knowledge can be satisfied
by a proper use of our faculties, and that we can deduce from
true principles tenable deductions. It is well deserving our
pains, therefore, to make a strict inquiry concerning the Prin-
ciples of Human Knowledge, to sift and examine them on all
sides.
The chief cause of the opinion that external objects (houses,
mountains, rivers) have a natural or real existence, distinct from
being perceived, is the doctrine that the mind can frame abstract
ideas. This, however, is not the case. We can imagine, or rep-
resent to ourselves, the ideas o£ the particular things we have
perceived, and we can variously divide and compound them.
But we cannot, for example, find in our thoughts an idea corre-
sponding with the description of the general idea of a triangle,
of a triangle that is " neither oblique nor rectangle, equilateral,
equicrural, nor scalenon, but all and none of these at once." It
is true, a man may consider a figure merely as triangular with-
out attending to the particular qualities of the angles or re-
GEORGE BERKELEY 337
lations of the sides. So far he may abstract ; but this will never
prove that he can frame an abstract, general, inconsistent idea
of a triangle. Similarly, we cannot frame the distinct idea of
motion, distinct from the body moving, and which is neither
swift nor slow, curvilinear nor rectilinear. There are general
ideas, to be sure, in this sense: an idea which, considered in
itself, is particular becomes general by being made to represent
or stand for all other particular ideas of the same sort. We
use one name or sign for all particular ideas of the same sort,
and because we use one name, we come to believe there is one
general or abstract idea corresponding to it. Such supposed
abstract ideas are not needful for the communication nor for
the enlargement of our knowledge.*
- The idea of a world without the mind, that is, of a real world
of matter, is such an abstract idea. We separate the sensible
objects from their being perceived, we conceive of matter as
existing unperceived. This is impossible. We cannot see or feel
anything without an actual sensation of that thing, nor can we
conceive any sensible thing or object, distinct from the sensa-
tion or perception of it.
With Locke, Berkeley agrees that the objects of human knowl-
edge are either actually imprinted on the senses or such as are
perceived by attending to the passions and operations of the
mind ; or, lastly, ideas formed by the help of memory and imagi-
nation. These ideas we compound, divide, or barely represent.
Besides ideas there is likewise something which knows or per-
ceives them, and exercises diverse operations, — as willing, imag-
ing, remembering, — about them. This perceiving, acting being
is mind, spirit, soul, myself. It is entirely distinct from my
ideas, it is a thing wherein they exist or whereby they are per-
ceived, for the existence of an idea consists in being perceived.
Now, everybody will grant that our thoughts and passions and
the pictures of the imagination do not exist without the mind ;
they are all in the mind, their existence consists
in their being perceived or known by the mind.
The same thing, however, is true also of our sen-
sations ; here, too, existence means to be perceived : esse is percipi.
*This nominalistic doctrine Berkeley modified in later years. See
vol. II, Alciphron, pp. 436, ff.
338 MODERN PHILOSOPHY
When I say the table I write on exists, I mean that I can see
and feel it. When I say it exists when I am out of the room,
I mean that if I were in the room I might perceive it,
or that some other mind actually does perceive it. To say
things exist when no mind perceives them, is perfectly
unintelligible. To exist means to be perceived, to be in the
mind. Bodies, therefore, have no existence without a mind;
their being consists in being perceived or known; so long
as they are not perceived by me or do not exist in my mind or
that of any other created spirit, they have no existence at
all, or else exist in the mind of some eternal spirit. It is
a contradiction in terms to say matter exists without the
mind.
That this is so follows necessarily from the idea of the body
as held by Locke. A body is a solid, extended, figured substance
having the power of motion, possessing a certain color, weight,
taste, smell, and sound. Certain of its qualities, however, do not
inhere in it ; color, sound, taste, smell are the eif ects of the body
produced in a perceiving subject, they are not qualities of the
body itself, but in me; we call them secondary qualities. Ex-
tension, figure, solidity, motion, rest are said to be qualities
inherent in the substance, body, itself; they are the primary
qualities. But, says Berkeley, these so-called primary qualities
are just as secondary as the others. The ideas of extension and
solidity I get through the sense of touch; they are sensations
in my mind also. I cannot separate my idea of extension from
the idea of color and other secondary qualities ; I never perceive
an extended thing which is not at the same time colored, and
so on. The primary qualities are inseparably united with the
secondary; I cannot abstract the latter and leave behind an ex-
tended solid substance, which is that and nothing else. I have
no abstract idea in my mind of such a substance. But, it is
said, there must be something outside which supports, or stands
under, these qualities, — a substance. That, again, says Berkeley,
is a mere abstraction; there is no meaning whatever in the
words material substance. Even if it were possible for such
a solid, figured, movable substance to exist without the mind,
how could we know it? Moreover, all our ideas or sensations,
or the things perceived, are inactive, they have no power to do
GEORGE BERKELEY 339
anything ; hence extension, figure, motion, all of which are ideas,
cannot be the cause of sensations.
But, you say, there must be some cause of the sensations or
ideas in my mind. And so there is, and this cause must be
an active substance. It cannot, however, be a
material substance, for there is none such, hence °
it must be an incorporeal, active substance or
Spirit. A spirit is one, undivided, active being, — as it perceives
ideas, it is called understanding; as it produces or otherwise
operates about them, it is called will. There can be no idea
formed of soul or spirit, because all ideas are passive and inert,
hence we can have no idea or image or likeness of that which
acts. We cannot perceive the spirit itself, but only the effects
which it produces. Still, we have some notion of soul or spirit
and the operations of the mind, such as willing, loving, hating,
inasmuch as we understand the meaning of these words.
Some ideas I can make and unmake at pleasure ; in this respect
my mind is active, I have power over my own thoughts. But
my sensations I have no such power over. I open my eyes: it
is not in my power to choose whether I shall see or no, or to
determine what particular objects shall present themselves to
my view. The ideas imprinted on my senses are not creatures
of my will. Hence, there is some other Will or Spirit that
produces them. The ideas of sense are more strong, lively, and
distinct than those of the imagination; they have likewise a
steadiness, order, and coherence and are not excited at random,
as those which are the effects of human will often are, but in
a regular train or series, the admissible connection whereof suf-
ficiently testifies the wisdom and benevolence of its Author.
Now, the set rules or established methods wherein the Mind we
depend on excites in us the ideas of sense, are called the laws
of nature; anot^these we learn by experience, which teaches us
that such and such ideas are attended with such and such other
ideas in the ordinary course of things. God, in other words,
arouses in us certain ideas in a certain order; he has connected
with the idea of food the idea of nourishment; with the idea
of sleep, the idea of refreshment; with the visual sensation of
fire, the bodily sensation of warmth. If there were no such
regular order in our sensations, we would be eternally at a loss,
340 MODERN PHILOSOPHY
we would not know what to do: that there is such regularity
in the flow of our sensations enables us to regulate our actions
for the benefit of life. We notice this connection between our
ideas and erroneously come to believe that the ideas cause each
other, that fire produces warmth, that sleep causes refreshment,
that collision of bodies causes sound. The ideas imprinted on
the senses by God are called real things; and those excited in
the imagination, being less regular, vivid, and constant, are more
properly termed ideas or images of things which they copy or
represent. But our sensations are ideas, nevertheless; they exist
in the mind; they are simply more vivid, strong, orderly, and
coherent ideas than our images ; they are also less dependent on
the thinking substance which perceives them, for they are ex-
cited by the will of another more powerful Spirit.
What, however, becomes of the sun, moon, stars, the houses,
mountains, rivers, trees, and stones, on this hypothesis? Are
they but chimeras or illusions of the fancy? Not
Answered8 a^ a^' sa^s our idealist. They exist in the sense
given above, they are real things in the sense that
God arouses these sensations in us in a regular coherent order.
Material substance, too, is real in this sense, if we mean by it
a combination of sensible qualities, such as extension, solidity,
weight, and the like. If we mean by it a support of accidents
or qualities without the mind, it does not exist even in the imagi-
nation. But does this not mean that we eat and drink ideas,
and are clothed with ideas? We eat and drink and are clad
with the immediate objects of sense, which cannot exist unper-
ceived or without the mind. It is more proper, therefore, to
call them things rather than ideas. But, we see things without
us at a distance. The consideration of this difficulty gave birth
to the Essay towards a New Theory of Vision, in which Berke-
ley holds that distance, or outness, is not immediately perceived
by sight, nor yet apprehended or judged of by lines and angles,
or anything that has a necessary connection with it. Ideas of
sight or visual sensations come to suggest to us certain ideas of
touch and ideas of locomotion. When the object seems indis-
tinct and small, experience has taught us that it is far off, at
a distance, that we must walk far to get a distinct and larger
picture.
GEORGE BERKELEY 341
But does not everything disappear when I close my eyes?
The things are no longer perceived by me, hence they ought
no longer to exist. Well, says Berkeley, the same difficulties
would confront those who hold the other view. Do the colors
and sounds disappear when I shut my eyes and ears ? The par-
ticular bodies we see, all have color, sound, figure, size. If these
disappear, what is left of the world? Besides, I may say that
when I close my eyes the things are perceived by other minds.
Again, does not this idealism do away with the whole cor-
puscular philosophy ? Berkeley answers, there is no phenomenon
explained by that hypothesis which cannot be explained without
it. No one really knows how matter operates on a spirit or pro-
duces any idea in it. Besides, the natural philosophers do not
account for things by corporeal substance, but by figure, mo-
tion, and other qualities, which are, in truth, no more than
mere ideas and cannot, therefore, be the cause of anything.
Still, would it not be absurd to speak in the language of this
new theory, to say a spirit heats instead of fire heats ? Berkeley
replies: in such things we ought to think with the learned and
speak with the vulgar. Those who accept the Copernican theory
still speak of the sun rising. It is said, however, that the whole
world believes in matter. Is the whole world mistaken? But,
does the whole world really believe it? It is a contradiction to
believe it. The truth is, men have no speculative opinion at all
about it. Besides, universal consent is no proof. We can account
for the prejudice. Men assumed that their sensations had an
existence independent of the mind and without the mind, be-
cause they themselves were not the authors of them. They did
not dream that a contradiction was involved in the terms. It
was supposed that qualities existed without the mind and that,
therefore, an unthinking substance was needed. Then it was
held that secondary qualities had no extra-mental existence.
Since, however, the primary qualities do not exist without the
mind either, substance becomes unnecessary. If you say, per-
haps there is a substance having qualities as incomprehensible
to us as color is to a man born blind, we ask, What is the
advantage of disputing about an unknown support of unknown
qualities, about something we know not what and know not
whyf Besides, if we had a new sense to perceive these qualities,
342 MODERN PHILOSOPHY
we should have all the difficulties over again. If matter is
defined as an unknown somewhat, neither substance nor attribute,
spirit nor idea, as inert, thoughtless, indivisible, immovable, un-
extended, existing in no place, then it is nothing. If you dis-
tinguish it from nothing by giving it existence, quiddity, entity,
I say this idea to me is incomprehensible trifling with words.
Spirits, then, are active indivisible substances ; ideas are inert,
fleeting, dependent things which subsist not by themselves, but
are supported by or exist in minds or spiritual
Knowledge substances. We comprehend our own existence by
Sf iritTand inward feeling °r reflection, and that of other
Relations spirits by reason. We may be said to have some
knowledge or notion of our own minds, of spirits,
and active beings, whereof, in a strict sense, we have no ideas.
In like manner, we know and have a notion of relations between
things or ideas, — which relations are distinct from the ideas or
things related, inasmuch as the latter may be perceived by us
without our perceiving the former. . Berkeley holds that ideas,
spirits, and relations are all in their respective kinds objects of
human knowledge and subjects of discourse; and that the term
idea will be improperly extended to signify everything we know
or have any notion of. Ideas imprinted on the senses are real
things, or do really exist, but they cannot subsist without the
minds which perceive them; they are not resemblances of any
archetype existing without the mind. They may be called ex-
ternal in the sense that they are not generated within the mind
itself, but imprinted by a spirit distinct from that which per-
ceives them. Sensible objects may also be said to be " without
the mind " in the sense that when I shut my eyes the things
still exist, but they must be in another mind.
This idealistic theoiy, Berkeley declares, banishes from phi-
losophy several obscure and difficult questions: Whether cor-
poreal substances can think? Whether matter is
Refutation infinitely divisible? How it operates on spirit?
Atheilm^and Jt reduces human knowledge to knowledge of ideas
Skepticism an^ knowledge of spirits. It gets rid of the dual-
ism of intelligible objects, or objects in the miiid,
and real objects without the mind. This dualism is the root
of skepticism, for how can we know that the things which are
GEORGE BERKELEY 343
perceived are conformable to the things which are not per-
ceived? If color, figure, motion, extension, and the like are
referred to things outside the mind, we see appearances only,
not the real qualities of things, and are landed in skepticism;
we distrust the senses. All doubt vanishes on our theory.
The doctrine of matter is also the cause of atheism; give it
up and the whole fabric falls to the ground. If the self-existent,
stupid, unthinking substance is the root and origin of all things,
we exclude freedom, intelligence, and design from the formation
of things. Give up matter and your Epicureans, Hobbists, and
the like have not even the shadow of a pretense. Idolatry, too,
falls with matter, for if objects of sense are merely so many
sensations in the mind, then men cannot fall down and worship
their own ideas. Also, take away material substance and mean
by body what every plain ordinary person means by the word:
to wit, that which is immediately seen and felt, which is only
a combination of qualities or ideas, and then objections to resur-
rection came to nothing.
Another source of error is the doctrine of the abstract ideas.
Time, place, and motion, taken in particular or concrete, are
what everybody knows; but having passed through the hands
of a metaphysician, they become too abstract and fine to be
apprehended by men of ordinary sense. Time is nothing ab-
stracted from the succession of ideas in our minds, hence the
duration of any finite spirit must be estimated by the number
of ideas or actions succeeding each other in the same spirit or
mind. Hence, it is a plain consequence that the soul always
thinks. Also, where extension is, there is color also, i.e., in the
mind; their archetypes can exist only in some other mind, and
the objects of sense are nothing but those sensations combined,
blended, concreted together; none of all which can be supposed
to exist unperceived. We cannot frame an idea of pure space
exclusive of all body. Pure space means the possibility of limbs
of my body to be moved on all sides without the least
resistance.
The skeptics triumph in natural philosophy. They say we do
not know the real essence, the internal qualities and constitu-
tion of things. Something there is in every drop of water,
every grain of sand, which it is beyond the power of human
344 MODERN PHILOSOPHY
understanding to fathom or comprehend. The complaint is
groundless. There is no inward essence of things whence their
discernible qualities flow or whereon they depend. It is also a
vain labor to endeavor to explain appearances or qualities, the
production of color and sound, for example, by the figure, mo-
tion, weight, and such like qualities of insensible particles.
There is no other agent or efficient cause than spirit; motion as
well as all other ideas is perfectly inert.
The great principle now in vogue is attraction. The word
does not mean anything but the effect itself ; it does not tell us
anything as to the manner of the actions whereby it is produced
or the cause which produces it. Many pronounce gravitation
universal: to attract and to be attracted by every other body
is said to be an essential quality inherent in all bodies. There
is nothing necessary or essential in the case, but it depends jen-
tirely upon the Will of the Governing Spirit, who causes certain
bodies to cleave together or tend towards each other, according to
various laws. Hence, it is vain to inquire into natural efficient
cause distinct from mind or spirit. The whole creation is the
workmanship of a wise and good Agent, hence philosophers
should concern their thoughts about the final causes of things.
One good way is to point out the various ends to which things
are adapted, and for which they were originally contrived.
There is no reason why observations and experiments should
not be made. That they are of use to mankind and enable us
to draw general conclusions, is not the result of any immutable
habitudes or relations between things themselves, but only of
God's goodness and kindness to men in the administration of
the world. By a diligent observation of phenomena within our
view, we may discover the general laws of nature, and from
them deduce the other phenomena; " I do not say demonstrate,
for all deductions of that kind depend on the supposition that
the Author of Nature always operates uniformly and in a con-
stant observance of those rules we take for principles: which
we cannot evidently know." The rules of morality, however,
which have a necessary tendency to promote the well-being of
mankind, Berkeley thinks can be demonstrated, and have the
same immutable, eternal truth with the propositions of
geometry.
DAVID HUME S45
Arthur Collier, in his Clavis universalis, 1713, making Malebranche's
system his starting-point, attempts to prove the non-existence of an
external world from the standpoint of rationalism. Clavis ed. by
Bowman. Cf . Lyon, Un idealiste anglais, Rev. phil, 1880 ; Kowalewski,
Kritische Analyze von Arthur Colliers Clavis universalis.
51. DAVID HUME
Locke taught that we have certain knowledge of our ideas,
demonstrative knowledge of God and of morality, and prac-
tically certain knowledge of the external world of
bodies. Berkeley denied the existence of a material
world and limited our knowledge to ideas, relations, and spiritual
beings. David Hume accepts the empirical theory of the origin
of knowledge and the Berkeleyan view that esse = percipi, and
draws what seem to him the consequences of these premises. If
all we can know is our own impressions, we have no right to
assert the reality either of material substances or of spiritual
substances. CWe find no impressions that justify the assump-
tion of any kind of substance. And we discover nothing in our
experience that justifies our notion of necessary connection or
causation ; cause and effect can mean nothing more than a regu-
lar succession of ideaj) Metaphysics, theology, and natural
science cannot yield universal and necessary knowledge ; the
sciences of God, the universe, and the soul are just as impossible,
as rational sciences, as Locke had declared the science of bodies
to be. We can know only what we experience, and we can reach
only probability in the field to which we are confined. Hume
agrees with Descartes, Hobbes, and Locke in the view that genu-
ine knowledge must be self-evident, but he finds no such knowl-
edge anywhere except in mathematics, which merely analyzes its
own concepts.
Hume's view is empiricism: our knowledge has its source i
in experience; it is positivism: our knowledge is limited to the
world of phenomena ; it is agnosticism : we know nothing of ulti-
mates, substances, causes, soul, ego, external world, universe;
it is humanism : the human-mental world is the only real subject
of our study.
David Hume, born in Edinburgh, 1711, studied law, served as sec-
retary to General St. Clair and later to Lord Hertford (1703-1766),
346 MODERN PHILOSOPHY
became librarian to the Faculty of Law in Edinburgh (1752-1757),
and Under-Secretary of State (1767-1769). He wrote his chief work,
Treatise upon Human Nature, in three books, during his first residence
in France (1734-1737), but the work made no impression upon the
public: it "fell dead-born from the press," as Hume says. He after-
wards worked it over, in more popular form, and published the three
revised parts separately (1748, 1751, 1757). But his fame during his
lifetime rested upon his achievements as a historian rather than on
his philosophical works. During his second sojourn at Paris, as a
member of the English embassy, he made the acquaintance of Rousseau,
Diderot, Holbach, Turgot, and d'Alembert, and induced Rousseau to
visit England. He died in 1776.
Among his works we mention : Treatise upon Human Nature (1739-
1740) ; five volumes of Essays: 1. Essays, Moral, Political and Literary,
1741-1742; 2. Inquiry concerning Human Understanding, 1748 (a re-
vision of Book I of the Treatise) ; 3. Inquiry concerning the Principles
of Morals, 1751 (revision of Book III); 4. Political Discourses, 1752;
5. Four Dissertations, 1757, including A Dissertation on the Passions
(Book II of the Treatise) and Natural History of Eeligion. Posthu-
mous works: My Own Life (published by Adam Smith), 1777, Dialogues
concerning Natural Religion, 1779, Suicide and Immortality of the
Soul, 1783. His History of England appeared 1754-1762.
Works ed. by Green and Grose, 4 vols., 1874, new ed., 1909 ; Essays
and Principles of Morals by Selby-Bigge, 1894; Letters by Birkbeck
Hill, 1888; Selections from Treatise by Aikins, from ethical writings
by Hyslop.
Monographs by Huxley, Knight, Calderwood, Orr; Green, Intro-
duction to Hume's Works, also in Green's works; Elkin, Hume's
Treatise and Inquiry; Jodl, Leben und Philosophie Humes; E. Pflei-
derer, Empirismns und Skepsis in Humes Philosophie; Spicker, Kant,
Hume, und Berkeley; Meinong, Hume-Studien, 2 vols.; Gizicki, Ethik
Humes; Hedvall, Humes Erkenntnisstheorie; Lechartier, Hume: mora-
liste et sociologue. See also McCosh, Scottish Philosophy, Pringle-
Pattison, On the Scottish Philosophy, and the works on English philos-
ophy mentioned pp. 254, f.
All sciences, says Hume, have a relation to human nature.
The sole end of logic is to explain the principles and operations
of our reasoning faculty and the nature of our
Science of ideas ; morals and criticism regard our tastes and
Nature1 sentiments; and politics consider men as united
in society and dependent on each other. Even
mathematics, natural philosophy, and natural religion are judged
by the powers and faculties of men. Hence, we ought to study
human nature itself, in order to find the principles which regu-
late our understanding, excite our sentiments, and make us
praise or blame any particular object, action, or behavior. What,
DAVID HUME 347
we ask, is the source of our distinctions between truth and false-
hood, vice and virtue, beauty and deformity. The science of
man, or moral philosophy, as Hume calls it, is the only solid
foundation we can give to the other sciences, and this science
of man must be laid in experience and observation; the " ex-
perimental method of reasoning " must be introduced into phi-
losophy. Hume attempts this task in his Treatise upon Human
Nature, of which Book I treats of the Understanding, Book II
of the Passions, and Book III of Morals. The same subjects
are discussed in the Inquiry concerning Human Understanding,
Dissertation on the Passions, and Inquiry concerning the Prin-
ciples of Morals.
The most important task is to inquire into the nature of the
human understanding, to analyze its powers and capacities, to
show that it is not fitted for the abstruse and remote subjects
which traditional philosophy has set before it; in other words,
we must cultivate true metaphysics, the science of the under-
standing, in order to destroy the false and adulterate kind which
attempts to penetrate into realms inaccessible to the intellect.
Even if we could do no more than offer a mental geography,
as it were, a delineation of the distinct parts and powers of
the mind, there ought to be, to say the least, as much satisfac-
tion in that as in studying the system of the planets. But why
may we not hope to discover the secret springs and principles
by which the mind is actuated in its operations, that a Newton
of the mind may arise who may perhaps discover a universal and
general principle of the mind?
The chief problems that occupy Hume are those of the origin
and nature of knowledge. What is the source of our knowledge ;
what are its certainty, extent, and limitations?
What value have certain forms of knowing, or
certain categories, such as substance and causality ?
The answers to all these questions are based on the answer which
Hume gives to the question of the origin of knowledge. All the
materials of our thinking are derived from outward and inward
impre; ions. Impressions are our more lively perceptions, when
we hear or see or feel or love or hate or desire or will : that is,
all our sensations, passions, and emotions as they make their first
appearance in the soul. All our thoughts or ideas are copies
348 MODERN PHILOSOPHY
of such impressions: they are the less lively perceptions, the
faint or feeble impressions; of which we are conscious when we
reflect on any of the sensations or movements mentioned. Out-
ward impressions, or sensations, arise in the soul from unknown
causes, while the inward impressions are derived, in a great
measure, from our ideas: e.g., an impression strikes upon the
senses, we perceive heat or cold, pleasure or pain. A copy re-
mains of the impression, that is an idea. This idea of pleasure
or pain produces new impressions: desire and aversion, hope
and fear, which are impressions of reflection. These, again,
are copied by the memory and imagination. Out of these im-
pressions knowledge is built up by compounding, transposing,
augmenting, or diminishing the materials furnished us by the
senses and experience. The mixture and composition of the
impressions belongs alone to the mind and will. Analysis shows
that every idea which we examine is copied from similar impres-
sions. Moreover, where there are no impressions, there can be
no ideas; a blind man can have no notion of colors, nor a deaf
man of sounds. Hence, we should always ask ourselves in ex-
amining the meaning of philosophical terms : From what impres-
sion is the supposed idea derived?
Our thoughts or ideas, however, are not entirely loose and
unconnected, not joined by chance; they introduce one another
with a certain degree of method and regularity • there is a bond
of union between them, one calls up another. A picture natu-
rally leads our thoughts to the original (resemblance), the men-
tion of one apartment in a house suggests an adjoining one
(contiguity), the thought of a wound calls up the idea of pain
(cause and effect). This is the phenomenon called association
of ideas. The principles or laws of association are resemblance,
contiguity in time and place, and cause and effect. Thoughts,
in other words, tend to call up thoughts of like things, of things
contiguous in time and place, and of things related as cause
and effect. By the union or association of ideas according to
these principles, all our complex ideas are formed.
All our reasonings concerning matters of .fact are bf ^d on
the relation of cause and effect, that is, we always seek* a con-
nection between a present fact and another. A man finds a
watch in a desert island, he concludes from the product to the
DAVID HUME 349
cause, he infers that men have once been there. On our search
for causes and effects depend our speculations and practice. It
is, therefore, of cardinal importance that we study this relation.
How do we arrive at the knowledge of cause and effect, and
what is the validity of this knowledge, what is the nature of
its evidence?
We do not reach a knowledge of this relation by reasonings
a priori. Adam could not have inferred a priori, prior to experi-
ence, from the light and warmth of fire, that it would consume
him. The mind cannot deduce the effect from the supposed
cause ; no amount of reasoning will enable us to discover a priori
the explosion of gunpowder or the attraction of the loadstone.
For the effect is totally different from the cause and can never
be discovered in it. We cannot demonstrate that a certain cause
must have a certain effect or that it must always have the same
effect; we cannot prove to reason, as we can a mathema1
proposition, that bread nourishes and fire warms. There is no
necessary connection between the qualities of bread and nour-
ishment, such that the notion of the one necessarily implies the
other; if there were, we could, without experience, infer the
effects from the first appearance of these qualities, just as we
can conclude from the notion of a triangle that the sum of its
angles is equal to two right angles. There is nothing logically
contradictory in assuming that fire will not warm or bread nour-
ish or gunpowder explode.
Our knowledge of the relation of cause and effect is based
on observation and experience. We observe objects succeeding
one another, that similar objects are constantly conjoined, that
heat follows flame, cold snow, that the motion of one billiard
ball is attended by the movement of the other. Having found,
in many instances, that any two kinds of objects have ahv
been conjoined, we infer that the objects are causally related,
that one is the cause of the other. That is, we are led to expect
upon the appearance of the one, the appearance of the other;
the mind is carried by habit or custom to believe that the two
objects in question are connected, that they will always go
together. After the constant conjunction of two objects, h^at
and flame, weight and solidity, we are determined by custom
to expect the one from the appearance of the other. Our expe-
350 MODERN PHILOSOPHY
/rience of the constant conjunction of objects, in other words,
I produces a belief in their connection. This belief is an operation
of the soul, a species of natural instinct, as unavoidable as to
feel the passion of love when we receive benefits. We cannot
define belief except as a feeling of which every one knows the
meaning, because every man is conscious of it. (In the Treatise
Hume is still uncertain as to the psychology of this belief. He
identifies it with the imagination, but the matter seems obscure
and unsatisfactory to him.) Nature, therefore, has not trusted
the operation of the mind by which we infer like effects from
like causes, and vice versa, to the fallacious deductions of rea-
son, but has secured it by an instinct or mechanical tendency.
A cause may, therefore, be defined as an object followed by
another and whose appearance always conveys the thought of
that other. This definition, however, does not satisfy some meta-
physicians, they miss something in it. For them a cause is
something productive of another thing ; there is something in
the cause by which it is enabled to produce the effect, a secret
power, force, or energy. There is a tie that binds the cause to
the effect, a necessary connection between cause and effect, such
that if we knew the power, we could foresee the effect even
without experience, and might, at first, pronounce with certainty
concerning it, by the mere dint of thought and reasoning. If
this were true, we could deduce the effect from the cause; a
knowledge of the cause would necessarily carry with it a knowl*
edge of the effect : we should know at once, without any experi-
ence, how an object would act.
But what do these terms power, force, energy, necessary con-
nection mean, and what right have we to employ them? To
answer this question, we must analyze our idea of power or nec-
essary connection. We cannot think of anything which we have
not antecedently felt either by our external or internal senses.
Now what is the impression on which this idea of power depends :
how do we get it? When we look at external objects and con-
sider the operation of causes, we never discover any power or
necessary connection, any quality which binds the effect to the
cause and renders the one an infallible consequence of the other,
We only find that the one does actually follow the other. The
impulse of one billiard ball is attended with motion in the sec-
DAVID HUME 851
ond; this is all that appears to the outward senses. From the
first appearance of an object we can never conjecture what its
effect will be. The force in the universe which actuates the
whole machine is entirely concealed from us. We know that
heat is a constant attendant upon flame, but what is the con-
nection between them we cannot imagine. Nor do we get the
idea of power from reflection on the operation of our own minds ;
it is not copied from any internal impression or experience.
But, it may be said, are we not, every moment, conscious of
internal power, do we not feel that by simple command of our
will we can move the organs of the body or direct the faculties
of the mind? An act of volition produces motion in our limbs
or raises a new idea in our imagination. This influence of the
will we know by consciousness. Hence we acquire the idea of
power or energy; and we are certain that we ourselves and all
other intelligent beings are possessed of power.
Let us examine this view, says Hume. It is true, we do influ-
ence the organs of the body by volition. But we are not con-
scious of the means by which this is effected; we are never,
and never can be, directly conscious of the energy by which
the will does this. The power is utterly concealed from us
here, as in case of natural events. The motion of the body
follows upon the command of the will, that is all experience tells
us; how it is done is a mystery. Experience does not tell us
the secret connection which binds the will and its act together
and renders them inseparable. The whole relation between soul
and body is mysterious; we do not know the connection of the
cause with its effect here, we can never see the influence of mind
on body from any apparent power or energy in the cause, which
connects it with the effect and renders the one an infallible
consequence of the other. It is equally impossible to know how
our will controls our thinking, the power by which the soul
produces ideas. We do not discover any such power; all we
know is that the will commanded an idea and the event
followed.
To sum up : We can never discover any power at all ; all
we see is one event following another. We cannot observe or
conceive the tie that binds together the motion and the volition,
or energy, by which the mind produces this effect. The same
352 MODERN PHILOSOPHY
is true of natural events. One event follows another ; we never
can observe a tie between them. They seem conjoined but
never connected. We never experience such a tie, or power, or
connection ; we receive no impression of it, hence we can have
no idea of it. Employed as they are, these words seem to be
without a meaning. But they have a meaning when used in
the proper sense : when we say an object is connected with an-
other, we mean that they have acquired a connection in our
thought. As was said before, the mind is carried by habit, upon
the appearance of one event, to expect its usual attendant and
to believe that it will exist. This connection, therefore, which
we feel in the mind, this customary transition of the imagina-
tion from one object to its usual attendant, is the sentiment or
impression from which we form the idea of power or necessary
connection.
According to Hume, then, the objects are not necessarily
connected, but the ideas areconnected in our mind by association.
The "association is the result of repetition, of custom or habit.
The ideas have gone together so often that when one appears,
it suggests the other. We have, here .not logical but psychological
necessity, and this psychological necessity depends on experi-
ence. The process is the same in animals, in children, among the
generality of men and philosophers.
Another notion formed by philosophers is that of substance.
We cannot forbear looking at colors, sounds, tastes, figures, and
other properties of bodies as existences which cannot subsist
apart, but require a subject of inhesion to sustain and support
them. The imagination feigns something unknown and invisible
which it supposes to continue the same under all variation. This
unknown something is the substance ; its qualities are called
accidents. Philosophers also suppose occult qualities and sub-
stantial forms. But all these are fictions, they are like specters
in the dark. We have no perfect idea of anything but a percep-
tion. A substance is entirely different from a perception. We
have, therefore, no idea of a substance". Every quality, being
a distinct thing from another, may be conceived to exist apart,
and may exist apart, not only from every other quality but
from that unintelligible chimera of a substance.
All our ideas or* thoughts, then, are copies of impressions, all
DAVID HUME 353
knowledge is derived from experience. Now let us ask what is
the validity of such knowledge, what is the nature of its evi-
dence? All the objects of human reason may be
divided into two kinds : relations of ideas and mat-
ters of fact. Of the first kind are the sciences of
geometry, algebra, and arithmetic, and, in short, every affirma-
tion which is either intuitively or demonstratively certain. That
the square of the hypothenuse is equal to the square of the
other two sides is a proposition which expresses a relation be-
tween these figures. That three times five is equal to half of
thirty expresses a relation between these numbers. Proposi-
tions of this kind are discoverable by the mere operation of
thought, without dependence on what is anywhere existent in
the universe. Even if there had never been a circle or a tri-
angle in nature, the truths demonstrated by Euclid would for-
ever retain their certainty and self-evidence.
All evidence of matters of fact which lies beyond the testi-
mony of sense or memory is derived entirely from the relation
of cause and effect. Our knowledge of causes and effects is
derived from experience, as we saw: custom leads us to infer
that objects which our experience tells us are frequently con-
joined, will always be, but custom is an instinct and instinct
may be fallacious. Our evidence of the truth of matters of fact
is not like the evidence we have in mathematics. The contrary
ofjvery matter of fact is still possible, because it can never
T" contradiction. That the sun will not rise to-morrow
is no less intelligible a proposition, and implies no more con-
tradiction, than that it will rise. Here we are dealing not with
certain, self-evident knowledge, but with probability.
Of substances we have no idea whatever,~**annhey have no
place in knowledge. But, it may be asked, why trust imagina-
tion in the case of causes and not in the case of substance?
Hume's answer is that we must distinguish between principles
which are permanent, irresistible, and universal, such as is the
customary transition from causes to effects, and the principles
which are changeable, weak, and irregular, such as substance,
substantial forms, accidents, occult qualities. The former are
the foundation of all our thought and action, so that, upon thfir
removal, human r.ature must inevitably perish and go to ruin.
i
354, MODERN PHILOSOPHY
The latter are neither unavoidable to mankind nor necessary
and useful in the conduct of life.
We have no absolute or self-evident or certain knowledge,
therefore, of matters of fact ; our knowledge never reaches abso-
lute certainty. We base our conclusions on experience, we be-
lieve the future will be like the past, but we have no absolute
assurance that things will not change. Life, however, would be
impossible unless we acted on the belief that nature is regular
and uniform; no practical good can come of our skepticism;
practice is the best cure for all skeptical reflections.
The senses, however, alone are not implicitly to be depended
on; we must correct their evidence by reason. We trust our
senses by a natural instinct. We always suppose
Knowledge an external universe without any reasoning and
ternal World a^most before the use of reason. We assume it
to exist even if every sensible creature were an-
nihilated. The slightest philosophy, however, destroys the
opinion of all men. Nothing can be present to the mind but
an image or perception. We cannot prove that perceptions are
caused by external objects entirely different from them, though
resembling them (if possible). Experience is silent here, for
all we have before the mind is perceptions. We observe a rela-
tion of cause and effect between two perceptions, but can never
observe it between perceptions and objects, hence we cannot
conclude from perceptions to objects as their causes. If we
deprive matter of primary qualities as well as of secondary
qualities, we leave only a certain unknown, inexplicable some-
thing as the cause of our impressions, a notion so imperfect that
no skeptic will think it worth while to contend against it. We
do not know whether there are things-in-themselves or not. The
objects of all our knowledge are ideas of our own impressions.
We cannot prove that these are caused by external objects or
an unknown substance or by ourselves or by God. Sensations
arise in the soul from unknown causes. All we can do, then,
is to limit ourselves to the world of experience, to our impres-
sions and ideas. We can compare our ideas, note their relations,
and reason about the relations, thus attaining a kind of demon-
strative knowledge. We can also observe the order of our sen-
sations; through habit or custom we come to regard one object
DAVID HUME 355
as connected with another in a relation which we call cause and
effect.
We must limit our inquiries to such subjects as are best
adapted to the narrow capacities of the human understanding.
Philosophical decisions are nothing but the reflections of com-
mon life methodized and corrected. Philosophers will never be*
tempted to go beyond common life, so long as they consider
the imperfection of those faculties which they employ, their
narrow reach, and their inaccurate operations. We can never
form any satisfactory conclusions with regard to the origin of
worlds and the situation of nature, from and to eternity.
Metaphysics, therefore, in the sense of knowledge of the ulti-
mate origin and nature of the universe is impossible : rational
cosmology is out of the question. Nor can we
have a rational psychology, a science of the es-
sence of the soul ; we know nothing of an immate-
rial, indivisible, imperishable soul-substance. The idea of sub-
stance is meaningless, whether applied to matter or to mind.
The doctrine of the simplicity and indivisibility of a thinking
substance is a true atheism ; if we accept it, Hume declares, we
must embrace Spinozism. Nor have we, as some philosophers
hold, any idea of a simple and identical self. There is no such
simple and continued principle in me. * When I enter inti-
mately upon what I call myself, I always stumble on some par-
ticular perception or other, of heat or cold, light or shade, love
or hatred, pain or pleasure. I never catch myself, at any time,
without a perception, and never can observe anything but the
perception. ' ' The mind is a bundle or collection of different
perceptions which succeed one another with an inconceivable
rapidity, and are in a perpetual flux and movement. The mind
is a kind of theater where several perceptions successively make
their appearance, pass, repass, glide away, and mingle in an
infinite variety of postures and situations. There is properly
no simplicity in it at one time, nor identity at different times.
The comparison of the theater must not mislead us, however, we
are told. They are successive perceptions only that constitute
the mind ; nor have we the most distant notion of the' place where
these scenes are represented, or of the materials of which it is
composed. Every distinct perception is a distinct existence, and
356 MODERN PHILOSOPHY
is different and distinguishable and separable from every other
perception either contemporary or successive. Is this relation
of identity something that really binds our several perceptions
together or only associates their ideas in the imagination? In
pronouncing concerning the identity of a person, do we observe
some real bonds among his perceptions or only feel one among
the ideas we form of them? The understanding never observes
any real connection among objects ; even the union of cause and
effect resolves itself into a customary association of ideas. Hence,
identity is nothing really belonging to these different perceptions
and uniting them together; but is merely a quality which we
attribute to them because of the union of their ideas in the
imagination, when we reflect on them. Mind is nothing but a
heap or collection of different perceptions united together by
certain relations, and supposed, though falsely, to be endowed
with a perfect simplicity and identity.
Tlie idea of necessity and causation arises entirely from the
uniformity observable in the operations of nature. Where simi-
lar objects are constantly conjoined together, the
an mind is determined by custom to infer the one
from the appearance of the other. Beyond the
constant conjunction of similar objects and the consequent in-
ference from one to the other, we have no notion of any necessity
or connection. This idea of necessity is applied also to the
voluntary actions of men. All mankind have always agreed on
that; the disputes about liberty and necessity are due to mis-
understandings which a few intelligible definitions would have
ended. There is great uniformity in the actions of men; man-
kind is much the same in all times and places. The conjunc-
tion between motives and voluntary actions is as regular and
uniform as that between cause and effect in any part of nature,
and has been universally acknowledged among mankind. It
seems almost impossible to engage either in science or action of
any kind without acknowledging the doctrine of necessity and
this inference from motives to voluntary actions, from characters
to conduct. But why do men oppose this doctrine in words ? It
is because men have the false notion of necessity. They belieye
they perceive something like a necessary connection between
cause and effect in nature, while they feel no such connection
DAVID HUME 357
between the motive and the action when they reflect on the
operations of their own minds. Necessity, however, is not con-
straint, but uniformity of action, constant conjunction between
motive and effect. Liberty is a power of acting or not acting
according to the determinations of the will ; that is, if we choose
to remain at rest, we may, if we choose to move, we also may.
A man may refuse to give the name necessity to this property
of human actions, but so long as the meaning is understood the
word can do no harm. The doctrine is innocent.
The doctrines of liberty and necessity, thus explained, are not
only consistent with morality, but absolutely essential to its
support. Necessity is the constant conjunction of like objects,
or necessity is the inference of the understanding from one
object to the other. We draw inferences from human actions;
our inferences are based on the experienced union of like actions
with like motives. If actions did not proceed from some cause
in the character and disposition of the person who performed
them, the person would not be answerable for them. But where
liberty is wanting, human actions are not susceptible of any
moral qualities, nor can they be objects of approbation or dis-
like. To be called moral, acts must spring from the internal
character, passions, and affections of the person; in that sense
they are free; where they are derived altogether from external
objects, they can give rise neither to praise nor blame : they are
not free.
We cannot demonstrate the independent existence of a world,
though we continue to believe in it: rational cosmology is im-
possible. Nor can we demonstrate the existence of
a soul-substance and the immortality of the soul:
rational psychology is impossible. Finally, we cannot demon-
strate anything concerning the nature of God, his attributes, his
decrees, his plan of providence. Human reason is too weak,
blind, and limited in its scope to solve such problems as these:
rational theology is impossible. When the coherence of the parts
of a stone or even that composition of parts which renders it
extended; when these familiar objects are so inexplicable and
contain circumstances so repugnant and contradictory; with
what assurance can we decide concerning the origin of worlds
or trace their history from eternity to eternity? We are far
\
358 ± MODERN PHILOSOPHY
beyond the reach of our faculties when we carry our specula-
tions into two eternities, before and after the present state of
things: into the creation and formation of the universe, the
existence and properties of spirits, the powers and operations
of one universal spirit existing 'without beginning and without
end, omnipotent, omniscierit, immutable, infinite, and in-
comprehensible^ /
The question is not concerning the being but the nature of God.
No trirth. isjso certaua as the being of God; it is the ground of
all niiTJhopQS; the a)afgpst foundation of morality, the firmest sup-
port^ society. Nothing exists without a cause, and the original
catfse of this umverseV whatever it be) we call God, and piously
ascribe to him/every snecies of perfection. But we cannot com-
prehend the /attributes of this divine being nor suppose that his
perfection^have any analogy or likeness to the perfections of
a human' creature. Hume directs his attacks particularly against
the argument from design, the so-called teleological proof, which
attempts to infer the wisdom and goodness of God from the
ord^r, beauty, apd goodness of the universe^ Unless the cases
be iexactly similar, we cannot repose perfect confidence in rea-
soning by analogy here. There is a wide difference between the
universe and houses, ships, furniture, and machines, and we are
not justified in inferring similar causes from a slight similarity
in effects. Intelligence, it is true, is an active cause by which
some particular parts of nature, we find, produce alterations in
other parts. But thought, design, intelligence, such as we dis-
cover in men and other animals, is no more than one of the
springs and principles of the universe, as well as heat or cold,
attraction or repulsion, and a hundred others which fall under
daily observation. We cannot conclude with propriety from the
part to the whole. But even if we could, what peculiar privi-
lege has the little agitation in the brain which we call thought,
that we must thus make it the model of the whole universe?
Can we imagine that nature incessantly copies herself through-
out so immense a universe ? If we see a house, we conclude with
the greatest certainty that it had an architect or builder, —
because this is precisely that species of effect which we have
experienced from that species of cause. But the universe bears
no such resemblance to a house that we can with the same cer-
DAVID HUME 359
tainty infer a similar cause, or that the analogy is here entire
and perfect. The dissimilitude is so striking that the utmost
you can here pretend to is a guess, a conjecture, a presumption
concerning a similar cause.
We cannot represent the Deity as similar to a human mind:
to do so would be to fall into anthropomorphism. The human
, mind is in constant change ; this is not compatible with the
perfect immutability and simplicity ascribed to the Deity. Be-
sides, why not stop at the material world ? To say the different
ideas which compose the reason of the Supreme Being fall into
order, of themselves, by their own nature, has no more meaning
than to say that the parts of the material world fall into order,
of themselves, and by their own nature. We have experience
of matter doing this, and we have experience of mind do-
ing it.
The attempt to infer the nature of God from the nature of
the universe must end in disaster. By this anthropomorphic
method of reasoning, we cannot ascribe infinity to the divine
Being, because the effect is not infinite ; nor perfection, because
the universe is not perfect. Even if it were a perfect produc-
tion, it would still remain uncertain whether all the excellencies
of the work can justly be ascribed to the workman. Many worlds
might have been botched and bungled, throughout an eternity,
ere this system was struck out, much labor lost, many fruitless
trials made, and a slow but continued improvement carried on
during infinite ages in the art of world-making. Besides, there
is no proof, on this argument, of the unity of the Deity; per-
haps many gods united in making a world. Again, men are mor-
tal and renew their species by generation, hence if we reason
by analogy, why, then, must we exclude this universal circum-
stance from these deities? And why not complete our anthropo-
morphism and ascribe bodies to the Deity or deities ?
A more probable hypothesis than the anthropomorphic theory,
according to Hume, is that which infers that the world is an
animal and the Deity the soul of the world, actuating it and
actuated by it. The world itself plainly resembles more an ani-
mal or a vegetable than it does a watch or a knitting-loom. Its
cause, therefore, it is more probable, resembles the cause of the
former. The cause of the former is generation or vegetation.
360 MODERN PHILOSOPHY
The cause of the world, consequently, we may infer to be some-
thing similar to generation or vegetation.
It is true, these are world-fancies/^we have no data to estab-
lish any system of cosmogony. Our experience is limited and
imperfect, and can afford no possible conjecture concerning the
whole of things. But the hypothesis which compares the world
to an animal is as probable as the one which compares it with
a human contrivance ; indeed, the analogy is more striking in the
former case than in the latter.
Hume also points out that we cannot conclude from the uni-
verse to a being possessing moral attributes like those of men.
The purpose and intention of nature seems to be the preserva-
tion and propagation of the species, and not their happiness.
Misery exceeds happiness in the world. The fact of pain in
the world would prove that God is either not benevolent or not
almighty. Physical and moral evil do not allow us to infer a
good God. It may be said, human reason is too weak to under-
stand the purpose of the universe ; but this does not allow us
to infer anything of God's goodness; a man must infer from
what he knows, not from what he is ignorant of.
We cannot demonstrate a priori that the Deity is a necessarily
existent being; there is no being whose non-existence implies a
contradiction. We cannot prove his existence as a necessary
consequence of his nature, because we do not know what that
nature is. The material universe may, for all we know, have
qualities which make its non-existence inconceivable.
As to the origin of religion, Hume holds that the belief in
God is not the result of speculation, curiosity, or the pure love
of truth, but rests on the anxious concern for happiness, the
dread of future misery, the terror of death, the thirst for re-
venge, the appetite for food and other necessaries. Polytheism
or idolatry, and not theism, must have been the first and most
ancient religions.
In spite of these skeptical reflections, Hume declares that it
hardly seems possible that any one of good understanding should
reject the idea of God when once it is suggested to him. A
purpose, an intention, a design, is evident in everything, and
when our comprehension is so far enlarged as to contemplate
the first rise of this visible system, we must adopt, with the
DAVID HUME 361
strongest conviction, the idea of some intelligent cause or author.
The universal propensity to believe in invisible, intelligent power,
if not an original instinct, being at least a general attendant of
human nature, may be considered as a kind of mark or stamp
which the divine Workman has set upon his work. How seriously
these remarks are to be taken in view of what has been said be-
fore, the reader is left to decide for himself.
Theology is not a demonstrable science, we cannot prove the
existence or the attributes of God. The teleological argument is
imperfect; anthropomorphism, prejudice. Hume
inclines to an organic conception of the universe, teji^t "alism
in this respect opposing the eighteenth-century
ideal. His view of the origin of religion is also out of harmony
with the eighteenth-century notions, according to which reli-
gion owes its origin either to the rational faculties of primitive
men or is an invention of crafty priests. Hume rejects all such
theories: the belief in God is not the result of speculative rea-
soning, but is based on man's emotional and impulsive nature.
The intellectualistic or rationalistic explanation is set aside for
the voluntaristic conception: religion is rooted in the will.
Moreover, religions are not made, but grow; theism has devel-
oped from polytheism. The same views are introduced by Hume
into his theory of the State ; he rejects both the theological con-
ceptions and the contract theory which found such favor in the
eighteenth century. No compact or agreement was expressly
formed for general submission; that is an idea far beyond the
comprehension of savages. Each exertion of authority in the
chieftain must have been particular, and called forth by the
present exigencies of the case ; the sensible utility resulting from
his interposition made these exertions become daily more fre-
quent, and their frequency gradually produced an habitual, and,
if you please to call it so, a voluntary, and therefore precarious,
acquiescence in the people. The people, if we are to trace
government to its first origin in the woods and deserts, are the
source of all power and jurisdiction, and voluntarily, for the
sake of peace and order, abandoned their native liberty, and
received laws from their equals and companions. The ration-
alistic conception here gives way to the historical or genetic
point of view.
362 MODERN PHILOSOPHY
52. RATIONALISTIC REACTION IN ENGLAND
Although empiricism remained the dominant note in British
thought from the days of Roger Bacon and William of Occam
down to very recent times, the opposition to this
scn°°l never entirely disappeared. The rationalis-
tic traditions of scholasticism were kept alive at the
universities and among theologians, and spiritualistic systems
of philosophy arose as a reaction against the radical specula-
tions of Hobbes, Locke, and Hume. Ralph Cudworth (1617-
1688), a professor at Cambridge, opposes the atheistic and ma-
terialistic teachings of Hobbes from the standpoint of Chris-
tian Platonism in his True Intellectual System of the Universe,
1678. He accepts Descartes 's rationalism, but rejects all me-
chanical explanation of nature as leading to atheism. All men
have the same fundamental notions or categories, and what is
clearly and distinctly perceived is true. These a priori cate-
gories are the constant reflections of the universal reason, of
God's mind, and likewise form the nature or essence of things.
Among such innate truths are the moral laws, which are as bind-
ing on God as the axioms of mathematics. Cudworth 's ethical
philosophy is given in his posthumous work, Treatise concerning
Eternal and Immutable Morality, 1731, and A Treatise of Free
Will, 1838.
Other members of the Cambridge school of Platonists and opponents
of English empiricism are: Henry More (1614-1687; Enchiridion
metaphysicum, Enchiridion ethicum, 1668) ; Theophilus Gale (1628-
1677; Philosophia universalis, 1676); and John Norris (1657-1711;
Ln Essay towards the Theory of the Ideal or Intelligible World, 1701.
1704).
See the works on English philosophy mentioned on pp. 254, f . ; also
Tulloch, Rational Theology, etc., vol. II; Martineau, Types of Ethical
Theory, vol. II, Book II ; Jodl, Geschichte der Ethik; Scott, Introduc-
tion to Cudworth's Treatise; Huebsch, Cudworth; Mackinnon, Philos-
ophy of John Norris.
The rationalistic conception that there is universal and nec-
essary truth, both speculative and practical, not derived from
experience, continues in the English thought of the eighteenth
century. Samuel Clarke (1675-1729; Discourse concerning th?
Unalterable Obligations of Natural Religion, 1708) teaches that
RATIONALISTIC REACTION IN ENGLAND 363
there are eternal and necessary differences and relations of
things, and that divine and human reason perceives these as
they are : no one can refuse to assent either to a correct mathe-
matical proof or to moral truth. William Wollaston (1659-
1724; The Religion of Nature Delineated, 1722) and Kichard
Price (1723-1791; Review of the Principal Questions in Morals,
1758, and Letters on Materialism and Philosophical Necessity,
1778) agree with this view, which is later taken up by the Scot-
tish philosophy of Reid and his school.
The Scottish school, led by Thomas Reid (1710-1796), repre-
sents a reaction against the idealism of Berkeley and the skep-
ticism of Hume. Empiricism had ended in the gcottish
lenial of the very things which the common-sense Common-
3f mankind accepts as the most certain facts of Sense School
knowledge, — the existence of an external world and the exist-
ence of an immortal soul, — indeed, it had called in question the
possibility of truth itself. If the notions of substance and cau-
sality are mere illusions, and objects mere ideas in our heads,
a substantial soul is impossible, the existence of God undemon-
strable, and philosophy breaks down. Philosophy cannot con-
tradict the common consciousness of mankind. Sensation car-
ries with it an immediate belief in the reality of the object,
and this immediate certainty supplies us with a criterion of
truth. All proof rests on such direct knowledge, on self-evident,
not further provable principles. The knowledge of these prin-
ciples and of the criterion of truth is common-sense : such prin-
ciples, which we discover by observation, are either first prin-
ciples of necessary truths or first principles of contingent truths,
or truths expressing matters of fact. As belonging to the
former class, Reid mentions: the axioms of logic and mathe-
matics, the principles of grammar, taste, morals, and meta-
physical principles; among the latter he cites: the existence of
every thing of which I am conscious; the thoughts of which I
am conscious are the thoughts of a being which I call myself,
my mind, my person ; our own personal identity and continued
existence; things really exist which we distinctly perceive by
our senses, and are what we perceive them to be ; we have some
degree of power over our actions and the determinations of our
will; the natural faculties by which we distinguish truth from
364, MODERN PHILOSOPHY
error are not fallacious; there* is life and intelligence in our
fellow-men ; what is to be, will probably be like to what has been
in similar circumstances.
Other members of the Scotch school are: James Beattie (1735-1803),
James Oswald (+1793), and Dugald Stewart (1753-1828; Collected
Works edited by Hamilton, 1854-1858). Thomas Brown (1778-1820;
Inquiry into the Relation of Cause and Effect, 1803) seeks to reconcile
the teachings of Hume with the philosophy of common-sense. In Sir
William Hamilton this philosophy comes under the influence of Kant's
criticism. The German philosophers of the Enlightenment were
attracted to the Scottish philosophy, with which they had much in
common, and translated many of the writings of the school. In France,
Royer-Collard and Th. Jouffroy espoused the philosophy of common-
sense in opposition to sensationalism, materialism, and positivism.
(See pp. 380, f., 504, 513, ff.)
Writings of Reid : An Inquiry into the Human Mind on the Principles
of Common Sense, 1764; Essays on the Powers of the Human Mind,
1785, 1788. Collected Works by Hamilton, 7th ed., 1872; Selections
from Inquiry by Sneath. See Fraser, Reid; Peters, T. Reid als Kritiker
von D. Hume. On the whole movement see especially the works on
Scottish and English philosophy mentioned pp. 254, f.
DEVELOPMENT OF RATIONALISM IN GERMANY
53. GOTTFRIED WILHELM LEIBNIZ
Philosophy made little headway in Germany during the cen-
turies preceding the eighteenth. The barren theological contro-
versies following the Reformation, and the Thirty
Rise of Years' War (1618-1648), were not favorable to the
Cultu-e development of science and philosophy. The period
which produced Shakespeare, Bacon, Milton, and
Locke in England, Montaigne, Corneille, Racine, Moliere, Pascal,
and Descartes in France, found culture at a low ebb in the land
of Luther. The German language itself seemed to have perished
as a literary instrument: the higher classes spoke French and
the scholars still wrote in Latin, — the common people alone used
the mother-tongue. French culture was introduced through the
countless courts which were patterned after the French pater-
nalistic models and imitated French manners. With the division
of Germany into independent territorial principalities, the spirit
of nationalism declined, and Germans became ashamed of the
GOTTFRIED WILHELM LEIBNIZ 365
German name. The universities, — in this respect like those of
England and France,— took no part in disseminating modern
ideas; the new science and philosophy grew up outside of the
universities and were encouraged by educated polite society.
The first great representatives of the new culture in Germany
are: Samuel Pufendorf (1632-1694), who advocated the the-
ory of natural law, Christian Thomasius (1655-1728), who pub-
lished the first periodical in the German language and was the
first to lecture in German, — at the University of Leipzig, — and
Leibniz, who distinguished himself in mathematics, jurispru-
dence, and philosophy. Walter von Tschirnhausen (1651-1708),
who corresponded with Spinoza and Leibniz, accepted the mathe-
matical method, but held that all deductions must begin with
the facts of experience and find their verification in experience.
All these thinkers are pioneers of modernism in Germany and
forerunners of the Enlightenment, which had already begun to
sow its seed in England and in France and which was destined
to reap a rich harvest in the land of Lessing, Goethe, and
Kant.
Descartes assumes two distinct principles of explanation, body
and mind, the essential attributes of which are, respectively,
extension and thought. Spinoza sets up one uni- .
, , . , . , The Problem
versal substance, which, however, is conceived as
both extended and thinking. Both philosophers regard the
physical and mental realms as two absolutely closed systems,
with the difference that Descartes permits interaction between
the two at a single point in the human brain. Everything OD
the physical side is explained physically: for both the cor-
poreal universe is a machine. The mechanical explanation was
accepted by modern philosophers and modern natural scientists
alike. It met with vigorous opposition, however, from the
philosophical-theological scholastic systems which dominated
most of the universities, and was condemned as a godless doc-
trine that failed to take account of the divine purpose in the
world. Like his predecessors, Leibniz became acquainted with
the scholastic metaphysics at the university and subscribed to
the traditional world-view of the Protestant schoolmen in hi»
youth. But the study of modern philosophy and science and.
especially, his discovery of the infinitesimal calculus caused a
S66 MODERN PHILOSOPHY
significant advance in his thought, and suggested the necessity
of a theory that would do justice to the achievements of modern
science and philosophy as well as to the valuable elements in
Christian-scholastic speculation, — a system, in short, that would
reconcile mechanism and teleology, natural science and theology,
modern and ancient philosophy. And the mathematician Weigel
of Jena, his teacher, had convinced him of the truth of a con-
ception that remained the basis and guiding principle of all his
later efforts to construct a world-view : the Pythagorean-Platonic
notion of the harmony of the universe. He never abandoned the
idea that the universe is a harmonious whole, governed by mathe-
matical and logical principles, that mathematics and metaphysics
are, therefore, the fundamental sciences and the demonstrative
method the true method of philosophy.
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646-1716) was born in Leipzig, and
studied law, philosophy, and mathematics at the universities of his
native city, Jena, and Altdorf, receiving his doctorate in law from
the last-named institution in his twentieth year. Among his teachers
were Jacob Thomasius, the father of the celebrated Christian Thomasius,
and E. Weigel. After a sojourn (1670-1672) at Mayence, where he
was engaged in the reform of the legal procedure of the Electorate,
and a diplomatic mission to Paris (1672-1676), he was called to
Hanover as court councilor and librarian, a post which he held to
the day of his death (1716).
Among his writings, which consisted, for the most part, of shorter
essays in Latin, French, and German, published in learned journals,
and of private letters, are: Meditationes de cognitione, veritate et
ideis, 1684; Lettres sur la question si I' essence du corps consist e dans
Vetendue, 1691; Nouveau systeme de la nature, 1695; Nouveaux essais
sur I'entendement humain (in reply to Locke's Essay, 1704; first pub-
lished 1765); De ipsa natura, 1698; Essais de Theodicee, 1710; La
monadologie, 1714; Principes de la nature et de la grace, 1714.
Collection of philosophical writings edited by J. E. Erdmann, 1840;
by Toucher de Careil, 1859, ff.; by Janet, 2 vols., 1866; by Gerhard! ,
7 vols., 1875-1890; German writings by Guhrauer, 1838-1840. New
material in: Couturat, CEuvres et fragments inedits; Kabitz, Der junge
Leibniz; P. Ritter, Neue Leibniz-Funde; Baruzzi, Leibniz, avec de
nombreux textes inedites.
Translations: Philosophical Works by Duncan, 2d ed. ; New Essayi,
by Langley; Monadology, etc., by Latta; Correspondence with Arnault
and Monadology, by Montgomery.
Merz, Leibniz; Dewey, Leibniz's New Essays; B. Russell, Criticcl
Exposition of the Philosophy of Leibniz; Guhrauer, Leibniz, 2 vols,
transl. by Mackie; K. Fischer, Leibniz; Cassirer, Leibniz's System;
Couturat, La logique de Leibniz, and Sur la metaphysique de Leibmz
GOTTFRIED WILHELM LEIBNIZ 367
(Rev. de met. et morale, X, pp. 1-23) ; Renouvier, La nouvelle monado-
logie; de Careil, Leibniz, Descartes et Spinoza; E. Pfleiderer, Leibniz
und Geulincx; Stein, Leibniz und Spinoza; monographs on the Leib-
nizian and Lockian theories of knowledge by Hartenstein, von Benoit,
and Thilly; van Biema, L'espace et le temps chez Leibniz et chez Kant.
Cf. also Zeller's able work, Die deutsche Philosophic seit Leibniz;
Fabre, La pensee moderne (from Luther to Leibniz) ; Moller, De Leibniz
a Hegel.
Leibniz examined the presuppositions of the new science and
found them inadequate. Even the facts of physics, he felt,
could not be satisfactorily explained by the hy-
pothesis of merely extended bodies and motion. ^^ °f
Descartes had taught that the quantity of motion
is constant. But bodies come to rest and bodies begin to move:
motion seems to be lost and gained. This would violate the
principle of continuity, the principle that nature makes no leaps.
There must be something that persists when motion ceases, a
ground of motion : this is force, or the conatus, or the tendency
of the body to move or to continue its motion; and force is
constant in quantity. Hence, there is no substance that does
not act, that is not the expression of force: what does not act
does not exist ; only what is actual is real. Consequently, force,
and not extension, is the essential attribute of body. Hence,
also, the law of the conservation of motion must give way to
the law of the conservation of force or energy. Another proof
that extension cannot be the essential attribute of body is found
in the composite nature of extension: that which is made up of
parts cannot be a primary principle. Something simple is
needed, and force is such a simple, indivisible reality.
The geometric or static conception of nature is replaced, in
the Leibnizian philosophy, by the dynamic or energetic view.
Bodies do not exist by virtue of extension, but extension exists
by virtue of bodies (forces) ; there could be no extension with-
out force, without dynamic bodies. According to Descartes, the
existence of bodies presupposes extension ; according to Leibniz,
extension presupposes the existence of bodies or forces. Force
is the source or " fountain of the mechanical world," the me-
chanical world the sensible appearance of forces. " Extension
presupposes in the body a property, attribute, or nature that
extends itself, spreads itself out, and continues itself." There
368 MODERN PHILOSOPHY
is a force in body that precedes all extension. It is owing to
the force of resistance in the body that it appears as impene-
trable and limited, or as matter. Every unit of force is an
indivisible union of soul and matter, activity and passivity; it
is an organizing, self-determining, purposive force that also lim-
its itself or has the power of resistance.
Space, therefore, is conceived by Leibniz as the result of the
harmonious coexistence of forces ; hence it has no absolute exist-
ence,— there is no absolute space in which things exist, — but it
is relative to the things and would disappear with them. Forces
do not depend on space, but space depends on the forces. Hence,
there can be no empty space between .things and beyond things :
where forces cease to act, the world comes to an end.
Body, then, is a plurality of simple forces. Since many things
exist, there is not one single force in nature, but an infinite
number of forces, every one of which is a particu-
oc rme ^^ individual substance. Force is indivisible or
simple, hence it is immaterial, unextended. Sim-
ple substances or forces are called by Leibniz metaphysical
points, formal atoms, essential forms, substantial forms, or
monads, units. They are not physical points, for these are noth-
ing but compressed bodies; they are not mathematical points,
for these, though " true " points, are not " real," but merely
* ' points of view. ' ' Only metaphysical points are true and real ;
without them there would be nothing real, for without units
there could be no manifoldness. Moreover, such force-atoms
must be eternal : they cannot be destroyed, — only a miracle could
destroy them, — nor can they be created: monads can neither
arise nor disappear. The original scholastic conception of indi-
vidual active substantial forms, which Leibniz carried away witi
him from the university, is thus transformed into the doc-trine
of individual forces.
We know now that the world of bodies is composed of a:i
infinite number of dynamic units, or immaterial, unextendeci,
simple units of force. What else can we say of this principle,
where can we study it? In ourselves. We discover such a siir-
ple immaterial substance in our own inner life : the soul is sue h
a substance. What is true of it, will be true, in a measure, cf
all monads. Reasoning by analogy, Leibniz interprets tie
GOTTFRIED WILHELM LEIBNIZ 369
monads as spiritual or psychic forces. There is something
analogous in them to our sensations and tendencies (conations,
will) ; they have " perception " and " appetition. ' ' The same
principle that expresses itself in the mind of man is active in
body, plant, and animal. There is force everywhere, there is
no vacuum anywhere ; every part of matter is like a garden full
of plants; all matter is animate, alive, even to its minutest
parts.
But how can there be mind in the stone, and even in the
plant? Well, says Leibniz, mind is not absolutely the same in
stone, plant, and man. For Descartes there is nothing uncon-
scious in mind and nothing unextended in matter. The facts
of physics, however, show that nature is essentially immaterial,
and the facts of psychology show that mind is essentially uncon-
scious. Body and extension are not identical terms; and mind
and consciousness are not identical terms. Mind consists of
perceptions and tendencies. These perceptions differ in clear-
ness and distinctness in different monads; indeed, the human
mind itself reveals perceptions of different degrees of clarity.
When I attend carefully to an object, the elements attended to
stand out clearly and distinctly, whereas the surrounding parts
become successively more and more obscure and indistinct, until
they are not discerned at all. The farther an object is from the
focus of my attention, the smaller and fainter it is. There are,
therefore, clear perceptions and obscure perceptions; the latter
are called " small perceptions," perceptions petites. Sensation
cannot distinguish in the roar of the ocean the different elements
or the minute perceptions produced by the motion of each sepa-
rate wave, and yet every one of these separate sounds is con-
tained in the sensation. Just as there are different degrees of
clearness in the monad, so monads differ among themselves in
the clearness of their perceptions. In the very lowest monads,
everything is obscure and confused, in a condition resembling
sleep ; they exist in a kind of comatose state : such dormant life
wdftind in the plant. In animals there is perception with mem-
ory, i.e., consciousness; in man, consciousness becomes still
clearer ; here it is called apperception, being a ' ' reflexive knowl-
edge of the inner state," or self-consciousness.
Every monad has the power of perception or reppeaentation ;
-
V M
370 MODERN PHILOSOPHY
it perceives or represents and expresses the entire universe. In
this sense it is a world in mjniature, a microcosm ; it is a ' * Jiving
mirror of the universe, ' ' a concentrated world, a world for itself.
But each monad represents theNjniverse in its own way, from
its own point of view,xw4th different degrees of clearness; it is
limited, an individual, anoh^s other individuals outside it. The
higher the monad, the more clearly and distinctly it perceives
or expresses or represents its part of the world ; the monads
nearest to it, or its own body, it represents most clearly. From
this teaching it follows that " every body feels everything that
occurs in the entire universe, so that any one who sees all could
read in each particular thing that which happens everywhere
else and, besides, all that has happened and will happen, per-
ceiving in the present that which is remote in time and space. ' '
The monads, moreover, form a graduated progressive series,
from the lowest to the highest. The universe is composed of
an infinite number of monads in a gradually ascending scale
of clearness, no two monads being exactly alike; if they were,
they could not possibly be distinguished (the principle of in-
discernibles). There are no leaps in nature, no breaks in the
line from the lowest to the highest; there is a continuous line
of infinitesimal differences from the dullest piece of inorganic
matter to God. Nothing is uninhabited, nothing unfruitful,
nothing dead in the universe. God is the highest and perfect
monad, pure activity (actus piirus), the original monad, the
monad of monads. The principle of continuity demands such a
supreme monad.
Spinoza accepts one universal substance, Leibniz an infinite
number of them. Descartes also assumes a plurality of sub-
stances, but his substances are diametrically opposed to one
another in essence (mind and matter), while the Leibniziao.
forces are essentially alike. According to the Atomists, too, there
are many homogeneous realities, but they are material ; wherea s
for Leibniz they are spiritual. Like Plato 's ideas the Leibnizia a
principles are eternal purposes, but they are in the things, ss
Aristotle taught : monads are entelechies. ' * To understand me, ' '
Leibniz declared, " you must understand Democritus, Plato, and
Aristotle." In his younger days, he had held that particular
things alone are real, that universals have their real ground in
a
\ I V T ^r,
GOTTFRIED WILHELM LEIBNIZ 371
particulars and do not exist apart from them, except in the
mind of God. This individualistic and pluralistic conception
he never abandoned; indeed, he broke up the entire universe
into an infinite number of individual existences and made every
one of them a spiritual entity.
Every monad is in process of evolution and realizes its nature
with inner necessity. It is not determined from without ; it has
no windows through which anything can enter; everything it
is to be is potential or implicit in it. This follows necessarily
from the principle of continuity: nothing can be in the monad
which has not always been there, and nothing can ever come
into it that is not in it now. It passes through a series of stages
of evolution, unfolding what is preformed in it. The entire
human race was preformed in tKe seed of Adam and in the
ovaries of Eve. The developed individual existed in germ, pre-
formed in miniature, in the embryo. Nothing in the monad can
be lost, all is preserved in the later stages, and the future stages
are predetermined in the earlier ones. Hence, every monad is
" charged with the past " and is " big with the future." This
doctrine of preformation (the incasement theory) was common
among the biologists of Leibniz's time (Leuwenhoek and Swam-
merdam). It was opposed by the theory of epigenesis (" pro-
gressive formation and differentiation of organs from a germ
primitively homogeneous "), advanced by Caspar F. Wolff in
1759; but the latter conception did not meet with general ac-
ceptance until after the appearance of Darwin's Origin of
Species in 1859.
The difference between organic and inorganic bodies is de-
scribed as follows. Both are composed of monads or cci.
of force, but the organism contains a central monad, a " queen
monad," a soul, which represents, or has before it, a picture of
the entire body, and whk-h is the guiding principle of the
monads surrounding it. Inorganic bodies are not centralized
in this way, but consist of a mere mass or aggregation of monads.
The higher the bodies, the more organized they are, — the higher
organism forming a well-ordered union of monads.
This suggests the problem of th«> relation of mindjyotLbody.
How does the central monad : V\V might as-
sume interaction between them, but Leibniz has already told
372 MODERN PHILOSOPHY
us that monads have no windows, that they cannot be influenced
or acted upon from without. The occasionalistic doctrine that
God created both body and mind and regulates the actions of
each to keep time one with the other, as the watchmaker regulates
his clocks, is also rejected. Leibniz's explanation is that God in
creating minds and bodies has so arranged it, from the very
beginning, that the two shall go together: the relation between
soul and body is a relation of harmony preestablished by God.
Causal interaction is out of the question. There is a parallelism,
or concomitance, between the mental and physical states : in this
sense the body is tfie material expression of the soul. It must
not be forgotten/nowever, that the body itself consists of num-
berless monads or psychic forces, every one of which is organic
and acts in accordance with the preordained law of its nature.
11 Souls act according to the laws of final causes, by means of
desire, ends, and means. Bodies act according to the laws of
efficient causes or motions. And the two realms are in harmony
with one another. " In other words, the organic body and its
minutest parts are preformed by God: they are " divine
automata " or " divine machines."
This thought is extended to embrace the universe as a whole.
All monads act together like the parts of an organism, every
one of which has its function to perform. Everything is causally
related, but causation means no more than concomitant changes,
a harmonious action of the parts, which has been predetermined
by God. God, in other words, has arranged his universe in such
a way that it works without interference from him : every state
in every monad follows as the effect of the preceding state in
that monad, and acts in unison with the states of all the other
monads. The harmony in the universe is thoroughgoing. Every-
thing in nature can be mechanically explained in the sense that
there is law, order, uniformity in the physical realm. But the
plan of the whole points to a higher reason: God is the ultimate
cause of all occurrence. &" The source of mechanics lies in meta-
^ - *«*fa«r - • j ..*»»-•-.-**•-•*'*'*••*
physics," is the motto which Leibniz places at the head of his
system.
We cannot demonstrate the necessity of the laws of nature,
the laws of motion ; they are not necessary like the laws of logic,
arithmetic, and geometry. Their existence depends on their
GOTTFRIED WILHELM
/fcEf&Niz ^~#TS
utility, and this finds its ground in the wisdom of God. God_
has chosen them as ways of realizing his purpose, hencelthe
world owes its existence to the purpose in the mind of God : God
is the final cause who uses secondary or efficient causes as means.
Here we have the promised reconciliation of mechanism and
teleology. Nature can be explained without introducing the
"notion of purpose, but the mechanical philosophy leads us to
God, for we cannot explain the universal principles of physics
and mechanics without divine purpose. Religion and reason
are thus harmonized. There is also a harmony between the
physical kingdom of nature and the moral kingdom of grace,
that is, all rational souls and God himself. The souls are copies
of God, little divinities in their own departments ; man 's reason
is like God's reason in kind, though differing from it in degree.
Man's purpose, too, agrees with God's. Hence, we have a king-
dom or union of spirits, a harmony of souls. It is a moral
kingdom in contrast to the physical kingdom, — a kingdom of
grace, as Leibniz calls it. But there is harmony between the
two, between God the builder of the machine of the universe 1\
and God the monarch of the divine spiritual State.
This brings us to Leibniz's theology. God is the highest
monad, the monad of monads. His existence is proved in several
ways. ; The principle of continuity demands a
highest monad at the end of the series of forces.
Moreover, a cause is needed to explain the monads themselves,*
in accordance with the principle of sufficient reason (the causal
or cosmological argument). Finally, the order and harmony of
nature call for a harmonizer (tlu> physico-theological proof).
The cause of the world must be outside of it; it must also be
one since the universe is one, and it must be rational because
there is order in it. Another argument is offered which may
be called an epistemological proof. There are eternal and nec-
essary truths, the truths of logic and geometry, which presup-
pose an eternal intellect in which to exist.
* Leibniz defines the monads as eternal substances in his metaphysical
discussion4^, but adds that only a miracle could destroy a monad. In
his theology, however, ho declares that God created the monads and that
God alone can destroy them. Sometimes he calls them " fulgurat
or manifestations of God, thus closely approximating to the pantheistic
conception.
37* MODERN PHILOSOPHY
God as a monad is an individual, a person. But he transcends
all monads, he is supernatural and superrational, the most per-
feet and most real being. Man cannot form a perfectly clear
idea of God, because God is the highest monad and man is lim-
ited. Only a perfect mind could know a perfect mind. Man,
however, raises the qualities which every monad possesses in a
certain degree, to the highest power, and attributes to God
omnipotence, omniscience, and absolute goodness. In this way
we form a conception of God: he is superrational, but not
contra-rational. Man also has obscure ideas of God, confused
notions, a kind of longing or striving for God. There are, there-
fore, different stages of religion, corresponding to the different
degrees of clearness with which the Deity is known.
God, being perfect, does not undergo change and develop-
ment as do all other monads. He is complete in himself and
his knowledge is complete; he sees all things whole and at a
glance. He is reality realized. He created the world according
to a plan, and chose this world as the best of all possible worlds.
His choice was not groundless, but determined by the principle
of goodness, that is, by moral necessity. He is also determined
by logical necessity ; that is, the fundamental laws of thought are
binding on him as well as on man.
But how shall we account for evil in the world on this theory ?
The world is the best possible world, that is, the one in which
there is the greatest possible variety and harmony at once. It
is not perfect, however, it has its defects ; God could not express
his nature in finite forms without limitation and impediment.
Such limitations are metaphysical evils; they result in pain and
suffering (physical evil) and sin (moral evil). Besides, evil
is a foil to goodness and beauty ; like the dark phases of a picture,
it helps to bring out the good. Again, virtue gains strength in
combating evil; evil is the spur that goads us to good action.
These arguments go back to the Stoics and Neoplatonism, and
had become common property in the Christian theology of the
Middle Ages.
Ethics is a rational science. There are certain moral princi-
ples native to the soul which cannot be demonstrated, but from
which other moral truths necessarily follow. They operate un-
consciously in us, as instincts, but we may become aware oi
GOTTFRIEP WILHELM LEI3NIZ 875
them. Thus the truth that we ought to seek pleasure and avoid
pain is based on confused knowledge and inner experience, on
the instinctive desire for happiness. From this
principle others can be deduced, so self-evident in J
character that even a band of robbers would have to obey them
to preserve their union.
Moral instincts guide men directly and without deliberation,
but not irresistibly, for they may be corrupted by the passions
and by evil habits. The principle of justice is found even in
savages and forms a part of their nature. Although tradition,
habit, and education help in developing such tendencies of the
soul, they are ultimately rooted in human nature itself.
It is true, men do not always obey the inborn laws of mo-
rality, but this does not prove that they are ignorant of them.
It is not an argument against the innateness of a moral prin-
ciple to say that it is not recognized as such, nor is the public
violation of such a law an argument; it is rather a proof of
ignorance of the law. The fact is, these rules are not always
clearly perceived, but need to be proved, just as the proposi-
tions of geometry require demonstration. Attention and method
are necessary to bring them to the surface, and even scholars
may i^ot be fully conscious of them.
Mental life is, as we have found, essentially perception and
appetite, that is, cognition and conation. The union of appetite
and perception is called impulse or desire. Will is conscious
impulse or striving, impulse guided by a clear idea. Hence, will
is never an indifferent will, or caprice, but always determined by
an idea. Man is free in the sense that he is not determined from
without, — the monad has no windows by which anything can
enter to compel it, — he is, however, determined from within, by
his own nature, by his own impulses and ideas. Choice follows
the strongest desire. To desire to be free to decide for one act
rather than another is to desire to be a fool.
Leibniz's theory of knowledge rests on his metaphysical pre-
suppositions. He accepts the rationalistic ideal that genuine
knowledge is universal and necessary, that it is based on prin-
ciples not derived from experience. The universe is a mathe-
matical-logical system which reason alone can decipher. Since '
the soul-monad is an independent being which no external cause
376 MODERN PHILOSOPHY
can influence, knowledge cannot come to it from without, but
must arise within the soul itself. The soul, therefore, cannot be
an empty tablet upon which external nature writes
Logic and jts characters, as Locke holds. All our knowledge
Theory of v . ,. >..,-, . -,
Knowledge lies lmPllclt m tne mind: sensation and under-
standing alike; experience does not create it, but
it is brought out, cleared up, made explicit by experience.
Nothing can exist in the intellect that did not first exist in sen-
sation ; true, — except, Leibniz adds, the intellect itself. But
even if we disregard the monadic theory, he declares, it can be
proved that knowledge does not come from the senses. If it did,
universal knowledge would be impossible, for so-called empirical
truths are without necessity, they are accidental propositions:
we cannot assert that because something has happened, it must
always happen in the same way. Universal and necessary propo-
sitions cannot be derived from the senses; they have their seat
and origin in the mind itself.
Locke had argued that there can be no such innate or a priori
knowledge because we are not always conscious of it. Locke
would be right if nothing could be native to the mind without
the mind's being conscious of it. If the Cartesian identification
of mental life with consciousness is legitimate, the empiricist's
arguments are valid. The mind, however, is not always con-
scious of its ideas: ideas and principles may exist in the mind
without our being conscious of them. Still, if it could be shown
that all our truths actually spring from sensation, this correc-
tion of the Lockian view would do us no good. But it cannot
be shown. The propositions derived from experience, or reached
by induction, are wanting in universality and necessity; they
do not yield certain knowledge : however numerous the examples
of an occurrence may be, they do not prove that the event will
always and necessarily take place. We possess knowledge which
does not depend on the testimony of the senses: propositions
that are universal and necessary, as, for example, the truths
of mathematics. It is evident that the mind itself adds some-
thing in this case which the senses cannot furnish. Logic, meta-
physics, ethics, theology, and jurisprudenceflare full of propo-
sitions which rest on principles having their origin nowhere but
in the mind itself. To be sure, without sense-experience we
GOTTFRIED WILHELM LEIBNIZ 377
might never become conscious of such principles; our senses
furnish the occasion for our perceiving them, but they do not
produce or create them. Without them there would be no sci-
ence at all, but only a collection of details. " The final proof
of necessary truths comes from the understanding alone, and
the other truths are derived from experiences, or the observa-
tion of the senses. Our mind is capable of knowing both, but it
is itself the source of the former. However numerous the par-
ticular experiences we have of a universal truth may be, we can
never be absolutely sure of it by induction, unless we know its
necessity through reason." " The senses can arouse, justify,
and verify such truths, but not demonstrate their eternal and
inevitable certitude. ' '
Such innate truths do not exist in the soul as conscious truths :
" we cannot rea^ off the eternal laws of reason as the edicts
of the praetor are read off from the book, but we can discover
them in ourselves by attending to them when the senses offer us
the occasion." Ideas and truths are innate as tendencies, pre-
dispositions, and natural potentialities, and not as actions, " al-
though these potencies are always accompanied by certain, often
insensible, actions, which respond to them." In this sense,
arithmetic and geometry are potential in us ; we can draw them
out of ourselves without employing a single empirical truth.
That such truths are discovered later than the ideas of which
they consist (Locke) proves nothing against their originality;
nor does the fact that we first learn the signs, then the ideas,
and then the truths themselves. General principles, — the prin-
ciple of identity, for example, — constitute the very life of our
thinking; the mind depends on them every moment, although
great attention may be required to become aware of them. We
instinctively employ even the rules of logic in our natural rea-
soning, without being conscious of them. That there are also
such innate principles in the field of ethics, we have already
seen.
A bare faculty of receiving ideas is, therefore, a fiction. But
so are the pure faculties or powers of the schoolmen fictions
or abstractions. We never find a faculty anywhere that is shut
up in itself, that does not do anything: the soul is always pre-
ilisposed to act in a particular way, in one way rather than
L
378 MODERN PHILOSOPHY
in another, i.e., possesses definite tendencies. Experience is
necessary to stir up the soul, but cannot create ideas. The soul
is not a piece of wax on which impressions are stamped; those
who regard it thus, really make a material entity of it. The
empiricist objects that there is nothing in the intellect that did
not exist before in sensation. He is right, says Leibniz, only
he should add, — except the intellect itself. The soul contains
within itself Being, Substance, Unity, Identity, Cause, Percep-
tion, Reasoning, and Quantity, — notions which the senses could
never give us. ~*s*^^_^ — -
In this teaching, Leibniz aims to reconcile the differences be-
tween apriorism and empiricism, a task whic/n was afterwards
undertaken on such a large scale by Kant. He also partly antici-
pates Kant in his conception of space as a form oij the mind.
^Sense-perception and intelligence are, as f unctions \ of the in-
divisible monad, the same in kind, but they differj in degree.
Sensations are obscure and confused ideas, while thp objects of
the understanding are clear and distinct^Bess^-perdeption does
not know things in their true reality, as they are in themselves,
that is, as active spiritual substances of monads, but perceives
them, obscurely and confusedly, as phenomena, as spatial. The
coexistence of monads, which for clear conceptual thought is
a harmonious order of spiritual substance's, is perceived by sense-
perception as an extended phenomenal world. In other words,
the perceiving subject sees and imagines the spiritual order
in terms of space : ' ' our ideas of space, figure, motion, rest, ' '
Leibniz tells us, " have their origin in the common sense, in
the mind itself, for they are ideas of the pure understanding,
which, however, have reference to the external world." Ac-
cording to this view, the idea of space is native to the mind,
as Kant later taught. It is not, however, ^as we have already
seen, merely an idea in us, or merely a way of looking at things,
aroused in us by the coexistence of monads; an objective mate-
rial world results from the coexistence of monads. But space
is not real ; it is the expression or manifestation or phenomenon
of force, which is the real thing.
Rational knowledge is possible only through innate princi-
ples, on which our valid reasonings are based. Among these
are the principle of identity and contradiction, which is the
GOTTFRIED WILHELM LEIBNIZ 379
criterion of truth in the sphere of pure thought, and the prin-
ciple of sufficient reason, which is the criterion of truth in the
'sphere of experience. The principle of ^sufficient reason has not
merely a logical meaningTor LeibniZj^Hgyery judgment must
•feave a ground or reason which proves its truth ; — it is a meta-
physical principle as well, — everything must have a sufficient
reason for being; — it implies logical ground and rea1! ground
(ratio cognoscendi and ratio essendi). On it are based physics,
ethics, metaphysics, and theology: " unless we accept it, the
proof of the existence of God and of many philosophical theories
goes to pieces." The universe is a rational system in which
nothing happens without a sufficient ground; it is conceived in
analogy with a logical system in which the propositions are
rationally related. The problem of philosophy is to discover
the fundamental principles of knowledge, which are at the same
time the fundamental principles or presuppositions of reality.
There is the same necessity in the reaL universe as there is in
a logical system. Leibniz 's logic influences his metaphysics. But
his metaphysics also influences his logic : his conception of knowl-
edge as a development of principles immanent in the mind,
rests on his spiritualistic monadology, as we have seen. % His
individualism does not follow as a necessary consequence from
his logical conception of the universe ; the existence of inde-
pendent individuals cannot be justified to the logical reason.
Leibniz, however, finds a teleological explanation for the exist-
ence of the individual: the individual is the goal of the divine
creative will, and must, therefore, be contained in the world-
ground from the very beginning. Here, a human value is read
into the logical ground of the universe.
Besides clear and distinct knowledge there is confused knowl-
edge. Thus, for example, harmony and beauty are based on
certain proportional relations. These may be clearly known
by the scholar, but they need not be; they express themselves
in a feeling of aesthetic enjoyment, which is therefore an obscure
perception of harmony, or form, in man. So, too, the soul per-
ceives the order of things, the harmony of the cosmos, without
possessing a clear and distinct knowledge of it; here it has an
obscure feeling of God. This, too, is a confused knowledge which
can become clear.
880 MODERN PHILOSOPHY
54. SUCCESSORS OF LEIBNIZ
The Leibnizian philosophy is followed in Germany by a phi-
losophy of common-sense similar to that of the Scottish school of
Eeid. Leibniz was the first great German thinker
Philosophy Of the modern period to attempt a metaphysical
Sense"1 system, but nearly all of his writings consisted of
letters and articles composed in French or Latin
and published in various journals. It became the task of Chris-
tian Wolff (1679-1754), professor at Halle, to systematize the
Leibnizian teachings, to adapt them to common-sense, and to
present them in the German language. He accepts the ration-
alism of Descartes, Spinoza, and Leibniz and identifies the
method of philosophy with that of mathematics. At the same
time, he holds that the facts of experience will agree with the
deductions of reason : reason and sense-perception are both legiti-
mate faculties of knowledge. He adopts the Cartesian dualism
of mind and matter, but regards force as the essential attribute
of body, and explains the apparent interaction between soul
and body as a preestablished harmony (Leibniz). With Spinoza,
he conceives the universe as an interrelated causal order,
but also retains the teleological interpretation of Leibniz.
He likewise introduces the notion of development into his
system.
Wolff divides the sciences into theoretical and practical, ac-
cording to the two faculties of the soul, cognition and appeti-
tion ; including under the former : ontology, cosmology, psychol-
ogy, and theology (all of which constitute metaphysics) ; under
the latter: ethics, politics, and economics. The sciences are also
classified as rational and empirical, according as their proposi-
tions are derived from reason or from experience (rational cos-
mology and empirical physics ; rational psychology and empirical
psychology, etc.). Logic forms the introduction to all the
sciences.
Wolff wrote text-books on all these subjects in German and
Latin, which were used in the German universities for many
years, and created many of the German philosophical terms in
use to-day. Although he was lacking in originality and actually
weakened the Leibnizian philosophy, he gave an impetus to the
SUCCESSORS OF LEIBNIZ 381
study of philosophy in Germany, and contributed to the Enlight-
enment.
Among the followers of the Leibniz-Wolffian school were Bilfinger
(1693-1750), A. Baumgarten (1714-17C2), the founder of German
aesthetics, and Kant during his earlier period. The Wolffian philosophy
developed into an eclectic movement, which sought to reconcile em-
piricism and rationalism and prepared the way for Kant's Critique of
Pure Reason. We mention M. Knutzen (+1751), Kant's teacher; J. H.
Lambert (1728-1777), one of Kant's correspondents; N. Tetens (1736-
1805), who influenced Kant. Other representatives of this eclecticism
are the so-called popular philosophers, whose chief merit consisted in
presenting the dominant philosophy in popular form: M. Mendelssohn
(1729-1786); C. Garve (1742-1798), the translator of Ferguson's and
A. Smith's writings; J. J. Engel (1741-1802) ; E. Platner (1744-1818) ;
F. Nicolai (1733-1811). Samuel Reimarus (1694-1768), influenced by
this school and English deism, was a deist and an acute critic of the
Scriptures. All these thinkers may be regarded as representatives of
the German Aufkldrung of the eighteenth century.
Zeller, op. cit.; K. Fischer, Leibniz; Baumann, Wolff 'sche Begriffs-
bestimmungen; Zimmermann, Lambert: der Vorganger Kants; Stoning,
Die Erkenntnistheorie von Tetens.
The rationalism of Leibniz and Wolff did not satisfy all
thinkers; some lacked faith in the competence of reason to
arrive at truth and yet were unwilling to join the .^
ranks of the empiricists or skeptics. These men,
the lineal descendants of the mystics, found in inner experience,
in feeling and instinct, the source of certainty: the highest
truths cannot be demonstrated, but only felt. There was some
justification for such a view in the teaching of Leibniz that
feeling, craving, or impulse is but another stage of knowledge,
an instinctive form of truth. Leibniz regarded this as a lower,
confused form of knowledge; the philosophers of faith or feel-
ing discover in it a higher phase: what the limited reason of
man cannot fathom, may be felt or divined in religious, aes-
thetic, or moral feeling. We mention: J. G. Hamann (+ 1788),
J. G. Herder (1744-1803), who criticizes Kant's Critique of Pure
Reason in his Metacritique, and F. H. Jacobi (1743-1819), who
opposes rationalistic metaphysics with a philosophy based on
intuition. (See pp. 428, ff.)
A kindred movement, called Pietism, arose in German Protes-
tantism as a reaction against the rationalizing theology of the
new church: Christianity is not a doctrine for professors to
382 MODERN PHILOSOPHY
speculate upon, but an inner religious conversion. P. J. Spener
(1635-1705), A. H. Francke (1663-1727), and J. J. Lange (1670-
1744) are conspicuous members of this wing; the last two were
responsible for C. Wolff's dismissal from his professorship at
Halle.
PHILOSOPHY OF THE ENLIGHTENMENT
55. PROGRESS OF ENLIGHTENMENT
We have described the modern spirit as a spirit of revolt
against medieval society, its institutions and conceptions, and as
the self-assertion of human reason in the field of
thought and action. The work begun by the Re-
naissance was continued in the sixteenth and seven-
teenth centuries; the Reformation, the Thirty Years' War, and
the political and social revolutions in England and in France
(the Fronde) were symptoms of the change. The great Con-
tinental systems and English empiricism, with their various
offshoots, added fuel to the flame which had produced them;
and the spirit of independent inquiry slowly but surely trans-
formed the view of life. But the new ideas had to be popu-
larized and disseminated over larger areas of mankind, and this
task was performed during the eighteenth century, which has
been called the century of the Enlightenment : it represents the
culmination of the entire intellectual movement which we have
been describing. It is an age in possession of principles and
world-views ; full of confidence in the power of the human mind
to solve its problems, it seeks to understand and to render in-
telligible human life, — the State, religion, morality, language,
— and the universe at large. It is an age of philosophical dog-
mas, an age that has the courage to write books like Wolff's
Reasonable Thoughts on God, the World, and the Soul of Man,
also on All Things in General. It is the age of free and inde-
pendent thought that speaks out its ideas boldly, particularly
in France, and fearlessly draws the consequences of its
principles.
Philosophy in the eighteenth century not only mirrored the
strivings of the times, but influenced their action. It came out
PROGRESS OF ENLIGHTENMENT 383
of the closet of the scholars, and, as in the days of Socrates,
mingled with the crowd in the market-place ; it no longer spoke
a special language of its own, — the language of the schoolmen, —
but expressed itself in the speech of the people and in terms
intelligible to men of general intelligence. In France, owing
to social, political, and ecclesiastical oppression, the Enlighten-
ment found its most radical utterance; and here its influence
was greatest: the Revolution was the result of the propagation
of the new ideas. The respect for human reason and human
rights which characterized nearly all the important modern
philosophical doctrines, became universal in the eighteenth cen-
tury, and the words humanity, good-will, natural rights, liberty,
equality, brotherhood were on every tongue. Even the pater-
nalistic governments regarded it as their function to contribute
to the happiness and welfare of mankind. The revolt against
medievalism culminated in the great social and political upheaval
that marked the close of the century : the old regime gave way to
a new society. "What the modern spirit had been demanding was
in part achieved : liberty of conscience and worship, equal oppor-
tunity and economic freedom, representative government and
equality of all individuals before the law.
Hibben, The Philosophy of the Enlightenment; Leyy-Bruhl, History
of Modern Philosophy in France; Macdonald, Studies in the France
of Voltaire and Rousseau; the essays of John Morley on Voltaire,
Diderot, Rousseau, and Condorcet; Stephen, English Thought in the
Eighteenth Century; Fabre, Les peres de la revolution (from Bayle
to Condorcet) ; Damiron, Memoir es pour servir a I'histoire de la
philosophic au XVIII. siecle, 3 vols. ; Hettner, Litteraturgeschichte des
18. Jahrhunderts; Ritchie, Natural Rights; and histories of politics.
Chief among those who helped to awaken the new spirit and
to spread the new ideas in France, and indeed throughout Europe,
were Voltaire (1694-1778) and Montesquieu (1685- Voltaire
1755), both of whom had visited England and were
filled with admiration for English institutions. Voltaire, the
brilliant and versatile propagandist of the Enlightenment,
popularized and applied the Lockian ideas, — which he had
brought back with him from England together with Newton's
natural philosophy and English deism, — in his Lettres sur les
Anglais, 1728, a book which was burned by order of the cen-
384 MODERN PHILOSOPHY
sorship. He himself was a deist and never gave up his belief
in God: " All nature cries out to us that he exists." In his
earlier writings he also accepts the freedom of the will and the
immortality of the soul, but, later on, he becomes skeptical with
regard to life after death, and also inclines to determinism:
' ' When I can do what I will, I am free ; but I will necessarily
what I will. ' ' But he always ruthlessly attacked superstition and
ecclesiastical domination: revealed religion he regarded as the
product of ignorance and deceit, as the work of clever priests
making use of human stupidity and prejudice in order to rule
over men. His religion was based on the immutable principles
of morality, which, in his opinion, have remained essentially the
same in the teachings of philosophers. He combated oppression
of all kinds and fought for intellectual, political, and religious
liberty: for the freedom of the press, the freedom of elections,
the freedom of parliaments, and he demanded political rights
for the third estate or the bourgeoisie, which had grown
prosperous in industry and trade. And yet, in spite of all his
liberalism, he was not an apostle of democracy ; he had no faith
in the capacity of the lower classes for self-government: " it
seems necessary," he said, " that there should be an ignorant
rabble; when they begin to argue, everything is lost." The
age of reason is not intended to include * * lackeys, cobblers, and
hired girls " in its blessings.
Voltaire's thoughts, for the most part, express the spirit
of the Lockian philosophy, although the influence of Bayle's
Dictionary, which affected nearly all the intellectual leaders
of France in the eighteenth century, must not be overlooked.
English ideas had a large share in liberalizing and revolution-
izing France.
Besides the works already mentioned, see monographs on Voltaire
by Carlyle, Feuerbach, Bersot, Desnoiresterres, Pellissier, and Sakmanr .
Among the men who assisted in developing and propagating the
English empirical philosophy were: Condillac, Helvetius, Condorce',
Cabanis, Volney, Bonnet, Destutt de Tracy, La Mettrie, Holbach, anc,
especially, the Encyclopedists, led by Diderot and d'Alembert.
In England the Enlightenment did not reach its zenith withi i
a comparatively short period, as in France ; nor did its inflr -
enee express itself so spectacularly as there. The social cond -
PROGRESS OF ENLIGHTENMENT 385
tions were not the same, and there had been greater progress:
the new ideas and ideals had gradually found their way into
the life of the people. Nearly all the philosophers
who based themselves on the Lockian principles may Enlighten-
be called illuminators. The deists, the moralists, ^Tland
Hume, Hartley, Priestley, Erasmus Darwin, William
Godwin, the author of Political Justice (1793), Thomas Paine,
the author of The Rights of Man (1791-92) and The Age of Rea-
son (1794), all encouraged the progress of independent thought.
In Germany the Leibniz- Wolffian metaphysics remained
the dominant system until the middle of the eighteenth century,
when English ideas began to exercise an influence
through translations of the works of Locke, Hume,
and English moralists like Shaftesbury, Hutche-
son, and Ferguson. The result was a combination of rationalism
and empiricism, an eclecticism or common-sense philosophy that
conceives the universe and human history as a rational, teleo-
logical order which can be made perfectly intelligible to reason
because it is the expression of reason. Its task consists in clear-
ing up (Aufkldrung) all mystery and banishing all superstition,
in illuminating everything by the light of reason. It offers a
natural or rational theology, undertaking to prove and make
clear the fundamental doctrines common to all religions: the
existence of God, the freedom of the will, and the immortality
of the soul. We have already mentioned the leading figures
in this movement in metaphysics. The same rationalistic method
is applied in the study of history: language, law, the State,
morality, religion owe their origin to human reason; language,
for example, was invented by man to communicate his thoughts,
the State organized in order to insure his welfare. Since all
these things are the work of reason, the ideal should be to make
them more and more rational, to eliminate the irrational and
accidental elements that have crept into them and corrupted
them in the course of history. It was this rationalistic mode of
thought that helped to transform the political theories in Ger-
many and made popular the doctrines of equality and natural
rights even in the courts of the rulers (Frederick the Great and
the Emperor Joseph) : social distinctions are contrary to nature
and contrary to reason.
386 MODERN PHILOSOPHY
The Aufkldrung even carries its standards of clearness and
utility into the field of aesthetics; poetry, sculpture, architec-
ture, and painting follow rationalistic models: Gellert's fables,
as some one has said, are "moral philosophy in verse " and his
religious hymns a " rational theology put into rhyme." Gott-
sched wrote a book on the Art of Poetry which shows how poetry
must be made in order to serve as a means of enlightening and
moralizing mankind.
This is the same movement which, a century before, had found
its voice in England in the philosophy of Locke. It is opposed
by the great leaders of literature and philosophy who made the
last quarter of the eighteenth century the brightest period of
German intellectual life. Kant attacks the rational theology of
the Enlightenment, Herder its rationalistic interpretations of
history, Winckelmann and Lessing, Goethe and Schiller its ra-
tionalistic a3sthetics.
We have seen how the Cartesian philosophy led to an ob-
jective idealism in Malebranche, and how English empiricism
became idealism in Berkeley. The same great
Materialism movements were also turned to materialistic ac-
Evolutionism count ^n tne eighteenth century. Descartes offered
a mechanical explanation of the organic kingdom,
and conceived the animal as a complete machine. This sug-
gested the thought that man, too, is a machine, and that the
soul is not a separate entity, but a function of the body. The
attempt of Locke's successors (Condillac, Hartley, and others)
to reduce all mental processes to sensations formed an easy
transition to the view that such elementary states are merely
effects of the brain. Leibniz reduced matter to force and con-
ceived it as analogous to spiritual activity; others reversed tha
order and interpreted spiritual activity as physical force. And
when the spiritual principles, which filled the universe of tha
old Aristotelian metaphysics, were banished from nature by mod-
ern science and relegated to a separate world of their own 07
philosophy, what wonder was it that some thinkers should have
dispensed with them altogether and explained all phenomena as
the results of matter in motion?
The materialistic world-view made headway in England an I
in France during the eighteenth century, and by the end cf
PROGRESS OF ENLIGHTENMENT 387
that period had become a popular doctrine in the enlightened
circles of the latter country. According to John Toland (1670-
1721), in his later writings (Pantheisticon, 1720), thought is
a function of the brain, " a certain motion of the brain "; the
tongue is no more the organ of taste than the brain is the organ
of thought. David Hartley (1704-1757) makes all mental
processes depend on vibrations in the brain, which follow me-
chanical laws, — psychological association being attended by
physiological association, — but does not reduce states of con-
sciousness to motion. He is not sure whether the relation ought
to be regarded as a causal one or not. Joseph Priestley, the
discoverer of oxygen (1733-1804), however, identifies psychical
processes with movements, thus boldly accepting the materialistic
solution of the mind-body problem. Nevertheless, he does not
deny the existence of God or the immortality of the soul; fol-
lowing Hobbes, he declares that there is nothing inconsistent
with Christianity in the conception of the materiality of the
human and the divine soul.
The Frenchman La Mettrie (1709-1751; Histoire naturelle
de I'ame, 1745, L'homme machine, 1748, L'homme plante, 1748),
who was influenced by both Descartes and Locke, bases his ma-
terialism on Descartes 's mechanical explanation of the animal
organism : if the animal is a machine, why not man ? The mate-
rialistic theory is elaborated into a comprehensive system of
metaphysics by the German Baron d'Holbach (+1789), in the
Systeme de la nature (first published in London, 1770, under
the pseudonym of Mirabaud). Everything is explained by mat-
ter and motion, as the effect of necessary laws. There is no soul ;
thought is a function of the brain ; and matter alone is immortal.
The human will is strictly determined ; there is no design in na-
ture or outside of nature, no teleology and no God.
Other advocates of materialism, though not always con-
ently and openly such, are: Denis Diderot (1713-1784, editor
of the Encyclopedia} during the later period of his litV;
Cabanis (1757-1808; Thought is the function of the brain, as
digestion is the function of the stomach, and the secretion of
bile the function of the liver), and Destutt de Tracy (1754-
1836). The French biologists Buffon (Histoire naturelle, 1749,
ff.) and Robinet (De la nature, 1763, ff.) accepted a modified
388 MODERN PHILOSOPHY
form of materialism (hylozoism) ; Buff on assumes the existence
of molecules endowed with life, and Robinet (who was influ-
enced by Leibniz) gives sensation to every particle of matter.
Evolutionary conceptions appear in the writings of many of the
thinkers of the time, for example in La Mettrie's L'homme
plant e and La systeme d' Epicure, 1748; in Diderot's De la
nature, 1763, ff., and de Bonnet's La palingenesie philosophique,
1769. These men may be regarded as forerunners of Lamarck
and Darwin.
However the thinkers of the French Enlightenment may dif-
fer in details, they agree that the phenomena of nature, be
they physical or mental, are governed by law, that the mental
and moral life of man is a necessary product of nature. From
this standpoint, Helvetius (+1771) explains human morality,
the economists Turgot and Condorcet (1743-1794) develop a
philosophy of history, and Montesquieu (1689-1755; Esprit des
lois, 1748) studies human laws and institutions.
Hibben, op. cit., chap, v; Weber, op. cit., pp. 399-417; Hoffding,
History of Modern Philosophy, vol. I, Bk. V; Lange, History of
Materialism; Cousin, Philosophy of Locke; Ueberweg-Heinze, op. cit.,
§ 18 ; Damiron, op. cit.
The age of the Enlightenment did not confine itself, however,
to the propagation of the general ideas which the preceding
centuries had worked oat; it devoted itself assidu-
ously to the study of the sciences, natural and
mental. It has no reason to be ashamed of the men whom it
produced in these fields : Euler, Lagrange, and Laplace in mathe-
matics; Herschel and Laplace (Mecanique celeste) in astron-
omy; Galvani and Volta in physics; Lavoisier, Priestley, Davy,
Haiiy, and Berzelius in chemistry; Linne, Haller, Bichat, and
C. F. Wolff in biology; Alexander von Humboldt, who was
eminent in many sciences; Montesquieu in politics and juris-
prudence; Quesnay, Turgot, and Adam Smith, the founders of
the new political economy ; Baumgarten in aesthetics ; not to
speak of the psychologists and moralists already enumerated.
The Enlightenment glorified knowledge, the sciences and the
arts, civilization and progress, and boasted of the achievements
PROGRESS OF ENLIGHTENMENT 389
of the human race. The pride and self-confidence of the $5nligh
enment were, however, rudely shaken by Jean Jacques 04
(1712-1778), who characterized the arts and «cip£ees \
as fruits of luxury and indolence /and the Aurice ~
of moral decay (Discours sur I
arts, 1750, and Discours sur I'Mginc \/t lefondemepts dt
I'megalite parmi les hommes, 1753jWm-demande9Tr^eturn to
the naivete and simplicity of nature.x\Man is by7 nature inno-
cent and good; he possesses an impulse tcTpreserve himself and
to develop his capacities, but he is also prompted by sympathy
for others and inspired by religious feeling, gratitude, and rev-
erence. Morality and religion are not matters of reasoned think-
ing, but of natural feeling. Man's worth depends not on his
intelligence, but on his moral nature, which consists essentially
of feeling : the good will alone has absolute value. Rousseau em-
phasizes the importance of the sentiments as an element in our
mental life, and denies that the development of reason brings
with it the perfection of man. Men are equal by nature;
society, through the institution of property, has made them un-
equal, so that we now have masters and slaves, cultured and
uncultured, rich and poor. Civilization, with its culture and
the inequalities resulting therefrom, has corrupted our natural
inclinations, producing the slavish and the lordly vices, servility,
envy, hatred, on the one hand, contempt, arrogance, and cruelty
on the other, and has made^life artificial and mechanical. These
views resemble certain modern socialistic theories which seek
the origin of vices and virtues in social conditions and look for
the perfection of man in the improvement of society.
Rousseau substitutes for representative government direct
government by the people (initiative and referendum). His
political theory is the theory of the Swiss republican, as Locke's,
which Voltaire followed, was that of the English constitutional
monarchist. Among the people he included not only the third
estate or the prosperous bourgeoisie, but the fourth estate or
the laboring and peasant class, to which he himself belonged and
for which he demanded equal rights and deliverance from social
bondage, as Voltaire had demanded equal political rights and
liberty of thought and conscience for the middle class. Rousseau
takes the Lockian ideal of democracy seriously; if all men are
390 MODERN PHILOSOPHY
created free and equal and have the same natural rights and
capacities, there is no reason why they should be ruled or de-
prived of their inheritance by a privileged class, be it an aris-
tocracy or an industrial bourgeoisie. It was Rousseau's ideas
that found their way into the Declaration of the Rights of Man,*
of 1789 and 1793 ; and it is these notions which are influencing
legislation in many countries to-day.
The return to nature will deliver us from this corrupt and
artificial existence, and can be accomplished only by the creation
of natural social conditions and a natural|method of education.
(Contrat social, 1762, and Emile, 1762.) Natural society is
based on a contract in which the individual surrenders his indi-
vidual freedom for the liberty of citizenship, which is limited
by the general will, or the moral will of the people. Freedom
is obedience to self-imposed law. Sovereignty lies with the
people; the general will, — that is, the will of the people in so
far as it aims at the common good, — is the highest law. Govern-
ment executes the commands of the people, who can limit or
recall the power delegated to it.
Rousseau's theory of education is a plea for natural educa-
tion: for the free development of the child's natural and un-
spoiled impulses. Instruction should not begin until the desire
for knowledge arises. Hence, education must be largely negative,
consisting in the removal of unfavorable conditions, a task that
requires the greatest care. The individuality of the child should
be studied and nature assisted in distinguishing between good
and bad impulses. It is wise, therefore, to isolate the child from
its social environment in order that this development may follow
its natural course under the guidance of private teachers. Rous-
seau's theory exercised great influence on modern education:
Basedow, Pestalozzi, and Froebel are among those who have
put it to the practical test.
These ideas are not inconsistent with the Lockian principles.
If the soul is by nature an empty tablet, then men are by nature
equal, and differences between them are the result of external
* Article I of the Declaration of 1789 reads: "Men are born and remain
free and equal in rights. Social distinctions can only be founded on social
utility." Article VI: "The law is the expression of the general will. All
citizens have a right to take part, personally or by their representatives,
in its formation." See Hobhouse, Liberalism, p. 61.
IMMANUEL KANT 391
causes of all kinds, as Helvetius had already taught. Education
and the social environment become the most important instru-
ments for the perfection of the human race.__
.Rousseau, like Voltaire, combats materialism and atheism,
accepting the tenets of natural religion ; in this sense he is a
deist. But with him religion is rooted in feeling, it is a matter
of the heart and not of the head, though its truths may be
demonstrated by reason. The soul is immaterial, free, and im-
mortal; a future life is made necessary by the triumph of evil
in this world.
Rousseau exercised a mighty influence in Germany, — on Kant,
Herder, Goethe, and Schiller. Kant bears witness to the change
produced in his conceptions by Rousseau's thoughts in the
following passage : c ' I am myself an investigator by inclina-
tion, I feel the intensest craving for knowledge, and the eager
impatience to advance in it, as well as satisfaction with every
step of progress. There was a time when I believed that all
this might redound to the glory of mankind; and I despised
the ignorant rabble. Rousseau has set me right. The boasted
superiority has vanished ; I am learning to respect mankind, and
I should regard myself as of much less use than the common
laborer if I did not believe that this reflection could give value
to all other occupations, that is, reestablish the rights of man-
kind."
See, besides the works on the Enlightenment, p. 383, monographs
on Rousseau by John Morley, Macdonald, Hb'ffding; the volume in the
Bibliotheque generate des sciences societies, by many French scholars;
Rodet, Le contrat social et les idees politiques de J. J. Rousseau;
Mornet, Le sentiment de la nature en France de Rousseau a Saint-
Pierre; Hagmann, Rousseau's Sozialphilosophie; Fester, Rousseau und
die deutsche Geschichtsphilosophie.
CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY OF IMMANUEL KANT
56. IMMANUEL KANT
Modern philosophy began with faith in the power of the
human mind to attain knowledge; the only thing in question
was Iww, — by what methods — it could be reached and how far
392 MODERN PHILOSOPHY
its limits extended. Empiricists and rationalists alike conceived
genuine knowledge as universal and necessary, and nearly all
of them down to Hume declared that self-evident
Progress of propositions were possible in some fields. Descartes,
Philosophy Hobbes, Spinoza, and Leibniz constructed systems
of metaphysics which they deemed as logic-
proof as the Euclidean geometry. Bacon did not offer a uni-
versal theory: that was an enterprise that could not be under-
taken until the facts had been established by the new method;
but he held that the existence of God could be demonstrated and
the eternal essences of things or laws of nature discovered. Nev-
ertheless, doubts began to arise concerning the competence of
human intelligence to solve ultimate problems or even problems
of lesser scope. At times, metaphysics and theology seemed to
Bacon to transcend the powers of natural reason. Hobbes, too,
agreeing with Descartes that experience could not give us cer-
tainty and yet regarding sensation as the source of all we
know, betrayed occasional misgivings with respect to a genuine
science of physics. Locke saw the necessity of examining the
knowledge-problem more thoroughly than it had been examined,
and reached the conclusion that we possess certain knowledge
of the agreement and disagreement of our ideas, certain knowl-
edge of our own existence and of the existence of God, and that
mathematics and ethics are secure. But we have no such knowl-
edge, he held, of the existence of an external world and of the
necessary connection of the qualities of things: true knowledge
is out of the question in natural science. Berkeley declares that
there is no external (material) world to know, but that we know
ideas, spirits, and relations between ideas. Bayle plays havoc
with theological and metaphysical doctrines, holding them to be
not only beyond reason but contrary to reason. Hume draws
what appear to him to be the consequences of the sensationalistic
view of knowledge : if we can know only what we experience in
sensation, then rational theology, rational cosmology, and ra-
tional psychology are impossible : knowledge of God, world, and
soul is beyond our ken. Indeed, even our knowledge of matters
of fact can yield nothing but probability; we have no knowl-
edge of necessary connection, no knowledge of substance, no
knowledge of a self: we cannot even say that our ideas neces-
IMMANUEL KANT 393
sarily follow the order in which we experience them, and which
we believe they will repeat. We can attain "a kind of demon-
strative knowledge " by comparing our ideas, noting their
relations, and reasoning about the relations; and nothing
more.
The spirit of criticism which had undermined authority and
tradition and enthroned reason was now bringing reason itself
to the bar and denying reason 's authority. It was
not the empiricists alone, however, who were weigh- yst
ing rationalism in the balance and finding it wanting; protests
against its supposed pretensions and results also came from the
camp of the mystics and faith-philosophers, who distrusted the
deliverances of the intellect and sought in other phases or func-
tions of the human soul a means of stilling the longing for
certainty. According to them, the discursive understanding can
never pierce the covering of reality; truth has its source in
feeling, faith, or mystical vision of some sort ; the deepest reali-
ties cannot be conceived by reason, but only felt by the heart.
What particularly provoked such anti-rationalistic outbursts as
these in the modern era was the mechanistic and deterministic
world-views to which scientific or rationalistic thinking seemed
inevitably to lead and which degraded the individual to the role
of a marionette. To many minds the unaided natural intelli-
gence appeared to end either in a hopeless and cheerless skepti-
cism or in a tragic fatalism that mocked humanity's deepest
yearnings and rendered fictitious its most precious values.
To the intellect's destructive criticism of its own competence
and the will's demand for the recognition of its moral and reli-
gious values, philosophy was now compelled to
make some answer. This task was assumed by ™
Kant, who sought to do justice to the various cur-
rents of his age, to the Enlightenment, empiricism, skepticism,
and mysticism; his problem was, as one of his contemporaries
put it, " to limit Hume's skepticism on the one hand, and the
old dogmatism on the other, and to refute and destroy material-
ism, fatalism, atheism, as well as sentimentalism and supersti-
tion." He himself had come from the rationalistic school of
Wolff, but he had also been attracted to English empiri.
and Rousseau, and Hume had " aroused him from his dogmatic
394. MODERN PHILOSOPHY
slumbers. " * He sees the pressing need of an examination or
criticism of human reason, of a tribunal, as it were, that shall
secure the just claims of reason and dismiss all its groundless
claims, — of a theory of knowledge, in other words, that shall
investigate the possibility or impossibility of universal and nec-
essary knowledge, its sources, extent, and boundaries. Philoso-
phy, he thinks, has been dogmatic thus far: it has proceeded
without previous criticism of its own powers. It must now be-
come criticism, or enter upon an impartial examination of the
faculty of reason in general ; with this end in view Kant writes
his three Critiques: the Critique of Pure Reason, an examina-
tion of theoretical reason or science; the Critique of Practical
Reason, an examination of practical reason or morality; the
Critique of Judgment, an examination of our esthetic and teleo-
logical judgments, or purposiveness in art and in nature.
Genuine knowledge Kant defines as universal and necessary
knowledge. He agrees with the rationalists that there is such
knowledge, — in physics and mathematics, — with the empiricists
that it is ideal knowledge, not knowledge of things as they are
in themselves, but knowledge of phenomena, knowledge of things
as they appear to our senses; hence a rational metaphysics (cos-
mology, theology, psychology) is impossible. With the em-
piricists he also agrees that we can know only what we experi-
ence, that sensation forms the matter of our knowledge; with
the rationalists that universal and necessary truth cannot be
derived from experience. The senses furnish the materials of
our knowledge, and the mind arranges them in ways made
necessary by its own nature. Hence, we have universal and
necessary knowledge (rationalism) of the order of ideas, not
of foings-in-themselves (skepticism). The contents of our
knowledge are derived from experience (empiricism), but the
mind thinks its experiences, conceives them according to its
a priori or native, that is, rational, ways (rationalism). Never-
theless, things-in- themselves exist ; we can think them, but not
know them as we know the facts of the empirical world. If it
were not for the moral consciousness or practical reason, the
* For the development of Kant's critical philosophy see works of
Paulsen, Caird, and Riehl mentioned in bibliography, p. 396; also Paulsen,
Entwicklungsgescliiclite der kantischen Erkenntnisstheorie ; Boehm, Die
vorkritischen Schriften Rants.
IMMANUEL KANT 395
questions concerning the existence of a world other than the
causal space and time order, of God, freedom, and immortality,
would be left unanswered, indeed, could not even be broached.
Immanuel Kant was born in Konigsberg, 1724, the son of a saddler,
and was reared in religious surroundings, his parents being pietists.
Nearly his entire life as student, teacher, and writer was spent within
the boundaries of his native city. At the Collegium Fredericianum,
where he prepared for the university (1732-1740), he was chiefly in-
terested in the Roman classics; at the University of Konigsberg he
studied physics, mathematics, philosophy, and theology (1740-1746).
From 1746 to 1755 he served as tutor in several families residing
in the neighborhood of Konigsberg; in 1755 he received an appointment
as private decent at the University and lectured on mathematics,
physics, logic, metaphysics, ethics, physical geography, anthropology,
natural theology, and " philosophical encyclopedia." From 1766 to
1772 he combined with this position the post of assistant librarian of
the Royal Library. In 1770 Kant became professor of logic and
metaphysics, a place which he held until 1797, when his feeble con-
dition made it necessary for him to retire. He died in 1804.
During his earlier years Kant followed the Leibniz-Wolffian philos-
ophy, which dominated the German universities and had become popular
outside of academic circles. From 1760 to 1770 he came under the
influence of English empiricism; Locke and Shaftesbury, and then
Hume, made a great impression on him ; it was the latter who " aroused
him from his dogmatic slumbers," as he says. By the year 1770 he
had reached the philosophical standpoint for which he is noted, and
presented it in a Latin dissertation, De mundi sensibilis atque intel-
ligibilis forma et principiis; the next ten years he spent in working it
out. His master-work, Kritik der reinen Vernunft, appeared in 1781
(2d., revised edition, 1787) and was followed by Prolegomena zu einer
jeden zukunftigen Metaphysik, 1783, Grundlegung zur Metaphysik
der Sitten, 1785, Metaphysische Anfangsgriinde der Naturwissenschaft,
1786, Kritik der praktischen Vernunft, 1788, Kritik der Urtheilskraft,
1790, Die Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der blossen Vernunft, 1793,
Metaphysik der Sitten (containing his philosophy of law), 1797, Zum
ewigen Frieden, 1795. Uber die Pedagogik was published in 1803.
Works ed. by Hartenstein, 10 vols., 1838, ff.; by Rosenkranz, Y2
vols., 1838, ff.; by Kehrbach in Reclam Universal-Bibliothek ; recent
new editions by Prussian Academy, 11 vols. ; by Cassirer, 12 vols. ; by
Vorlander, 9 vols. See also B. Erdmann, Reflexionen Kants zur
kritischen Philosophic, 1882, ff., and Reicke, Lose Blatter aus Kants
Nachlass, 1889, ff. Separate ed. of Critique of Pure Reason by Kehr-
bach (based on Kant's first ed.), by Erdmann, and Adickes (both based
on second ed.).
Translations: Critique of Pure Reason (of 2d ed.) by Meiklejohn,
1854; (of 1st ed. with supplements of 2d) by Max Miiller, 1881;
paraphrase by Mahaffy and Bernard; Dissertation of 1770, by Eckoff;
of Prolegomena, by Mahaffy and Bernard ; Foundations of Metaphysics
of Morals, Critique of Practical Reason, parts of Metaphysics of
396 MODERN PHILOSOPHY
Morals, and first part of Religion, by Abbott, in one vol. ; Religion,
by Semple; Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science, by Bax;
Cosmogony, by Hastie; Critique of Judgment, by Bernard; Philosophy
of Law, Principles of Politics, and Perpetual Peace, by Hastie;
Perpetual Peace, by M. C. Smith; Pedagogy, by Churton; Dreams of
Ghost-Seer, by Goerwitz; Selections, by Watson; a paraphrase of
Critique of Pure Reason, by Fogel and Whitney. Miiller's translation
has been made use of in our account.
Paulsen, Kant, transl. by Creighton and Lefevre; Wenley, Kant and
his Revolution; W. Wallace, Kant; Adamson, Philosophy of Kant;
Watson, Philosophy of Kant Explained; Weir, Student's Introduction
to Kant; Green, Lectures on the Philosophy of Kant, vol. II of Works;
Sidgwick, Lectures on the Philosophy of Kant; E. Caird, Critical
Philosophy of Kant, 2 vols. ; K. Fischer, Kant, 2 vols. ; recent German
monographs by Kronenberg, Simmel, Adickes, Kiilpe, Wernicke.
Morris, Kant's Critique of Pure Reason; Prichard, Kant's Theory of
Knowledge; Riehl, Philosophical Criticism, vol. I; Stirling, Text-Book
to Kant; K. Lasswitz, Lehre Kants von der Idealitdt des Raumes
und der Zeit; Volkelt, Kants Erkenntnisstheorie; Cohen, Kants
Theorie der Erfahrung; Vaihinger, Commentar zu Kants Kritik
der reinen Vernunft, 2 vols.; E. Pfleiderer, Kantischer Kriti-
zismus und englische Philosophie; Wartenberg, Kants Theorie der
Kausalitdt. F. Adler, Critique of Kant's Ethics, in Essays in Honor
of W. James; Porter, Kant's Ethics; Schurman, Kantian Ethics and
the Ethics of Evolution; Messer, Kants Ethik; Cohen, Kants Be-
grundung der Ethik, 2d ed. ; Cresson, Morale de Kant; Delbos, Philoso-
phie pratique de Kant; Hegler, Psychologie in Kants Ethik; Foerster,
Entwicklungsgang der kantischen Ethik; Schmidt, Entwicklung der
kantischen Ethik; Thilly, Kant and Teleological Ethics, Kant-Studien,
vol. VIII, 1 ; Sanger, Kants Lehre vom Glauben; Piinjer, Religionslehre
Kants. Tufts, Kant's. Teleology; Meredith, Kant's Critique of Judg-
ment; Stadler, Kants Teleologie; Cohen, Kants Begriindung der
Aesthetik. Bowne, Kant and Spencer; Lovejoy, Kant and the English
Platonists, in Essays in Honor of W. James; Uphues, Kant und seine
Vorgdnger; Bauch, Luther und Kant; Meyer-Benfey, Herder und
Kant; Saisset, dEnesideme, Pascal, Kant; Spicker, Kant, Hume und
Berkeley; Sydow, Kritisches Kant-Kommentar.
Works on entire idealistic movement in Germany: Royce, Spirit
of Modern Philosophy; Pringle-Pattison, From Kant to Hegel;
Kronenberg, Geschichte des deutschen Idealismus, 3 vols. (vol. I on
pre-Kantian idealism); Liebmann, Kant und die Epigonen; works by
Chalybaeus, Fortlage, Harms, Biedermann, Michelet, Willm, Drews.
See also Pfleiderer, Development of Rational Theology since Kant.
Bibliography on Kant by Adickes, Phil. Rev., vol. II.
The fundamental problem for Kant is the problem of knowl-
edge : What is knowledge, and how is it possible ? What are
the boundaries of human reason ? In order to answer these ques-
tions, we must examine human reason, or subject it to criticism.
IMMANUEL KANT 397
Knowledge always appears in the form of judgments, in which
something is affirmed or denied. But not every judgment is
knowledge; in an analytical judgment the predi-
cate merely elucidates what is already contained problem °f
in the subject: e.g., Body is an extended thing.
The judgment must be synthetic; that is, add something to
the predicate, extend our knowledge, not merely elucidate
it: e.g., All bodies have specific gravity. Not all synthetic
judgments, however, give us knowledge; some are derived from
experience ; they inform us, for example, that an object has such
and such properties or behaves thus or so, but not that it must
have these qualities, or behave so. In other words, such judg-
ments are lacking in necessity: reason does not compel their
acceptance, as it compels the acceptance of a mathematical propo-
sition. Again, they are lacking in universality: we cannot say
because some objects of a class have certain qualities, that all
have them. Judgments lacking in universality and necessity,
or a posteriori judgments, are not scientific. To be knowledge,
a synthetic judgment must be necessary: its contradictory must
be unthinkable; and it must be universal, i.e., admit of no ex-
ceptions. Universality and necessity have their source not in
sensation or perception, but in reason, in the understanding
itself; we know without experience (and in this sense prior to
it) that the sum of the angles of a triangle must be equal to two
right angles and that it will always be so. In order to yield
knowledge, therefore, a judgment must be a priori.
Our conclusion, then, is that knowledge consists in synthetic
judgments a priori. Analytic judgments are always a priori;
we know without going to experience that all extended things
are extended; such judgments are based on the principles of
identity and contradiction. But they do not add to our knowl-
edge. Synthetic judgments a posteriori add to our knowledge,
but are not sure; the knowledge they yield is vague, uncertain,
problematic. We demand apodictic certainty in our sciences, and
such certainty is possible only in synthetic judgments a priori.
That there are such judgments Kant never doubted for a
moment: we find them in physics, in mathematics, and even in
metaphysics. He accepts the existence of universal and neces-
sary knowledge as an established fact, hence he does not ask
398 MODERN PHILOSOPHY
whether synthetic judgments a priori are possible, but only how
they are possible. What are the conditions of such knowledge ;
what does the existence of such judgments logically presuppose or
necessarily imply? The German criticist's method is, therefore,
dogmatic, as he says: the theory of knowledge is a strictly de-
monstrable science, an a priori or pure science, one that bases
its truths on necessary principles a priori. His method is not
psychological, but logical or transcendental: he does not tell
us to examine the conditions of knowledge in our own conscious-
ness,— how it arises psychologically, — but to take real knowl-
edge, say the propositions of mathematics or physics, and to
ask ourselves what the existence of such propositions logically
presupposes. What, for example, follows necessarily from the
fact that there can be judgments at all, or judgments concerning
space relations, or judgments affirming causal relations? There
can be no synthetic judgment without a synthetic mind, no
spatial judgment without a space-perceiving mind, no causal
judgment without a mind thinking in terms of cause and effect.
In employing this method Kant is, of course, employing human
reason with all its categories, he is taking for granted the possi-
bility and validity of knowledge, — that is, he is a dogmatist, —
but this does not disturb him, since it would be a " scandal,"
as he declares, if Hurne were right in denying the possibility
of knowledge. We should simply never get anywhere if the
competence of reason to examine itself had to be established be-
fore reason could undertake this task.
The problem, then, is : How are synthetic judgments a priori
possible in mathematics, physics, and metaphysics, or, How are
pure mathematics, pure physics, and pure metaphysics possible'!
Show how and why we can have genuine knowledge in these
fields. In order to answer such questions, we must examine the
organ of knowledge; we must consider its powers, its functions,
its possibilities, its limitations. Knowledge presupposes a mind
We cannot think without having something to think about, anc
we can have no object of thought unless it is given through th(
senses, unless the mind is receptive or has sensibility. Sensi
bility furnishes us with objects or percepts (Anschauungen, in
tuitions; empirical intuitions Kant sometimes calls them)
These objects must be thought, understood, or conceived by tht
IMMANUI L KANT 399
understanding; from it arise concepts. Knowledge would be
impossible without sensation or perception and thinking or
understanding. These two presuppositions of knowledge are
fundamentally different, but supplement each other. " Percepts
and concepts constitute the elements of all our knowledge."
Percepts without concepts are blind, concepts without percepts
are empty. All that the intellect can do is to elaborate what is
given by sensibility. Perhaps the two faculties have a common
root, but it is unknown to us.
The question, then, How is knowledge possible? divides into
two questions : How is sense-perception possible ? and How is un-
derstanding possible? The first question is answered in the
Transcendental ^Esthetic (doctrine of the faculty of perception),
the second in the Transcendental Logic (doctrine of concepts
and judgments). These together form the Transcendental Doc-
trine of Elements.
Let us take up, first, the Transcendental ^Esthetic. What are
the logical preconditions of the faculty of sensibility or of sense-
perception? In order to perceive, we must have
sensations (color, sound, hardness, etc.). But Theory of
mere sensation would not be knowledge ; sensation Perception
would be a mere modification of consciousness, a
mere change occurring in consciousness, a mere subjective state
produced in us by something else. Sensation must be referred
to space and time, to a definite place in space and in time; it
must be perceived as something outside, by the side of other
things, as something coming before or after or with something
else. Our sensations are arranged in a spatial and temporal
order. Perception, therefore, presupposes matter or content
(sensations) and form (space and time). Sensations constitute
the raw material (colors, sounds, weight), which is arranged by
sensibility into the framework or form of space and time, and
so become percepts. The soul not only receives sensations, but
by virtue of its faculty of intuition (intueri: to look at, en-
visage) perceives them: it sees the color, hears the sound, out-
side of itself, in space, and in a time-order. Sensibility possesses
the power to perceive space and time a priori; indeed, the mind
is so constituted that it perceives space and time even when there
are no objects present; it not only perceives objects in space
400 MODERN 1 HILOSOPHY
and time but space and time themselves. In this sense, we can
speak of pure perception.
The functions or forms of arranging sensations in space and
time cannot themselves be sensations. They are not empirical
or a posteriori forms of intuition, but inherent in the very nature
of the soul, — a priori. Time is the form of the inner sense : that
is, our psychic states cannot be apprehended otherwise than as
following one another in temporal succession; while space is
the form of the outer sense: we can apprehend spatially only
what affects our sense-organs. But since everything given or
presented to sense is a modification of consciousness and so be-
longs to the inner sense, time is a necessary condition of all
ideas (Vorstellungen) or phenomena.
Space and time are not realities or things existing for them-
selves, nor are they qualities or relations belonging to things
as such. They are ways our sensibility has of apprehending
objects, they are forms or functions of the senses ; if there were
no beings in the world endowed with the intuition or perception
of space and time, the world would cease to be spatial and tem-
poral. " Take away the thinking subject and the entire cor-
poreal world will vanish, for it is nothing but the appearance
in the sensibility of our subject." We can never imagine that
there is no space, although we can conceive that it contains
no objects. That is, we are compelled to perceive and imagine
in terms of space. Space is a necessary precondition of phe-
nomena and hence a necessary a priori idea. This is an example
of Kant's transcendental or metaphysical method, as he calls it.
We cannot think things without space ; we can think space with-
out things ; hence space is the necessary precondition of our ideas
of things, or of the phenomenal world. Whatever is a necessary
precondition must be an a priori form of the mind. The same
remarks apply to time.
The question, then, How is pure mathematics possible? is
answered: we have genuine knowledge, or synthetic judgments
a priori, or self-evident truths, in mathematics because the mind
has space and time forms, because it is by nature compelled to
perceive and imagine in spatial and temporal ways.
But, remember, space and time are merely conditions of sensi-
bility, forms of sense-perception, ways we have of perceiving
IMMANUEL KANT 401
things, hence they have validity only when applied to perceived
things, to appearances or phenomena, not when applied to things-
in-themselves or to things independent of our perception of
them. We cannot apply them outside of our world of ideas.
But this leaves the certainty of our experiential knowledge
untouched; knowledge is secure whether space and time inhere
in things-in-themselves or are merely the necessary forms of our
perception of things. The things we perceive are not things-
in-themselves, as which we regard them, nor are the relations
we perceive the relations of things-in-themselves. If we should
take away the subject, or only sensibility, all the qualities and
all the relations of things in space and time, indeed space and
time themselves, would disappear. They could no longer exist
as phenomena-in-themselves, — that is, we should no longer refer
our sensations outward, — but only as sensations in us, as modifi-
cations of our consciousness. What things-in-themselves are
apart from sensibility; what it is that causes sensations in us,
what it is independently of its effect on our sense-organs, we
do not know. When a thing strikes the eye, we have color;
when the ear, sound; and so on. All these are sensations in
us; what the thing as such (das Ding an sick) is apart from
the effect produced on consciousness, we do not know. We know
only our peculiar way of perceiving such things, a way that may
not be necessary for all creatures though it is necessary for man.
In this sense, space and time are subjective or ideal. They are
real or objective, however, in the sense that all our phenomena
are arranged in spatial and temporal order: no object can ever
be given to us in experience that does not come under the con-
dition of time; and all objects as external phenomena will al-
ways be coextensive in space.
To sum up. Real knowledge, as we human beings have it,
would be impossible if it were not for several things. The mind
must have something presented to it, it must be capable of being
affected, or of receiving impressions. But if we merely received
impressions or experienced modifications of consciousness, we
should be shut up in our own subjectivity, we should not per-
ceive an objective world. Our sensations must be objectified,
referred outward, projected into space, as it were, — arranged in
a spatial and temporal order. It is only because the human
402 MODERN PHILOSOPHY
mind possesses these ways of perceiving, that there can be an
objective world as we perceive it.
This, however, is not enough. Mere unrelated, disconnected
percepts would not be knowledge. The mere perception of ob-
jects in space and time would not yield knowl-
Theory of edge. The mere perception of the sun followed by
standing^" *^e Perception of a hot stone is not the same as
knowing that the sun heats the stone. Only by
connecting these two experiences in thought in a certain way,
can I form the judgment that the sun is the cause of heat in
the stone. Objects must be connected, related, conceived, or
thought. Knowledge or judgment would be impossible without
a synthetic, thinking mind, that is, without understanding
(Verstand) or intelligence. Reason is not only receptive, but
active, spontaneous. Intuition is perceptual, understanding con-
ceptual : it thinks in concepts. We must make our percepts in-
telligible, or bring them under concepts, as well as make our
concepts sensible, or give them an object in perception. The
understanding by itself cannot intuit or perceive anything; the
senses by themselves cannot think anything. Knowledge is pos-
sible only in the union of the two. The science of the rules
of sensibility is called Esthetic; the science of the rules of the
understanding is called Logic.
The understanding has different forms of conceiving or re-
lating or connecting percepts; they are called pure concepts
or categories of the understanding, because they are a priori
and not derived from experience. The understanding expresses
itself in judgment; indeed, understanding is a faculty of judg-
ment: to think is to judge. Hence, its ways of conceiving will
be ways of judging, and to discover these ways of judgment
we must analyze our judgments, examine the forms in which
they appear. Since our common logic has already done this
for us, we can go to it for help here. The logical table of judg-
ments will serve as a guide to the discovery of the categories.
There are as many pure concepts of the mind, or categories,
as there are possible judgments in the table of judgments. The
part of logic which deals with this subject is called Transcen-
dental Analytic.
Kant finds that there are twelve kinds of judgments: (1) the
IMMANUEI- KANT 405
universal judgment (All met8 that whatever they may be, the
ticular judgment (Some planting to its necessary rules,
gular judgment (Napoleon was-h are intellectual, be applied to
judgments we conceive things i^a? Pure concepts and sense-
tity : totality, plurality, unity. ^ar> or heterogeneous, according
(Heat is a form of motion) ; (5^t them together? There must
is not extended) ; (6) the unlink idea between the pure con-
tended). These express the cate something that is pure (with-
tion, limitation. (7) The categc:ne same time, sensuous. This
heavy) ; (8) the hypothetical ^(dental schema, which is used
the thermometer rises) ; (9) the *• The employment of such
substance is either solid or fluid), ^understanding. The time-
category of relation : inherence and sJt is both pure and sensu-
accident), causality and dependence (cautime-form, — that is, all
munity (reciprocity between the active arie' they take place in
The problematical judgment (This may be <?e sensibility at all,
assertory judgment (This is a poison) ; (12) ftem, it must make
ment (Every effect must have a cause). Thes^cepts, its cate-
press the category of modality: possibility or iiL.by means
existence or non-existence, necessity or contingency. ;n time-
The problem arises, What right have we to apply these fo
of the mind to things ? What is their objective validity ? T
have a purely mental origin and yet they are em-
ployed in experience. We read our categories,
which are independent of experience in the sense
of not being derived from experience, into experience, into
world of objects. How is that possible; what right have we to
do it? Jurists call the proof of rights and claims in a legal
process the deduction. What we need here is a deduction or
proof or justification, a transcendental deduction of the cate-
gories. Kant's proof consists in showing that without them in-
telligent experience would be impossible. There could be no
knowledge, no connected world of experience, without such origi-
nal a priori acts of thought, without a unified and unifying
consciousness or self-consciousness, or the synthetic unity of
apperception, as Kant calls it, which operates with these cate-
gories. Understanding is judgment, the act of bringing together
in one self -consciousness (unity of apperception) the many per-
ceived objects. Without a rational mind that perceives in cer-
402 MODERN PHILOSOPHY
mind possesses these ways of perd judges or thinks in certain
objective world as we perceive it. <nized by nature (a priori) that
This, however, is not enough, it does, there could be no uni-
percepts would not be knowledge^ objects of experience. Knowl-
jects in space and concepts of the understanding,
Theory of edge. The mere pe^d us by the senses and perceived
standing^" the perception of Jgories serve to make experience
knowing that the ification.
connecting these two experienrrception of the freezing of water,
can I form the judgment thp-sible unless the mind apprehended
the stone. Objects must b'-O as related in time and connected
thought. Knowledge or ju<^ught. The same synthetic unity of
a synthetic, thinking necessary in order that we may have
(Ver stand] or intellige^m order that we may have perception,
active, spontaneous. Jy apprehend. The same spontaneous acts
ceptual : it thinks in reduction, and imagination that operate in
telligible, or brincrate in sense-experience; and the same cate-
concepts sensib^ork in them both. Our world of experience is
understandable by the categories; the phenomenal order, or
senses >* as we perceive it, depends on the forms of our intelli-
, -gence, not vice versa, as the empiricists hold. This is what Kant
• means when he says that the understanding prescribes its laws
| to nature; this is the Copernican revolution which he intro-
' duced into philosophy.
Since, then, the mind prescribes its laws to nature, it follows
that we can know a priori the universal forms of nature. We
can know that the perceived world will always be connected in
certain intelligible ways, that our experiences will always be of
spatial and temporal things in fixed order, of things related
as substance and accident, cause and effect, and as reciprocally
influencing one another. We cannot, therefore, go wrong in
applying the categories to the world of sense. But, let it not
be forgotten, they can be legitimately employed only in the field
of actual or possible experience, only in the phenomenal world ;
their use is not valid outside of this sphere; we cannot tran-
scend experience or have conceptual knowledge of the supersensu-
ous, of things-in-themselves. It also follows from this theory
that we cannot know a priori the matter or contents of experi-
ence, what particular sensations (colors, sounds, weight, etc.)
IMMANUEL KANT 405
will be given; all we can say is that whatever they may be, the
mind will organize them according to its necessary rules.
But how can categories, which are intellectual, be applied to
percepts, to sensible phenomena? Pure concepts and sense-
percepts are absolutely dissimilar, or heterogeneous, according
to Kant; how, then, can we get them together? There must
be a third something, a mediating idea between the pure con-
cepts and the sense-perceptions, something that is pure (with-
out anything empirical) and, at the same time, sensuous. This
something Kant calls the transcendental schema, which is used
to connect or relate our experiences. The employment of such
a schema is the schematism of the understanding. The time-
form fills the requirements laid down : it is both pure and sensu-
ous. All our ideas are subject to the time-form, — that is, all
our experiences are ordered by us in time: they take place in
time. Hence, if the intellect is to influence sensibility at all,
if it is to relate sense-experiences or connect them, it must make
use of the time-form. It tries to image its concepts, its cate-
gories, its uniform ways of connecting and relating, by means
of the pure time-form, that is, to imagine them in certain time-
relations. For example, it successively adds one to one, or con-
siders time as a series of homogeneous moments, thus getting
number. This operation of numbering, adding one to one, is
the schema of the category of quantity, — this category expressed
in the form of time. One moment of time expresses singularity ;
several moments express particularity; all, or the totality of
moments, universality. The category of quantity is expressed
in the schema of time-series. The intellect also imagines sensa-
tions occurring in time, a content in time, something in time,
or it imagines nothing in time. This is its way of picturing to
itself the category of quality : the concept of quality is expressed
in the schema of time-content. The intellect looks upon the
real in time, the content, as something that remains when every-
thing else changes. This is the way it imagines the category of
substance. It considers the real as something upon which some-
thing else invariably follows in time: this is its way of making
perceivable the category of causality. Or it regards the quali-
ties of one substance and the qualities of another as invariably
appearing together in time : this is its way of imaging the cate-
406 MODERN PHILOSOPHY
gory of reciprocal action. The categories of substance, causality,
and reciprocal action are expressed in the schema of time-order
(permanence, succession, simultaneity). Or it thinks of some-
thing as existing at any time (category of possibility), at a
definite time (actuality), at all times (necessity). The cate-
gories of possibility, actuality, and necessity are expressed in
the schema of time-comprehension.
As has been pointed out, we cannot transcend our experi-
ence or have a priori knowledge of the supersensible, of things-
in-themselves, of things as they are apart from
Knowledge the way they affect consciousness. Knowledge im-
Themselv^s11" P^es Perception, and things-in-themselves cannot
be perceived by the senses : in sense-perception only
the way they appear to consciousness is made known. Nor can
they be perceived or intuited by the intellect ; we do not possess
intellectual intuition, we cannot see things face to face, at one
glance, in the mind's eye, as it were; the intellect is discursive,
not intuitive. If we apply categories to such a thing-in-itself,
we cannot justify them : we cannot prove, for example, that
everything that exists exists as a substance in an intelligible
world. We can, however, think such a thing-in-itself, speak of
it as something to which none of the predicates of sense-
perception applies; say that it is not in space or in time, that
it does not change, and so on. Not a single category, however,
can be applied to it, because we have no means of knowing
whether anything corresponding to it exists. We should never
know whether anything existed corresponding to the notion of
substance if perception did not furnish us with a case in which
the category is applied. In the case of the thing-in-itself, how-
ever, perception leaves us in the lurch.
The notion of a thing-in-itself is unknowable. But it is not
a contradictory concept, for we surely cannot maintain that
the phenomenal order is the only possible form of perception.
We can have sensible knowledge only of sensible things, not of
things-in-themselves ; the senses cannot presume to know every-
thing the intellect thinks. The concept of the thing-in-itself, or
noumenon, as something not knowable by the senses (but the
possibility of knowing which in intellectual intuition is think-
able) is, therefore, a limiting concept; it says to the senses: here
IMMANUEL KANT 407
is your limit, you can go no further, here is where your
jurisdiction ceases. You can know only phenomena; the non-
phenomenal, the noumenal, the intelligible is beyond you.
I know things not as they are in themselves, but only as they
appear to me. Similarly, I do not know myself as I am, but
only as I appear to myself. I am conscious of my existence,
of my activity, of my spontaneity. But consciousness of oneself
is not knowledge of one's self. To know is to have percepts. I
do not perceive my self, my ego, nor do I possess an intellec-
tual intuition of my self; I see myself through the glasses of
perception, that is, through the time-form, as a succession of
states. But though I cannot know the ego in the sense of per-
ceiving it, I can think it. Indeed, Kant's whole theory of knowl-
edge is based on the thought of such an ego : the synthetic unity
of apperception is nothing but the self-conscious self. There
can be no knowledge without a self-conscious, unifying self; but
this self itself cannot be known in the sense of being perceived
directly.
We cannot, therefore, — that is now plain, — have universal and
necessary or a priori knowledge of anything non-perceivable.
Hence, we cannot have a metaphysic that transcends experience,
a metaphysic of things-in-themselves, a metaphysic that can
offer us genuine knowledge of a non-phenomenal world, — free
will, immortality, and God. But we can have a priori science
of the phenomenal order, for the reasons already mentioned.
Mathematics owes its necessity to the forms of space and time,
geometry being based on a priori space-perception, arithmetic
on the notion of number, which expresses a priori time-
perception. Natural science rests on the categories: in it we
speak of substance and accident, cause and effect, interaction,
and so forth. Hume and the empiricists are wrong. We can
have universal and necessary knowledge in mathematics and in
physics, but it is knowledge of phenomena only, and knowledge
only of the form and arrangement of phenomena. We cannot
know things-in-themselves; in this Hume is right. Things-in-
themselves, however, exist; indeed, they must exist, otherwise
sensation is unexplainable. Corresponding to phenomena there
must be something that appears, something extra mentem, some-
thing that affects our senses and supplies the matter of our
408 MODERN PHILOSOPHY
knowledge. Kant does not, for a moment, doubt the existence
of such a thing-in-itself. In the second edition of the Critique
he even proceeds to prove its existence (Refutation of Ideal-
ism). But, after his strong insistence that it exists and that it
is the ground of our sensations, he is compelled by the nature
of his system to make it a very uncertain and hazy factor. It
becomes a limiting concept, a kind of check to the pretensions
of sense-knowledge : we cannot know the supersensible by means
of the senses. Then, again, we are told that although we cannot
know it, we can think it: we can deny categories of it. Or we
can apply categories to it, but these categories have no objective
validity when so applied. Here was a problem which had to
be worked out, and to this Kant himself gave further atten-
tion and to this his successors addressed themselves with zeal, as
we shall see.
The aim of Kant was to show, first, against the " skeptic "
Hume, that we can have knowledge in mathematics and physics ;
second, against the Leibniz- Wolffian ' ' dogmatists, ' '
Impossibility that we cannot have knowledge of the super-
physics^ sensible in metaphysics, that metaphysics in this
sense is a pseudo-science.* To the second part of
his problem we now turn. The understanding can know only
what can be experienced; but reason strives to go beyond the
confines of the understanding, and attempts to conceive the
supersensible, that for which we have no object in perception,
that which is merely thought. It confuses percepts with mere
thought, and in this way falls into all kinds of ambiguities,
equivocations, false inferences, and contradictions. That is what
happens in the metaphysics of the transcendent. Questions
which have a meaning when asked with respect to our world
of experience have none when we transcend phenomena. No-
tions like cause and effect, substance and accident, which are
perfectly legitimate when applied to the phenomenal order, have
no meaning when transferred to a noumenal world. Meta-
* There are, however, several senses in which he regards metaphysics as
possible: (1) as a study of the theory of knowledge; (2) as absolute
knowledge of the forms and laws of nature; (3) as absolute knowledge of
the laws or forms of the will, i.e., as moral philosophy; (4) as knowledge
of the spiritual world, based on the moral law; (5) as a hypothesis of the
Hniverse, having a certain degree of probability.
IMMANUEL KANT 409
physics too often forgets this, confusing phenomena with nou-
mena, and so comes to predicate of the transcendent, concepts
which are valid only in our world of sense. In this way it
falls into error and illusion, which, as involving principles of
the understanding, Kant calls transcendental illusion. He calls
the principles which are applied within the confines of pos-
sible experience immanent principles, those which transcend
these limits transcendent principles, or concepts of reason, or
Ideas. It is an inevitable illusion of reason to mistake our
subjective principles, which apply to sensations, for objective
principles, and to apply them to things-in-themselves. It is
the business of Transcendental Dialectics to discover the illu-
sion of such transcendent judgments and to prevent such illusion
from deceiving us. It cannot, however, destroy the illusion,
for the illusion is natural and inevitable; we may see through
it and avoid being deceived by it, but we cannot get rid of it.
A careful examination of the arguments of metaphysics will
reveal a lot of logical fallacies, equivocations, nonsequiturs, and
contradictions. As we saw before, the understanding is the
name given to the faculty of the mind, or reason in general,
which connects our experiences in uniform ways, according to
rules or principles, thus furnishing us with many judgments.
These judgments may, in turn, be embraced under more com-
prehensive a priori concepts. The faculty of the mind which
is engaged in this work is Reason as a faculty of subsuming
the rules of the understanding under higher principles. Rea-
son (Vernunft), in this sense, aims at a unification of judg-
ments of the understanding. But such higher principles are
merely subjective laws of economy for the understanding, striv-
ing to reduce the use of concepts to the smallest possible number.
This supreme Reason does not prescribe laws to objects nor does
it explain our knowledge of them.
Thus, Reason strives to bring all mental processes under
a general head, or Idea of a soul, in rational psychology; all
physical events under the Idea of nature in rational cosmology ;
all occurrences in general under the Idea of a God in rational
theology. The notion of God would, therefore, be the highest
Idea, the highest unity, the one absolute Whole compivhonding
everything else. Such Ideas, however, are transcendent, beyond
410 MODERN PHILOSOPHY
experience : they have no empirical value or use. Thus, we can
never represent the Idea of an absolute Totality in the form
of an image ; it is a problem without a solution. Yet these Ideas
have their value and use as guides to the understanding, they
lead it onward in its pursuit of knowledge.
(a) Rational Psychology. Thus, it is legitimate to conclude
that there can be no knowledge unless there is a subject, self,
or knower, unless thoughts come together in a single conscious-
ness, and unless the self that thinks the subject is the same
self that thinks the predicate, in a judgment. But we have no
right to infer that this knower is a self-existent, simple, inde-
composable self-identical soul-substance, one that remains the
same in all change. In reasoning thus, rational psychology
draws conclusions not warranted by the premises; it uses the
terms (self or subject and soul) in different senses, and is
guilty of a fallacy, which Kant calls a paralogism. We cannot
prove, theoretically, the existence of free will and an immortal
soul. Still, although rational psychology does not add anything
to our knowledge, it prevents us from adopting either a soul-
less materialism or a groundless spiritualism. Reason here gives
us a hint to turn from fruitless speculations and to put our self-
knowledge to moral use. The moral law teaches man to esteem
the mere consciousness of righteousness more than anything
else in the world, and to render himself fit to become the citizen
of a better world, which exists in his Idea only.
(b) Rational Cosmology. Reason also tries to reduce the
objective conditions of all our phenomena to an ultimate and
supreme condition, or an unconditioned. We form the Idea
of nature as a whole, the Idea of a universe, and either conceive
this as the principle on which all phenomena depend, or we
seek the unconditioned among the phenomena themselves. In
either case we form cosmological Ideas, and involve ourselves
in all kinds of antitheses, which Kant calls antinomies: sophis-
tical propositions which can neither hope for confirmation not*
need fear refutation from experience. The thesis is free from
contradiction and is rooted in the necessity of reason, but, un-
fortunately, the antithesis can produce equally cogent and nec-
essary grounds for its support.
There are four such antinomies in which both the thesis and
IMMANUEL KANT 411
he antithesis can be proved. It can be proved (1) that the
vorld has a beginning in time, and that it has no beginning
n time, or is eternal ; that it is limited in space, and that it is
inlimited in space; (2) that bodies are infinitely divisible, and
hat they are not infinitely divisible, that there are simple parts
n them, which cannot be further divided (atoms) ; (3) that
here is freedom in the world, and that everything in the world
akes place according to the laws of nature ; (4) that there ex-
sts an absolutely necessary Being belonging to the world, either
,s part or as cause of it ; and that there is no such Being, either
rithin or without the world, as the cause of it. In preferring
me side to the other, the participants do not consult the logical
est of truth, but only their own interest. Every right-thinking
oan has a certain practical interest in the thesis, or dogmatism,
f he knows his true interests. That the world has a begin-
ting, that my thinking self is simple and imperishable, that
t is free and not subject to the compulsion of nature, that the
phole order of things, which constitutes the world, springs from
n original Being whence everything receives its unity and pur-
>oseful connection, — these are so many supports of ethics and
•eligion. The antithesis, or empiricism, robs us, or seems to
•ob us, of all these supports. If there is no original Being dif-
'erent from the world ; if the world is without a beginning and,
herefore, without a Creator; if our will is not free, and our
oul is divisible and perishable like matter, our moral Ideas and
>rinciples lose all validity and fall with the transcendental Ideas
vhich form their theoretic support.
There is also a speculative interest involved. For if we
Assume the transcendental Ideas in the thesis, we can conceive
\ priori the whole chain of conditions and the derivation of the
londitioned by beginning with the unconditioned. The an-
ithesis does not accomplish this. Yet, if the empiricist were
atisfied with putting down presumption and rashness, his prin-
iple would serve to teach moderation in claims. We should not
>e deprived of our own intellectual presumptions or our faith
n their influence on our practical interests. They would merely
lave lost the pompous titles of science and rational insight, be-
lause true speculative knowledge can never have any other ob-
ject than experience. But empiricism itself becomes dogmatic
412 MODERN PHILOSOPHY
and boldly denies what goes beyond the sphere of intuitive
knowledge, which does irreparable injury to the practical inter-
ests of reason.
Kant solves the difficulties involved in the antinomies by
pointing out that the antithesis holds for the phenomenal world,
and the thesis for the noumenal world. Our sense-perceived,
spatial-temporal world has no first beginning in time and no
extreme limit in space. We never experience absolute limits;
we can never stop anywhere in the regressus of time or in the
progressus of space. But there may be a non-spatial world in
which absolutely simple beings exist, a world of spiritual en-
tities. It does not follow that because a limit is impossible in
the one world, it is also impossible in the other. For all we
know, the true world may have had a beginning, have been
created by God, and be limited. Still, we have no right to search
for spiritual beings in space and for spatial things in the super-
sensible realm.
In the same way, the causal antimony is solved. In the phe-
nomenal series, everything is conditioned by something like it,
every effect has a phenomenal cause ; no breach is possible in
the causal nexus. It is our business to go right on in the chain
ad infinitum. Still, it is conceivable that a phenomenal condi-
tion has also an intelligible or noumenal condition, that there is
something outside of the phenomenal series on which the phe-
nomenally conditioned depends. It is settled by the nature of
our intelligence that we shall never find a free cause in the
sense-world, hence we cannot derive the Idea of freedom from
experience. It is a transcendental Idea because reason creates
it independently of experience. It is easy to see, however, that
if all causality in the world of sense were merely natural cau-
sality, every event would be necessarily determined by some
other event, every act would be a necessary natural effect oi
some phenomenon in nature. The denial of transcendental free-
dom, of spontaneity, would destroy practical or moral freedom.
Practical freedom presupposes that although something did not
happen, it ought to have happened, hence that its phenomenal
cause was not absolutely determining, that our will could have
produced it independently of its natural causes and even con-
trary to their power and influence. If transcendental freedom
IMMANUEL KANT 413
is possible, practical freedom is possible : the will may be inde-
pendent of the coercion of sensuous impulses, not necessitated
as is the will of the brute.
In such a way freedom and natural necessity could be recon-
ciled. We can regard the phenomena as caused by the thing-in-
itself, the intelligible cause, which is not perceived, but whose
acts, the phenomena, are perceived and arranged in the unbroken
causal series. One and the same phenomenon, looked at as part
of the phenomenal world of space and time, would then be a link
in a causal chain ; looked at as the act of the non-perceived thing-
in-itself, it would be the act of a free cause, which originates
its effects in the world of sense by itself. On the one side, the
event would be an effect of nature only; on the other, an effect
of freedom. In other words, this effect is a phenomenon and
must have an empirical cause, but this empirical cause itself can
be the effect of a non-empirical cause, or intelligible cause, or
free cause, without breaking, in the least, its connection with
natural causes.
Applying this teaching to man, we would have the following
result. Looked at through the spectacles of sense and under-
standing, man is a part of nature; in this sense he has an
empirical character, he is a link in a chain of causes and effects.
But in reality man is an intelligible or spiritual being. To such
a being the sense-forms do not apply ; such a being can originate
acts. And man is aware of this power, in that he holds him-
self responsible. Whenever we think of an act as a phenomenon,
we cannot regard it as beginning by itself, it must have a cause.
We cannot, however, regard reason in that way, we cannot say
that the state in which reason determined the will was preceded
by another state, and so on. For reason is not a phenomenon,
and therefore not subject to any of the conditions of sensibility
(time, space, causality). Hence, we cannot interpret its cau-
sality in the natural way, that is, expect a cause for everything
it does. Reason, or the intelligible, or man as he is in himself,
is the permanent condition of all his voluntary acts. The em-
pirical character is only the sensuous schema of the intellectual
character, that is, the way we image man, phenomenalize
trim.
This shows Kant's meaning clearly. Every voluntary act is
414 MODERN PHILOSOPHY
the direct effect of the intelligible character, of pure reason;
hence, man is a free agent, he is not a link in the chain of
natural causes. Yet the act itself, when looked at as a phe-
nomenon, is absolutely determined. The man in himself is a
free agent, he originates acts ; but when these acts are perceived
by a mind, that mind weaves them into a web of causes, puts
something before them and after them, makes them the effects
of particular impulses, ideas, education, natural disposition, and
so on. But the real cause of the act is reason; the action is
imputed to the man's intelligible character, which shows that
we imagine that reason is not affected at all by the influences
of the senses, and that it does not change.
In the Critique of Pure Reason, however, Kant does not aim
to establish the reality of freedom or even to prove the possi-
bility of freedom. He simply wishes to point out that rea-
son creates the Idea that it can begin, absolutely, a causal
series and, at the same time, prescribes laws of causality to
the understanding, or involves itself in an antinomy; and to
prove that nature does not contradict the Idea of free cau-
sality.
The antinomy of necessary Being and contingent being Kant
solves thus. The intellect refuses to regard anything as neces-
sary or independent within the phenomenal series; everything
is contingent or accidental, that is, depends on something else.
But this would not be denying that the whole series may depend
on some intelligible Being, which is free, independent of all
empirical conditions, and itself the ground of the possibility
of all these phenomena. We can regard the whole world of
sense as the expression of some intelligible Being, which is
the substance, the necessary Being without which nothing ca:i
exist, and which needs nothing in order that it may exist. The
intellect must not say that because the intelligible is useless i:i
explaining phenomena, it is, therefore, impossible. Such ;i
Being may be impossible, but it does not follow from what we
have found to be true of the understanding, that it is impossible.
When we are speaking of phenomena, we must speak in terms
of seiise, but that is not necessarily the only way of looking
at things; we can conceive of another order of existence, of an
order of things-in- themselves, of non-sensuous thought-thing!;,
IMMANUEL KANT 415
of things not as they appear to the senses, but as we can think
them. We are bound to assume something intelligible on which
phenomena depend, but we know nothing of such objects; all
we can do is to form some kind of notion of them, conceive
them by analogy with the ways in which we use concepts of
experience.
(c) Rational Theology. We form the Idea of an empirical
whole, of a whole of experience, and we conceive this system
of objects, this universe of things, or phenomena, as something
existing apart from us. We forget that it is our Idea, and so
make an entity of it. We represent it as an individual thing,
containing in itself all reality: as the most real thing, as the
highest reality, all-sufficient, eternal, and simple. This idea
Kant calls the ideal of a transcendental theology. The ideal of
the most real Being, however, is a mere Idea. First we make
an object of it, that is, a phenomenal object, then we make an
entity of it, and then we personify it.
There are only three proofs for the existence of God, the
physico-theological, the cosmological, and the ontological, all of
which are worthless. To take the ontological argument: The
conception of a Being that contains all reality does not imply
existence. Existence does not follow from the notion of the
most real being: here we spin out of an entirely arbitrary Idea
the existence of an object corresponding to it. In the Cosmo-
logical proof, we conclude from the Idea of all possible experi-
ence (world or cosmos) the existence of a necessary Being. God
alone can be conceived as such a Being. We have no right, how-
ever, to conclude that because we think there must be an abso-
lute Being, such a Being exists. This is really the ontological
proof over again. Moreover, the argument concludes from the
accidental or contingent to a cause. Such an inference has no
meaning outside of the phenomenal world, but in the cosmological
proof it is used to transcend experience, which is forbidden.
Kant points out that the argument contains a nest of dialectical
assumptions. It may be permissible to assume the existence of
God as the cause of all possible effects, in order to assist reason
in the search for the unity of causes, but to say such a Being
necessarily exists is not the modest language of legitimate hypoth-
esis, but the impudent assurance of apodictic certainty. The un-
416 MODERN PHILOSOPHY
conditional necessity, which we require as the last support of
things, is the true abyss of human reason.
The physico-theological argument infers the existence of a
Supreme Being from the nature and arrangement of the present
world. It, too, fails. The manifoldness, order, and beauty of
the world, it tells us, lead us to infer a cause of its origin and
continuance. Such a cause must possess a higher degree of
perfection than any possible experience of ours. What is to
prevent us from conceiving all possible perfection as united in
this Supreme Cause as in one single substance? The proof de-
serves respect; it is the oldest and clearest and most in con-
formity with human reason. It reveals purposes and ends in
nature, where our observation would not itself have detected
them. Nevertheless, we cannot approve of its claims to apodictic
certainty. It is an argument by analogy, inferring from the
similarity between natural products and works of human art
(houses, ships, clocks) that a similar causality, namely under-
standing and will, lies at the bottom of nature. If we must
name a cause, we cannot do better than to follow the analogy
of such products of human design, which are the only ones
of which we know completely both cause and effect. There
would be no excuse if reason were to surrender a causality
which it knows, and have recourse to obscure and indemonstrable
principles of explanation which it does not know. The argu-
ment, however, could, at best, establish a world-architect, who
would be much hampered by the quality of the material with
which he has to work, but not a world-creator to whose Idea
everything is subject. The physico-theological proof leads from
experience to the cosmological proof, which is merely the dis-
guised ontological proof. The ontological proof would be the
only possible proof if such a proof were possible at all.
Outside of the field of experience, the principle of causality
cannot be employed and has no meaning. Hence, unless we
make the moral laws the basis or are guided by them, we can
have no National theology. For, all synthetic principles of the
understanding are applicable immanently only, that is, in the
phenomenal realm ; to arrive at a knowledge of a Supreme Being,
we must use them transcendentally, and for this our under-
standing is not prepared. Even if we should allow the causal
'I
IMMANUEL KANT 417
leap beyond the limits of experience, we could not reach a con-
cept of a Supreme Being, because we never experience the
greatest of all possible effects from which to conclude the Supreme
Cause. Transcendental theology has an important negative use,
however ; it acts as a constant censor of our reason and removes
all atheistic or deistic or anthropomorphic assertions.
Though the transcendental Ideas produce an irresistible illu-
sion, they are as natural to reason as are the categories of the
understanding. The latter, however, convey truth,
i.e., agreement of our concepts with their objects. u^e of Meta-
Every faculty has its use, provided we can dis-
cover its right direction. The transcendental
Ideas have their immanent use ; but when they are mistaken for
concepts of real things, they are transcendent in their applica-
tion and deceptive. They have no constitutive use, that is, they
are not concepts of objects ; they have a regulative use, that is,
they direct the understanding to a certain aim: they unify the
manifoldness of concepts, just as the categories bring unity into
the manifoldness of objects. Through the Ideas reason aims
to systematize our knowledge, to connect it by means of one
principle. This systematic unity is merely logical; the reason
must keep on unifying; systematic unity is a method, it is
subjectively and logically necessary, as a method, not objectively
so. Many of the so-called scientific principles are Ideas, having
hypothetical value, but not absolute truth. We can know a priori
only the forms of reality, e.g., that it is spatial and temporal, that
things are causally related. But that there are fundamental
causes, or powers, or substances, or even one such power, or
cause, or substance, is a mere hypothesis. We cannot assert that
such unity exists, but we must always look for it, in the interest
of reason, in order to introduce order into our knowledge. Phi-
losophers assume that there is such unity in nature when they
say: " Principles should not be multiplied beyond necessity."
Some students of nature (preeminently speculative) are more
intent on the unity of nature, on discovering likeness in di-
versity; others (preeminently empirical) are constantly striving
to divide nature into species. The latter tendency is based on
a logical principle which aims at systematic completeness. Erery
genus has different species; these, different sub-species, and
418 MODERN PHILOSOPHY
so on. Keason demands that no species be regarded as the lowest
in itself. We have therefore the law of homogeneity and the
law of specification, which are not derived from experience.
Moreover, there are always intervening species possible between
the species and sub-species. This is the law of the continuity
of species : there is no transition from one to another per saltum,
by leaps, but only by smaller degrees of difference. This law
presupposes a transcendental law of nature (the law of con-
tinuity in nature), without which the understanding would only
be misled, by following, it may be, a path contrary to nature.
But this continuity of forms is, likewise, a mere Idea, no object
corresponding to it can be pointed out in experience ; the species
in nature are actually divided. The law just guides the under-
standing in general, it has no reference to any particular objects.
The two principles (unity and difference) can easily be com-
bined, but so long as we mistake them for objective knowledge,
they cause discord and even obstacles in the way of truth.
The Ideas have objective reality in a certain sense; not in
the sense that we can find anywhere in experience an object
corresponding to them : we cannot see anywhere a highest genus
or a lowest species or the infinite number of intervening
transition-species. They have objective reality in the sense that
the understanding is their object, and that they give rules to
this understanding. They outline the procedure or method for
understanding to follow; they say: keep on seeking for a high-
est genus, for a lowest species, and so on. In this way they
have an indirect effect on the objects of experience ; they bring
consistency into the functions of the understanding.
The only purpose of the Idea of a Supreme Being is to pre-
serve the greatest systematic unity in the empirical use of our
reason. The Idea of a ground or cause of the objects of our
experience helps us to organize our knowledge. The psycho-
logical, cosmological, and theological Ideas are not referred
directly to an object corresponding to them and its qualities,
yet by presupposing such an object in Idea we are led to
organize and extend our knowledge without ever contradicting
it. Hence, it is a necessary maxim of reason to proceed accord-
ing to such Ideas. In psychology, we must connect all inner
phenomena as if our soul were a simple substance existing
IMMANUEL KANT 419
permanently, and with personal identity (in this life, at least),
in order that we may unify our facts. In cosmology, we must
pursue the conditions of all natural phenomena (inner and
outer) in an investigation that can never be complete, as if
the series were infinite and had no first and highest member.
In theology, we must look at everything that may belong in
the connection of possible experience, as if that experience formed
an absolute unity (but yet a unity thoroughly dependent and al-
ways conditioned within the world of sense). At the same time,
also, we must look at it as if the totality of all phenomena
(the sense-world) had one supreme and all-sufficient ground
outside of it, namely an independent, original, and creative
reason. All this does not mean : derive the inner phenomena of
the soul from a simple thinking substance, but : derive these phe-
nomena from each other according to the Idea of a simple being :
that is, treat these phenomena in the usual scientific way, but
keep before your mind the Idea that there is unity in this body
of phenomena. It does not mean: derive from the highest in-
telligence the world-order and the systematic unity of the same,
but: use the Idea of a most wise Cause as a guide how best to
employ the reason in connecting causes and effects in the world,
for reason's own satisfaction.
These Ideas or principles, then, are not mere fictions of the
brain, but are highly useful, indeed necessary. We cannot think
of systematic unity without giving the Idea some object, without
objectifying it or realizing it, as it were. But no such object is
ever experienced, it is assumed problematically, — as a problem.
We assume a God so that we may have some ground on which
to fix the systematic unity, some focal point from which and
to which to proceed. The same thoughts apply to the Idea of
soul-substance. It is not to be regarded as a thing-in-itself,
an entity of which we can know anything, but as something on
which we can rest our thought, a kind of focal point to which
to refer all states of consciousness. If we take the Idea for
what it is, for a mere Idea, we shall not confuse empirical laws
of corporeal phenomena (which are totally different) with the
explanations of what belongs to the inner sense, we shall admit
no windy hypotheses of generation, extinotion, and palingeneni
of souls.
420 MODERN PHILOSOPHY
Human knowledge begins with percepts, proceeds to con-
cepts, and ends with Ideas. It has a priori sources of knowl-
edge with respect to all three elements. A complete criticism
shows that reason, in its speculative use, can never go beyond
the field of possible experience with respect to these elements.
Among the Ideas which reason applies in the contemplation
of nature is the Idea of purpose, or the teleological Idea. This
Idea Kant subjects to careful criticism in a sepa-
Use of rate Work called The Critique of Judgment, in
Nature^ ] which also the nature of aesthetic judgment is dis-
cussed. The understanding conceives every ex-
istent whole of nature solely as the effect of the concurrent
moving forces of its parts. In the case of organic bodies, how-
ever, the parts seem to depend on the whole, to be determined by
the form or plan or Idea of the whole. Every part is both a
means and an end and, in cooperating to make the whole pos-
sible, is determined by the Idea of the whole. Here, again,
we have an antinomy and a dialectic: — the thesis stating: the
creation of all material things is possible according to mechanical
laws ; the antithesis : the creation of some is not possible accord-
ing to mechanical laws. The contradiction is removed when we
take these propositions not as constitutive principles but as regu-
lative principles. In the latter sense, the first invites us to seek
for mechanical causes in material nature wherever it is possible ;
the second to search for final causes or purposes in certain cases
(and even in nature as a whole) where the mechanical explana-
tion does not seem to suffice. It does not follow from these
principles, if we interpret them thus, that certain natural prod-
ucts cannot be explained mechanically nor that they can be
explained by mechanical causality alone. Human reason will
never be able to discover a natural purpose by searching for
mechanical causes. It is not impossible that the physical-
mechanical series and the teleological series of the same things
may be united in one principle in the inner ground of nature
which is unknown to us. We are compelled by the constitution
of our reason, by our reflective judgment, as Kant here calls
it, to view the organic world as purposive ; but sense-experience
never discovers such a purpose nor do we possess any intel-
lectual intuition that might enable us to see it. We cannot
IMMANUEL KANT 421
assume a blind unconscious purpose, for this would be hylozoism,
which means the death of all natural philosophy; besides, we
never find such blind purposes in our experience ; the only kind
of purposes we know are the conscious purposes of man. Kant
repudiates vitalism ; we must either abandon the effort to deter-
mine the cause of the unity of the organism or conceive it as
an intelligent Being. The value of the teleological Idea consists
in guiding the investigator in the study of nature ; it helps him
to discover the purpose which an organ and the smallest part
of the body serve and by means of what efficient causes the result
or purpose is realized. The teleological interpretation of nature
is, therefore, an inevitable attitude of reason, aroused by the
contemplation of certain phenomenal forms, but it has no legiti-
mate use in experience except as a working-hypothesis or guiding
principle.
The final purpose of nature in arranging our reason is a moral
one. The whole interest of reason, whether speculative or prac-
tical, is centered on three questions: What can I
know? What ought I to do? What may I hope Practical Use
for? We can never have knowledge of the exist- of ,Riffason,
and Moral
ence of God, freedom, and immortality in the Theology
scientific sense of that term. The purely specu-
lative interest in these problems, however, is very small. Even
if all of them were proved, they would not help us to make
any discoveries in the field of natural science. They are of no
use to us in so far as knowledge is concerned; their real value
is practical, ethical. Now, our reason commands moral laws.
The moral laws are necessary. If they are, we can reason theo-
retically from them as premises in a necessary way. The law
tells me to act so that I will be deserving of happiness; this
is a necessary practical law. Since reason commands this, it
must follow, as a necessity of theoretical reason, that I may hope
for happiness. Morality and happiness are inseparably con-
nected, but they are connected in Idea only. Now, if God is
the author of the natural order, it is possible to hope that this
natural order is also a moral order, or rather that in such a
natural order happiness will accompany morality. Our reason
compels us to regard ourselves as belonging to a moral world-
order, in which happiness and morality are connected. But the
422 MODERN PHILOSOPHY
world of sense shows nothing but phenomena, in which such a
connection is not revealed. Therefore, we shall have to assume
a future world in which the connection does exist. God, there-
fore, and a future life are two presuppositions which, accord-
ing to the principles of pure reason, cannot be separated from
the obligation (moral law) which reason imposes upon us.
Moral theology inevitably leads to the concept of a single all-
perfect and rational original Being. This Being must be om-
nipotent, so that all nature and its relation to morality can be
subject to him; omniscient, so that he may know the innermost
disposition and its moral worth; omnipresent, that he may be
immediate to all the needs which the highest good of the world
requires ; eternal, that this harmony of nature and freedom may
never be absent. If the world is to harmonize with what our
practical reason, our moral use of reason, demands, it must be
regarded as derived from an Idea, the Idea of the highest good.
Our practical reason demands the union of virtue and happiness ;
this cannot be unless we look upon the world as having a moral
purpose, — a moral Being behind it that realizes the purpose. In
this way speculative reason and practical reason become united.
And in this way, the study of nature tends to assume the form
of a teleological system, and to become physico-theology. In
other words, we are led to teleology and God through the
moral law.
Pure reason, therefore, in its practical employment, that is,
as moral reason, connects a knowledge, — which mere speculation
can only conjecture, but not guarantee, — with our highest prac-
tical interest. It thereby makes it not a demonstrated dogma,
but an absolutely necessary presupposition for its essential
purposes.
Kant's moral philosophy, which he presents in his Grund-
legung zur Metaphysik def Sitten, Kritik der praktischen
Vernunft, and Metaphysik der Sitten, may be re-
garded as an attempt to judge the quarrel between
intuitionism and empiricism, idealism and hedonism. His fun-
damental problem is to discover the meaning of goodness, right
and wrong, or duty, and the implications of our moral knowl-
edge; how shall we define duty and what follows from man's
moral nature?
IMMANUEL KANT 423
Rousseau had taught him that nothing is absolutely good
in this world or out of it except a good will. A will is good
when it is determined by respect for the moral law, or the con-
sciousness of duty. An act that is done from inclination, say
from self-love or even sympathy, is not moral; to be that, it
must be done in the face of such impulses, from sheer
respect for law. Moreover, the Tightness or wrongness of
an act does not depend on its effects or consequences; it is
immaterial whether happiness or perfection results, so long
as the motive of the agent is good. Pure respect for the
law is the sublime test. The sentimental morality of " the vol-
unteers of duty " was as distasteful to Kant as the utility-
ethics. The moral law is a categorical imperative ; it commands
categorically, unconditionally; it does not say: Do this if you
would be happy or successful or perfect, but : Do it because it is
your duty to do it (duty for duty's sake). It does not concern
itself with particular acts or even with general rules, but lays
down a fundamental principle : Always act so that you can will
the maxim or determining principle of your action to become
universal law; act so that you can will that everybody shall
follow the principle of your action. This law is a sure test
of what is right and wrong. For example, you cannot will that
everybody should make lying promises, for if everybody did,
nobody would believe anybody, and lying promises would defeat
themselves. A rational being cannot really will a contradiction,
and it would be a contradiction to will a lying promise. Nor
can such a being will to disregard the welfare of others, for if
such conduct became universal, he himself might some day be
treated inhumanly, and he could not will to be a member of
such an inhuman society.
This law or categorical imperative is a universal and neces-
sary law, a priori, inherent in reason itself. It is present in the
commonest man ; though he may not be clearly conscious of it,
it governs his moral judgments; it is his standard or criterion
of right and wrong. Implied in this law, or rather identical
with it, is another law: Act so as to treat humanity, whether
in thine own person or in that of any other, in every case as
an end withal and never as a means. Every man conceives his
own existence as an end in itself, as having worth, and must
424 MODERN PHILOSOPHY
therefore regard the existence of every rational creature in the
same way. Here we have the humanitarian ideal which was
preached by the Stoics and primitive Christianity, and which
played such an important role in the ethical and political theories
of the eighteenth century.
The rational will, therefore, imposes upon itself universal
laws, laws that hold for all and are acceptable to all. If every-
body obeyed the law of reason, a society of rational beings would
result, a kingdom of ends, as Kant calls it, a society organized
by rational purposes. The categorical imperative, in other
words, implicitly commands a perfect society ; the ideal of a ra-
tional realm of spirits is necessarily implied in it. Therefore,
every rational being ought to act as if he were by his maxims,
his universal principles, a legislating member of a universal king-
dom of ends. He is both sovereign and subject: he lays down
the law and acknowledges the law. By virtue of his moral na-
ture, he is a member of a spiritual kingdom ; in recognizing the
authority of the law over him, he recognizes the ideal world as
the highest good. +-~z~
A man who is governed by the moral law and not by his im-
pulses, his selfish desires, his appetites, is free. The brute is
the play-ball of its wants and instincts; through the knowl-
edge of the moral law within him, man can resist his sensuous
appetites, all of which aim at selfish pleasure. And because he
can suppress his sense-nature he is free: he ought, therefore he
can. The moral imperative is the expression of man's real self,
of the very principle of his being. It is his innermost self that
expresses itself in the moral law; the moral law is his com-
mand, the command of every rational being. He imposes the
law upon himself : this is his autonomy.
The fact of the moral imperative indicates the freedom of the
will. If it were not for our moral nature, or practical reason,
a proof of free will would be out of the question. Our ordi-
nary scientific knowledge deals with the appearances of things,
with the spatial-temporal order, and in this everything is ar-
ranged according to necessary laws : the occurrences in the phe-
nomenal world are absolutely determined, as we have seen. If
this temporal, spatial, and causal order were the real world,
freedom would be impossible. But Kant teaches that the world
IMMANUEL KANT 425
as it appears to our senses is not the real world. Hence free-
dom is possible. But whether it is actual or not, we should never
know if it were not for the moral law which points us to a time-
less, spaceless universe, to the intelligible world of free beings.
In other words, the moral consciousness of man, his knowledge
of right and wrong, gives him an insight into a realm that is
different from the world of matter presented to the senses.
The moral consciousness implies the freedom of the will. It
also implies the existence of God and the immortality of the
soul, which notions the Critique of Pure Reason had shattered
as scientifically demonstrable dogmas, but had left as possibili-
ties. The moral proof for the existence of God runs as follows.
The categorical imperative commands an absolutely good will,
a virtuous will, a holy will. Reason tells us that such a will
is deserving of happiness : a good man ought to be happy ; hence,
the highest good must consist in virtue and happiness, for vir-
tue without happiness would not be a complete good. But
virtue and happiness do not go together in this world, the vir-
tuous man does not necessarily achieve happiness. Reason tells
us there ought to be a Being who apportions happiness accord-
ing to desert. In order to do this, such a Being must have abso-
lute intelligence, or be omniscient: he must see through us; he
must have our moral ideals, that is, be all-good; and he must
have absolute power to make the connection between virtue and
happiness, or be omnipotent. Such an all-wise, all-good, and
all-powerful Being is God. The proof for immortality rests on
the same premise : The moral law commands holiness or an abso-
lutely good will. Since the moral law is a deliverance of reason,
what it enjoins must be realizable. But we cannot reach holi-
ness at any moment of existence; hence an endless time, an
eternal progress towards this perfection is necessary. In other
words, the soul must be immortal.
In the Critique of Pure Reason Kant rejects all the old argu-
ments for the freedom of the will, the existence of God, and the
immortality of the soul ; the result of the Critique of Pure Rea-
son is negative in this respect. In the Critique of Practical
Reason he bases all these notions on the moral law. Man is
free, man is immortal, and there is a God : all these truths are
necessary implications of the rational moral law within us. The
426 MODERN PHILOSOPHY
moral law guarantees freedom, immortality, and God; religion
is based on morality.
This teaching is closely connected with the Christian concep-
tion; so Kant himself tells us. (1) Morality demands holiness,
perfection, an absolutely good will. (2) Man, however, cannot
completely realize this ideal. Only God is perfect and holy;
man has strong desires, hence a propensity to sin. All he can
do is to respect the law, to attain to a dutiful disposition. (3)
The highest good can be realized only in the life to come. (4)
A character that is perfectly in accord with the moral law,
a perfectly moral man, has infinite worth and deserves all pos-
sible happiness. (5) But the moral law does not promise hap-
piness ; we must do the right because it is the right, whether we
are happy or not. Obedience to morality does not guarantee
happiness. (6) Our reason, however, tells us that a moral man
is worthy of happiness. Hence, it is reasonable to suppose that
there is a Being who will apportion happiness to the good accord-
ing to their deserts. A world in which such apportionment is
made is the kingdom of God. (7) But happiness can never be the
motive to moral conduct. We must do right, not for the sake
of eternal happiness, but for the right's sake. It is such doc-
trines as these that have won for Kant the title of the philosopher
of Protestantism.
57. SUCCESSORS OF KANT
The new philosophy suggested a number of problems. The
first, and perhaps not the least difficult, task consisted in under-
The Problems stan(^n£ the nature of " the Copernican revolu-
tion. ' ' The literature of the age shows how unsuc-
cessful were many of the initial efforts to grasp its meaning.
Hamann designated Kant as a Prussian Hume, Garve identified
his teaching with Berkeleyan idealism; some perceived in it a
subtle artifice for destroying the historical foundations of reli-
gion and for proving naturalism, others suspected it as a new
support for the declining faith-philosophy. In order to assist
in a clearer understanding of the subject, Kant wrote his
Prolegomena (1783), Johannes Schultz published his Erlau-
terungen (1784), Reinhold his Letters on ike Kantian Philoso-
SUCCESSORS OF KANT 427
phy (1786-1787), and Hufeland and Schiitz established Die
Jenaer Allgemeine Litter aturzeitung (1785) as the organ of the
critical movement. Jena became the home of the new school,
and through the efforts of Schiller, Reinhold, Fichte, Schelling,
and Hegel, who taught there, philosophy became one of the most
honored subjects of study in Germany.
Among the other tasks that confronted the successors of Kant
were the development of his epistemology, the unification of its
principles, the solution of the problems following from his
dualism between the intelligible and phenomenal worlds, free-
dom and mechanism, form and matter, knowledge and faith,
practical reason and theoretical reason; and the removal of the
inconsistencies introduced by the notion of the thing-in-itself.
Another work to be undertaken was the construction of a uni-
versal system on the critical foundation laid by Kant; this
became the chief occupation of the most famous successors of
the great reformer: Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel.
Kant had examined the judgments of mathematics, natural
science, and metaphysics, the moral, aesthetic, and teleological
judgments, and had pointed out the presupposi-
tions, preconditions, or principles on which they Idealism and
all rest. The question suggested itself, indeed was i^itself^
frequently asked by Kant himself, whether there
was not a common root in which these principles had their
origin and from which they might, perhaps, be derived. The
thought of an ideal system of judgments, or of an interrelated
system of knowledge held together by a fundamental and abso-
lutely certain principle, took possession of some of the think-
ers of the age and led in time to the attempt to construct an
all-embracing system of idealistic metaphysics. But before this
stage was reached, a great deal of work had to be done in the
way of clearing away the difficulties presented by the Kantian
Critique of Pure Reason.
K. L. Reinhold (1758-1823) in his Versuch einer neuen
Theorie des menschlichen VorstelliDigsvcrmogens, 1789, seeks
to derive the faculties of sensibility and understanding as well
as the categories from a single principle, the faculty of repre-
sentation (Vorstellung} , which is both receptive and active, or
spontaneous : it receives matter and produces form. The object,
428 MODERN PHILOSOPHY
as it exists independently of representation, is the thing-in-itself,
which is unknowable. G. E. Schulze, in his JEnesidemus*
1792, attacks the new critical philosophy as presented by Kant
and Reinhold ; instead of doing away with skepticism, he thinks,
it restores it, leaving philosophy exactly where Hume had left it.
It denies the possibility of knowledge of the thing-in-itself, and
yet assumes its existence and applies categories to it, after having
declared that these are valid only in the world of experience. The
only way to overcome the skepticism and the contradictions im-
plied in the notion of the thing-in-itself, according to S. Maimon
(Versuch uber die Transcendentalphilosophie, 1790), is to abol-
ish the thing-in-itself as inconceivable and impossible. The
cause and origin of the given, or a posteriori element in con-
sciousness, is unknown to us, an irrational quantity, a surd, a
problem that can never be entirely solved. Hence, we can have
no complete knowledge of experience; we do not produce the
objects of our experience, but we do produce the objects of our
thought, which, therefore, are the only objects of our knowledge.
S. Beck, influenced by the criticisms leveled against the Critique,
interprets it in the idealistic sense : either the thing-in-itself must
be rejected or the Critique contradicts itself (Einzig moglicher
Standpunkt aus welchem die kritische Philosophie beurteilt wer-
den muss, 1796). Kant could not have been the author of such
a contradictory philosophy. The only possible standpoint is
the view that what is given in consciousness is the product of
consciousness. Without idealism there can be no Critique.
The poet J. G. Herder (1744-1803; Metakritik, 1799, Ideen
zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit, 1784-1791) op-
poses the Kantian dualism of mental faculties and
theitNew°f emPhasizes the unity of soul-life ; thought and will,
Philosophy understanding and sensation spring from a com-
mon ground. All of these factors cooperate in
knowledge. He holds that rationalism with its conceptual
method (the Aufkldrung) cannot do justice to " living reality/'
and interprets nature and mind organically and historically.
God reveals himself in nature and in man, particularly in the
religion, art, and life of peoples (pantheism). The history of
mankind is a process of evolution towards the ideal of humanity,
* Iteprint of this book, edited by Liebert, 1911.
SUCCESSORS OF KANT 429
;hat is, the harmonious development of all human capacities in
•elation to the environment. Our rational capacity should be
educated and fashioned into reason, our more refined senses into
irt, our impulses into genuine freedom and beauty, our motives
nto love of humanity.
F. H. Jacobi (1743-1819) declares that the Critique logically
;nds in subjective idealism, and, therefore, rejects its conclu-
dons. Such a " system of absolute subjectivity," or nihilism,
is he calls it, seems to him incapable of grasping the ultimate
•ealities, — God and freedom, — upon which his heart is set.
For the critical philosophy, objects are phenomena, ideas,
Ireams, ' ' specters through and through " : it can never be freed
Prom the web of ideas into which it spins itself and find the true
essence of things. Dogmatic rationalism, on the other hand,
3f which the mathematical method of Spinoza furnishes the
most consistent example, Jacobi thinks, is equally unable to reach
truth. According to it, everything is determined, and what has
QO ground is inexplicable, irrational, and non-existent: it cul-
minates in atheism and fatalism. It operates with universal ab-
stractions and must of necessity miss the living moving spon-
taneity of freedom and God. nationalism exaggerates the claims
of the universal over against the individual, the claims of de-
ductive inference against immediate certainty, the claims of
rationality against faith, and narrows the notion of experience
to include only sense-experience. Jacobi escapes the alleged skep-
ticism of idealism and the fatalism and atheism of rationalism
by basing himself on feeling, belief, or faith, in which he finds
an instinctive form of truth. We are immediately certain of
the existence of things-in-themselves ; this faith is made possible
only by their direct revelation; it springs from our direct per-
ception of the objects. We come face to face with the real, and
not merely with ideas, as idealism holds; ideas are mere copies
of originals which we immediately perceive. No existence of
any kind can ever be demonstrated by reason with its abstract
principles. Just as we immediately experience external objects,
we experience our own being, the self, the beautiful, the true,
and the good, free causality, and God. Kant and Jacobi both
oppose naturalism with its atheism and fatalism, and strive to
save God, freedom, and immortality. With this end in view,
MODERN PHILOSOPHY
both discredit the discursive understanding as a source of ulti-
mate truth; both are in this sense anti-intellectualists : we can
have no " knowledge " of things-in-themselves. Yet, both seek
to give naturalism its due, Kant by turning over to it the entire
phenomenal world, Jacobi by setting up a world of real objects
which, however, is not completely subject to determinism. But
Kant remains a rationalist in his effort to derive God, freedom,
and immortality as implications of a rational moral law, while
Jacobi finds their reality directly guaranteed by certain inner
experiences, which carry with them the feeling of immediate
certainty or faith. Kant's faith is a rational faith grounded
on practical or moral certainty, that is, on man's knowledge
of right and wrong. Jacobi 's faith rests on direct experience of
the supersensible : the ultimate realities are immediately revealed
to us in our consciousness ; here we come face to face with spirit,
freedom, and divine Being: we believe in these things because
we experience them directly. With Hamann and Herder, Jacobi
broadens the notion of experience to include the vision of reali-
ties which the critical philosophy had placed beyond the reach
of the human understanding.
Jacobi's Brief e uber die Lehren Spinozas, 1785; D. Hume uber den
Glauben, 1787; Introduction to his works. Complete works in 6 vols.,
1812-1825. Wilde, Jacobi; Crawford, The Philosophy of Jacobi;
Harms, Uber die Lehre von F. H. Jacobi; Levy-Bruhl, La philosophic
de Jacobi; Kuhlmann, Die Erkenntnistheorie F. H. Jacobis; Schmidt,
Jacobi.
In his Neue oder psychologische Kritik der Vernunft (1807),
Jacob Fries (1773-1843) seeks to combine the teachings of Kant
and Jacobi. He bases the critical philosophy on psychology,
substituting self-observation for the transcendental method. The
principles of reason, which Kant seeks to prove a priori, are,
according to Fries, immediately known in consciousness: we
become directly aware of their certainty in ourselves. Only thai
which is sense-perceived can be known; we cannot know the
supersensible, or things-in-themselves ; they are objects of f aitt
which satisfy the demands of the heart.
A neo-Friesian school, of which L. Nelson is a prominent mem
ber, is publishing monographs on Fries. (See Elsenhans,
und Kant.)
JOHANN GOTTLIEB FICHTE 451
GERMAN IDEALISM
58. JOHANN GOTTLIEB FICHTE
As we have seen, the interest of the contemporaries and
immediate successors of Kant was centered upon a number of
problems: how to bring unity into the system of
knowledge or to find a common basis for the prin- p£^a 1jfan
ciples of natural science, morals, aesthetics, and
teleology; what to do with the thing-in-itself ; how to justify
the Ideas of God, freedom, and immortality. It now seemed
desirable to comprehend in the unity of a system the various
tendencies of the age: critical idealism, Spinozisin, rationalism,
the faith-philosophy, as well as the notion of development which
occupied a prominent place in French thought and in the writ-
ings of Herder.
Kant had opposed the entire naturalistic world-view with its
mechanism, fatalism, atheism, egoism, and hedonism, and had
made room for a rational faith in human values by limiting the
discursive understanding to the field of phenomena. In the
world of sense-experience, the object of natural science, law
reigns supreme: every event, human action included, is a link
in the causal chain. There is no scientific knowledge possible
outside of this domain: so far as the Critique of Pure Reason is
concerned, the thing-in-itself is beyond the pale of the knowable.
The perusal of the other Critiques, however, shows us that the
notion of the thing-in-itself develops as we advance in our knowl-
edge of the critical system. Conceived, at first, as a mere ab-
straction, a Gedankending, it becomes a necessary Idea of rea-
son, a regulative principle expressing the rational demand for
unity (soul, world, God). The Idea of freedom is found to be
a possible or thinkable ground of all things; the moral law,
however, demonstrates the reality of this Idea and vouchsafes the
existence of God, a spiritual kingdom, and immortality. The
thing-in-itself which began as an abstraction is interpreted in
the sequel as freedom, practical reason, will, and made the
ground of the theoretical reason. There is, then, a hfgher kind
of truth than that offered by scientific intelligence; the moral
4S2 MODERN PHILOSOPHY
law within us is a sure guarantee of the existence of the super-
sensible world, which is closed against the mathematical-physical
methods of the understanding. But Kant was cautious in deal-
ing with the practical possibilities suggested by the categorical
imperative ; he hesitated to transcend the limits of experience and
refused to lead his followers into the promised land. It could
not be reached through the theoretical reason, and he saw no
possibility of entering it through the gates of immediate experi-
ence: the closer we come to immediacy, according to him, the
nearer we are to chaos and the farther from truth: percepts
without concepts are blind. And we do not possess the power of
intellectual intuition which would enable us to meet the thing-
in-itself face to face. Nor was the sober-minded criticist ready
to seek in sentimentalism or mysticism the approach to the heart
of reality ; indeed, he had a contempt for extravagances of this
sort in philosophy, fpr such they seemed to him. And yet, in
spite of all his rationalism, there is an element of faith in his
method : faith in the moral imperative saves us from agnosticism,
materialism, and determinism: we know because we believe in
the moral law. If it were not for that, we should not only know
nothing of freedom and the ideal order, but also be helpless to
free ourselves from the mechanism of nature : it is moral truth
that both sets us free and proves our freedom. It was this phase
of the new philosophy that particularly appealed to the new gen-
eration; it offered an escape from the causal universe without,
apparently, sacrificing the legitimate claims of knowledge.
Spinozism had become popular in Germany during the latter
part of the eighteenth century and was regarded by many think-
ers, even by those who rejected it, as the most consistent dog-
matic system, indeed as the last word of speculative metaphysics ::
Lessing, Herder, and Goethe had been attracted to it, and Fichte
had heroically accepted its rigid determinism as inevitable, be-
fore his acquaintance with the critical philosophy. It was the
Kantian solution of the controversy between the head and the
heart and the idealistic world- view which it vouchsafed tha-;
became popular in German philosophy and formed the starting-
point of what is called Post-Kantian idealism, the chief repre-
sentatives of which are Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel.*
* Cf. Thilly, Romanticism and Rationali&m, PMl Rev., March, 1913.
JOHANN GOTTLIEB FICHTE 433
Kant had reached his standpoint by a laborious critical ex-
amination of scientific, moral, and metaphysical knowledge; his
successors make the intelligible world, or freedom, to which the
moral law points, the starting-point of their speculations: the
ideal or supersensible world, the world of mind or spirit (Geist),
is the real world. With this self-determining spiritual activity
as the principle, they seek to solve all the problems of philosophy,
to account for knowledge and experience, to explain nature and
history and human institutions. The ideal principle, they tell
us, brings unity into our knowledge, unifies the categories and
theoretical and practical reason, enables us to overcome the dual-
ism between mechanism and teleology, and removes the incon-
sistencies in the Kantian thing-in-itself. We can understand
reality only when we interpret it in the light of self-determining
reason; consequently, reason understands the world only when
it understands itself. Hence the importance of the science
of knowledge, or Wissenschaftslehre, as Fichte called it, in the
systems of the Post-Kantians : the discovery of the correct
method of knowledge will solve the problem of metaphysics;
indeed, philosophy is Wissenschaftslehre. Hence, also, philoso-
phy is the absolute science, which explains everything and alone
can explain everything: mere empirical knowledge of facts is
not real knowledge, and the empirical sciences of nature and
history are not true sciences. If to know means to comprehend
the active, living, synthetic, spiritual process of reality, a method
that limits itself to phenomena in a spatial-temporal-causal
series cannot be knowledge: on this point Fichte, Schelling,
Schleiermacher, and Hegel are agreed. They agree also in their
conception of reality as a process of evolution, in the organic
and historical view of things, which Lessing, Herder, Winckel-
mann, and Goethe taught ; but differ in their methods of reach-
ing a knowledge of it, as we shall see.
Fichte Js basal thought, the one which he regards as the key-
stone of the critical philosophy, is the notion of freedom, the
idea that the will, or ego, is not a thing among
things, a mere link in the causal chain, but free
self-determining activity. Only such activity is
truly real, all else is dead passive existence: it is the principle
of life and mind, of knowledge and conduct, indeed, of our en-
434 MODERN PHILOSOPHY
tire world of experience, the moving power in all progress and
civilization. It is the ground on which knowledge rests, the
unifying principle of the theoretical understanding, at which
Kant had hinted and which Reinhold sought, and the common
root of theoretical and practical reason. The study of knowl-
edge will, therefore, prove to be the most important subject of
philosophical inquiry, and to this Fichte constantly addressed
himself during his strenuous career. The Wissenschaftslehre
is the key to all knowledge : in it he offers a comprehensive and
detailed account of the conditions, principles, or presupposi-
tions of both theoretical and practical reason.
Johann Gottlieb Fichte was born in Saxony, 1762, the son of a
poor weaver. Through the generosity of a nobleman, who was im-
pressed with the child's talent, he obtained the means to attend the
schools at Meissen and Schulpforta. He studied theology at Jena,
Leipzig, and Wittenberg (1780-1784), and gave private lessons, often
interrupting his university work for long periods of time, in order
to gain his livelihood as a tutor (1784-1793). In 1790, at the request
of some students who desired him to instruct them in the new critical
philosophy, he began the study of Kant, which revolutionized his
thought and determined the direction of his life. In 1794 he was
called to a professorship at Jena, then the intellectual center of
Germany, and became the leader of the new idealism, the aim of which
was the reform of life no less than the reform of science and philosophy.
During the Jena period (1794-1799) Fichte wrote a number of works
on the Science of Knowledge, Natural Right, and Ethics. The pub-
lication of an essay, On the Ground of our Belief in a Divine World-
Order (1798), in which he seemed to identify God with the moral
world-order, provoked the charge of atheism. He resigned his pro-
fessorship and went to Berlin, where he developed his philosophy and
presented it in popular form in lectures and in books. In 1807-1808
he delivered his celebrated Addresses to the German Nation, in which
he appealed to the patriotism of his people while Napoleon's army
was still occupying Berlin. He became professor of philosophy in
the newly founded University of Berlin, in 1809, and served tie
institution ably and faithfully until his death in 1814.
Versuch einer Kritik aller Offenbarung, 1792; Grundlage dcr
gesammten Wissenschaftslehre, 1794; Grundlage des Naturrechts, 1796 ;
Das System der Sittenlehre, 1798; Die Bestimmung des Mensche-i,
1800; Die Anweisurng zum seligen Leben, 1801; Reden an die deutscl e
Nation, 1808-
Posthumous works ed. by J. H. Fichte, 3 vols., 1834; complete worl:s
ed. by J. H. Fichte, 8 vols., 1845-1846; selected works, by Medicus;
Letters, by Weinhold, 1862, J. H. Fichte, 1830. Translations: Fichte'a
Popular Works (Nature of Scholar, Vocation of Man, Religion, Char-
acteristics of Present Age), by Smith; Science of Knowledge (Co'.i-
JOHANN GOTTLIEB FICHTE 435
ception of the Science of Knowledge, part of Grundlage, the Sketch
of 1795, and minor essays). Science of Eights, and System of Ethics,
by Kroeger; other works in Journal of Speculative Philosophy, by
Kroeger; Vocation of Man and Addresses to German Nation in German
Classics, vol. V.
Monographs by Adamson, Everett, Medicus, Loewe, X. Leon, Fischer ;
Thompson, Unity of Fichte's Doctrine of Knowledge; Talbot, Funded
mental Principle of Fichte's Philosophy; Raich, Fichte: seine Ethik,
etc.; Zimmer, Fichtes Eeligionsphilosophie ; Lask, Fichtes Idealismus
und die Geschichte; Kabitz, Entwicklungsgeschichte der fichteschen
Wissenschaftslehre. See also end of bibliography, p. 396, and Fuchs,
Das Werden dreier Denker : Fichte, Schelling, Schleiermacher; Thilly,
Fichte, Schelling, Schleiermacher, vol. V of German Classics, and
Romanticism and Rationalism, Phil. Rev., March, 1913.
Kant, according to Fichte, had abstracted the categories from
experience, but had not shown that they were necessary laws
of intelligence: that is, he had not demonstrated
his principles. This can only be done, Fichte tells Aim and
us, by deriving them from a common root, that is, g1^ ° ^ thfc
only by means of a strictly scientific procedure. Knowledge
Every science, in order to be science, must pos-
sess a coherent body of propositions, held together by a first
principle; it should be an interrelated system of propositions,
an organic whole in which each proposition occupies a certain
place and bears a certain relation to the whole. Thus, the no-
tion of space is the central idea in geometry, that of causation
in natural science. The different sciences call for an all-
embracing Science, a science of sciences, a Wissenschaftslehre,
which shall establish or prove the basal principle on which
every one of them rests. And this universal science or phi-
losophy, the source of the certainty of all the others, must itself
proceed from a self-evident or necessary proposition, from an
absolute first principle that shall give its own judgments their
scientific character, while, at the same time, validating those of
all the other fields of research.
This central science, however, is not the lawgiver, but the
historiographer of knowledge: it becomes conscious of the sys-
tem of the necessary acts of the mind, observes or watches it
in its necessary creation. And yet it is not a mere register of
what happens, though Fichte sometimes declares it to be such;
it seeks to understand the necessity of these acts, to discover
436 MODERN PHILOSOPHY
the grounds or logical presuppositions of the various forms of
knowing. ' ' If but a single link in the long chain which idealism
has to forge does not finally connect itself with the one next to
it, our science does not claim to have proved anything at all."
The assumption is that the mind itself is a rational system, that
it acts as organic reason, that the different functions of intel-
ligence are not disconnected and unmeaning acts, but all means
to a common end ; that if it were not for them, the purpose of
reason, — namely, the evolution of self-consciousness, — could not
be realized. The philosopher should, therefore, understand the
purpose or meaning of all consciousness before he can undertake
the task of deduction. Just as in a clock, if we know the pur-
pose of the whole, its structure, size, and so on, we can tell what
the parts must be, so in the case of the system of conscious-
ness, we can understand the~parts if we understand the whole,
or purpose: that is, clear and complete, or developed, self-
consciousness. The method of the Wissenschaftslehre consists in
showing that the various acts of intelligence are means to the
evolution of self-consciousness, that the mind could not become
free and self-conscious if it were not for these particular acts
of intelligence. In his earlier and more technical works Fichte
develops the system of knowledge from the fundamental prin-
ciple; in the more popular presentations he rises from the ob-
servation of knowledge to the principle ; but his object is always
the same: the illumination of the organic unity of knowledge.
He sometimes calls his method a genetic method; it does not,
however, aim to describe the psychological genesis of the prin-
ciples of knowledge, but to show how they arise from their nec-
essary presuppositions, or how reason itself evolves them.
In order to study the genesis of rational thinking, the philoso-
pher must set his thought in motion by an act of will: phi-
losophy, therefore, begins, not with a fact, but with an act.
Knowledge is not a mere passive mirroring of the world or mere
opinion, but a self -determining living process, — not a possession,
but an achievement. Genuine knowledge is possible only by an
act of freedom. I understand only what I can create freely
in thought; what I cannot create, I do not understand. Con-
sciousness can be explained by nothing outside of itself; it can-
not be produced by anything external to it, it is a spontaneous
JOHANN GOTTLIEB FICHTE 437
act or creation which becomes aware of itself in the act of crea-
tion. Knowledge, in other words, necessarily presupposes, as
its ground, pure activity, self-determining activity, or rather
it is such activity. Knowledge, intelligence, thought, is free.
There could be no world of sense, no experience, no thinking,
without such activity; this, therefore, is the fundamental prin-
ciple which we have been seeking. The pure ego, the principle
of egoity, or self-active reason, is the starting-point of the
Wissenschaftslehre, the self-evident presupposition of all knowl-
edge; it is also the end or goal of our science, for when the
Wissensckaftslehre has reached complete self-consciousness, con-
sciousness has grasped the meaning of all knowledge.
As we have seen, an act of will is needed to set the mind
(the ego) in motion, but, once at work, it will act in certain
necessary ways. In this sense, necessity is a product of free-
dom. I am not compelled to think, but if I think, I must think
according to laws, — in sensuous terms, let us say, according to
the forms of space and time, according to the principle of suffi-
cient reason, and so on. But no consciousness would be possible
without an active ego. Take, for example, the judgment A = A ;
simple as it is, it would be impossible if it were not for a syn-
thetic mind. If the ego did not spring into existence and act,
or posit itself, as Fichte puts it, there could be no subject, no
object, no world of experience. And since there can be no world
of experience, no phenomenal world, without the ego as its
condition, it is impossible to conceive the ego as a link in the
chain of objects; that would be putting the cart before the
horse.
The question arises, How do we reach the ego-principle? We
can infer it as the ground of experience and the forms of thought,
as the unity of theoretical and practical reason.
But Schulze had warned against such reasoning
as contrary to the spirit of the Critique, and Fichte
himself sometimes sees no more speculative warrant for assum-
ing a spiritual ground than a material ground. He offers sev-
eral other lines of argument in support of his idealism. One
of them connects itself with the results of Kant's ethical phi-
losophy, and finds its way to the principle by means of the moral
law. Fichte shares Kant's view of the insufficiency of the in-
438 MODERN PHILOSOPHY
tellect: we cannot grasp the living reality by the discursive
understanding and its spatial, temporal, causal ways ; only when
we have seen through the nature of ordinary knowing, its super-
ficiality and relativity, can we grasp the living reality behind
the surface: freedom, the moral world-order, and God. If we
were limited to scientific intelligence, we could never rise beyond
the notion of an inexorable causal order, and would ourselves
be unable to escape the machinery of nature. But there is a
way out. In an act of intellectual intuition, which is itself an
act of free will, we become conscious of the law of duty, or the
universal purpose, which commands us to be Tree persons, to
free ourselves from the determinism of nature, to refuse to be
mere links in a causal chain. Acceptance of the law of duty
and of the freedom which it implies will give our life worth and
meaning; it will enable us to understand the world as the in-
strument of a universal purpose (the realization of freedom),
and to transform ourselves from blind tools of this purpose into
its willing helpers. Now it becomes clear that our ordinary
sense-perceiving knowledge is a practical instrument for achiev-
ing freedom ; it presents us with the resistance needed for the
exercise of will: we cannot become free without putting forth
effort, hence we need a world to struggle against and to over-
come. The world would have no meaning, therefore, if the com-
mand of duty to achieve freedom were not realizable ; it becomes
perfectly intelligible to us in the light of the deliverances of
the moral consciousness.
These thoughts won for Fichte's philosophy the name of
ethical idealism: it is a world-view based on moral faith. We
cannot prove to theoretical reason the primacy of a free self-
determining being, — for theoretical reason never ceases to search
after grounds, — but we accept such a principle as ultimate, be-
cause it alone can satisfy the demands of our moral nature and
give our life worth and meaning. It is from this standpoint
that " the choice of one's philosophy depends on what kind of
man one is," as Fichte says. The man without the ethical ideal,
the man who cannot free himself from the machinery of nature,
cannot conceive himself otherwise than as a thing or product,
or take an interest in the free self: he cannot know and prize
what he has not experienced, — the freedom to be a person, —
JOHANN GOTTLIEB FICHTE 439
and he cannot experience it because he has never achieved it.
The man who has freed himself from the slavery of the senses,
who is a self-determining agent, regards himself as a power
superior to everything sensuous, and cannot will to conceive
himself as a thing.
There is another line of thought in Fichte, according to which
the ego is immediately conscious of its free activity in itself.
Idealism has this advantage over dogmatism or materialism:
the object of the former, the ego, appears in consciousness, not
as an object of experience, not as a phenomenon or link in the
causal series, but as an ego-in-itself, as something real, as some-
thing above all experience. There exists an immediate self-
consciousness of free mental action. But such consciousness does
not force itself upon us, we must produce it in ourselves by an
act of freedom. If we cannot perform the act, we will not un-
derstand the idealistic philosophy, we will not get the glimpse
into the real world of mind. The dogmatist denies the postulate
of the freedom and independence of the ego because he cannot
discover it in his world ; if he is consistent, he must be a fatalist
and a materialist. We cannot prove conceptually that there
is such an act of intellectual intuition nor what it is. Every
one must find it directly in himself, or he will never know of it.
As well might we attempt to explain to a man born blind what
colors are as try to demonstrate what this intellectual intui-
tion is. But it can be pointed out to every one that it occurs
in every phase of his consciousness. Every person who ascribes
activity to himself, tacitly appeals to such an intuition. Here
Fichte holds that wherever there is spiritual activity, there is
consciousness of it, even though it escapes the attention of the
dogmatist.
Fichte also points out that the truth of idealism can be veri-
fied by experience. If the presupposition of idealism is correct
and if the correct deductions have been made, the final result
must be a system of necessary ideas, or the sum-total of experi-
ence. If the results of a philosophy do not agree with experi-
ence, the philosophy is certainly false, for it has not kept its
promise to deduce the whole of experience and to explain it by
the necessary action of intelligence. But idealism does not keep
experience in view as a goal at which to arrive; it pays no
440 MODERN PHILOSOPHY
attention whatever to experience. In its procedure, it evolves its
propositions from the basal idea, regardless of what the results
may be. That is what Fichte says, but, as a matter of fact,
he does pay attention to experience; he asks us to observe the
intelligence in its operations, to watch the mind at work. What
he means to imply is that mere observation of such acts would
not be philosophy, that this demands an understanding of these
acts, an understanding of their ground and purpose, and that
such an understanding can only be reached by logical thought.
Fichte bases all reality on the ego; since ego is everything,
there can be nothing outside, no thing-in-itself in the sense of
an independent extra-mental object. The problem
External Q£ idealism is, therefore, to explain how we happen
to ascribe objective reality to what seems to be
merely subjective, or, how we come to assume existence or being
as opposed to life, action, mind. Fichte tells us that it belongs
to the very nature of the self-active principle to limit itself:
in springing into existence it at the same time limits itself, and
it must limit itself if it is to be at all. I experience my limita-
tion in my feelings of red, sweet, cold ; they show me that I am
limited; they force themselves on me. Dogmatists attempt to
explain such original feelings or sensations as the effects of
something, of a thing-in-itself; but here all transcendental ex-
planation comes to a stop, according to Fichte. The objective
world is produced by the ego for itself, in the sense that the
mind projects the purely subjective modifications of conscious-
ness into space, or makes objects of them. If it were not for
sensations and the necessary functions or acts of the ego (space,
time, and causality), we should never produce the phenomenal
world which we perceive. What arouses sensations, we do not
know. This does not mean that our knowledge of the phe-
nomenal world has no objective validity. It is not an illusion
that things are presented to us, it is our sole truth. It becomes
an illusion only when we say there are things-in-themselves inde-
pendently of us, outside of us. It is a false philosophy that
introduces this fictitious notion; common-sense knows nothing
of it. Take this world as you find it, seek to understand it and
to act on it. This is the standpoint of critical idealism : we can-
not transcend consciousness by our theoretical reason. All that
JOHANN GOTTLIEB FICHTE 441
we can know is that the ego posits itself as determined by the
non-ego; that it does so cannot be theoretically explained.
Fichte, however, solves the problem practically: we cannot ex-
plain to reason the origin of the limits; but their significance
or ethical value is perfectly clear and certain: they mark our
definite place in the moral order of things. What we perceive
through them has reality, the only reality that concerns us or
exists for us. Our world is " the sensualized material of our
duty ; ' ' through these things we can and must realize our moral
ideals. The world is a means of realizing our purposes, hence
what difference does it make whether it is real or appearance!
The ego as a self-active being needs a world of opposition, one
in which it can struggle, one in which it can become conscious
of itself and its freedom, one in which it can achieve freedom.
It demands a world ordered according to laws, a strictly deter-
mined world, in order that the free self may realize its pur-
poses by relying on these laws. The ego must know what to
expect, otherwise rational purposive action is impossible.
There is much in this view that is suggestive of subjective
idealism, and most of Fichte 's contemporaries interpreted it as
such. Fichte, however, means by the ego, on
which he bases his philosophy, not the individual
ego of common-sense, but the pure ego, pure ac-
tivity, universal reason, intelligence as such. Absolute ego (ego-
ity, or Ichheit) and individuality are quite different concepts
for him. Reason as such is prior (logically) to the personal
ego, it is the condition or logical ground of the individual ego.
"We cannot think of individual selves without ascribing to them
all the same reason, the same universal processes of thought.
The logical prius, however, does not remain a mere logical prius
with Fichte ; as we saw before, the absolute ego turns out to be
more than an abstraction. It is, in reality, above all persons,
over-individual; it is the universal active reason, the same in
all persons, of which the individual can have a vision if he wills
it so. The highest degree of self-consciousness is the self-
consciousness of the philosopher, the intellectual intuition in
which the ego returns unto itself and is conscious of its activity.
Here it rises above space- and time-perception ; it no longer be-
holds a phenomenal causal order, but withdraws within itself,
442 MODERN PHILOSOPHY
looks at itself, and knows itself. That is what gives Fichte 's
philosophy such certainty in his eyes; it not only infers a prin-
ciple or reaches it by logical abstraction, but experiences it,
in a larger sense of the term experience than Kant would accept.
In his earlier writings Fichte speaks of this principle as the
universal reason that acts in us all, that phase of us, we should
say, that thinks in universal terms, that knows universal truths
and has universal purposes or ideals. He was interested in
refuting naturalism, the mechanical and deterministic concep-
tion of reality ; and so emphasized the idealistic character of all
experience. He did not define his notion of the ego in detail.
This, together with the fact that he called it ego, led to the mis-
conception of his system as subjective idealism, against which
he protested vigorously from the beginning. Later on, he worked
the problem out and expressed himself more definitely, so that
the principle which his extreme opponents had interpreted as
the personal subjective ego finally became God.
But whether it be called universal reason, absolute ego, or God,
the principle is conceived as a universal life-process that domi-
nates all individual consciousnesses. There are other rational
beings outside of us, who both act on the phenomenal world
and represent it in the same way; which shows that the same
power of life, the same universal principle, is active in all egos.
Nature is not the creation of the particular ego, but the phe-
nomenal expression or reflection, in the subject, of the universal
spiritual principle. Universal life is the true reality of which
the individual selves are the products or phenomena; it domi-
nates them, like a law of nature. Fichte is, therefore, a realist
in the sense of assuming a universal principle of reality and
not merely individual consciousnesses; but he refuses to con-
ceive this principle as a static substance, either material or spir-
itual: it is a living, flowing, self -determining spiritual process
that expresses or manifests itself in individual selves, that is
the law of their nature, the common ground of their sensational
or phenomenal life as well as of the necessary laws of thought.
It is this universal life and reason that lives and thinks and acts
in us: in it we live and move and have our being. Fichte does
not deny the existence of an extra-mental world, in the sense
of a reality outside of the individual personal consciousness;
JOHANN GOTTLIEB FICHTE 443
indeed, he tries to show that there could be no such conscious-
nesses, no individuals, if it were not for the universal life-process.
But this world is not a world of dead things, arranged in a
spatial-temporal-causal order; the latter is the revelation in
human consciousness of the absolute principle, and could not
exist if it were not for the universal ego. Fichte's subjective
idealism is supplemented by an objective or metaphysical ideal-
ism; he himself called it real-idealism. We are the creatures
or products or revelations of universal nature ; in us the universal
law of nature thinks and comes to consciousness; yes, — but for
that very reason nature must be Geist, spirit, mind, and can be
nothing else.
How the universal and unlimited life-principle comes to
divide itself among the countless individual selves, Fichte tries
to make clear by means of the analogy of light. As light is
broken by an obstacle and reflected or turned back to its source,
so the universal activity must be reflected, or turned back upon
itself, by some obstacle. There could be no consciousness (light),
no self-consciousness, no self-determining thought, no knowl-
edge, unless the infinite activity met with some check: it can,
therefore, become conscious of itself only in finite form, in the
ego limited by opposition. And since universal life is infinite,
it cannot exhaust itself in finite form, but must go on, infi-
nitely, producing egos, and become conscious of itself in this
process of separation or individuation. Consciousness, it seems,
arises through the self -limitation of the universal ego, through
an act that precedes the birth of consciousness, and of which
we are not conscious. The absolute ego produces the selves un-
consciously, and the selves are unconscious of their creation.
But why should there be life at all, and why should it express
itself in countless forms of consciousness? We cannot conceive
of the universal life process or pure activity as purposeless;
it would be meaningless if it were not a means to an ethical
end. The purpose of nature, or the non-ego, is the same: it,
too, is a means of realizing the ego. It is the same absolute
ego that expresses itself in us and in nature, in the individual
self and in the not-self. The life of the world and the indi-
viduals in it are the visible expressions of the ultimate moral
purpose; we can understand them only as such; they have no
MODERN PHILOSOPHY
reality except as means to the moral end. The individual selves
can, however, by an act of will raise themselves from the state
of mere appearance to the knowledge of the supersensible, and
in this way adopt the universal moral purpose as their own.
There is, then, a difference between the absolute, independent
ego and the conscious, dependent, individual ego. The absolute
ego is present in the individual ego as a pure impulse to action
and as a moral purpose, as the consciousness of duty, which
commands the self to overcome the opposition of the world of
sense, to realize the ideal of freedom after which the absolute
ego strives. When we become aware of pure activity in our-
selves, we know the essence of reality, and when we strive to
realize our moral purpose, we are striving to realize the mean-
ing of the universe, the purpose of the absolute ego. The pur-
pose of which the individual ego becomes conscious in itself is
the voice of the Absolute, the purpose of the same absolute
ego that expresses itself in the world of things. We can accom-
plish what our nature urges, or impels us to do; the same uni-
versal will that prompts the act at the same time produces the
changes in the external world.
The question arises: What freedom is left to the individual
self in this scheme? The individual self is a manifestation of
an absolute activity; it is determined, on its theoretical side, by
necessary laws of sense-perception and thought, and, on its
practical side, by the universal purpose. The universal purpose
is bound to realize itself in the world whether the individual
wills it or not, and the sense-world will follow its laws regard-
less of him. But the individual has the power of choice whether
he shall think or not ; — thinking, in the real sense of the term,
is only possible by an act of will, — and he can decide, also,
whether to make the universal purpose his own ; that, too, will
depend on his free choice. It lies in our power to decide whether
we shall remain blind tools of the universal purpose or become
conscious and willing instruments in the service of the good.
When once we have decided freely to do our duty, to realize
the universal purpose, we are no longer free; we have made
ourselves instruments of the Absolute, and our moral life is
determined.
Freedom, in this connection, means a free inexplicable choice,
JOHANN GOTTLIEB FICHTE 445
the freedom of indifference, a sudden leap of the will. Fichte
concludes from this view that men are either good or bad, accord-
ing as they have either chosen the good or have remained mere
cogs in the machinery of sense, and that the good alone win
immortality. He also concludes that resistance and moral strug-
gle are never overcome; the universal moral purpose is never
realized; moral life is in constant progress towards the good
which it never reaches : hence, world will give way to world.
Fichte 's entire system is tinged with ethical ideas: it begins
with Kant's categorical imperative and ends with the uni-
versal moral purpose of God. We have seen how
he deduces our world of experience from the moral
law: the moral law commands freedom from the
rule of sense. There can be no deliverance from sense unless
there is something to be delivered from, a state of unfreedom,
a natural ego limited by a world. The moral law implies free-
dom, freedom implies deliverance from obstacles, and this im-
plies a sensible world. The moral law implies a continued life
of struggle, hence immortality ; and it implies a universal pur-
pose or a God. It also presupposes that what the individual
aims at in his dutiful conduct is actually achieved and realized,
that is, a moral order, an order that ought to follow from the
moral determination of his will, something that lies beyond the
sphere of his own moral will, but which must be assumed in order
to give it purpose and meaning. In other words, the moral law
implies a religious faith: it would have no meaning without
religious faith, without the belief in a moral world-order and
in the moral world-orderer. It is faith, then, that gives cer-
tainty and conviction to what might be mere illusion, and this
faith is a decision of the will: I will to believe. Conscience is
the touchstone of every truth and every conviction.
The ethical purpose realizes itself in the world; nature and
man are instruments in the service of the good. Man 's vocation
is, therefore, to do his duty, to work consciously and voluntarily
for the realization of the highest good, to turn his gaze toward
the universal moral end. His conscience commands him to free
himself from the slavery of sense, to be a person, not a thing.
He cannot, however, escape the determinism of nature without
knowledge, and he cannot act on nature without knowledge, hence
446 MODERN PHILOSOPHY
he must seek knowledge for moral ends and not from mere
curiosity. It is, therefore, his duty to know what he is doing,
and not to act unless he does know what he is doing. He should
act from conviction always and never under the compulsion
of authority. The command to be free carries with it the com-
mand to exercise his reason, to understand the purpose estab-
lished by conscience. Conscience commands duty for duty's
sake; such a command implies a purpose to be realized; con-
science tells me what my purpose ought to be. I do not act
as I act because something is a purpose for me, but it becomes
a purpose because I ought to act so. Hence conscience is infal-
lible, it will always tell us, in every concrete situation, how to
act ; that is, to be sure, if we stop to think the matter out.
For Fichte, morality does not consist merely in the good will,
— respect for the moral law is not enough ; — the good will must
express itself in acts, it should seek to overcome the resistance
of nature, inner and outer: morality is a struggle. The battle
with nature, however, does not consist in annihilation, but in
adapting it to man's ethical purposes; it can and ought to be
made an appropriate instrument for the purposes of reason:
hence the ethical significance of natural goods, of property, the
various callings, and our entire industrial life, all of which can
be placed in the service of the universal moral purpose. And
since the moral life is not an isolated individual existence but
a community life, each individual should regard himself as a
member of a working society and sacrifice his own earthly
possessions for the common good, by which alone the ultimate
purpose can be realized. Every man should freely choose his
proper sphere of action in the world in accordance with the
dictates of his conscience, but that he may choose properly edu-
cation is needed. Indeed, it is necessary that the individual be
educated in order that conscience may arise in him; without
instruction the voice of duty would not speak, and its signifi-
cance would not be understood.
Every individual has his particular place in society in which
to labor for the whole. Similarly, every people has its peculiar
place in civilization, its unique contribution to make in the battle
of humanity for freedom. In his patriotic Addresses to the
German Nation, Fichte held up before his people the ideal of
JOHANN GOTTLIEB FICHTE 447
German unity; it is Germany's mission, he said, to regain her
national existence, to assume the philosophical leadership in the
business of civilization, to establish a State rooted in personal
liberty, a veritable kingdom of justice, such as has never ap-
peared on earth, which shall realize freedom based on the equal-
ity of all who wear the human form. And it is the vocation of
the human race to incorporate itself in a single united body, a
universal federation of states, in which the culture contributed
by every age and people shall be distributed over the entire
globe.
But the earthly goal cannot be our highest goal ; we promote
the earthly human end merely as a means to the universal pur-
pose: the realization of a spiritual kingdom which alone gives
worth and meaning to the phenomenal order. Man is a citizen
of both worlds: he cannot work for the other world without at
least willing to work for this. We work for the other world by
making the will good; every act in accordance with the will
affects God and through him other spirits. The voice of con-
science is God's voice in me; through conscience the spiritual
world reaches down to me, through the will I reach up to it
and act on it. God is the mediator between the spiritual world
and me. The only principle by which I recognize your work
is the voice of conscience, which commands me to respect your
work, and this voice is God's voice. And our belief in the truth
of the sense-world is nothing but the faith that a life promoting
freedom and morality will evolve, world without end, from our
disinterested and faithful performance of duty in this world
of sense.
The state of universal peace among men and of their absolute
dominion over the mechanism of nature is not something to be
possessed for its own sake ; the ideal is that men should produce
it themselves, and that it should be produced by all men, as one
great free moral community. The basal law of the great moral
kingdom of which our present life is a part is: nothing new
or better for a particular individual except through his own
moral will; nothing new or better for the community except
through the social moral will.
" I do not understand my complete vocation; what I ought
to be and what I shall be transcends all my thinking. I know
448 MODERN PHILOSOPHY
for certain at every moment of my life what I ought to do in
it: I ought to develop my intelligence and acquire knowledge
in order to extend the sphere of my duty. I ought to regard
myself, body and soul, merely as a means to the end of duty.
All I can care for is the promotion of reason and morality in
the kingdom of rational beings, for progress for its own sake.
I regard myself as an instrument of the rational purpose and
respect and love myself only as such. All the events of the
world I measure by this purpose alone. My entire personality
is absorbed in the contemplation of the goal. I am in the world
of the highest wisdom and goodness, which penetrates its plan
and executes it without error, and in this conviction I rest and
am blessed."
59. FRIEDRICH WILHELM SCHELLING
Fichte's philosophy takes account of the diverse currents in
the thought of his times, and seeks to gather them together in
a common stream. With the Aufklarung, he op-
New Idealism p0ses authority and tradition, and seeks a rational
Romanticism explanation of the world. In exalting the free per-
sonality and the rights of man, as well as civilization
and progress, and demanding the reform of science, philosophy,
religion, education, and of human life in general, he simply
expresses the spirit of the entire modern age. His patriotic
appeal for German national unity and his ideal of a State based
on equality and justice voice the yearnings of a people oppressed
by absolutism and humiliated by the Napoleonic wars. In
making mind or spirit (Geist) the central principle of reality
and delivering man from the incubus of mechanism, he expresses
the yearning for a universe that shall be intelligible to reason
and in sympathy with human ideals. Consistent with the new
idealism, as interpreted by him, and in agreement with the
great leaders of German literature, Lessing, Herder, Goethe,
he conceives existence as a dynamic process of evolution guided
by a moral purpose. With both the classic and Romantic poets
of his age and the faith-philosophers, — and, indeed, with Kan;
himself, — he agrees that the universal living whole cannot bo
grasped by the categories of science: with Goethe that the uni-
FRIEDRICH WILHELM SCHELLING 449
verse must be conceived organically, as a unity in diversity;
with Jacobi, that it can be known only in the inner living experi-
ence of the free agent, in intuition: in the act of freedom, in
the sense of duty, and in the love of truth, spirit speaks to
spirit. The anti-rationalistic and mystical element in Fichte 's
system, — which accompanies his rigorous logic, — attracted the
Romantic poets: the two Schlegels, Tieck, and Novalis. Many
other phases of the new idealism found favor in their eyes:
its seeming subjectivism, its historical point of view, and its
conception of the uniqueness of German culture. But all these
characteristic features they tended to exaggerate: reason gave
way to feeling and sentimentalism ; Fichte 's intuition became the
divining, sympathetic insight of the poetic genius; the rational
and ethical ego was transformed into a romantic, mystical, im-
pulsive, even freakish, individualistic self. Nature was inter-
preted in analogy with such an ego and conceived as the abode
of occult personified forces, while history was appealed to in
support of tradition and the past given authority over the
present.
On the Romantic school of poetry and its relation to philosophy, see
the histories of German literature; Haym, Die romantische Schule;
Walzel, Deutsche Romantik; K. Fischer, Schelling; Noack, Schelling
und die Philosophie der Romantik; T. Ziegler, Die geistigen und
socialen Stromungen des XIX. Jahrhunderts; Windelband, Die Phi-
losophie im deutschen Geistesleben des XIX. Jahrhunderts.
Schelling was influenced by all these tendencies, particularly
by the new idealism and the poetic Romanticism. He was, like-
wise, interested in Spinozism and in the natural-scientific move-
ment, which had made headway in Germany, under the impetus
given it by the critical philosophy. As a youth, not yet out of the
Theological Seminary at Tubingen, Schelling gained fame as the
best interpreter of Fichte ; and, a few years later, supplemented
Fichte's philosophy with a philosophy of nature that not only
pleased the Romanticists and the poet Goethe, but found friends
among the natural scientists of his country.
Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling, born 1775, studied philosophy
and theology at the Theological Seminary of the University of Tubingen
from 1790 to 1795. After serving as private tutor to two young
students at Leipzig for two years, during which he himself studied
450 MODERN PHILOSOPHY
mathematics, physics, and medicine at the University, he accepted a
professorship of philosophy at Jena (1798). Here he became attached
to the Romantic circle presided over by August and Caroline von
Schlegel, and produced his most brilliant works. After holding various
positions, at Wiirzburg (1803-1806), at Munich as Director of the
Academy of Fine Arts (1806-1820), at Erlangen (1820-1827), and at
Munich, again, as professor of philosophy in the newly-established
University (1827-1841), he was called to Berlin to stem the tide
of the popular Hegelian philosophy, but met with little success. He
died in 1854.
During his earlier period, Sehelling reproduced the Fichtean phi-
losophy and continued it in the spirit of the master; among his
writings being: Ideen zu einer Philosophic der Natur, 1797; Von der
Weltseele, 1798; System des transcendentalen Idealismus, 1800. Dur-
ing the second period, which shows the influence of Bruno and Spinoza,
he conceives both nature and mind as two aspects of a higher principle :
this is his philosophy of identity, presented in Bruno, 1802, and
Methode des akademischen Studiums, 1802. In his third period
Sehelling develops what he calls his positive philosophy, a philosophy
of revelation and mythology, or theosophy, which resembles that of
Jacob Boehme. The universe is conceived as a fall from God. The
meaning of universal history is sought in the obscure beginnings of
mythology and revelation, from which, Sehelling thinks, we may gain
hints of the original fall of man from God. The works of this period,
with the exception of one on human freedom, were not published until
after his death.
Complete works ed. by his son, 1856, ff., 14 vols.; selected works,
by Weiss, 1908; translations in Journal of Spec. Phil. Monographs
by Watson, Hartmann, Fischer, Brehier, Braun, Adam, Mehlis ; Bolland,
Schelling, Hegel und Fechner; Frantz, Schellings positive Philosophic;
works mentioned pp. 396 and 435.
Schelling was captivated by the new idealism, which explained
the world of experience in terms of mind, and became an ardent
exponent of the cause. He was not, however, sat-
0? Nature7 isfied with Fichte's conception of nature,— so far
as Fichte had developed it at the time of Schel-
ling's appearance on the scene, — with the view, namely, tha':
nature is a product of the absolute ego in the individual con-
sciousness and serves merely as an obstacle or incentive to tho
will: " nature is the material of our duty." Schelling advances
to objective idealism and pantheism, as Fichte himself had done :
the pure ego of epistemology becomes the absolute ego of meta-
physics. If reality is, at bottom, a living self -determining proc-
ess akin to the human spirit, nature cannot be conceived as :i
mere external impediment to the will or as a dead mechanical
FRIEDRICH WILHELM SCHELLING 451
order. We can understand nature because it has kinship with
us, because it is the expression of a dynamic mind, because there
is life and reason and purpose in it. But reason is not neces-
sarily conscious intelligence; with the Romanticists and faith-
philosophers, Schelling broadens the conception of spirit, mind,
or reason, so as to include the unconscious, instinctive, purposive
force that manifests itself in inorganic and organic nature as
well as in the highest self-consciousness of the philosopher, into
which it evolves. That which is common to unconscious nature
and self-conscious mind is pure activity, self -determining energy ;
reality is, through and through, action, life, will. The absolute
ground, or source, or root, of all things is creative energy, abso-
lute will or ego, the one all-pervading world-spirit, in which
everything dwells in potency and from which everything that
is actual proceeds. The ideal and the real, thought and being,
are identical in their root ; the same creative energy that reveals
itself in self-conscious mind operates unconsciously in sense-
perception, in animal instinct, in organic growth, in chemical
processes, in crystallization, in electrical phenomena, and in
gravity: there is life and reason in them all. The principle,
which, as blind unconscious impulse, forms and moves my body,
becomes conscious of itself, separates itself, as it were, from its
blind, striving phase (which still goes on working unconsciously)
and becomes pure spirit, pure self -consciousness. The universal
ego expresses itself in me and in numberless other individual
selves: in souls it becomes aware of itself. We are real in so
far as we are rooted in the universal ego; we are not real as
independent, isolated individuals: absolute selfhood is an
illusion.
It was this thought of Schelling 's that nature is visible spirit,
spirit invisible nature, that gave an impetus to the Romantic
imagination and encouraged the new poets to endow the
world with life and mind, and to view it with a loving sym-
pathy, which they could not feel in the presence of a dead
machine.
Nature and mind, being and thought, are not, however, as
Spinoza held, two parallel aspects of the Absolute, but different
steps or stages or epochs in the evolution of absolute mind. The
Absolute unfolds itself, it has a history: it is an evolutionary
452 MODERN PHILOSOPHY
process, the highest goal of which is self-consciousness. Just
as in our own selves we rise from the unconscious or subcon-
scious stage to clear self-consciousness and yet remain one and
the same self, so the one universal ego rises from darkness to
light. The graduated scale of organized objects, from inanimate
nature to man, clearly betrays a creative power which only
gradually evolves into complete freedom. The dead and uncon-
scious products of nature are merely unsuccessful attempts of
nature to reflect itself; so-called dead nature is an unripe intel-
ligence, but its phenomena unconsciously exhibit the traces of
reason. Nature reaches its highest goal, self-consciousness, in
man; here the original identity of nature and mind is revealed
to us. The most perfect theory of nature would, therefore, be
one in which all the laws of nature could be reduced to laws
of perception and thinking ; in which the whole of nature would
resolve itself into intelligence.
It is, therefore, immaterial whether we begin with nature or
with mind, with the Philosophy of Nature or with the System
of Transcendental Idealism; whether we ask, How does nature
become (conscious) intelligence? or, How does intelligence be-
come (unconscious) nature? The principles of knowledge and
the principles of reality are the same ; the question, How is
knowledge possible? and the question, How is a world possible?
are answered by referring to the same conditions and laws. The
results will be the same; in tracing the different epochs in the
history of self-consciousness, from primitive sensation up, we
are, at the same time, tracing the development of the absolute
principle as it manifests itself in nature. " All qualities are
sensations, all bodies are percepts of nature ; nature itself, with
all its sensations and percepts, is a congealed intelligence."
There is the same law in all: the principle at the root of
things acts in the same uniform ways, pulsates in the same
rhythms everywhere. Its action is a process of expansion and
contraction: the principle unfolds what is potential or implicit
in it, objectifies itself, goes out of itself, so to speak, and then
returns to itself enriched and enhanced: in self-consciousness
nature expresses itself as subject and object, differentiates and
becomes conscious of itself in the process. The different forces
of nature are fundamentally the same; heat, light, magnetism,
FRIEDRICH WILHELM SCHELLING 453
electricity are different stages of one and the same principle,
as are also inorganic and organic nature. There is also unity
in the different organic forms ; they constitute a graduated scale
and are the products of the same principle of organization ;
they are all built on the same plan. All the products of nature
are held together by one creative spirit; every part of it sub-
serves the whole, of which man is the highest product and in
which the goal is the realization of self-consciousness.
Schelling attempts to construct nature a priori, to reason out
the necessary stages in the process of its evolution, as Fichte
had tried to show the logical steps in the development of mind.
Like Herder and Fichte before him and Hegel after him, he finds
a dialectical process at work in the world, a process in which
two opposing activities (thesis and antithesis) are united and
harmonized or reconciled in a higher synthesis. This he calls
the law of triplicity: action is followed by reaction; from the
opposition a harmony or synthesis results, which, again, is
dissolved in the never-ending movement of time. Hence, there
can be neither dead, static substance (or changeless atoms) nor
complete flux in nature; neither absolute solids nor absolute
fluids, for example, but only a union of the two. Schelling ap-
plies this thought to the details of inorganic and organic nature ;
we find the law expressed in the series: attraction, repulsion,
gravitation; magnetism, electricity, chemism; sensibility, irri-
tability, reproduction. We shall not follow him in his account,
in which poetry and science are mingled and in which fancy
and logic relieve each other; it will be sufficient to remind the
reader that Schelling 's basal idea of nature as a dynamic evo-
lution is a popular doctrine in contemporary science.
It is because nature is alive, because there is law, reason,
purpose, in it, that we can understand it, that it can mean
anything to us. It is bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh.
With Fichte, Schelling rejects the old notion of the unchange-
able static substance and substitutes for it the dynamic idea,
the conception of universal life, of a living, creative, purposive
principle of evolution, which develops from unconsciousness to
consciousness, and whose ultimate end is the self-conscious rea-
son of man. He opposes the mathematical-physical conception
of nature and substitutes for it the teleological conception, or,
454, MODERN PHILOSOPHY
rather, reconciles mechanism and the older teleology in the no-
tion of unconscious purpose. On the lower stages, the Absolute
acts as if it had conscious purpose; it acts without intention,
but it is not pushed into action, mechanically, from the outside.
If the observer, who sees only the outside of the thing, its changes
in appearance, its different states and stages, could place him-
self on the inside; if he could himself be the impulse or the
movement, and be conscious of it ; he would find that the impulse
is not compelled from without, but compels itself from within ;
that acting itself out is its own will, and that it is aware of
whither it is going.
Schelling's philosophy of nature contained much that was
fantastic and often offered bold assertions, fanciful analogies,
and brilliant figures of speech instead of proofs and facts. In
attempting to force nature into its logical rubrics, it tended to
withdraw the attention from details. But it aroused an inter-
est in nature and in the study of nature, counteracted the influ-
ence of a one-sided mechanism, kept alive the philosophical in-
stinct or craving for unity, which has always marked German
thought, even among its leading natural scientists, and em-
phasized the dynamic and evolutionary conception of reality,
which has again become popular to-day.
We shall not attempt to offer a detailed account of Schelling's
philosophy of mind, as given in the System of Transcendental
Idealism, in which his dependence on Fichte is
Philosophy t marked It traces the history of self-
of Mind . . J .
consciousness in its different epochs, from primary-
sensation to creative imagination; from creative imagina-
tion to reflection; from reflection to the absolute act of will.
Since there is the same principle at work in all forms of
life, we shall expect the activities of mind to correspond to
those found in nature ; the forces of nature continue to operate
in the consciousness of man. The method employed is the same
as Fichte 's : there could be no finite ego unless the absolute ego
or energy limited its infinite activity and produced a phenomenal
world ; the ego could not achieve self -consciousness and freedom
if it were not for such a phenomenal world. The objective world
is the product of absolute reason, which produces sense-
perception, the necessary categories of thought, and self-
FRIEDRICH WILHELM SCHELLING 455
consciousness in the individual. A further precondition of
self-consciousness and freedom is life in society and in an or-
ganized State. An isolated ego could have no thought of a
real world and hence no consciousness of freedom. In the State,
which is the expression of unconscious universal reason, the
natural selfish impulses are restrained by the universal will;
individuals are unconsciously socialized and prepared for a
higher ethical stage, on which they do the right, not from force,
but consciously and willingly. The highest stage in the devel-
opment of self-consciousness is reached in art ; the creative artist
imitates the creative action of nature and becomes conscious
of it, becomes conscious of the activity of the Absolute ; indeed,
in artistic creation the Absolute becomes conscious of its own
creative force. The view that art is the noblest function of
man (not morality, as Fichte had taught) was popular in the
golden age of German literature and in the iron age of political
decadence.
In its developed state, Schelling's philosophy is a form of
pantheism, in which the universe is conceived as a living, evolv-
ing system; as an organism, in which every part
has its place and subserves the whole. In this
sense, subject and object, form and matter, the
ideal and the real, are one, together and inseparable; the one
is the many, and the m/iny are one; just as in an organism
we cannot tear the part from the whole nor understand it apart
from the whole, nor understand the whole without its parts.
The same unity in plurality, or identity in diversity, we find in
mental life ; in the act of knowledge, the knower and the thing
known are one.
The question arises: How can we be sure of the truth of
this system; how can we prove it? What guarantee have we
that action, or life, or will, is the principle of things, and that
it passes through the stages of evolution described by Schelling?
His answer is not always the same. Sometimes he holds that
since the world is thoroughly rational, it is self-evident that rea-
son should understand it, and that we should be able to recon-
struct it in thought. Moreover, since there is a logic in its
history, we can reproduce the necessary stages of its evolution
in our thinking. His ideal here is to produce an organic system
456 MODERN PHILOSOPHY
of knowledge, in which every judgment has its proper place,
depending on other judgments and on the whole system for its
truth. In this mood, he imitates Spinoza and employs the
geometric method in order to make his philosophy logic-proof.
In spite, however, of his attempt at a rational deduction of the
progressive stages of nature and mind from the notion and
purpose of the Absolute, he did not always believe that his
system could be made to rest on an a priori universal and nec-
essary postulate. Philosophy, he held, cannot demonstrate ideal-
ism, any more than it can prove dogmatism or materialism; a
man's world-view is his free choice. The only way to prove free-
dom, or the reality of the creative principle, is to be a free self-
determining being oneself. When we set up freedom as our
ideal, we are tacitly assuming the reality of an absolute creative
spirit ; for, if the world were mere matter, it would be meaning-
less to strive to become free; belief in the ideal implies belief
in a spiritual world. The will to be free, will read the world in
idealistic terms. There is another argument, which Fichte had
used: a free being will know what freedom is, and understand
idealism. We become aware of freedom, or the Absolute, only in
the spontaneous activity of intelligence and in voluntary action :
in an intellectual intuition, which is the unique endowment of
the philosopher. The living, moving element in nature, the inner
meaning of reality, cannot be graspec^ by the scientific under-
standing with its spatial, temporal, and causal categories.
" What is described in concepts," Schelling tells us, " is at rest,
hence there can be concepts only of things, of the finite and
sense-perceived. The notion of movement is not movement itself,
and without intuition we should never know what motion is.
Freedom, however, can be comprehended only by freedom; ac-
tivity only by activity." Natural science and common-sense
take a static view of things, comprehend only their 'being; phi-
losophy knows them in their becoming, it is interested in the
living, moving element in them. Natural science and common-
sense see them only on the outside and break them up ; we must
know them from the inside, as they are in themselves and for
themselves, and that we can do only by knowing ourselves. Per-
haps we can reconcile the rationalistic and intuitionistic tend-
encies in Schelling 's thought by declaring that intuition gives
FRIEDRICH WILHELM SCHELLING 457
us our principle or fundamental postulate, and that this enables
us to construct a rational theory of the world.
Under the influence of a great poetic era and of the artistic
atmosphere in which he lived, Schelling comes to regard this
intuition as an artistic intuition. At first he conceived self-
consciousness, or pure self-reflection, as the goal of the Absolute,
as the highest achievement in the evolution of life and mind,
and held that such a state could be experienced only in the
intuition of the philosopher. Afterwards he interpreted the uni-
verse as a work of art: the Absolute realizes its purpose in the
creation of a cosmos. Hence, art, and not philosophical knowl-
edge, is the highest human function. In the products of art,
subject and object, the ideal and the real, form and matter,
mind and nature, freedom and necessity, are one, or interpene-
trate: here the harmony sought by philosophy is achieved and
lies before our very eyes, — to be seen, touched, and heard. Na-
ture herself is a great poem, and her secret is revealed by art.
The creative artist creates as nature creates, in realizing his
ideal, and so knows how nature works; hence art must serve
as the absolute model for the intuition of the world: it is the
true organ of philosophy. Like the artistic genius, the phi-
losopher must have the faculty of perceiving the harmony and
identity in the universe : aesthetic intuition is absolute knowing.
Akin to the aesthetic conception is the organic conception, as
which Schelling sometimes describes intellectual intuition: it
is the faculty of seeing things whole, the universal in the par-
ticular, unity in plurality, identity in diversity. He expressly
declares that there is nothing mysterious in this function, but
that no one can hope to be a philosopher who does not possess
the power to transcend the disconnected, isolated data of experi-
ence, and to pierce through the outer shell into the inner kernel
of reality.
This type of thought is diametrically opposed to the logical'
mathematical method of science, against which German litera-
ture and German idealistic philosophy both protest. Goethe's
entire view of nature, art, and life rested on the organic or
teleological conception; he too regarded the ability to see the
whole in its parts, the idea or form in the concrete reality, as
the poet's and thinker's highest gift, as an aper^u, as a revela-
458 MODERN PHILOSOPHY ,
tion of consciousness thatgives man a hint of his likeness to
God. It is this gift wHicE~Faust craves and Mephisto sneers at
"as die hohe Intuition.*
On the last stage of his philosophical development, Schelling
reaches a religious mysticism: the world is conceived as a fall
from God, and the goal as a return to God, to be realized in
a mystical intuition in which the soul strips off its selfhood and
becomes absorbed in the Absolute. In all the cases mentioned,
however, the Absolute is defined as a union or identity of spirit
and nature, of the infinite and the finite, and the ideal as an
approximation to a knowledge of the principle, through some
kind of intuition, be it in the self-consciousness of the thinker,
in a free act of will, in artistic creation, or in religious feeling.
60. FRIEDBICH SCHLEIEEMACHEB
In Schleiermacher we have a man of deep religious feeling
and marked intellectual capacity. Religion formed the core of
his thought. The problem for such a personality
of Rr i y was to Develop a conception of reality that would
satisfy the intellect as well as the heart. The great
philosophical movements which confronted him, and with which
as a thinker he had to reckon, were the theories of Kant, Jacobi,
Fichte, and Schelling and the tendencies towards Spinozism
which were so prominent in Germany at the time. He was also
compelled to take account of Romanticism, with many of whose
representatives he came into friendly personal touch and whose
mysticism appealed to his religious nature. His study of Greek
idealism, particularly of Plato, whose works he translated into
German, also furnished his mind with material for a Weltan-
schauung. Schleiermacher was consciously influenced by all
these intellectual movements; he calls himself a dilettante in
philosophy and was certainly an eclectic, a fact which accounts
for many of his inconsistencies. But his eclecticism was of the
independent, original type; he assimilated such elements in the
culture of his age as satisfied his ethical and religious needs,
and adapted them to his fundamental purpose : the construction
of a great system of Protestant theology. It is owing to his
*Cf. Thilly, The World-View of a Poet: Goethe's Philosophy, Hibben
Journal, April, 1908.
FRIEDRICH SCHLEIERMACHER 45*9
understanding and appreciation of the intellectual life of his
times that he came to exercise such a profound influence on
religious thought and won for himself the title of the founder
of the new theology.
Friedrich Daniel Ernst Schleiermacher was born in Breslau, 1768, and
received part of his education in the schools of the Moravian brother-
hood, a pietistic sect. Influenced by the new critical philosophy, he
continued the study of theology and philosophy at the University of
Halle (1787-1790), served as a tutor, and then entered the ministry
(1794). In 1809 he became preacher of Trinity Church at Berlin,
and in 1810 professor of theology at the new University, which
positions he filled until his death in 1834. In Berlin he came under
the influence of the leaders of the Romantic school, but did not follow
them in their extreme teachings. Although Schleiermacher achieved
his greatest distinction as a theologian, he has gained substantial fame
in the history of philosophy as a student of the sources.
Works: Eeden uber die Religion, 1799 (transl. by Oman); Mono-
logen, 1800; Kritik der bisherigen Sitterilehre, 1803; translations of
Plato's Dialogues, with introductions and notes, 1804-1828; Der christ-
liche Glaube, 1821-1822. Complete works, 1834-1864; selected works
by Braun.
Selbie, Schleiermacher; Cross, The Theology of Schleiermacher;
Fuchs, op. cit.; Dilthey, Das Leben Schleiermacher -s, vol. I ; Cramaussel,
La philosophic religieuse de Schleiermacher; works mentioned on
pp. 396, 435, 450.
Schleiermacher rejects the idealism of Fichte, so far as it
seeks to derive all reality from the ego, and assumes the exist-
ence of a real world. We are compelled to infer
a transcendent ground of all thought and being;
all particular things have their source in a prin-
ciple that is the absolute unity of both, the principle of identity,
in which all differences and oppositions are resolved. We know
the nature of things themselves and not merely phenomena, as
Kant had taught. But owing to the perceptual nature of our
thinking, we cannot reach an adequate knowledge of the origi-
nal source of things ; thought moves in opposites and can never
realize absolute identity. The problem is to know the absolute
principle, the identity of thought and being, God ; but the very
nature of this principle precludes all possibility of rational
knowledge. It can never be realized, but only approximated:
conceptual thinking can never free itself from differences and
opposites, whereas the ultimate ground is without differences and
opposites. Hence, philosophy is not Science, but Wissen-
460 MODERN PHILOSOPHY
schaftslehre, Science of Knowledge: it is the art of thinking,
or dialectics; it is the product of social or cooperative thought
and teaches us how to approximate to the goal. Nor can we
reach an adequate knowledge of God through practical reason,
in the Kantian way. The fact is, Schleiermacher already pos-
sesses his touchstone of truth in his notion of God, and on this
his conception of knowledge depends: human intelligence, with
its habit of pulling things apart, cannot comprehend the unity
of the divine nature.
We realize the ideal only in religious feeling or in divining
intuition; in feeling we come into direct relation with God:
the absolute unity or identity of thought and being, which we
cannot define in conceptual terms, is immediately experienced
in self-consciousness. Religion is the feeling of absolute de-
pendence on an absolute world-ground ; it is the immediate con-
sciousness that everything finite is infinite and owes its exist-
ence to the infinite, that everything temporal is eternal and
rests in the eternal. Schleiermacher opposes the shallow ra-
tionalism of the Aufkldrung with its theological proofs, as well
as the orthodox utilitarian conception of God as the dispenser
of rewards and punishments, and, likewise, refuses to ground
religion on ethical conviction, as Kant and Fichte had done.
According to him, religion does not consist in theoretical dog-
mas or rationalistic proofs, any more than in acts of worship
and moral conduct. Since God cannot be known, theology must
be a theory of religious feeling; its function is to formulate
and to bring to clear consciousness the implications of religious
feeling.
This Schleiermacher proceeds to do in his theology, which
represents a fusion of Spinozism and idealism that was quite
common in Germany at the beginning of the nine-
World116 d teenth century. The Absolute is conceived or-
the Individual ganicaUy> in analogy with the human mind, as
unity in diversity, as the identity of thought and
being. Schleiermacher did not consistently carry out the Spino-
zistic idea, but attempted to combine his pantheism with dualism.
God and the world are one, true ; but things are not mere essence-
less forms; the world has a relative independence. A legiti-
mate theory of the universe must affirm the inseparableness of
FRIEDRICH SCHLEIERMACHER 461
God and the world, — God has never been without a world, nor
the world apart from God, — an«l yet it must distinguish between
the idea of God and the idea of the world: God is a spaceless
and timeless unity ; the world, a spatial-temporal plurality.
We cannot ascribe personality to God, for that would make
him finite. Nor can we attribute infinite thought and will to
him, for these terms contradict each other; all thinking and
willing are by their very nature necessarily finite. God is the
universal creative force, the source of all life: so Herder,
Goethe, Fichte, and Schelling had interpreted the Spinozistic
substance.
The relation of the individual to the Absolute is conceived in
a way to preserve some measure of freedom and independence
to the former. The individual egos are self-determining princi-
ples: freedom means (as for Leibniz) the natural evolution of
individual capacity or endowment. Yet, they are imbedded in
the universal substance, as it were; they are articulate mem-
bers of the universe, and as such their individual nature must
conform to the universe. Each particular ego, however, has its
specific talent or gift ; it occupies a place in the whole of things
that is absolutely necessary, and must, therefore, give expres-
sion to its own individuality in order that the nature of the
whole may be realized. The high value which Schleiermacher
places on personality, and his insistence on self-development and
self-expression, are characteristic of the Romantic tendencies in
German thought. It is this individualistic bent which, in spite
of the feeling of absolute dependence, prevented him from sink-
ing the human soul in the universal substance, and which gave
rise to his individualistic ethics. He had little sympathy with
Kant's rigoristic morality and the dualism between reason and
nature, a dualism which can never be bridged unless the sub-
jective will and the objective will are united in the original
natural will.
Reason and will exist in nature as well as in man ; morality
is a higher development of something that already manifests it-
self in nature in a lower form. The reason immanent in nature
is identical with that of the self-conscious subject: there is no
irreconcilable conflict between the natural law and the moral
law. The ideal is not the destruction of the lower impulses, but
4C2 MODERN PHILOSOPHY
the unfolding of the individual's peculiar nature in the har-
mony of the whole. The ethical value of the acts of each per-
sonality consists in their uniqueness : hence, be a unique person
and act in accordance with your own peculiar nature. Even
in religion the individual should be left free to express himself
in his own unique and intimate way. This teaching is not to
be interpreted as a selfish individualism; for, according to
Schleiermacher, the consciousness of the value of one's own per-
sonality carries with it the appreciation of the worth of others.
The sense of universality (der allgemeine Sinn) is the highest
condition of one's own perfection. Hence, the ethical life is a
life in society, in a society of unique individuals who respect
humanity in its uniqueness, whether in themselves or in others.
" The more each becomes like the universe, the more fully he
communicates himself to others, the more perfect will be the
unity of all ; . . . rising above themselves and triumphing over
themselves, they are on the way to true immortality and eter-
nity." It is the religious feeling, however, that illuminates
one 's entire life and brings unity into it. In the feeling of piety
man recognizes that his desire to be a unique personality is in
harmony with the action of the universe; " religion regards all
events in the world as the acts of God. ' ' Personal immortality
is out of the question ; the immortality of religion consists in
becoming one with the infinite ; to be immortal is ' ' to be eternal
in every moment of time."
61. GEORG WILHELM HEGEL
Both Fichte and Schelling had proceeded from Kantian pre-
suppositions : mind is the principle of knowledge ; all philosophy
is ultimately a philosophy of mind, in which form:?
and cateS°ries constitute the significant fact. Both
accepted the dynamic view of reality : for both thii
ideal principle is an active living process. And, in spite of
Romantic tendencies, both employed the logical method, seeking
to explain the world of experience by exhibiting the condition*
without which such experience would be impossible. We havB
seen how Schelling modified Fichte 's earlier view, or at least
elaborated it in several important respects. We may say that
GEORG WILHELM HEGEL 463
in Schelling philosophy again becomes metaphysics: nature and
mind are conceived as progressive stages in the evolution of an
absolute principle that expresses itself in the inorganic and
organic realms, in individual and social life, in history, science,
and art. The results of critical epistemology are applied in
ontology; the necessary forms of thought are regarded also as
necessary forms of being. Nature takes an important place in
his thinking: unconscious processes are at work, not only in the
so-called inanimate sphere, but in history, society, and the hu-
man mind as well. The rigorous logical method followed by
Schelling in some of his early writings is gradually supplemented
or replaced: esthetic intuition becomes the organ of knowledge
and the aesthetic ideal is set up, in place of the Fichtean ethics,
as the goal of human development.
Hegel builds on the foundations laid by Fichte and Schelling.
He agrees with the former in insisting on a logical method, —
indeed, he undertakes to put the world-view of his friend Schel-
ling on a rational scientific basis, — with the latter, in identifying
logic with ontology or metaphysics; with both in conceiving
reality as a living developing process. For him, too, nature and
mind or reason are one ; only, he subordinates nature to reason.
Indeed, for him, all being and reason are identical; the same
process that is at work in reason, is present everywhere ; hence,
whatever is real is rational, and whatever is rational is real.
There is, therefore, a logic in nature as well as in history, and
the universe is at bottom a logical system. The Absolute, then,
is not an undifferentiated absolute, " in which all cows are
black," as Schelling had taught (according to Hegel), but
reason itself. Nor is the Absolute so much a substance (Spi-
noza) as a subject, which means that it is life, process, evolution,
as well as consciousness and knowledge. All motion and action,
all life, are but an unconscious thinking ; they follow the law of
thought ; hence, the more law there is in nature, the more rational
is its activity. And, finally, the goal toward which the devel-
oping Absolute moves is self-consciousness ; the meaning of the
entire process lies in its highest development : in the realization
of truth and goodness, in the realization of a mind that knows
the meaning and purpose of the universe and identifies itsel/
with the universal purpose.
MODERN PHILOSOPHY
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel was born in Stuttgart, 1770, studied
theology and philosophy at Tubingen (1788-1793), and held private
tutorships in Switzerland and in Frankfort, from 1794 to 1801. In
1801 he established himself at Jena, receiving a professorship in 1805,
which he was compelled to relinquish after the battle of Jena, in 1806.
After serving as the editor of a newspaper in Bamberg (1806-1808)
and as director of the gymnasium at Nuremberg (1808-1816), he was
called to the professorship of philosophy at Heidelberg and then to
Berlin, where he exercised a great influence and won many adherents.
. In 1831 he died of the cholera.
Works: Phdnomenologie des Geistes, 1807; Logik, 1812-1816; Encyclo-
pedic der philosophischen Wissenschaften, 1817; Grundlinien der Phi-
losophic des Rechts, 1821. His lectures on the History of Philosophy,
^Esthetics, Philosophy of Religion, Philosophy of Right, and Philosophy
of History were published by his pupils after his death, in the Complete
Works, 19 vols., 1832, ff. Das Leben Jesu, 1795, was published in
1906, System der Sittlichkeit , 1893. New ed. of separate works by
G. Lasson, Bolland, Drews, and in Phil. Bibl Translations: Logic,
vol. II, by Harris; Encyclopedia: Logic and Philosophy of Mind, by
Wallace; Phenomenology, by Baillie; Philosophy of Eight, by Dyde;
History of Philosophy, by Haldane ; Philosophy of History, by Sibree ;
Philosophy of Religion, by Speirs; Philosophy of Art: Introduction,
by Bosanquet; Part II in J. of Spec. Phil, by Bryant; abridged tr. by
Hastie.
E. Caird, Hegel; Hibben, Hegel's Logic; W. Wallace, Prolegomena
to the Study of Hegel's Philosophy; Stirling, Secret of Hegel, 2 vols. ;
Baillie, Origin and Significance of Hegel's Logic; Harris, Hegel's
Logic; McTaggart, Commentary on Hegel's Logic, and Studies in the
Hegelian Dialectic and Cosmology; A. Seth, Hegelianism and Per-
sonality; G. W. Cunningham, Thought and Reality in Hegel's System;
M. Mackenzie, Hegel's Educational Theory and Practice; Haym, Hegel
und seine Zeit; K. Fischer, Hegel; Ulrici, Princip und Methode der
hegelschen Philosophic; Croce, Lebendiges und Totes in Hegels Phi-
losophic (German transl.) ; Noel, Logique de Hegel; Dilthey, Jugendge-
schichte Hegels; Nohl, Hegels theologische Jugendschriften; P. Barth,
Geschichtsphilosophie Hegels; Bolland, Hegels Philosophie des Rechts,
and Philosophie der Religion; Morris, Hegel's Philosophy of State
and of History; works on post-Kantian philosophy, pp. 396, 450.
It is the business of philosophy, according to Hegel, .to know
nature and the entire world of experience as it is, to study and
Proble f comPrehend the reason in it;— not the superficial,
PhUos'ophy transitory, and accidental forms, but its eternal
essence, harmony, and law. Things have a mean-
ing, the processes in the world are rational : the planetary sys-
tem is a rational order, the organism is rational, purposive, full
of meaning (sinnvoll). Since reality is at bottom rational, a
necessary process of thoughts or notions, a logical process, it
GEORG WILHELM HEGEL 465
can be known only by thought; and the function of philosophy
will be to understand the laws or necessary forms according to
which reason operates. Logic and metaphysics will, therefore,
be one and the same. The world, however, is not static, it moves
on, it is dynamic; so is thought, or reason; the notion, or the
true concept, is an active, moving process, a process of evolution.
In evolution, something that is undeveloped, undifferentiated,
homogeneous, as we should say, and in this sense abstract, de-
velops, differentiates, splits up, assumes many different, hence
opposing or contradictory forms, until at last we have a unified,
concrete, particularized object, a unity in diversity. The indefi-
nite, abstract ground from which we have proceeded has become
a definite concrete reality in which the opposites are reconciled
or united in the whole. The higher stage in the process of evolu-
tion is the realization of the lower, it is really what the lower
intends to be; in this sense, it is the truth of the lower, the
purpose of the lower, the meaning of the lower. What was im-
plicit in the lower form becomes explicit or is made manifest in
the higher. Every stage in the process contains all the preceding »
stages and foreshadows all the future ones: the world at every j
stage is both a product and a prophecy. The lower form is |
negated in the higher, that is, it is not what it was; but it is
also preserved in the higher, it has been carried over and j
sublated. All these ideas Hegel expresses by the German word
aufgehoben; and the process, in the thing, of passing over into ^
its opposites he calls the dialectical process.
This is what Hegel means when he declares that contradiction
is the root of all life and movement, that everything is contra-
diction, that the principle of contradiction rules the world.
Everything tends to change, to pass over into its opposite. The
seed has in it the impulse to be something else, an other: to
contradict itself and to transcend itself. Without contradic-
tion there would be no life, no movement, no growth, no devel-
opment; everything would be dead existence, static externality.
But contradiction is not the whole story; nature does not stop
at contradiction, but strives to overcome it; the thing passes
over into its opposite, true, but the movement goes on and oppo-
sitions are overcome and reconciled, that is, become parts of a
unified whole. The opposites are opposites with respect to one
466 MODERN PHILOSOPHY
another, but not with respect to the unity or whole of which
they form the parts. Taken by themselves, they have no value
or meaning, but considered as planfully articulated parts of a
whole, — of a process, — they have value and meaning. They are
expressions of the notion of the thing, of its reason or purpose.
In realizing its purpose, its notion, or Begriff, the thing over-
comes the contradiction between its being and its notion, between
what it now is and what it has it in it to be. Thus, for ex-
ample, all nature strives to overcome its material being, to
divest itself of its phenomenal encumbrances and to make mani-
fest its true essence, to put on immortality.
Again, the universe is a process of evolution, in which ends
or purposes are realized, the purposes of universal reason. This
is an organic or teleological conception. The complete organism
is the realization of the purpose or form or notion or concept
of the organism, the truth of the organism, as Hegel would say.
The important thing in evolution is not merely what existed at
the beginning, but what happens or is made manifest at the
end. The truth lies in the whole, but the whole is realized only
in the completed process of evolution ; being is at the end what
it is in truth. And so we may say that the Absolute is essen-
tially a result; the result as such, however, is not the complete
whole; the result together with the entire process of develop-
ment is the true whole; the thing is not exhausted in its pur-
pose, but in its achievement (Ausfuhrung).
Hence, philosophy is interested in results ; it has to show how
one result emerges from the other, how it necessarily emerges
from the other. This movement proceeds unconsciously in na-
ture and even in history (Schelling). But the thinker can
become conscious of the process ; he may describe it, rethink the
concepts. He has reached the highest stage of knowledge when
he has grasped the Idea of the world, when he knows its mean-
ing, when he can retrace the operations of the universal dynamic
reason, its categories, its notions. The concepts in his head are
of the same nature as the universal concepts ; the dialectical evo-
lution of the concepts in the mind of the philosopher coincides
with the objective evolution of the world ; the categories of sub-
jective thought are likewise categories of the universe; thought
and being are identical.
GEORG WILHELM HEGEL 467
Now, if the business of philosophy is to follow the nature
of things, to tell us the what, the why, and the wherefore of
reality, the existence, ground or essence, and pur-
pose of things, its method must be suited to its end. RialuC jj cal
The method must reproduce the rational process,
or the course of evolving reason in the world. This object can-
not be attained by the artistic intuitions of genius or in similar
mysterious ways, as Schelling and others supposed; there is no
other way than that of hard thinking. Philosophy is conceptual
knowledge, Begriffswissenschaft, as Kant had declared. But,
Hegel notes, we cannot exhaust reality in abstract concepts;
reality is a moving dynamic process, a dialectical process, which
abstract concepts cannot faithfully represent: the abstract con-
cept tells only a part, and only a small part, of the story. Real-
ity is now this, now that ; in this sense it is full of negations,
contradictions, and oppositions: the plant germinates, blooms,
withers, and dies; man is young, mature, and old. To do a
thing justice, we must tell the whole truth about it, predicate
all these contradictions of it, and show how they are reconciled
and preserved in the articulated whole which we call the life
of the thing. Ordinary abstract thought takes the existing things
in isolation, it looks upon them as the true realities, and con-
siders their special phases and oppositions by themselves. The
intellect can do nothing but distinguish, oppose, and relate;
it cannot conceive the unity of opposites, it cannot understand
life and the inner purposiveness of things; hence, for example,
it can only wonder at animal instinct and its works. The in-
tellect looks down upon the speculative method, but it can never
grasp life as such. Conceived by themselves or torn from their
relations, the contradictory aspects of things are meaningless
appearances ; they can be understood only as parts of an organic,
articulated system; or, as Hegel puts it, all existence has truth
only in the Idea, for the Idea is the only true reality. One Idea
pervades the whole and all the parts of the whole; all particu-
lars have their reality in this unity. The activity which sees
things whole, or unifies the opposites, is a higher function of
mind, which, however, let it be remembered, cannot dispense
with the intellect. The two functions work hand in hand.
Thought will, therefore, proceed from the most simple, ab-
468 MODERN PHILOSOPHY
stract, and empty concepts to the more complex, concrete, and
richer ones, to notions. Hegel calls this method, which we
Already find indicated in Kant and employed by Fichte and
Schelling, the dialectical method, and, with them, distinguishes
in it three moments or stages. We begin with an abstract uni-
versal concept (thesis) ; this concept gives rise to a contradic-
tion (antithesis) ; the contradictory concepts are reconciled in a
third concept which, therefore, is a union of the other two (syn-
thesis). To illustrate: Parmenides held that being is perma-
nent, Heraclitus that it is in constant change, the Atomists that
it is neither and both, that something is permanent and some-
thing changes. The new concept, however, suggests new prob-
lems and contradictions, which, in their turn, must be resolved
in other concepts. And so the dialectical process, which seeks
to follow the evolution of reality, goes on until we reach an
ultimate concept or notion in which all oppositions are resolved
and preserved. But no single concept, not even the highest,
represents the whole truth ; all concepts are only partial truths ;
truth or knowledge is constituted by the entire system of con-
cepts, every one of which has evolved from a basal concept.
Truth, like rational reality itself, is a living logical process.
Or to say it in other words : One thought follows necessarily
from the other, one thought provokes a contradictory thought
with which it is united to form another thought. The dialectical
movement is the logical self-unfolding of thought. Hegel
speaks as though thoughts or notions thought themselves: there
is an inner necessity in them, they are like a growing organism
that unfolds its capacities and becomes a concrete organized
whole, a concrete universal. Hence, all the thinker has to do
is to let his thought follow its logical course in the manner
described ; since this process, if correctly carried on, is identical
with the world-process, it will be a reproduction of the develop-
ment immanent in things. In this way, we can think God's
thoughts after him.
Speculative or dialectical thinking, then, is a process that
seeks to do justice to moving, living, organic existence, a proc
ess in which differences are reconciled, in which distinctions ar(
not merely made, but comprehended. The philosophical notioi
is an organic unity of differences, a totality of parts, a unifiec.
GEORG WILHELM HEGEL 469
and yet differentiated whole. When Hegel tells us that the con-
crete universal notion is the synthesis of opposites, he wishes
to describe the nature of thought as well as the
nature of reality. Being is what the Romanticists Th?ufh.t
£ j £ iv 7i a and Being
were fond of calling it: a flowing reality, some-
thing akin to life and mind. And, — again the Romanti-
cists were right, — being cannot be grasped by an abstracting
intelligence that catches only general phases or glimpses of
it, cuts it into pieces, and ignores its organic character. But it
cannot be realized by mystical feeling, aesthetic intuitions, or
happy guesses. It is a rational process, a process that has a
meaning and must be thought. It is not an insane flux, an
unbridled, absolutely meaningless happening, but an orderly
evolution, a progress. By its fruits we shall know it; in the
light of the goal it achieves, all its seeming oppositions and con-
tradictions are understood and reconciled. Our attempts to split
up reality into essence and appearance, inner and outer, sub-
stance and attribute, force and its expression, the infinite and
the finite, mind and matter, God and world, give us nothing
but false distinctions and arbitrary abstractions. Natur hat
weder Kern noch Schale: the essence is the appearance, the inner
is the outer, the mind is the body, God is the universe, and
so on.
Reality, then, is a logical process of evolution. It is a spir-
itual process, and we can, therefore, understand it only in so
far as we experience such a process in ourselves. But, let us
not forget, it is not the particular ideas, the empirical or psycho-
logical content, which we find in ourselves, that give us such
understanding. There is a rational necessity in all thought that
must be reproduced by us. Our thinking evolves or develops
rationally; it moves logically, genetically, dialectically : in this
sense, it is universal, trans-empirical, transcendental, or meta-
physical, as Hegel calls it. Nor is truth expressed in this or
that individual, it manifests itself in the species, it grows
out of the life of the race. The divine mind or reason expresses
itself in the evolution of the racial consciousness, in human his-
tory. But, it must always be remembered, only in so far as
human history is rational, necessary, logical, can we speak of
it as expressive of the divine reason.
470 MODERN PHILOSOPHY
Hegel calls God Idea, meaning the potential universe, the
timeless totality of all the possibilities of evolution. Spirit or
Mind (Geist) is this Idea realized. The Idea contains within
itself, in posse, implicitly, ideally, the entire logical-dialectical
process which unfolds itself in a world ; in it all the laws of its
evolution are outlined which express themselves in the form of
objective existence. The Idea is the creative logos or reason;
its forms of action or categories are not empty husks or lifeless
ideas, but objective thoughts, spiritual forces which constitute
the very essence of things. The study of the creative logos,
in its necessary evolution, is logic. It is not meant by this teach-
ing that God as pure thought or logical Idea existed before
the creation of the world ; for Hegel declares that the world was
eternally created. The divine mind can never be without self-
expression; God is the living moving reason of the world, he
reveals himself in the world, in nature and in history; nature
and history are necessary stages in the evolution of God into
self-consciousness. (The evolution is not temporal in the sense
that there ever was a time when there was no evolution. The
Absolute is eternally that into which it develops: the categories
are eternally potential in it, they have never evolved out of
nothing. Nevertheless, the categories are developed successively,
one after the other, one being the condition of the other.) God
is not absorbed in the world, nor the world absorbed in God;
without the world God is not God, he cannot be without creating
a world, without knowing himself in his other. There must be
unity and opposition in the Absolute : God is not separate from
the world. The finite world could not exist without the Idea,
it is not an independent thing and has no real being without
God : whatever truth it has it owes to God. Just as in our minds
thoughts and feelings come and pass away without exhausting
the mind, so the phenomena of nature come and go without
exhausting the divine mind. And just as our mind is enriched
and enlarged by its thoughts and experiences, and rises to fuller
and fuller self-consciousness in and through them, so the divine
Idea is enriched by its self-expressions in nature and history,
and rises through them to self-consciousness, becoming for itself
what it was in itself. In the rhythmical process of self-alienation
and self-deliverance, the universal mind realizes its destiny: it
GEORG WILHELM HEGEL 471
thinks itself in its object and so comes to know its own essence.
The Absolute becomes conscious only in evolution, and above all
in man. Hegel, therefore, does not mean that God, or the logical
Idea, exists as a self-conscious logical process before the creation
of the world, — he cannot be conscious without a world; — he is
a developing God and becomes fully self-conscious only in the
minds of human beings who make explicit the logical-dialectical
process that lies implicit in the universal absolute reason.
From all this it must appear that logic is the basal science,
since it reproduces the divine thought-process as it is in itself.
Dialectical thought expresses the innermost essence
of the universal mind ; in such thinking the uni- Jrf^
versal mind knows itself as it is ; here thought and
being, subject and object, form and content are one. The forms
or categories of thought which logic evolves are identical with
the forms of reality: they have both logical and ontological or
metaphysical value. In the essence of things thought recognizes
its own essence, seeing it as in a mirror. Reason is the same
everywhere, and everywhere the divine reason is at work: the
universe, or that which is real and eternal in it, is the result
of the thought of God. Hence it makes no difference where we
begin: whether we study reason, the dialectical process, in our-
selves (logic) or in the universe (metaphysics), we shall always
reach the same results. In logical thinking, pure thought may
be said to study itself, thinker and thought are one ; and in it,
also, the thinker develops with his thinking. The other sciences
are applications of logic: the philosophy of nature studies the
Absolute, or universal reason, in its otherness> in its self-
objectification or self-alienation; the philosophy of mind shows
how reason overcomes objective nature, returns to itself, as it
were, or evolves into self-consciousness.
It is to be noted that in all these cases of the revelation of
reason, whether as nature or mind, reason appears in an infinite
variety of temporal and transitory forms. These accidental
shapes showing on the surface are not the object of philosophy.
It is the business of philosophy to understand the reason in
things, the essence or substance of nature and mind, the eternal
harmony and order, the immanent law and essence of nature,
the meaning or rationale of human institutions and of history,
472 MODERN PHILOSOPHY
the eternal element shining through the temporal and accidental,
the inner pulse beating in the external shapes. Moreover, this
reason in things we can know only conceptually, through the
notion, through dialectical or logical thought; hence, the only
knowledge worthy of the name is a priori or philosophical knowl-
edge: philosophy of nature, philosophy of right, philosophy of
history.
Logic deals with concepts, it shows how one concept springs
from the other, that there is a necessary evolution in thinking,
that if we think correctly, we are bound to pass
Philosophy from stage to stage until we reach the highest
of ,N^ye stage, the culmination and completion of the proc-
and Philoso- ___. *L .
phy of Mind ess> the epitome of all the others. When we think
these concepts, we are in the world of true reality,
the eternal, imperishable process of the universe. The system of
concepts which we think in logic, forms an organic whole and
represents the true essence of things. It is not merely some-
thing in our heads ; we find it revealed in the world-process, in
nature and in mind, in the individual mind and in the social
mind, in the history of the world and in human institutions. In
logic, however, we envisage reason in its purity, in its naked-
ness, as it were; in this sense, it is a shadow- world of essence-
less forms, the logical Idea, God before he created the world.
It is a shadow-world because it lacks substance or body, because
it is naked thought, because it is not clothed in the garments of
a universe. This is what Hegel means when he states that logic
has no actual being, that it is never actualized except in the
thinking of man: outside of human thinking, universal reason
is more than pure thought. We are not concerned, in logic,
with its revelations, with nature, history, society, but with a
system of truths, a world of ideas, as it is in itself. But we
can also study it in its revelations, we can see how this skeleton.
or framework, takes on flesh and blood, or, rather, we can see
it in flesh and blood. In nature, reason reveals itself in its
otherness, in its externality and succession, in space and time.
We cannot truly say that the logical Idea passes over into na-
ture : the logical Idea is nature, nature is a form of the logical
Idea, it is the Idea in its spatial and temporal form. Nature
is reason, it is conceptual, it is the Begriff in its " side-by-
GEORG WILHELM HEGEL 473
sideness," the notion in the form of extension. Hegel calls it
petrified intelligence, an unconscious intelligence, concepts
spread-out, so to speak. Moreover, nature is a stage of transi-
tion through which the logical Idea passes, in its evolution into
mind or spirit (Geist). That is, the Idea, which embodies itself
or is externalized in nature, returns into itself and becomes
mind, or spirit: in mind the Idea reveals itself to itself.
Mind or spirit passes through dialectical stages of evolution,
revealing itself as subjective mind, objective mind, and absolute
mind. Subjective mind expresses itself as soul (mind dependent
on nature), consciousness (mind opposed to nature), and spirit
(mind reconciled with nature in knowledge) : corresponding to
these stages, Hegel has the sciences of anthropology, phe-
nomenology, and psychology. The Idea, or universal reason,
becomes soul in the animal organism. It embodies itself, creates
a body for itself, becomes a particular, individual soul, the func-
tion and vocation of which is to exercise its peculiar individu-
ality; it is an unconscious production. This soul, which has
fashioned an organic body for itself, becomes conscious of itself,
distinguishes itself from its body; consciousness is an evolution
from the very principle of which the body is the expression.
The function of consciousness is knowing. It rises from a purely
objective stage, in which it regards the sensible object as the
most real and truest thing, to a stage in which reason is con-
ceived as the innermost essence of both self-consciousness and
objective reality. Mind or spirit (Geist) in the highest sense
unites both functions: it is productive knowing. We really
know only what we create or produce. The objects of the spirit
are its own products; hence, its essence, especially that of
theoretical spirit, consists in knowing. Spirit or intelligence
immersed in the object is perception. No one can speak or write
illuminatingly of an object without living in it spiritually, i.e.,
without intuiting it in the true sense of the terra. Knowledge
is completed in the pure thinking of conceiving reason. Presen-
tation (Vorstellung, memory, imagination, association) is the
mean between perception and reason. Reason evolves or un-
folds concepts, i.e., conceives by pure thought the self-develop-
ment of concepts. The understanding or intellect judges
(urteilt), that is, separates the elements of the concept; reason
474 MODERN PHILOSOPHY
concludes, that is, binds together the elements of the concept.
In the development of pure thought, theoretical intelligence sees
through itself, knows itself; it becomes reason recognizing
itself.
Intelligence or reason is the sole ground of its development;
hence, the result of its self-knowledge is the knowledge that its
essence is self-determination or will or practical spirit. Will
appears as a particular subject or natural individual, striving for
the satisfaction of his needs or deliverance from his ills. The
will immersed in its impulses is unfree.
The Idea, or universal reason, expresses itself not only in na-
ture or in individuals, but in human institutions and in history,
in right or law (property, contract, punishment),
Philosophy -n mora}jty or conscience, in custom (Sitte) or
ethical observances (family, civic society, State).
In these institutions and in history reason realizes itself or
becomes actual, i.e., appears in external form; in this sense it
is called objective reason. The reason which has produced hu-
man institutions is the same as that which seeks to understand
them : the reason which has unconsciously evolved law, custom,
and the State becomes conscious of the process in the philosophy
of right. It is not the business of such a philosophy to tell us
what the State ought to be, but to know it as it is, that is, to
exhibit the reason immanent in it; and that can only be done
by dialectical thinking. It is the function of philosophy to show
how rational institutions follow from the very Idea or nature
of right or justice. In studying institutions, it is possible to
explain them historically, to show to what conditions, circum-
stances, and so forth, they owe their existence. But such a,
causal explanation is not the true philosophical explanation; it
is one thing to trace the historical evolution of institutions, to
point out the circumstances, needs, events, which led to their
establishment; another, to demonstrate the justice in them and
their rational necessity. We can understand the reason of right,
law, custom, State, only when we understand the notion of tht
thing (den Begriff der Sache).
Objective reason is realized in a society of free individuals IE
which the individual wills the laws and customs of his people,
In such a society the individual subordinates his subjective con-
GEORG WILHELM HEGEL 475
science (morality) to universal reason; in custom or the ethical
observances of his people (Sitte) he finds his universal and true
self expressed: he recognizes in the laws his own will and in
himself a particularized expression of the laws. The evolution
of the ethical spirit into a community of self-conscious individ-
uals is the result of the evolution of active reason. After many
experiences in society, the individual learns that in willing a
universal cause he is willing his own will, or is free. The real
and the ideal are one here: individual reason accepts universal
reason as its own; the individual abandons his subjectivity and
subordinates his individual reason to the universal reason, which
expresses itself in the Volksgeist, in the consciousness of a
people, in the national mind: this is Sittlichkeit. The perfect
State, which realizes perfect freedom, is the goal and purpose
of universal history: progress means the development of the
consciousness of freedom. The various peoples and the great
historical personalities are the instruments by which the uni-
versal spirit realizes its ends: every great people has a mission
to perform in the divine evolution and can be understood only
in the light of the total development. When it has accom-
plished the purpose of its existence, it makes way for other
stronger nations. The conquest of one nation by another is a
confession that the Idea for which the one stands is subordinate
to that of the victorious people : here might makes right, physical
power and rational justice coincide. War, in so far as it is a
war of ideas, is justified by Hegel on the assumption that the
stronger cause will defeat the weaker and that the progress of
humanity is furthered by physical and moral conflict: Die
Weltgeschichte ist das Weltgericht. Providence, or universal
reason, also makes use of the passions and private interests of
individuals to realize universal ends: this is the strategy of the
Idea ; great men are the executives of Reason. In his Philosophy
of History Hegel tries to show how the universal spirit realizes
the purposes prescribed by the dialectical evolution of its
essence.
In none of the preceding stages of the development of mind,
however, does the universal mind come to know itself as it is,
or reach the highest plane of self -consciousness and freedom.
In none of them can it be said that thought and being, subject
476 MODERN PHILOSOPHY
and object, are one, or that all the oppositions are fully recon-
ciled. The supreme stage in the evolution of the logical Idea
is the Absolute Mind, whose sole purpose and work
Art, Reli- consist in making manifest to itself its own nature,
Philosophy and which is> therefore, free and unlimited spirit.
Every particular subject as a truly knowing subject
is such an absolute subject. The Absolute Mind likewise passes
through three stages: revealing itself in the art, the religion,
and the philosophy of the human mind. The Absolute Mind ex-
presses its essence or truth in the form of intuition (Anschauung)
in art; in the form of presentation or imagination (Vorstel-
lung) in religion; in the form of conception or pure logical
thought (Begriff) in philosophy. The mind perceiving its inner
essence in perfect freedom is art, the mind imaging it reverently
is religion, the mind conceiving and knowing it in thought is
philosophy. " Philosophy too has no other object than God
and is, therefore, essentially rational theology, as well as an
enduring worship of God in the service of truth." Every one
of these forms realizes itself in the dialectical process of evolu-
tion and has its history: the history of art, the history of reli-
gion, and the history of philosophy.
In the history of philosophy every great system has its neces-
sary place and represents a necessary stage in logical develop-
ment. Each system provokes an opposing one ; the contradiction
is reconciled in a higher synthesis, which, in turn, gives rise
to new conflicts, and so on. The Hegelian philosophy, — so its
author believes, — represents the final synthesis in which the
Absolute Mind becomes conscious of itself: it recognizes the
content of its being in the historical development through which
it has passed.
From 1820 to 1840 Hegel's system was the reigning philosophy
.in Germany. It enjoyed the favor of the Prussian State, and
had representatives in nearly every German uni-
versity. What made it particularly attractive to
many thinkers was its logical method, — which
seemed to avoid both the rigid abstractions of rationalism and
the easy fancies of mysticism, — its claim to absolute certainty,
and its apparent success in overcoming difficulties and solving
GEORG WILHELM HEGEL 477
problems in nearly every field of human study. After the death
of the master, the school divided into conservative and liberal
groups. Differences arose with regard to theological questions, —
God, Christ, and immortality, — upon which Hegel had not ex-
pressed himself definitely. The conservatives interpreted the
system in the orthodox supernaturalistic sense, as teaching the-
ism, personal immortality, and an incarnate God (Hinrichs,
Goeschel, Gabler), while the liberals, the so-called Young
Hegelians, held to a spiritualistic pantheism: God is the uni-
versal substance which becomes conscious in mankind. Mind
as such is eternal, that is, the universal mind, not the individual
mind. The incarnation of God in Christ is interpreted as the
expression of the divine in humanity. To this wing belonged
Richter, Euge, — also, for a time, B. Bauer, D. Strauss, and L.
Feuerbach. Some of the liberal Hegelians eventually went over
to naturalism, among them B. Bauer, Strauss, and Feuerbach.
Hostile to Hegelianism, yet in sympathy with the theistic views
of the right wing, were C. H. Weisse, J. H. Fichte, and H. M.
Chalybaeus.
The early socialists (Marx and Lassalle), with their economic
interpretation of history, also based themselves on Hegelian
premises. What was once rational, they reasoned, becomes irra-
tional in the process of evolution : private property, which was
once right and rational, will be superseded and overcome in
socialism as a result of the dialectical-logical process of history.
The impetus which Hegel gave to the study of the history of
philosophy and the history of religion produced a school of
great historians of philosophy (Trendelenburg, Ritter, Brandis,
J. E. Erdmann, E. Zeller, Kuno Fischer, W. Windelband) and
of religion (0. Pfleiderer). He likewise exercised a great influ-
ence on the philosophy of history, the study of jurisprudence,
politics, and indeed on all the mental sciences.
For the period after Hegel see: Siebert, Geschichte der neuern
deutschen Philosophic nach Hegel; Ueberweg-Heinze, op. tit., Part III,
vol. II; Kiilpe, Philosophy of the Present in Germany, transl. by Q.
Patrick ; and works on p. 396.
478 MODERN PHILOSOPHY
GERMAN PHILOSOPHY AFTER HEGEL
62. REALISM OF JOHANN FRIEDRICH HERBART
The Hegelian philosophy, however, likewise aroused great
opposition and gave rise to reactionary movements, the most
extreme of which rejected all metaphysics as a fu-
Opposition to tile un(jertaking. Every phase of the new German
movement was subjected to attack: its idealism,
its pantheism, its rationalism, and its a priori methods. Some
thinkers insisted on exacter scientific methods, and reached re-
sults at variance with the new philosophy : realism and pluralism.
Others refused to follow the view that the world was rational
and pointed out the irrational elements in reality of which
philosophy would have to take account. Still others, following
in the wake of mysticism, faith-philosophy, and intuitionism,
sought the answer to the world-riddle in other functions of the
mind than reason. The two greatest opponents of the so-called
speculative philosophy are Herbart and Schopenhauer: both of
them regard themselves as the true successors of Kant, both are
interested in the natural sciences, and both seek a basis for their
thought in the facts of experience. Both offer systems of meta-
physics : Herbart a pluralistic realism that harks back to Leibniz ;
Schopenhauer a pantheistic idealism that resembles Schelling's
Natur philosophic and a voluntarism that is reminiscent of
Fichte's philosophy and Schelling's later view.
Among the works of Herbart are: Einleitung in die Philosophic,
1813 ; Psychologic als Wissenschaft, 1824-1825 ; Allgemeine Metaphysik,
1828-1829; Allgemeine Padagogik, 1806; Allgemeine praktische Philo-
sophic, 1808. Complete works, by Hartenstein, 13 vols., 2d ed., 1883-
1893 ; by Kehrbach, 15 vols., 1887, ff . ; pedagogical works by Willmann,
2 vols., 2d ed., 1880. Transl. of Lehrbuch der Psychologic, by M. K.
Smith. Works on Herbart by Kinkel, Franke, Wagner, Striimpell,
Lipps, Kaftan, Drobisch. Cf. Ribot, Contemporary German Psychology,
transl. by Baldwin, and the histories of psychology.
In Johann Friedrich Herbart (1776-1841) we have an inde-
pendent critical thinker who opposes the entire idealistic move-
ment, as it had developed in Germany after Kant. He had al-
ready studied his Kant and the pre-Kantian rationalists before hi
came to Jena, where he heard Fichte (1794) and afterward served
REALISM OF HERBART 479
as private decent and professor (1802-1809). He regarded the
new philosophy as an aberration from the principles laid down by
the great criticist of Kb'nigsberg (to whose chair
he was called in 1809), and once spoke of himself Realistic
as a Kantian of the year 1828. He attacks its
methods and its results, and reaches conclusions
directly opposed to those of the reigning school on nearly
every important point. We cannot, in his opinion, deduce
reality from a principle: such principles come at the end and
not at the beginning of philosophy. We cannot reduce being
to one single ground, hence monism and pantheism are out of
the question. Indeed, knowledge of the ultimate essence of
things, that is, of things-in-themselves, is impossible: metar
physics, in the Hegelian sense, is a dream. Yet things-in-
themselves exist, not one, but many ; and the world is not merely
our idea. Herbart opposes the rationalistic method, apriorism,
monism, pantheism, subjective idealism, and free will, and sub-
stitutes for these doctrines empiricism, pluralism, realism, and
determinism.
Outside of experience, he tells us, there is no hope of progress
in knowledge. It is the business of philosophy to begin with
the general concepts of experience and of the sciences, with the
thoughts which have been unconsciously evolved by the race.
Such concepts we must examine with the help of formal logic,
whose function it is to make their meaning clear and distinct,
and to point out their inconsistencies, if such there be. Phi-
losophy in general, therefore, consists in the elaboration of con-
cepts: in analyzing them, comparing them, and attempting to
harmonize them. Logic finds difficulties, inconsistencies, con-
tradictions in what seem to be our simplest, clearest, and most
distinct concepts, in such concepts as thing, change, becoming,
matter, self -consciousness: all of them contain nests of contra-
dictions. A thing, for example, in ordinary thought, is a corn-
plexus of qualities : gold is heavy, yet fusible ; one thing is many
things, a unity is a plurality. Herbart holds that nothing can
be real that is contradictory, thus restoring the old-time logical
principle of contradiction to its former place of honor in phi-
losophy. Reality can be conceived only as an absolutely self-
consistent system. In this sense our philosopher is, after all,
480 MODERN PHILOSOPHY
a rigorous rationalist: genuine knowledge is a system of self-
consistent concepts. Hence, if our experience furnishes us with
a world-view that is contradictory, it cannot stand. Here be-
gins the work of metaphysics; the contradictions must be re-
moved and harmonized; we must modify and correct our ordi-
nary and scientific notions so that they will hang together, form
a consistent picture of reality, render intelligible our world of
experience.
This Herbart proceeds to do in his metaphysics. He accepts
the Kantian teaching that experience reveals only phenomena ;
. but, he insists, an appearance must always be the
appearance of something: it implies a reality; so
viel Schein so viel Hindeutung auf Sein. (Here, again, our
Kantian thinker betrays his rationalism; basing himself on the
notion of ground, he passes from ideas to things-in- themselves. )
Our sensations cannot be explained, after the fashion of ideal-
ism, as mere products of the mind; subjective though they be,
they suggest a being outside of them, a world of things-in-
themselves. The question is, How is this world, the true reality,
Constituted ?
Our seeming, appearing, phenomenal world is a world of con-
Vadictions, a world of many qualities and changes. We say,
^or example, a thing has many qualities, and a thing changes its
lualities. How can one thing be many things? How can one
l:hing be white and hard and sweet and fragrant, and how can
t be now one thing, now another ? It cannot be, for that would
De contradictory. Every thing is what it is, identical with
Itself, absolutely one: to give it several qualities or to ascribe
Change to it, would be a contradiction in terms. Every sensa-
tion points to a single reality or being. A thing is simple,
changeless, constant being : absolute, indivisible, not extended in
space or in time. It cannot be conceived as a continuum, other-
wise it would not be simple and absolute. The principle oi
identity, in this sense, is for Herbart a basal law upon which
he rears his theory of reality.
But if a thing is what it is, a simple, changeless substance
how do we account for the illusion of manif oldness and change •
Why do the things we experience appear to have many quali
ties and to change? Metaphysics can explain this only on th(
REALISM OF HERBART 481
assumption that there are many simple unchangeable principles,
or substances, or reals, as Herbart calls them. Each particular
and apparently simple thing is really not a simple thing having
many qualities, but a complexus or aggregate of many simple
things or reals, in more or less constant union. We must assume
many reals, because the so-called thing has many qualities ; when
such and such reals happen to form such and such combinations
with one another, enter into such and such relations, then such
and such phenomena result. Change is explained as the coming
and going of reals ; to say a thing changes its quality means sim-
ply: a change occurs in the relation of the reals or monads
composing it; the reals themselves originally composing it are
unchangeable, and every one of them remains unalterably what
it is; only the relation has changed, reals have been added or
taken away. It is for this reason that we can call phenomena
" the accidental viewpoints " of things. One and the same
line can be a radius or a tangent; in the same way a real may
enter into different relations with other reals, without changing
its essence. What we say of their mutual relations does not
affect their being: it is merely an accidental viewpoint which
we take.
The world of reals is absolute; there is no change, growth,
appearance in it, everything is what it is. But we relate the
thing with another thing, with another real or reals; the sem-
blance is in us, the contradictions of plurality and change are
phenomena in us; all qualities are secondary qualities. This
view would ascribe all variety and change to us; the real
world would be an absolutely static world in which nothing
would happen; all occurrence would be a phenomenon in
consciousness.
Nevertheless, there appears to be change in the real itself.
This is explained as follows. Every real strives to preserve
its identity against disturbances on the part of other reals. One
and the same real will, therefore, behave differently in maintain-
ing itself against others. There is no real change in the real;
it asserts its quality, or preserves its essence, against all dis-
turbance, but the way it preserves itself depends on the nature
and degree of the disturbance threatening it. Even if there
were no opposition, if it existed alone, it would preserve its
482 MODERN PHILOSOPHY
quality. The real maintains itself at the same level always;
it is constant, unchanging in the face it presents, but it seems
that varying degrees of effort are required for it to preserve
its calm in the presence of different qualities and different de-
grees of opposition. The question arises, How is all this pos-
sible in view of the statement that reals do not influence one
another? They do seem to influence one another; the presence
of other reals does not change the nature or status of any real,
but it does arouse different degrees of activity (self-preservation)
in it. — Space, time, motion, and matter are treated according
to the same method: they are not reals, but objective appear-
ances of reals.
Herbart's psychology is a part of metaphysics: it is rational
psychology. Empirical psychology cannot be made the basis of
philosophy; psychology presupposes metaphysics;
without a metaphysical psychology the questions
of a critique of reason cannot be answered, indeed not even thor-
oughly discussed. Psychology rests on experience, metaphysics,
and mathematics. The soul is a simple, absolute, timeless and
spaceless real (it is the first substance science compels us to
presuppose) ; hence, it cannot have different faculties or powers,
of which psychologists speak. Herbart's attack on the faculty-
psychology results from his metaphysical presuppositions. Since
the soul is a simple substance, there can be no action in it but
self-preservation. It is related to the body, which is an aggre-
gate of reals, the seat of the soul being in the brain. All souls
are essentially alike ; the differences in souls and in their devel-
opment are due to external conditions, such as the organization
of the body. The soul has originally no powers or capacities,
neither ideas nor feelings nor impulses; it knows nothing of
itself, has no forms, intuitions, or categories, no a priori laws
of willing or acting. A sensation arises in the soul when the
soul asserts itself against another real; sensation is the expres-
sion of its function of self-preservation. The entire content of
the soul, as it exists in the developed state, is the result of the
reproduction and association of sensations. Psychology is the
statics and mechanics of the mind. Herbart's aim is to create
a science parallel to physical mechanics. The old physics ex-
plained everything by forces, the new physics reduces every-
REALISM OF HERBART 483
thing to motion; the old psychology explained everything by
powers and faculties, the new psychology must explain every-
thing by the movements of ideas: sensations and ideas tend to
persist, but other psychic states contend with them; there is
action and reaction. Herbart seeks to formulate mathematically
the relations existing between them. Mental life, then, is ex-
plained as the complication, fusion, and opposition of ideas;
feelings and strivings, or impulses, are modifications of ideas.
Consciousness does not exhaust psychic life; processes occur
beneath the threshold of consciousness, in the region of the un-
conscious. There is no free will ; everything in the mind follows
fixed laws, and psychical processes can be mathematically
determined.
The permanent ground of mental life is the soul-substance,
and not the so-called self-identical ego, the ego as knower, the
self-conscious personality. Indeed, the notion of such a self-
conscious subject is contradictory. How can that which is a
subject also be an object, how can the ego represent, or be con-
scious of, itself? It is contradictory to say the knower is the
thing known, the subject is the object. Besides, we can never
become aware of the ego, because it always shifts its base when
we try to catch it, and leaves us with an object (the me). The
eye cannot see itself; the ego can see only its picture; an ego
that is seen or looked at is no longer the looking or perceiving
ego: this eternally eludes our grasp. The self-conscious ego is
not a principle, but a product ; it is not the spontaneous ground
or center of our mental life, but itself the result of the me-
chanics of the soul. Self-consciousness comes later than the
consciousness of objects, it presupposes many ego-ideas. Fichte's
pure ego is an abstraction; the only kind of self-consciousness
we know is our empirical self-consciousness, and this is always
a consciousness of objects.
Characteristic of Herbart 's psychology are his rejection of
the faculty- theory, his theory of presentation (Vorstellung) as
the sole and basal function of the soul, his doctrine of the uncon-
scious, his theory of apperception, his associationism, his theory
of interaction, his determinism, and his view that the ego is
not a principle, but a product. Space, time, and the categories
are not a priori forms of the mind, but products of the me-
484 MODERN PHILOSOPHY
chanics of the soul, the result of the interaction of psychic
elements.
Metaphysics has to do with reality. There is a science called
aesthetics, which deals not with realities, but with values, — which
pronounces judgments of taste. These two sciences
Sciem are aDsoiutely separate, and Herbart opposes all
attempts that have been made to unite them.
There are, besides theoretical judgments, judgments which ex-
press approval and disapproval: we call things beautiful and
ugly, praiseworthy and blamable. The problem of aesthetics
is to examine the objects of these judgments and to discover
what pleases or displeases us in them. Herbart finds that it is
not their content, but their form, that our feelings of approval
and disapproval are aroused by certain simple relations existing
between things.
Practical philosophy is a branch of aesthetics and concerns
itself with the morally beautiful. We approve and disapprove
certain relations of will. Experience shows that there are five
types of relations which give rise to ethical judgments and
which are called patterns or Ideas. We approve the relation
in which the individual's will agrees with his conviction (Idea
of inner freedom) ; a harmonious relation between the different
strivings of the will in the same subject (Idea of perfection) ;
a relation in which a will makes the satisfaction of another's
will its object (Idea of benevolence). We disapprove a rela-
tion in which several wills impede one another, that is, conflict
and discord. We approve a relation in which each will permits
a will to impede its own (Idea of justice). We disapprove a
relation in which the intended good or evil act is not recom-
pensed (Idea of retribution). Corresponding to these five Ideas,
in inverse order, are five systems of society: the legal system,
the wage system, the system of administration, the system of
culture; all of which are united in the realization of the Idea
of inner freedom as applied to society. The supreme ideal of
society is the union of will and reason, one in which there is no
discord between the members.
Herbart exercised his greatest influence through his theory
of education. Pedagogy he regarded as applied psychology, and
its ends as determined by ethics. His mechanical conception
SCHOPENHAUER AND HARTMANN 485
of mental life as the result of the interplay of ideas accounts
for the emphasis he places on instruction, the importance of
interest, and the value of apperception.
F. H. Beneke (1798-1854; Lehrbuch der Psychologic als Naturwissen-
schaft, 1833, System der praktischen Philosophic, 1837) was influ-
enced by Herbart, as well as by Fries and English empiricism. He
agrees with Herbart that psychology must be based on experience, but
rejects the view that makes it dependent on mathematics and meta-
physics. It is the science of inner experience, the most certain of all
our knowledge, and must serve as the foundation of metaphysics,
epistemology, ethics, and pedagogy.
63. PHILOSOPHY OF WILL : SCHOPENHAUER AND HARTMANN
Arthur Schopenhauer was born, 1788, in Danzig, his father being
a wealthy banker and his mother a popular novelist of her day. The
son entered business, but found commercial life dis-
tasteful and exchanged the counting-house for the uni- Schopenhauer
versity. At Gottingen (1809-1811) and Berlin (1811-
1813), he devoted himself to the study of philosophy, natural science,
and Sanscrit literature. His favorite philosophical writers were Plato
and Kant; Fichte he heard at Berlin and was undoubtedly influenced
by him, notwithstanding his contemptuous characterization of him,
Schelling, and Hegel as the " windbags of philosophy." Schopenhauer
established himself as a private decent at the University of Berlin
and lectured there intermittently from 1820 to 1831 during the period
of HegePs greatest popularity, but met with little success as a teacher.
In 1831 he retired from the University, full of bitterness and hatred
of all " philosophy-professors," and settled at Frankfort on the Main,
devoting himself to thinking and wricing. His fame was slow in
coming, but it sweetened the last few years of his life. He died in 1860.
tiber die vierfache Wurzel des Satzes vom zureichenden Grunde,
1813; Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung, 1819; Uber den Willen
in der Natur, 1836; Die beiden Grundprobleme der Ethik, 1841;
Parerga und Paralipomena, 1851. Collected works ed. by Frauenstadt,
6 vols., 2d ed., 1877; by Grisebach, 1890, ff. (new ed. in Reclam,
6 vols.); by Steiner, 13 vols., 1894; by Deussen, 1911, ff. Index by
Wagner.
Translations : World as Will and Idea, by Haldane and Kemp, 3 vols.,
1884, ff.; Fourfold Root and Witt in Nature, by Hillebrand, 2d ed.,
1891; Basis of Morality, by Bullock; Selected Essays, by T. B. Saundere.
Monographs by W. Wallace, Whittaker, Zimmern, Caldwell, Volkclt,
K. Fischer, Ribot, Grisebach ; Paulsen, Schopenhauer, Hamlet, Mephis-
topheles; Simmel, Schopenhauer und Nietzsche; Tsanoff, Schopen-
hauer's Criticism of Kant; Th. Lorenz, Entwicklungsgeschichte der
Metaphysik Schopenhauers. Cf. Sully, Pessimism.
Schopenhauer accepts the thought of Kant's Critique of Pure
Reason that the world of experience is a world of phenomena,
486 MODERN PHILOSOPHY
conditioned by the nature of human intelligence. The mind has
its forms of perceiving (space and time) and its categories of
knowing; the latter Schopenhauer reduces to the
The World single category of causality. What the world is
andJtdea apart from intelligence, Kant had declared, we do
not know, and can never know, in the sense
in which we know phenomena; it is the great unknown, the
noumenon of which the perceived world is the phenomenon.
We do not come face to face with the thing-in-itself in an in-
tellectual intuition and can, therefore, know nothing of it except
that it exists; the forms of the mind, space, time, causality,
and the rest are inapplicable to it.
At this point Schopenhauer's teaching diverges from that of
his master. It is true, he says, if I were merely an intellectual
being, an outward-looking subject, I should perceive nothing but
phenomena arranged in space and time, and in causal relation.
In my own innermost consciousness, however, I come face to
face with my true, real, basal self; in the consciousness of
activity I become aware of the thing-in-itself. The thing-in-
itself is will; it is the primary, timeless, spaceless, uncaused
activity that expresses itself in me as impulse, instinct, striving,
craving, yearning. I also become aware of myself as a phe-
nomenon, as a part of nature; I image myself as an extended
organic body. I know myself in two ways : as will and as body ;
but it is the one will which, in self-consciousness, appears as
the consciousness of activity and, in perception, as my material
body. The will is my real self, the body the expression of
the will.
This thought is the key to the solution of the whole question
of metaphysics. All things are interpreted by Schopenhauer
in analogy with his conception of the human being :
Will in the world is will and idea ; idea to the intellect, but
in Man ' in reality will. We find this voluntaristic world-
view corroborated by the facts. When I look inward.
I come face to face with will ; when I look outward, I perceive
this will of mine as body. My will objectifies itself as body,
expresses itself as a living organism. We are, therefore, justi-
fied in inferring by analogy that other bodies are, like mine,
the outward manifestations of will. In the stone, will mani-
SCHOPENHAUER AND HARTMANN 487
fests itself as blind force ; in man, it becomes conscious of itself.
The magnetic needle always points to the north; bodies always
fall in a vertical line; substances form crystals when acted on
by other substances; and all such occurrences give evidence of
the operation of forces in nature which are akin to the will
in us. In the vegetable kingdom, too, we discover traces of
unconscious striving or impulse. The tree desires light and
strives upward; it also wants moisture and pushes its roots
into the soil. Will or impulse guides the growth of the animal
and directs all its activities. The wild beast desiring to devour
prey develops teeth and claws and muscles; the will creates for
itself an organism suitable to its needs; function precedes or-
ganization: the desire to butt is the cause of the appearance
of the horns. The will to live is the basal principle of life.
In man and the higher animals this primitive impulse be-
comes conscious; it creates intelligence as its organ or instru-
ment; intelligence is the lamp that illuminates the will's way
through the world. The will makes for itself a brain ; the brain
is the seat of intelligence; intelligence and consciousness are
functions of the brain: in this respect Schopenhauer agrees
with the materialists. On the lower stages of existence, the will
is blind craving, it works blindly, without consciousness ; in man
it becomes conscious; intelligence is grafted on the will and
becomes the greatest of all instruments of self-preservation. But
it always remains in the service of the will; will is the master,
intellect the servant.
Will controls perception, memory, imagination, judgment, and
reasoning; we perceive, remember, imagine what we will to per-
ceive, remember, and imagine; and our arguments are always
pleas of the will. As we pass downward in the scale of exist-
ence from man to the mineral, we observe intelligence falling
into the background; the will, however, remains as the one,
constant, persistent element. In the child and the savage,
impulse predominates over intelligence; in the animal kingdom,
instinct gradually becomes unconscious; in the plant, it is un-
conscious; in the mineral, all trace of intelligence disappears.
This basal will, which manifests itself in mineral and in man,
is not a person, not an intelligent God. It is a blind uncon-
scious force that wills existence. It is neither spatial nor tern-
488 MODERN PHILOSOPHY
poral, but expresses itself in individuals in space and time;
that is, it acts in such a way that our mind perceives it in
individual, i.e., temporal and spatial, form. It manifests itself in
eternal, immutable types, which Plato calls Ideas. The dif-
ferent organic species, for example, are eternal immutable types :
the species do not change; the individuals belonging to the
species grow and die, but the will-type or the species endures.
These types form an ascending scale, a graduated series (Aris-
totle), rising from the lowest stages of matter to man. Indi-
viduals may come and individuals may go, but will goes on
forever. Hence, the fundamental part of us, the will, is im-
mortal; the particular, individual form in which it expresses
itself is mortal. Suicide, therefore, means the destruction of
a particular expression of the will, but not of the will itself.
The will to be, the will to live, is the cause of all struggle,
sorrow, and evil in the world. A world of ceaseless striving
and battle, in which the different forms of the
^kp^! blind will to exist struggle with one another, a
world in which the little fishes are devoured by
the larger ones, is not a good world, but an evil one, indeed the
worst of all possible worlds (pessimism). The life of man is
not worth living, because it is full of misery: it follows from
the very nature of the human will that it should be full of
pain and misery. Life consists of blind craving, which is pain-
ful so long as it is not satisfied, and which when satisfied is
followed by new painful desires, and so on ad nauseam. We
are never permanently satisfied, there is a worm in every flower.
We are like shipwrecked mariners who struggle and struggle
to save their wearied bodies from the terrible waves, only to be
engulfed at last. " The life of most men is but a continuous
struggle for existence, — a struggle which they are bound to lose
at last. Every breath we draw is a protest against the death
which is constantly threatening us, and against which we are
battling every second. But Death must conquer after all, for
we are his by birth, and he simply plays with his prey a little
while longer before devouring it. We, however, take great pains
to prolong our lives as far as we can, just as we blow soap-
bubbles as long and as large as we can, though we know with
absolute certainty that they must break at last."
SCHOPENHAUER AND HARTMANN 489
After one life has run down, the will repeats the same old
process in new individuals. " The life of most men is weary
yearning and torture, a dreamy tottering through the four ages
toward death, accompanied by a succession of trivial thoughts.
It is like a clock-work that is wound up and goes without
knowing why; and every time a man is conceived and born,
the clock of human life is wound up anew, in order to grind
out the same old hackneyed tune which it has played so many
countless times before, measure for measure, beat for beat, with
insignificant variations. ' '
Another reason why life is evil is because it is selfish and
base; and it follows from the very nature of the will that it
should be so. L'homme est I' animal mechant, a heartless and
cowardly egoist, whom fear makes honest and vanity sociable,
and the only way to succeed in the world is to be as grasping
and dishonest as the rest. The progress of knowledge and civili-
zation does not mend matters; it simply brings witH it new
needs and, with them, new sufferings and new forms of selfish-
ness and immorality. The so-called virtues, love of labor, per-
severance, temperance, frugality, are merely a refined egoism.
" In much wisdom is much grief; and he that increaseth knowl-
edge increaseth sorrow." " History is an interminable series of
murders, robberies, intrigues, and lies ; if you know one page of
it, you know them all."
Schopenhauer teaches that sympathy, or pity, is the basis and
standard of morality, and that the race is wicked because it is
selfish. To be good, an act must be prompted by pure sym-
pathy; if the motive is my own welfare, the act has no moral
worth at all ; if the motive is the harm of others, it is wicked.
The empirical character of man is wholly determined, but the
fact of remorse suggests that the will is free ; my will must there-
fore be ultimately responsible for my character: the intelligible
ego has fashioned the empirical ego.
Since the selfish will is the root of all evil and the source
of all sorrow, man must negate the will, suppress his selfish de-
sires, in order to enjoy happiness or at least to be at peace.
This is possible in several ways. The artistic or philosophical
genius may be delivered from the selfish will, forget himself,
lose himself in artistic contemplation or philosophical thought,
490 . MODERN PHILOSOPHY
a method that affords only temporary relief though it offers a
foretaste of deliverance. The individual can also free himself
from his selfish will by contemplating the wickedness of the
world, the futility of all desire, and the illusoriness of indi-
vidual existence. If he will think of these things and remember
that all individuals are one in essence, that they are all mani-
festations of the same primal will, he will feel sympathy or pity
with all creation; he will see himself in others and feel the
sorrows of others as his own. This is the moral way, but it
likewise furnishes only temporary relief. The best way is total
negation of the will in an ascetic life, such as is practised by
Christian ascetics and Buddhist saints. Resignation and will-
lessness ensue, the will is dead. The saint finds deliverance from
his own will, from the impulses which bind the natural man to
the world; the will dies as soon as it becomes aware of what
it is, through the knowledge of life, the road to which is
suffering.
Influenced by Schelling, Hegel, and Schopenhauer, E. von
Hartmann (1842-1906) seeks to reconcile Hegel's intellectualism
with the voluntarism of Schopenhauer, basing his
Philosophy speculation on the inductive-scientific method and
Unconscious offerin^ a philosophy of nature resembling Schel-
ling's. Mechanism is inadequate as an explanation
and must be supplemented by an idealistic conception. We can-
not account for the facts without assuming the operation of
a will in nature, and this will must be conceived as determined
by an idea of purpose, which, however, is unconscious. Animal
instinct, for example, is intelligent action towards an end with-
out consciousness of that end. It is not determined by me-
chanical or psychical conditions, but adapts itself to the environ-
ment, transforming its organs to meet its needs. The directing
principle in things, matter included, is an unconscious, imper-
sonal, but intelligent, will, — that is, idea plus will, — which be-
comes fully conscious only in the brain of man. Matter consists
of centers of force, or unconscious will-impulses, which represent
the activities of an absolute universal unconscious spirit. This
absolute spirit was originally in a state of inactivity, mere
potential will or reason, but it was impelled to action by the
NEOKANTIANISM 491
groundless will. It is due to the logical reason in it that the
unconscious world-will is governed by rational purposes, and
that it expresses itself in a rational process of evolution. But
all willing is essentially evil and the cause of unhappiness. The
final purpose of this process is the deliverance of the absolute
will from itself and the return to the original state of rest, the
nirvana. This end will be attained when the human race de-
cides upon non-existence. In the meanwhile, it is our duty to
affirm the will to live to the utmost, not to practise asceticism
and world-flight.
Philosophic des Unbewussten, 1869 (transl. by Coupland) ; Phdnome-
nologie des sittlichen Bewusstseins, 1879; Grundproblem der Erkennt-
nistheorie, 1890; Religionsphilosophie, 1881, f.; Kategorienlehre, 1896;
System der Philosophie im Grundriss, 1907, ff.
Sully, Pessimism, chap, v; A. Drews, Hartmanns philosophisches
System; 0. Braun, E. v. Hartmann; Vaihinger, Hartmann, Dilhring
und Lange.
64. NEOKANTIANISM
Kant had sought to establish the validity of mathematics and
natural science against the skepticism of Hume, but had denied
the possibility of metaphysics as an a priori sci-
mce of things-in-themselves. Rational theology, Reaction
cosmology, and psychology have no scientific value jjp8-
for him : we cannot prove the existence of God, the Philosophy
immortality of the soul, and the freedom of the
rtill to theoretical reason; theoretical knowledge is out of the
luestion here, because these things are not and cannot be objects
)f experience. We can form metaphysical hypotheses, it is true,
laving more or less probability, but universal and necessary
mowledge cannot be reached in them. We may, however, rise
;o a higher kind of knowledge of freedom, immortality, and
jod, through a moral intuition, as it were: practical reason
issures us of the validity of such truths, though we cannot give
ihem a sensuous content and hence know them in the scientific
icnse.
As we have seen, the great successors of Kant, — Pichto,
Jchelling, Hegel, — did not share his misgivings with respect to
netaphysics. Hegel offered a logical explanation of the universe
n all its various phases, and his philosophy remained the reign-
492 MODERN PHILOSOPHY
ing one in Germany until 1840. The critical opposition to ra-
tionalistic metaphysics, however, persisted outside of the post-
Kantian school ; we find it expressed in the writings of Fries,
Beneke, Herbart, Schopenhauer, and many others. Objections
were also made to the claim that philosophy possesses a special
method of knowledge in the artistic intuition of Schelling or
in the dialectical process of Hegel; and the treatment of scien-
tific research as a mere preparation for philosophy, or even as
a false method, was repudiated. Speculative philosophy was
accused of ignoring the facts or of attempting to spin them
out of its own inner consciousness, and fell into disrepute. The
progress of natural science invited a closer study of experience
and led to positivism and to a growing contempt of metaphysics,
which came to be identified with the speculations of the post-
Kantians. In 1842 Eobert Mayer discovered the principle of
the conservation of energy; in 1859 Darwin published his
epoch-making work on the Origin of Species by Means of
Natural Selection. The eclipse of philosophy and the triumph
of natural science encouraged the growth of materialism. In
the fifties began the Materialismusstreit in Germany, in which
Karl Yogt (1817-1895), H. Czolbe (1819-1873), J. Moleschott
(1822-1893), and L. Biichner (1824-1899; Force and Matter,
1855) led the forces against the idealistic systems. The move-
ment was as much a protest against the theological reactionaries
as against the extravagances of speculative philosophy, and com-
bined with its materialistic metaphysics a humanitarian and
idealistic ethics. Indeed, the theories offered were, as a rule,
not consistent materialistic theories at all, but conglomerations
of many views: thought being conceived sometimes as motion,
sometimes as the effect of motion, sometimes as the necessary
concomitant of motion, sometimes as one of the aspects of an
underlying unknown principle of which motion is a parallel
expression. Biichner '& book had a great vogue, from the fifties
on, and passed through at least twenty editions. Its place has
now been taken by Ernst Haeckel's Riddle of the Universe
(1899), a work that shows the same inconsistencies as its prede-
cessor.*
* See Thilly, The World-View of a Scientist: Ernst Haeckel's Philosophy,
Popular Science Monthly, September, 1902.
NEOKANTIANISM 493
The chemist Wilhelm Ostwald (1853—; Die Uberwindung des wissen-
schaftlichen Materialismus, 1895, Natur philosophic, 1902) rejects ma-
terialism and mechanism in favor of a dynamic or " energetic " theory.
The various properties of matter are special forms of energy (kinetic,
thermal, chemical, magnetic, electric, etc.), which cannot be reduced
to one another. Psychic energy is another form of energy; it is un-
conscious or conscious nervous energy. Interaction is explained as the
transition from unconscious to conscious energy or the reverse.
Under these circumstances, it was natural that philosophers
should again take up the problem of knowledge, to which Kant
had given such careful and sober attention, and
subject the various intellectual tendencies of the
age to critical examination. The critical philosophy
became the rallying-point for all those who opposed both the
methods of the Hegelians and the progress of materialism, as
well as for those who distrusted metaphysics altogether. In
1865 O. Liebmann raised the cry : Back to Kant (Kant und die
Epigonen), in which he was joined by Weisse, Zeller, Fortlage,
Haym, and K. Fischer; and F. A. Lange published his cele-
brated work on History of Materialism. During recent years,
this Neokantian movement has grown to large proportions, and
nearly every German thinker of note may be said to belong to
it, in some way or other. All the members of this group
emphasize the need of epistemological investigations, some even
regarding the philological study of the Kantian writings, espe-
cially of the Critique of Pure Reason, as of primary importance
(Vaihinger, B. Erdmann, Reicke, Kehrbach, Adickes, E. Ar-
nold). Certain Neokantians would limit philosophy to epistemol-
ogy, accepting the positivistic conclusion that we can know phe-
nomena only and rejecting all metaphysics, whether materialis-
tic or idealistic, as beyond our ken. According to Lange (1828-
1875), who has exerted a great influence, materialism is justified
as a method, but not as a world-view, since it fails to explain
the basal nature of physical objects and of our own inner self.
To his mind, metaphysical and religious speculations are the
products of a kind of " constructive instinct " in man and have
no theoretical value: the existence of an ideal world cannot be
proved, but such a conception has practical worth in human
life. H. Cohen (born 1842), the head of the Marburg School,
develops the critical philosophy and offers a system of his own
494 MODERN PHILOSOPHY
(Systemder Philosophic, 1902, ff.), on the basis of Kant's
method. Among his pupils are P. Natorp (Sozialpadagogik,
1899) and R. Stammler (Lehre von dem richtigen Rechte,
1902).
Another group of thinkers, influenced by Berkeley and Hume,
as well as by Kant, limit philosophy to the analysis of states
of consciousness. Their doctrine has been called
Immanent ^ immanent philosophy ; the school is represented
by Schuppe, Rehmke, and Schubert-Soldern. Some
of the members end in solipsism, but the larger number of them
advocate an objective idealism, setting up a universal conscious-
ness as a necessary presupposition of knowledge.
The theological Neokantians place the emphasis on Kant's
ethical philosophy: a rational moral faith, ethical-religious ex-
perience, forms the basis of religion. To this group belong A,
Ritschl and his followers : W. Hermann, J. Kaftan, H. Schultz;
K. Kostlin, A. Dorner, and R. Lipsius.
65. NEW IDEALISM
With the decline of Hegelianism came the reign of natural
science and materialism, and the temporary eclipse of all phi-
losophy. No one could hope to reestablish it in a
Me]a£hysics, Position of respect who did not understand and
and Natural . , ,, ,. , ,
Science appreciate the methods and results of natural
science as well as those of philosophy. A number
of thinkers arose in Germany, some from the ranks of natural
science itself, through whose efforts philosophy has regained a
place of honor in the hierarchy of the sciences. Most promi-
nent in this group are Lotze, Fechner, Hartmann, Wundt, and
Paulsen. All these men have profited by a study of the different
movements of thought: positivism, materialism, criticism, and
post-Kantian idealism. They regard as futile any attempt 1:0
construct a metaphysics by means of the rationalistic methods
of the old schools and independently of natural science. Though
rejecting subjective idealism and the a priori and dialectical
methods, they may all be called descendants of German idealisn.
With Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, they hold that there csn
be no knowledge in science and philosophy without experience;
NEW IDEALISM
with positivism, that there can be no system of metaph\
possessing absolute certainty.
A thinker well fitted by training and temperament to under-
take the task of reestablishing philosophy was Hermann Lotze,
ivho offered a system, combining the monadology
>f Leibniz with the pantheism of Spinoza, which Hermann
sought to reconcile monism and pluralism, mech-
anism and teleology, realism and idealism, pantheism and theism,
and which he called teleological idealism. His aim was to do
justice to the claims of an ethical-religious idealism (Fichte)
as well as to the sober scientific interpretation of natural
phenomena.
Lotze (1817-1881) studied medicine and philosophy at Leipzig, be-
3ame a teacher of physiology and philosophy in that university (1839),
ind professor of philosophy at Gottingen (1844), where he remained
antil 1881, when he was called to Berlin.
Works: Metaphysik, 1841; Allgemeine Pathologie und Therapeutik
ils mechanische Naturwissenschaften, 1842; Logik, 1843; Physiologic,
L851; Medizinische Psychologic, 1852; Microcosmus, 3 vols., 1856-1864;
System der Philosophic : Logik, 1874, Metaphysik, 1879.
Microcosmus, transl. by Hamilton and Jones, 1884; Logic, by B.
Bosanquet, 2 vols., 1884; Metaphysics, by B. Bosanquet, 2 vols., 1884;
Lotze's Outlines (lectures), by Ladd. On Lotze, see H. Jones, The
Philosophy of Lotze; Hartmann, Lotzes Philosophic; Falckenberg,
Lotze; E. Pfleiderer, Lotzes philosophische Weltanschauung; V. Robins,
Some Problems of Lotze's Theory of Knowledge; V. Moore, Ethical
Aspect of Lotze's Metaphysics; Lichtenstein, Lotze und Wundt; M.
Wentscher, Lotze.
Man is not a mere mirror of facts; he cannot find satisfaction
for his ethical and religious interests in a mechanized universe.
Ajid yet the physical world, life included, is to be
explained by physical and chemical laws, on the
basis of a mechanical atomism. Organic matter
differs from inorganic matter, not in the possession of vital
force, but only in the different arrangement of its parts; and
this arrangement is a system of physical reactions that deter-
mines the direction, form, and evolution of every one of the
parts. The living body is an automaton, — more of a machine
than any invention of man. This view seems to leave no place
for man and his purposes and ideals; and yet an examination
[>f the presuppositions on which the mechanical theory rests
496 MODERN PHILOSOPHY
will show that this is not the case. The external world, as pre-
sented to perception, is not a copy of reality, as naive realism
assumes, but a reaction of our own consciousness to external
stimuli: a creation of the soul in the soul itself. The spatial-
temporal sense-world is a phenomenal world, a product of con-
sciousness. Sensation, perception, and the logical laws by whicl
we interpret the given sensations, are functions of the subject
What, then, is the essence of the real things outside, of the things
in- themselves ? This question we can answer only by analogical
reasoning, and such reasoning will bring us to a metaphysical
idealism. Things-in-themselves must have the capacity to ac1
and to be acted on, or to suffer change, and yet remain the
same in all change. A being of such nature we know immediately
only in ourselves: it is the self-determining principle of unity
called the soul, This unity of consciousness, the capacity of the
mind to combine manifold phenomena in the unity of conscious
ness, is what compels us to assume the existence of an indivisible
supersensible soul, as a being distinct from the body. Only ir
the soul do we find unity in variety, persistence in change, anc
development: what has been experienced is not lost, but carried
over into the present as part and parcel of our mental life. Th(
real universe must, therefore, be interpreted in terms of mind
in terms of the only reality directly known to us. The atoms
of which science speaks are immaterial essences, like Leibniz 't
monads, or centers of force, analogous to what we experience ir
our own inner life. Space is not a metaphysical reality, but i
mere sensible appearance of the existence of these dynamic units
a constant product of perception. Even the lowest forms oJ
matter are not dead, inert masses, but finely organized systems,
full of life and action. There are various degrees of reality
the human mind represents the highest, self-conscious, stage IE
the scale of mental life, but mental life is equally present IE
less clearly conscious modes of existence, even in gross forris
of matter.
Lotze also bases the acceptance of metaphysical idealism OE
practical or ethical grounds. It is an intolerable thought tc
suppose that a cold material atomic mechanism should exist f 31
the sole purpose of picturing, in the feeling soul, a beautiful
illusion of colors and sounds. Such a universe would have neith e:
NEW IDEALISM 497
leaning nor ethical worth. We can interpret reality only as
:>mething which we can absolutely approve, as something abso-
itely good; hence the phenomenal world cannot be a meaning-
iss illusion, but must be conceived as the manifestation of an
thically ordered spiritual world. Lotze 's logic and metaphysics
re here rooted in ethics. We cannot think of anything exist-
ig that ought not to exist; our forms of thinking (the logical
iws) are rooted in the demand for the good, and reality it-
jlf is rooted in what is absolutely good, in the highest good.
The relation of soul and body is one of interaction. How
; is possible for the body to cause changes in the soul, or vice
ersa, cannot be explained, but the difficulty is no greater here
lan anywhere else. All we can mean by any causal action, is
lat on the occasion of a change in one object, a change takes
lace in another: how, we cannot tell. The principle of the
anservation of energy is no argument against the interaction
f mind and body: this is made possible by the fact that the
ody is not different from the soul in essence. The body is, for
otze as for Leibniz, a system of monads or spiritual forces,
ie soul being situated in the brain and coming into relation
dth the body only in the brain. The soul dominates the body,
3 long as the body is alive ; what becomes of it after the disso-
ition of the body is a riddle, but Lotze holds, as an act of faith,
lat every being will receive his just due at some time.
We see how the mechanistic theory is transformed in Lotze 's
lought into a system of spiritual realities in reciprocal relation
rith one another. Such a pluralistic world cannot .
. . J .Pantheism
e thought without a unifying, universal substance,
f which all phenomena are the modes or expressions. Even
le mechanical world-view, assuming, as it does, the harmonious
iterrelation of the movement of the smallest atom with the
lotions of all the other atoms in the world, makes necessary
ic conception of such an infinite being ; indeed, the mechanism
f nature is the expression of the absolute will, it is the way in
hich the Absolute gives itself external finite form. We cannot
nderstand a single case of interaction or even causal efficiency,
ic possibility of the influence of one thing on another, unless
e regard the manifold processes of nature as states of one and
ic same all-comprehending substance. Here Lotze's philosophy
498 MODERN PHILOSOPHY
develops into an idealistic pantheism, uniting Leibnizian and
Spinozistic elements. The human soul is compelled to interpret
the universal substance in terms of the highest reality that i1
knows, — as a personality ; and we must think this divine person-
ality as an absolutely good being, as a God of love.
Gustav Theodor Fechner (1801-1887), professor of physics
at Leipzig, and one of the founders of psycho-physics, is a repre-
sentative of the same movement.
Leben nach dem Tode, 1836; Das hochste Gut, 1846; Nanna, odei
Seelenleben der Pflanzen, 1848; Zend-Avesta, 1851; Uber die Seelen-
frage, 1861; Elemente der Psychophysik, 1860; Vorschule der Aesthetik
1876. On Fechner, see: Lasswitz, Fechner ; Wundt, Fechner; Pastor
Fechner.
Fechner reasons by analogy from the existence of mental proc
esses in ourselves and their manifestation in our bodies, to th(
existence of psychic life, in descending degrees oj
clearness, in animals, plants, and finally also ir
inorganic matter, the atoms of which are centers of force. The
entire universe is alive (panpsychism) . There are also highei
forms of psychic life than man's; the earth and the other planets
have souls, and these, together with all psychic existences
are comprehended in a highest soul, a world-soul, the soul oJ
God. The relation of God to the universe is analogous to thai
of the human soul to the human body; nature is the body oJ
God, the objective expression of the world-soul, which is above
nature, as the human soul is above the human body.
Friedrich Paulsen (1846-1908), in his Introduction to Phi-
losophy, a book widely read in both Germany and America, offers
an idealistic world-view similar to that of Lotze and Fechnor
(Cf. Thilly, Paulsen' 's Ethical Work, I. J. Ethics, XIX, 2.)
Wilhelm Wundt (born 1832), whose writings show the influ-
ence of the teachings of Spinoza, German idealism, Herbal,
Fechner, Lotze, and the modern theory of evolu-
tion, first held a professorship of physiology a1
Heidelberg (1864-1873). In 1873 he became professor of phi
losophy at Zurich, and was called to Leipzig in 1875. He is the
father of modern experimental psychology; many of the teach-
NEW IDEALISM 499
ers of this new science in the different parts of the world have
been his pupils.
Lehrbuch der Physiologic, 1864; Lectures on Human and Animal
Psychology, 1863 (transl. by Creighton and Titchener), 5th ed., 1911;
Physiological Psychology, 1874, 6th ed., 1908-1911; Introduction to
Psychology, transl. by Pinter, 1912; Logik, 3 vols., 1880-1883, 3d ed.,
1906-1908; Ethics, 1886 (transl. by Titchener, Washburn, and Gulliver),
1th ed., 1912; System der Philosophic, 3d ed., 1907; Einleitung in die
Philosophic, 5th ed., 1909; Volker psychologic, 5 vols., 1900, ff.
Konig, Wundt als Psycholog und als Philosoph; Eisler, Wundta
Philosophic und Psychologic; Conrad, Die Ethik Wundts; Hb'ffding,
Moderne Philosophen.
Wundt defines philosophy as the universal science whose func-
tion it is to combine the general truths obtained in the special
sciences into a self-consistent system. The facts of conscious-
ness form the basis of all our knowledge; so-called external
experience, the perception of an external world, is a phase of
inner experience ; all our experiences are mental. But this can-
not be interpreted, in the sense of subjective idealism, as mean-
ing that the world is a mere reflection of consciousness; we are
compelled to infer the existence of an external world (critical
realism). Space and time, causality and substance, notions
which originate in the mind, would never arise in us without
the cooperation of the objective world. A knowledge of nature
would be impossible without both external causes and conceptual
forms. If we make our external experiences the basis of our
world-view, we are driven to an atomistic materialism ; if we
limit ourselves to the facts of our mental life, we shall end in
idealism. We cannot, however, interpret the external world as
devoid of inner life: the cosmic mechanism is the outer husk
behind which lies concealed a spiritual creation, a striving and
feeling reality resembling that which we experience in ourselves.
The psychic element is given the priority, in accordance with
the results of the theory of knowledge, for which inner experience
must remain the original datum. Psychology shows that men-
tal life is essentially activity, will : this manifests itself in atten-
tion, apperception, association, in the emotions and in volitions,
and constitutes the central factor of mind (voluntarism).
The soul is not to be regarded as substance, — which would
be a materialistic conception, — but as pure spiritual activity,
500 MODERN PHILOSOPHY
actus purus. Reality must be conceived as a totality of striving,
willing beings, manifesting themselves in material form: it is
composed of independent beings determined by inner purposes
(teleology). We are led by ethical reasons to comprehend these
individual wills in a universal absolute will, the nature of which
we cannot further define. The world is the evolution of a mind,
a progressive development of interrelated purposive forms.
Some of the systems of philosophy we have examined are based
on judgments of value; they interpret reality in terms of a
highest good: the world must be, at bottom, what
Philosophy fae ethical, aesthetic, or logical consciousness de-
mands as the ideal. For Kant the universe is
essentially what the moral consciousness implies, — what ought
to be : the noumenal world must be a spiritual realm, a kingdom
of ends, a free rational community in which each person wills
the union. Fichte's world-view is similar to this, and Lotze,
too, is guided in his thought by the conception of the good : we
cannot conceive the world otherwise than based on a good prin-
ciple. The introduction of such conceptions into metaphysics
is said by many to rob it of its scientific character. Philosophy,
they hold, is a work of the theoretical intellect; its business is
to offer an explanation of reality free from the demands of
man's moral or aesthetic or religious nature. The universe should
not be conceived in terms of what we desire, in terms of what
ought to be, but in terms of what is. Against this scientific
and rationalistic view, it is pointed out by the value-philosophers
that the desire for truth and rationality, the demand for logical
consistency and unity, is itself a craving for what ought to be ;
that here, too, we are moved by an ideal: it offends our love of
order and harmony, our ideal of perfection, or our longing for
beauty to conceive reality as a chaos. Hence, it is argued, the
logical impulse has not the primacy over the other demands of
our nature, and no philosophical system can be adequate that
fails to do justice to them all.
W. Windelband (born 1848; Praludien, 3d ed., 1907, Qt-
schichte und Naturwissenschaft, 3d ed., 1904, Willensfreihei.;
2d ed., 1905, Wille zur Wahrheit, 1909), who has been influence 3
NEW IDEALISM 501
by Kant and Fichte, works out this teaching in the spirit of the
critical philosophy. According to him, philosophy is the science
of universal values, the study of the principles of absolute value-
judgments (logical, ethical, aesthetic) ; the subject-matter of all
other sciences being theoretical judgments. There is a funda-
mental difference between the propositions : This thing is white,
and, This thing is good. In the one case we predicate a quality
belonging to the presented objective content; in the other, a
relation pointing to a consciousness that sets up a purpose. The
validity of logical axioms, moral laws, and aesthetic rules cannot
be proved; the truth of each rests upon a purpose that must be
presupposed as the ideal of our thinking, feeling, or willing.
That is, if you desire truth, you must recognize the validity of
the principles of thought ; if you are convinced that there is an
absolute standard of right and wrong, you must recognize the
validity of certain moral norms; if beauty is to be something
more than subjective satisfaction, you must recognize a universal
norm for it. All such axioms are norms whose validity is based
on the presupposition that thought aims to realize the purpose
to be true; the will, the purpose to be good; and feeling, the
purpose to apprehend beauty, — in such a way as to be uni-
versally acceptable. Faith in universal purposes is the presup-
position of the critical method ; without it, the critical philosophy
can mean nothing.
Logical rules are, therefore, necessary instruments of the will
for truth. This, however, is not to be understood in the prag-
matic sense that their utility is their truth ; truth is not derived
from the will but from the things themselves, and is not an
arbitrary affair. Windelband distinguishes between natural sci-
ences and the sciences of events: the former deal with the
constant, the abstract, the universal, with law ; they are ' ' nomo-
thetic;" the latter (history) deal with the individual, the con-
crete, the unique, the novel, and are " idiographic. "
To be mentioned in the same connection are the writings of H.
Rickert (Grenzen der naturwiss. Begriffsbildung, 2d ed., 1913; Kultvr-
wissenschaft und Naturwissenschaft, 2d ed., 1910), and H. Miinsterberg
(Psychology and Life, 1899, Eternal Life, 1905, Science and Idealism,
L906, Eternal Values, 1909). W. Dilthry emphasizes the uniqueness of
the mental sciences (Introduction to the Mental Sciences, 1883), a*
distinguished from the natural sciences. We must study the relations.
502 MODERN PHILOSOPHY
methods, and presuppositions of the mental sciences; in them we gain
a knowledge of reality, values, norms, and purposes, by reflecting on
the expressions of the mind in history and psychology. Metaphysics,
however, as a logical system of reality, values, and purposes is im-
possible. The mental sciences are based on a teleological, descriptive-
analytical psychology, which is general psychology, comparative psy-
chology, social-historical psychology.
Eudolf Eucken (born 1846) offers a system of metaphysics
that seeks to do justice to human values, as well as to the logical
intellect, and has succeeded in arousing an interest in ethical
idealism outside of academic circles and in many lands.
Geistige Stromungen der Gegenwart, 1909 (transl. by Booth, under the
title Main Currents of Modern Thought}, first appeared 1878, under
the title Geschichte und Kritik der Grundbegriffe der Gegenwart; Die
Lebensanschauungen der grossen Denker, 1890, transl. by Hough and
Boyce Gibson, under the title, Problem of Life; Der Kampf um einen
geistigen Lebensinhalt, 1896; Der Sinn und Werth des Lebens, 1907,
transl. by Boyce Gibson, under the title: Value and Meaning of Life;
Grundlinien einer neuen Lebensanschauung, 1907, transl. by Widgery,
under the title: Life's Basis and Life's Ideal; Einfuhrung in eine
Philosophie des Geisteslebens, 1908, transl. by Pogson, under the title :
The Life of the Spirit; Ethics and Modern Thought, 1913. On Eucken
see Boyce Gibson, Eucken' s Philosophy of Life; Booth, Eucken: His
Philosophy and Influence; Siebert, Eucken's Welt- und Lebensan-
schauung; A. J. Jones, Eucken: A Philosophy of Life.
According to Eucken, neither naturalism nor intellectualism
can fully interpret reality; the former always tacitly presup-
poses the mental world which its principles deny,
Eucken ,..
while the latter can never make experience square
with logical thought. The mind with its yearning for the
infinite, revealing itself in ourselves and in history, points to
a universal spiritual process, an independent and intelligible
world beyond, as the source of all individual mental life. We
experience such a free, self-active spirit in ourselves: it is an
axiomatic fact or act which we cannot deduce, but only appre-
hend in its immediacy. In his essence man transcends history;
he is a historical being only in so far as he is imperfect and
strives for perfection. Either the spiritual life is an epiphe-
nomenon of material nature or it is a self -existent totality, ;i
universal whole, the source of all being. If human life is a mera
incident in nature, then it is nugatory; all that is noblest
POSITIVISM AND ITS OPPONENTS IN FRANCE 503
and best in it is a mere illusion, and the universe irrational.
What religion is struggling for, is not the happiness of man,
but the preservation of a genuine spiritual life on a human
basis. The sharp contrast between the spiritual endowment in
man and his real situation inspires him with the deep conviction
that a higher power is active in him. The yearning for truth
and love, the longing to live a genuine life instead of drifting
with the current of mere phenomena, we cannot uproot from
the human heart. The ceaseless striving in man, the impulse
for self-activity, immediacy, and infinity would be inconceivable
without the operation in him of an infinite power. If there is
no transcendent world, the spiritual life falls to pieces and
loses its inner truth. An idealistic pantheism rises out of the
desire for a higher world.
The universal life forms the ground of all being, — of human
history, of human consciousness, and of nature itself. The
universal process evolves from the inorganic to the organic,
from nature to mind, from mere natural soul-life to spiritual
life; and in this process of evolution towards independence
and self-realization the world becomes conscious of itself. Hu-
man personality is not, however, submerged in this universal
mind; indeed, the development of individuality is possible only
within, and as sharing in, the universal life.
PHILOSOPHY IN FRANCE AND ENGLAND
66. POSITIVISM AND ITS OPPONENTS IN FRANCE
In France, the Enlightenment, which rested on a naturalistic
philosophy, brought in the great revolution with its disturbing
social and political changes. After the revolution,
the sensationalistic and materialistic theories (Con-
dillac, the Encyclopedists, Holbach), which had
been so popular during the last half of the eight-
eenth century, lost their vogue, and new philosophies came to
the front. It was not strange that an excess of criticism and
liberalism should have aroused a conservative reaction, and that
the demand for free thought should have been opposed by a
school of thinkers who emphasized the principle of authority and
504, MODERN PHILOSOPHY
offered a supernaturalistic philosophy as a remedy to the trou-
bled age. Thus, Joseph de Maistre (1754-1821) declared that
human reason had shown itself impotent in governing man, and
that faith, authority, tradition alone could hold him in check
and bring about a stable order of society. Psychology, however,
seemed to offer the best arguments against materialism and be-
came the most promising field of study. Condillac 's sensational-
ism had proved unsatisfactory even to members of his school.
The materialist Cabanis called attention to vital feelings and
instinctive reactions, elements of conscious life which it was diffi-
cult to explain as mere products of external senses. Maine de
Biran (1766-1824), who began as a follower of Condillac and
Cabanis, finds in the feeling of effort the central element of
consciousness and the basal principle of knowledge : in this inner
experience, he thinks, we become directly aware of the activity
of the soul as well as of the existence of a material world. The
feeling of effort is also the basis of our notions of force, causality,
unity, identity, and so forth.
The most important opposition to materialism, however, came
from Royer-Collard (1763-1845), Victor Cousin (1792-1867),
and T. Jouffroy (1796-1842). Eoyer-Collard, an eloquent
teacher of philosophy at the Sorbonne, accepted the common-
sense philosophy of Thomas Reid. Cousin offered an eclectic
system with a spiritualistic keynote, which showed the influence
of Reid, Collard, Biran, Schelling, and Hegel, and became a
leading force in French education.
On French philosophy of the first half of the nineteenth century,
see Levy-Bruhl, History of Modern Philosophy in France; Morell,
Speculative Philosophy of Europe in the Nineteenth Century, 2d ed.,
1847; Flint, Philosophy of History in France; Damiron, Histoire de
la philosophic en France au XIXe siecle, 3d ed., 1834; works by
Taine, Ravaisson, Ferraz; Ueberweg-Heinze, op. cit., Part IH, vol. II,
§§ 35-40. Bibliography in Ueberweg-Heinze, op. cit.
Not one of these movements, however, possessed sufficient
vigor to satisfy the needs of an age that still felt an interest
in the ideals of liberty, equality, and fraternity.
The reform of human society remained the dream Samt-Simon
of a large part of French thinkers, and practical questions ap-
pealed to them more strongly than the theories of eclectic phi-
POSITIVISM AND ITS OPPONENTS IN FRANCE 505
losophers. The political revolution had not brought universal
happiness, it is true; the ignorance and misery of the lower
classes had not been removed by the proclamation of universal
human rights. It was now held that the goal could be reached
by social evolution, through the gradual reform of society by
education and enlightenment. Claude Henri de Saint-Simon
(1760-1825) conceived the idea of a new science of society which
would do away with the unequal distribution of property, power,
culture, and happiness. The main thing, according to him, was
the economic and intellectual emancipation of the workers; the
form of government he regarded as immaterial. A new Chris-
tianity is needed, he declared, which shall preach not self-denial,
but love of the world, and emphasize the command of love, which
for Saint-Simon meant love of the poor and lowly. The reform
of society presupposes a knowledge of social laws and, there-
fore, implies a reform of the sciences as well as of our world-
view. The present, he holds, is a period of criticism, negation,
and dissolution, an age of spiritual chaos, a critical and not an
organic age. The medieval age was an age of construction, an
age of spiritual and social organization, an organic age, and to
such a period we must again return. We need a new system
of thought, and this must be a positive philosophy: a system
based on experience and science.
Saint-Simon, a sympathetic seer and enthusiast rather than a sys-
tematic thinker, was not the man to construct the positive philosophy.
The task was undertaken by Auguste Comte, who had
been commissioned by Saint-Simon to write for his Comte
Catechisme des industries (1823-1824) the part dealing
with the scientific system of education; but the account did not seem
to the master to do justice to the emotional and religious phase of
education. Comte was born, 1798, in Montpellier, the son of an
orthodox Catholic family. He attended the polytechnical school at
Paris (1814-1816), where he acquired a knowledge of the exact sciences
and imbibed the principles of Saint-Simonism, which had an enthusi-
astic following in that institution. After leaving the school, he studied
biology and history and gave lessons in mathematics in order to gain
his livelihood. He became associated with Saint-Simon for a number
of years, but the men did not agree, and Comte began to work out
his own ideas independently of the master, supporting himself, as beat
he could, by means of his pen and by giving private instruction. Al-
though he made several attempts to obtain a professorship, he never
succeeded. He died in 1857.
Plan des travaux scientifiques ntcessaires pour reorganise la soctfti,
506 MODERN PHILOSOPHY
1822; Politique positive, 1824; Cours de philosophic positive, 6 vols.,
1830-1842 (abridged transl. by H. Martineau) ; Systeme de la politique
positive, ou traite de sociologie instituant la religion de I'humanite,
4 vols., 1851-1854 (contains Plan; transl.) ; Catechisme positiviste, ou
sommaire exposition de la religion universelle, 1853 (transl. by Con-
greve). Letters of Comte to Valet, 1877, and Mill, 1877.
J. S. Mill, Comte and Positivism; E. Caird, Social Philosophy and
Religion of Comte; Watson, Comte, Mill, and Spencer; Whittaker,
Comte and Mill; Littre, Comte et la philosophic positiviste; Levy-
Bruhl, La philosophic d'A. Comte; Duherme, Comte et son osuvre;
Dupuy, Le positivisme de Comte; Defourny, La sociologie positiviste.
As the titles of his books indicate, Comte 's ideal is, like that
of Saint-Simon, the reform of society. This end cannot be
reached until we have a knowledge of the laws
Reform of Of society, a social science, which, in turn, pre-
the^ScLnces suPPoses a^ the other sciences and a philosophical
point of view. The reform of society, therefore,
calls for the reform of political and social science and philoso-
phy,— a new philosophy, to the working out of which our author
devoted his entire life. The Middle Ages had their world- view, —
a common conception of the universe and of life, — in their the-
ology, which, however, represented a primitive stage of thought.
The remarkable development of the natural sciences in modern
times, especially in France, suggested the scientific method as
the one to be followed in the new undertaking. The sole object of
science is to discover natural laws or the constant relations
existing between facts, and this can be done only by observa-
tion and experience. Knowledge thus acquired is positive knowl-
edge ; and only such knowledge can be successfully applied, in
the various fields of human practice, as is verified by positive
science. Wherever we have not yet reached such knowledge,
it is our business to obtain it by imitating the methods employed
in the advanced natural sciences. We see, Comte here sides
with the thinkers of the empirical school; he belongs to the
chain of philosophers in which Hume and Diderot are important
links.
Positive knowledge, which is Comte 's ideal, is the result of
historical evolution. The human mind passes through three
stages (the law of the three stages) or employs three methods
of philosophizing: the theological, the metaphysical, and the
positive, each of which has its practical value and its correspond-
POSITIVISM AND ITS OPPONENTS IN FRANCE 507
ing social institutions. On the theological stage, the age of child-
hood, man regards things anthropomorphically, as the expressions
of supernatural beings, passing from fetichism
through polytheism to monotheism. This is the age ]
of monarchy and absolute authority, and has priests
as its leaders. On the metaphysical stage, the age of youth,
abstract powers or entities are substituted for personal beings;
such powers or essences are supposed to inhere in the different
things and to be the necessary causes of the phenomena observed
in the things ; from the knowledge of these causes, the knowledge
of their effects is said to be deduced. At first, different powers
are assumed to explain different groups of phenomena, — such as
chemical force, vital force, mental force, — but the tendency is
to reach a single primary force, as on the preceding stage. The
metaphysical age is the age of nationalism and popular sover-
eignty; jurists are its leading spirits. Both theology and meta-
physics believe in the possibility of absolute knowledge and of
explaining the innermost essence of things. On the stage of
positivism, the attempt to discover the inner essences of things
is abandoned as futile^and replaced by^4heeffort to discover the
uniform relations existing between 'phenomena. The question
asked is not Why? but How? Laws of nature are substituted
for absolute causes ; the aim now is to ascertain invariable rela-
tions between facts by the method of observation. Gal>leo,
Kepler, and Newton have established the positive sciences. We
cannot know what heat, light, and electricity are in themselves,
but we can know the conditions under whifeh they occur; and the
general phenomena common to such conditions, that is,V the
general laws governing them : to explain light is to bring >Min
the laws of motion. Such knowledge, is sufficient for prai"
purposes; to see in order to foresee tyirjpour pi-
motto of the positivist.
The human mind seeks to reduce everything to olnity, but this
is a mere subjective bent. We cannot reduce the many different
laws of nature to a single all-embracing law ; experience reveals
too many irreducible differences for that. The term positive,
says Comte, means real, useful, certain and indubitable, exact,
it means the opposite of negative: positive knowledge is not mere
negation or criticism.
508 MODERN PHILOSOPHY
It is also necessary, however, to construct a positive philoso-
phy, which shall collect and arrange the general laws yielded
by the different sciences, give us the method corn-
Classification mon to them, and show how these sciences are
Sciences connected with one another, — that is, provide us
with a classification of the sciences. Such a syn-
thesis is of value to education as well as a means of overcoming
the evils of specialism. Comte arranges the sciences according
to the order in which they enter upon the positive stage : mathe-
matics (arithmetic, geometry, mechanics), astronomy, physics,
chemistry, biology, and sociology (to which he later adds ethics
as the culmination of them all). This classification also ex-
hibits a gradual advance from simplicity to complexity : mathe-
matics, which contains the simplest, most abstract and universal
propositions, corner/first and forms the basis of all the rest,
while sociology, the most complex of all, presupposes the sciences
preceding it. The reason for this is that the simpler and more
general the laws are, the wider will be their application. The
truths of geometry hold for all phenomena in so far as they are
regarded as extended (static view) ; those of mechanics hold for
all phenomena in, so far as they are regarded as in motion
(dynamic view)/ Although every science in the ascending series
presupposes its predecessors, it is not assumed that the phe-
nomena with which it deals can be derived from the simpler
ones, — the phenomena of life, for example, from phenomena of
motion. That would be materialism, and Comte rejects mate-
rialism: we cannot explain organic phenomena mechanically or
chemically. In each of the six fields of science, a new element
is added which is distinct from those of the others. The same
remarks apply to phenomena within a single science: heat is
distinct from electricity, the plant from the animal, the various
organic species from each other.
We miss in Comte 's list of sciences the names of logic, psy-
chology, and ethics. Logic as the science of intellectual func-
tions would seem to take precedence even of mathematics, but
the French philosophers regarded it as a branch of psychology ;
and psychology was not a special science, according to Comte.
^tind or soul is a metaphysical entity and does not exist for
positivism: we cannot observe mental processes subjectively, in-
POSITIVISM AND ITS OPPONENTS IN FRANCE 509
;rospection being impossible. All we can do is to study them
sbjectively, that is, the organic phenomena with which they are
connected and the human institutions in which they are ex-
pressed. Psychology, therefore, belongs, in part, to biology, in
part to sociology. The fact is, the insertion of psychology into
the scheme would have given Comte a great deal of trouble;
geometry and mechanics would not be applicable to unique proc-
esses like mental processes, and the classification would break
lown. But if organic processes, though regarded as unique and
lot explainable mechanically, can have their place in the series,
it is not to be seen why psychology should be excluded. Conn
lid not work out these ideas consistently; his interest in tl
phrenology of Gall and his aversion to all spiritualistic psy-
chology led him to regard psychic states as functions of the
brain. ^
The last and most complex science in the scale, and the one
about to enter upon the positive stage, is sociology, which de-
pends upon the others, especially upon biology (for
society is made up of organic individuals), and |£?
comprises economics, ethics, the philosophy of his-
tory, and a large part of psychology. Comte claimed the credit
of being the founder of this science, and gave it its name. It
is impossible to study psychology, ethics, and economics apart
from the science of society and the philosophy of history: the
phenomena with which they deal stand in reciprocal relation
with society and social evolution. Social statics is a study of
society as a fact, of the laws of its existence, of the social order;
social dynamics, a study of society in its evolution : it is a phi-
losophy of history and aims to trace the progress of soc
Social life owes its origin, not to self-interest, but to the
social impulse. Man has egoistic impulses, and these, too, are
indispensable to society. The nobler impulses, the altruistic
feelings, supported by intelligence, gain the mastery over the
selfish instincts, which are stronger in the beginning than altru-
ism (a term coined by Comte) and which must be held in check
in order to make society possible. The family is the social unit
and the preparation for a larger social life. Int. lliu-«'nc.> is the
leading principle in progress. Progress consists in the develop-
ment of the human functions which distinguish man from the
510 MODERN PHILOSOPHY
brute, in the advance of reason and the higher or nobler im-
pulses. Society passes through three stages of evolution, corre-
sponding to the stages of intelligence already pointed out. Mili-
tarism is characterized by order, discipline, force: organization
is the primary condition of progress. It is followed by the revo-
lutionary stage, the stage of political rights, a transition period
of negation. The positive stage, " the definitive stage of hu-
manity," is the stage of industrialism, in which the emphasis
is placed on the social problem instead of the political problem
and individual rights. It is the era of experts whose function
it will be to guide scientific research, to superintend public in-
struction, to inform public opinion, on the one hand; and j to
regulate social production on the other. Comte is opposed to
popular representation on the ground that it would make the
experts dependent on the ignorant. Public opinion is the anti-
dote to misgovernment. He believes that the social problem
is, after all, a moral problem, that the positive State will be
brought about by a change in ideas and customs.
As we pointed out in the beginning, Comte 's leading thought
is the reform of society, and this necessarily rests on an ethical
ideal. He interprets history in the light of his ideal: progress
means the realization of the ideal of humanity, it means the
perfection of man in society. History is moving toward the
ideal ; intellectual, social, and ethical evolution is making straight
for positivism : the definitive stage of humanity. It is not diffi-
cult to see that positivism ends in dogmatism: it becomes a sys-
tem of metaphysics.
During his later period, Comte laid greater stress on the
emotional and practical phases of life and brought the ethical
ideal into bolder relief. Formerly, intelligence had
Ethics and been emphasized as the great factor in the reform
the Religion « . , , , , , . ,
of Humanity °* society ; n°w reason and science are brought into
the right relation with feeling and practice. The
objective method is replaced by the subjective method, sub-
jective in the sense that it connects knowledge with the satisfac-
tion of subjective needs and with the desire for unity and
simplicity in our world-view. Ethics is added to the science?
as the seventh and highest science, as the goal of which all tho
others are parts. The great human problem is to subordinate,
POSITIVISM AND ITS OPPONENTS IN FRANCE 511
so far as possible, the personality to sociability ; everything must
be related to humanity, love is the central impulse, to live for
others the absolute demand. Humanity is the Great Being
worthy of worship.
Positivism did not put an end to the spiritualistic eclecticism
of Cousin. A reaction, however, arose within this school itself,
and a number of independent thinkers (Bordas-
Demoulin, Ravaisson, Secretan, Vacherot) attacked Idealistic
eclecticism, some from the standpoint of science,
others from the standpoint of German idealism.
We also find a Platonic-Christian movement within the Catholic
lergy of France (Lamennais, 1782-1854), and a revival of the
Thomistic system, especially at the University of Louvain, Bel-
gium, which continues to be a seat of serious philosophical study
to this day. Positivism, however, which had a large following
(Littre, Taine, Renan), was not favorable to metaphysical studies,
>ut encouraged specialism in psychology (Th. Ribot) and sociol-
ogy (O. Tarde, E. Durkheim). The theory of evolution likewise
helped to weaken the influence of spiritualism.
Under the leadership of C. Renouvier (1818-1903), editor
of Critique philosophique, a school has arisen which bases itself
on Kant's criticism and opposes both positivism and the tradi-
tional spiritualism. Renouvier calls his system Neocriticism,
which, however, develops into an idealistic metaphysics, — similar
to the monadology of Leibniz, — of which pluralism and person-
alism are the characteristic features. There is no noumenal
world, no thing-in-itself ; things, so far as they are presented,
are phenomena, and nothing exists for us but ideas. The notion
of an actual infinitude is a logical contradiction, as well as a
contradiction of experience. The universe is a finite sum of
finite beings. Hence, there can be no infinite transitions in phe-
nomena; whence follows the necessity of the notion cf discon-
tinuity. The idea of discontinuity implies the possibility of
uncaused beginnings and free will. Knowledge, therefore, is
relative, and is limited to the discovery of the relations existing
between things.
Some of Renouvier 's ideas were anticipated by Antoine
Cournot (1807-1877), who finds chance and contingency in na-
512 MODERN PHILOSOPHY
ture and in history. The laws of nature are only approximately
true. Chance consists in the combination or concurrence of
events which belong to independent series of occurrence.
Among those who have been influenced by Renouvier are F.
Pillon, E. Boutroux, H. Bergson, and "William James.
Works of Cournot: La theorie des chances et des probabilites, 1843;
Essaisur les fondements de nos connaissances, 1851; Traite de Venchaine-
ment des idees fondamentales dans les sciences et dans I'histoire, 1861.
Works of Renouvier: Essais de critique generale, 4 vols., 1854-1864,
2d ed., 1875-1896; La nouvelle monadologie (with L. Prat), 1899;
Le personnalisme, 1902; Derniers entretiens, 1905. Valuable critical
articles by Pillon in Annee philosophique, of which he is the editor.
Works of Boutroux : De la contingence des lois de la nature, 1874, 4th
ed., 1902; Etudes d'histoire de la philosophie, 2d ed., 1901, transl. by
Rothwell; Science et religion, 1908, transl. by Nield; Questions de
morale et de pedagogie, 1896, transl. by Rothwell. For James and
Bergson, see sections 72 and 73.
On the philosophy of the second half of the nineteenth century see:
Levy-Bruhl, op. cit.j Boutroux, La philosophie en France depuis 1867 ;
Ueberweg-Heinze, op. cit., §§ 40-46. Bibliography of the movement
in Ueberweg-Heinze. Cf. also Hoffding, Moderne Philosophen (French
transl.: Philosophes contemporains) ; monographs on Renouvier by
Seailles, Janssens, Ascher; Feigel, Der franzosische Neokritizismus.
For Cournot see Revue de metaphysique et de morale, May, 1905;
Bottinelli, A. Cournot.
A. Fouillee (1838-1912) attempts to reconcile idealism and
materialism in his voluntaristic and evolutionistic philosophy of
idees-forces. Materialism is one-sided when it emphasizes mo-
tion to the exclusion of other factors ; idealism is one-sided when
it emphasizes thought. Mind and matter, consciousness and
life, operate in nature as a single principle. Mind and matter
are two abstractions of one unique and total reality, two ways
of conceiving one and the same thing. All psychic phenomena
are expressions of an impulse or appetition. Psychic existence
is the only reality which is directly given to us, hence we have
the right to interpret the world in analogy with active mind or
idees-forces.
FouilleVs views are presented in: La liberte et le determinisme, 187:2;
L'evolutionisme des idees-forces (main work), 1890; La psychologic des
idees-forces, 1893; La morale des idees-forces, 1908; La pensee, 1912;
Esquisse d'une interpretation du monde, 1913. See A. Guyau, La
philosophie et la sociologie d'A. Fouillee, and works under Renouvitr.
Jean Guyau (1854-1888), the brilliant pupil of Fouillee, emphasize*
SCOTTISH RATIONALISTIC PHILOSOPHY 513
the tendency in the universal life-impulse toward unification, which
sxpresses itself in human altruism no less than in the forces of nature.
The evolution of the principle of solidarity and sociality is the common
3haracteristic of morality, religion, and art. Among Guyau's works
are: Esquisse d'une morale sans obligation ni sanction, 1885, 5th ed.,
1.903; L'irreligion de Vavenir, 1887, 7th ed., 1904; Education et
heredite, 1889, 5th ed., 1900; Les problemes de I'esthetique content
voraine, 1884, 6th ed., 1901. Fouillee, La morale, I'art et la religion
1'apres Guyau, 1889. The first three books have been translated.
67. SCOTTISH RATIONALISTIC PHILOSOPHY
Although English philosophy had shown a decided leaning
toward nominalism and empiricism, and indifference to meta-
physics, since the days of William of Occam, the
opposing schools never entirely disappeared. We ^j;
have already mentioned the Cambridge Platonists
of the seventeenth century and the reaction against Hume repre-
sented by Thomas Reid and his school in the eighteenth and the
beginning of the nineteenth century, when the common-sense
philosophy dominated the Scotch universities. The value of the
latter movement consisted not so much in its positive teachings
as in its criticisms of empiricism and the impetus it gave, in
England, to a more thoroughgoing examination of the popular
doctrine. The Scottish philosophy later came under the influ-
ence of the critical philosophy of Kant in the persons of William
Whewell (1795-1866) and Sir William Hamilton (1788-1856).
Whewell, who is the author of History of the Inductive Sci-
ences, Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences, and Elements of
Moral Philosophy, finds in induction an element that is ignored
by empiricism: the mind itself contributes to the knowledge of
phenomena a number of ideas and principles by virtue of
which the content of experience is organized and unified.
Through them we interpret nature and translate its data u
our own language, long before we become conscious of th<
They are unconscious inferences and are necessary in the sense"
that their opposites are inconceivable.
Such fundamental ideas and principles act in simple appre-
hension; indeed, we cannot conceive of any activity of mind in
which they are not at work. They are acquired and developed
through experience, though not derived from experience: they
514 MODERN PHILOSOPHY
do not exist in the mind ready-made, but arise when the mind
is set in motion ; they seem to be ways the mind has of acting on
its material. Among such principles Whewell mentions: space,
time, cause, and purpose, as well as the moral axiom that we
ought to do what is right. Like the common-sense philosophy,
Whewell calls attention to certain principles of knowledge, but
fails to subject these notions to careful analysis, and to bring
unity into them. His works on the inductive sciences are works
of merit ; without them, John Stuart Mill tells us, he could not
have accomplished his own task in this field.
Sir William Hamilton advances beyond the common-sense
school, in the direction of Kantian criticism. He is a pro-
founder thinker than Whewell, a keen logician and
dialectician, and possesses a wider knowledge of
the history of philosophy than any of his predecessors. Among
his works are : Discussions on Philosophy and Literature, 1852,
ff., and Lectures on Metaphysics and Logic, 1859. He was
chiefly interested in moral and religious problems, and found
in the critical philosophy a basis for his theology.
Hamilton holds that there are necessary or a priori truths, —
simple self-evident truths which carry absolute conviction in
themselves, — universality and necessity being the final tests of
such truths. All men, for example, are convinced that two lines
cannot ever inclose a space; indeed, they cannot possibly even
imagine two lines inclosing space. In the case, however, of some
necessary truths so-called, — the law of causality, the law of sub-
stance, and the laws of identity, contradiction, and excluded
middle, — it is unthinkable that the deliverance of consciousness
should not be true ; while in the case of some contingent truths, —
the existence of an external world, — this is not unthinkable,
and yet we cannot practically believe in the falsity of it. The
inconceivableness of the contradictory opposite of a proposition
is no test of its truth, for the proposition itself may be equally
inconceivable. Thus, free action and completely determined ac-
tion are both inconceivable. A proposition must be positively
necessary: it is so, when it is conceivable and its contradictory
opposite is inconceivable. " All positive thought lies between
two extremes, neither of which we can conceive as possible, y3t
as mutual contradictories the one or the other we must recoj-
SCOTTISH RATIONALISTIC PHILOSOPHY 515
nize as necessary." This is Hamilton's law of the conditioned.
He applies this law to the principle of causality. We cannot
conceive of an absolute commencement of existence nor of an
absolute termination. " We necessarily deny in thought that
the object which apparently begins to be, really so begins; and
we necessarily identify its present with its past existence. "
We are compelled to believe that the object (that is, the cer-
tain quale and quantum of whose phenomenal rise into exist-
ence we have witnessed) did really exist prior to this rise under
other forms. But to say that a thing previously existed under
other forms is only to say, in other words, that a thing had
causes. ' ' We are, however, also unable to conceive of an infinite
non-commencement or of an infinite non-termination. Hence, we
cannot regard the law of causality as possessing absolute cer-
tainty; it rests on mere negative inconceivability, and that, as
we have seen, is not a test of truth. If the law were positively
necessary, free will would be impossible, but since it is not a
positive law, free will is possible. Whether the will is free or
not, therefore, is to be decided by the evidence; and for the
fact of liberty we have immediately or mediately the evidence
of consciousness.
We can know only the conditionally limited ; existence is not
cognizable absolutely and in itself, but only in special modes,
related to our faculties. If this is so, we cannot know the ulti-
mate being, or God, for the ultimate is unconditioned. The
Unconditioned is either absolute (that is, completed, perfected)
or infinite, but it cannot be both, for Absolute and Infinite are
contradictory opposites. Since, however, God must be either
one or the other, and since we cannot decide which of them to
apply to him, a rational theology is impossible. God cannot be
known a priori. Not one of the advocates of speculative the-
ology has ever been able to prove that God is either absolute
or infinite, though many have defined him as both, which is
contradictory. Hamilton did not hold that the notion of an
Unconditioned is self-contradictory, nor that the notion of the
Absolute or of the Infinite is so. It is possible to b» . God,
it is possible to believe he is either absolute or infinite, it is not
possible to believe he is both : but in no case can we prove a priori
that he is either.
516 MODERN PHILOSOPHY
Another application of the law of the Unconditioned is the
principle of substance and phenomenon. All our knowledge of
mind and of matter is relative, conditioned; we are conscious
only of existence as conditioned. I am compelled by a necessity
of my nature to think of the phenomenon as the known phe-
nomenon of an unknown substance. I cannot think this relative
as absolutely relative, — this phenomenon as a phenomenon and
nothing more. I can suppose it to be the phenomenon of some-
thing that does not appear; I conceive it as the accident of a
subject or a substance.
Hamilton betrays the influence of the Scottish common-sense
school in his doctrine of natural realism: we have a direct con-
sciousness of the world as really existing. We believe that it
exists because we know it, we feel it, we perceive it, as existing.
But we do not perceive the material or mental substance directly.
We perceive directly the phenomena, a certain series, or aggre-
gate, or complement, of appearances, or phenomena manifested
in coexistence. We must think these phenomena or qualities
as phenomena of something, of something that is extended, solid,
figured, and so on. This something is cognizable or conceivable
only in its qualities, only in its effects, in its relative or phe-
nomenal existence. A law of thought compels us to think some-
thing absolute and unknown as the basis or condition of the rela-
tive and known. What applies to matter applies to mind. Mind
and matter, as known or knowable, are only two different series
of phenomena or qualities: as unknown and unknowable they
are two substances in which these different qualities are supposed
to inhere. We, therefore, directly perceive qualities, attributes,
phenomena, and not substances.
Veitch, Hamilton; Monck, Hamilton; Mill, Examination of Sir
William Hamilton's Philosophy; also, for Hamilton and his school, see
works on the Scottish philosophy by McCosh and Pringle-Pattison, anc.
on English philosophy by Forsyth and J. Seth (pp. 254, f.) ; Hoffding
Englische Philosophic, German transl. by Kurella; Ueberweg-Heinze
op. cit.f § 57. Bibliography in Ueberweg-Heinze.
68. EMPIRICISM OF JOHN STUART MILL
Hume had drawn what seemed to him the ultimate conse-
quences of the presuppositions of empiricism. If our knowledge
EMPIRICISM OF JOHN STUART MILL 517
is limited to impressions and their faint copies or ideas, and the
self is a mere bundle of sensations, we have no universal and
necessary knowledge : the notion of cause is reduced
to the idea of temporal succession; and the con- Empiricism
sciousness of necessity accompanying it, to habit or
belief ; it is illusory to assume either a spiritual sub-
stance or a material substance as the cause of our sensations.
Hume's reflections, ending as they did in partial skepticism,
agnosticism, and phenomenalism, caused a violent reaction and
led to the development of the common-sense philosophy of the
Scottish school, as we have seen. Owing to the progress of the
natural sciences, however, and the rise of positivism in France,
the empirical conception again came to occupy the leading place
in British thought during the middle of the nineteenth century.
It based itself on the doctrines of Hume and Hartley and reached
its highest form in the Logic of John Stuart Mill. Though this
thinker did not escape the influence of Auguste Comte, whom
tie greatly admired, he had as his intellectual ancestors the lead-
;rs of the traditional English school, among them his own father,
James Mill (1773-1836), and Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832), and
had taken sides before the appearance of Comte 's writings.
There is, indeed, much in common between French positivism
and latter-day English empiricism, enough to have induced some
historians to regard the latter as an offshoot of the Comtian
movement. The same attitude of mind characterizes both views :
they both emphasize the value of facts and of scientific method,
and are both, in principle, opposed to metaphysics; both aim
at social reform and make the happiness and development of
humanity jthe etjiical ideal. The positivists, however, turn their
attention to the methods and results of the special sciences and
geek a classification and systematization of human knowledge,
while the Englishman, following the traditions of his school,
makes psychology and logic, which the Frenchmen neglect, his
starting-point and finds in these the solution of his problems.
John Stuart Mill (1806-1873) was the son of James Mill, a secretary
in the East India Company and a writer on economic, political, socio-
logical, and philosophical subjects. The elder Mill began the intellectual
training of his son during the latter's infancy, and gave it his careful
personal attention. He introduced him to the study of the philosophy
518 MODERN PHILOSOPHY
of the eighteenth century; and Hartley's psychology and Bentham's
ethics made a great impression on the boy. Hartley's doctrine of the
association of ideas became, — as it had been to his father, — the guiding
principle of Mill's psychology and kindred studies, while Bentham's
principle of utility, as he himself says, gave unity to his conception of
things and a definite shape to his aspirations. In 1823, after a few
years spent in travel and in the study of law, Mill entered the service
of the East India Company, with which he remained until its abolition
by Parliament in 1858. In 1865 he was elected to Parliament as a
Liberal and served for three years, but his greatest influence on the
political life of his country was exercised through his writings.
Logic, 1843; Principles of Political Economy, 1848; Liberty, 1859;
Thoughts on Parliamentary Reform, 1859; Representative Government,
1860; The Subjection of Women, 1861; Utilitarianism, 1861; Augusts
Comte and Positivism, 1865; Examination of Sir William Hamilton's
Philosophy, 1865; edition of James Mill's Analysis of the Human
Mind, 1869; Dissertations and Discussions, 1859-1874. His Autobiog-
raphy and Essays on Religion: Nature, The Utility of Religion, and
Theism were published after his death. Correspondence of Mill and
Comte, ed. by Levy-Bruhl; correspondence with d'Eichthal; Letters,
ed. by Elliot, 2 vols. New ed. of works in New Universal Library.
Monographs on Mill by Douglas, Bain, Fox Bourne, Sanger, Lauret ;
Douglas, Ethics- of J. S. Mill; Hoffding, Englische Philosophen;
MacCunn, Six Radical Thinkers; Ribot, Contemporary English Psychol-
ogy, transl. by Baldwin ; Guyau, La morale anglaise contemporaine.
See also works under Comte, p. 506, and English philosophy, pp. 254, f.
The ideal of social and political reform gave direction to Mill's
intellectual labors. He shared the eighteenth ^century 's enthusi-
asm for progress and enlightenment and with it
Science and believed in the supreme efficacy of education, hold-
Reform *n£ that tnere is no natural impulse which it cannot
transform or destroy, and that human character will
change with men's ideas. In order to bring about reforms,
knowledge is necessary, knowledge of the right ends and knowl-
edge of the means of realizing them. But in order to reach
knowledge, correct methods must be employed, and to the study
of these Mill addressed himself in his Logic. The wonderful
progress of the natural sciences suggested an examination of
scientific methods and their application in the mental or moral
sciences: in psychology, ethics, economics, politics, and history
The investigation of methods of knowledge, however, could not
be carried on successfully without a consideration of the gen-
eral principles of the theory of knowledge, and such a study
we have in the Logic, which has been called the most thorough-
EMPIRICISM OF JOHN STUART MILL 519
going exposition of the epistemology of empiricism ever
written.
Hume had taught that we cannot reach universal and nec-
essary knowledge : we do not experience any necessary connec-
tion among things ; the necessity of judgments, on .
which intuitionists lay so much stress, is merely
the result of habit. All we know is our ideas, which follow one
another in a certain temporal order, according to the laws of
association by similarity, contiguity, and causality. Hartley
worked out this theory of association, reducing Hume's three
laws to the single law of contiguity: ideas call up ideas with
which they have been associated in consciousness before; and
sought to explain all mental processes as cases of this law. On
the basis of this theory, knowledge is nothing but a firm and
coherent association of ideas, and the so-called necessity of
thought nothing but an expression of the firmness of these asso-
ciations. To know, therefore, means to study the sequence of
our ideas, to eliminate the accidental, transitory associations,
and to discover the permanent, enduring, invariably recurring
ones, the correct and valid sequences: this is accomplished by
the methods of induction, which Mill describes as they are em-
ployed by modern experimental research. Hence, all inference
and proof, and all discovery of truths not self-evident, consi?
of inductions and the interpretation of inductions: all
knowledge that is not intuitive comes exclusively from this
source.
Mill's entire logical theory is based on the laws of association.
The child infers that the fire will burn because fire and the burn
came together before; the inference, in this case, j duct-ve
is from one particular to another, and not from jj]^^
the universal to the particular, or from the par-
ticular to the universal. Here we have the elementary form o
all inference. It makes no difference whether I infer from t
fact that Peter died the death of Paul or the death of all men
in the latter case I am simply extending the inference to an
indefinite number of particular cases instead of only one.
have passed from the known to the unknown in i-ith.-r case, am
the same process of inference is involved. The conclusion
induction embraces more than is contained in the premises.
,
520 MODERN PHILOSOPHY
The syllogistic process (All men are mortal, Paul is a man,
hence he is mortal), therefore, is not a process of inference,
because it is not a progress from the known to the unknown.
In every syllogism, considered as an argument to prove the con-
clusion, there is a begging of the question : the proposition, Paul
is mortal, is already presupposed in the general assumption, All
men are mortal. The major premise of a syllogism does not
prove the conclusion. The inference is finished when we have
asserted that all men are mortal; the major premise is proved
by the particular instances: it is a concise or compressed form
of expression of the results of many observations and inferences,
and of instructions for making innumerable inferences in un-
foreseen cases. It practically tells us what has already been
found, registers what has been inferred, what events, or facts,
have gone together and were, therefore, inferred to belong
together, and gives directions for future inductive inferences.
The question at once arises, What warrant have we for mak-
ing such inferences? The assumption involved in every case
of induction is that what happens once, will, un-
der a sufficient degree of similarity, happen again,
and not only again, but as often as the same cir-
cumstances recur. And what warrant have we for this assump-
tion itself? The warrant of experience: it is a universal fact
that the universe, so far as known to us, is so constituted that
whatever is true in any one case is true in all cases of a certain
description. This principle that the course of nature is uni-
form, is the fundamental principle or axiom of induction. It
is, however, itself an instance of induction, one of the latest
inductions to attain strict philosophical accuracy. If this is so,
how can it be regarded as our warrant for all the others ? Is not
Mill here reasoning in a circle, proving the particular inductions
by the law of the uniformity of nature and then proving this
law by these inductions? No, says Mill, the principle of the
uniformity of the course of nature stands in the same relation
to all inductions, as the major premise of a syllogism always
stands to the conclusion: it does not contribute to prove it, but
is a necessary condition of its being proved (that is, the con-
clusion is not proved unless the law is true). The real proof
that what is true of John, Peter, and others is true of all man-
EMPIRICISM OF JOHN STUART MILL 521
kind, can only be, that a different supposition would be incon-
sistent with the uniformity which we know to exist in the course
of nature. Mill regards the law as an abridgment or summation
of our past experiences: it simply registers what has been ob-
served. It does not prove the particular inductions, but merely
increases their certainty. But though we may acquit Mill of
the charge of circular reasoning here, it is plain that he fails
to find a logical basis for his theory of induction. He does not
accomplish what he promises, and seems, moreover, to be uncon-
scious of the skeptical consequences of his position.
The uniformity in question, Mill also points out, is not prop-
erly uniformity, but uniformities. A certain fact invariably
occurs whenever certain circumstances are present and does not
occur when they are absent; the like is true of another fact;
and so on. Such uniformities as exist among natural phenomena
are called laws of nature. The problem of inductive logic is to
ascertain the laws of nature and to follow them into their
results. The purpose is to ascertain what kinds of uniformities
have been found perfectly invariable, pervading all nature, and
what are those which have been found to vary with difference of
time, place, or other changeable circumstances. Some uniformi-
ties, as far as any human purpose requires certainty, may be
considered quite certain and quite universal. By means of these
uniformities we can raise multitudes of other inductions to the
same point in the scale. For, if we can show with respect to
any inductive inference that either it must be true or one of
these certain and universal inductions must admit of an excep-
tion, the former generalization will attain the same certainty
and indefeasibleness within the bounds assigned to it which are
the attributes of the latter.
We have uniformities of simultaneity and uniformities of suc-
cession. In the laws of number and those of space, we recognize,
in the most unqualified manner, the rigorous uni-
versality of which we are in quest. But the most
valuable to us of all truths relating to phenomena
are those which relate to the order of their succession. Of these
truths, one only has been found that has never been, in any
instance whatever, defeated or suspended by any change of
cumstances. This is the law of causation, which is universal also
522 MODERN PHILOSOPHY
in the sense that it is coextensive with the entire field of suc-
cessive phenomena, all instances whatever of succession being
examples of it. The truth that every fact which has a begin-
ning has a cause, is coextensive with human experience.
The notion of cause is the root of the whole theory of induc-
tion, and it is, therefore, necessary to reach a clear and precise
idea of it. The only notion of a cause which the theory of
induction requires, is such a notion as can be gained from experi-
ence. The law of causation is but the familiar truth that invaria-
bility of succession is found by observation to obtain between
every fact in nature and some other fact which has preceded it.
To certain facts, certain facts always do, and, as we believe,
will continue to succeed. We do not mean by the cause a mys-
terious and most powerful tie between things or some essence
that actually produces something else. The invariable ante-
cedent is termed the cause ; the invariable consequent, the effect.
The cause, philosophically speaking, is the sum-total of the con-
ditions, positive and negative, taken together.
The objection might be urged against this definition of cause
that it leaves out of account an important element, the idea of
necessity or necessary connection. If the invariable antecedent
is the cause, then night must be the cause of day, and day the
cause of night. To obviate the objection, Mill adds that cau-
sality implies not only that the antecedent always has been fol-
lowed by the consequent, but that, as long as the present consti-
tution of things endures, it always will be so. All that can be
meant by the term necessity is unconditionalness. That which
is necessary, that which must be, means that which will be.
Hence, the cause of a phenomenon is the antecedent, or the con-
currence of antecedents, on which it is invariably and uncondi-
tionally consequent. The question, How do we know that a
sequence is unconditional ? is answered : By experience. In some
cases we are not sure that a hitherto invariable antecedent i?
the invariable antecedent. But there are certain primeval o:*
permanent causes of which, or some combination of which, all
phenomena are the effects, and these would be unconditional.
One knowing all the agents which exist at the present moment,
their collocation in space, and all their properties, — in othe:'
words, the laws of their agency, — could predict the whole sub-
EMPIRICISM OF JOHN STUART MILL 523
sequent history of the universe. Anyone acquainted with the
original distribution of all natural agents, and the laws of their
succession, would be able to construct a priori the whole series
of events in the history of the universe, past and future.
Mill's assumption, we see, is that inexorable law and order
reigns in the universe, that there are invariable, unconditional
sequences, and that these can be ascertained by induction, de-
duction, and verification, which constitute the scientific method.
This doctrine, if consistently carried out (which it is not),
would lead to a rationalistic science and make possible, in theory
at least, an absolute body of knowledge. It does not, however,
agree with his theory of induction, according to which the idea
of causation can be nothing but a belief in the succession of
phenomena, a belief that rests on the succession of ideas in con-
sciousness. Mill wavers between the rationalistic and empiricist
conceptions of causality: the view that causality implies neces-
sary connection, and the view that it means merely invariable
temporal succession. On the latter hypothesis, all we can say
is that the belief in causation increases with our experiences
of succession. And, indeed, this is the view generally taken
by Mill when he examines our right to assume the universality
of the law of causation, as we do in all the inductive methods.
We cannot justify the assumption, he tells us, by the disposi-
tion of the human mind to believe it, for belief is not proof,
and, besides, not one of the so-called instinctive beliefs is in-
evitable. Even now, many philosophers regard volitions as an
exception to the law of causation. His position on this question
agrees with his view of the uniformity of nature. Indeed, the
universality of the causal law is merely a case of the uniformity
of sequences in nature. We arrive at the universal law of causa-
tion by generalizing from many partial uniformities of sequence.
It is true that we arrive at the law by the loose and uncertain
method of induction per enumerationem simplicem, and it might
seem, at first sight, that such a principle would prove a weak
and precarious basis for scientific induction. But the precari-
ousness of the method is in an inverse ratio to the largeness of
the generalization, and the law of causation is the most extensive,
in its subject-matter, of all generalizations which experience war-
rants, respecting the sequences and coexistences of phenomena.
524 MODERN PHILOSOPHY
In point of certainty, it stands at the head of all observed uni-
formities, and it adds to these as much proof as it receives from
them. The criticism that it is a paradox to base induction on
the law of causation, and then to explain this itself as a case
of induction, is answered by Mill in the same manner in which
he answers a similar objection against the uniformity of nature.
When we have ascertained that the particular conclusion is liable
to no doubt except the doubt whether every event has a cause,
we have done all that can be done for it.*
In matters of evidence, we neither require nor can attain
the absolute. Whatever has been found true in innumerable in-
stances, and never found to be false, after due examination, in
any, we are safe in acting on as universal provisionally, until
an undoubted exception appears; provided that the nature of
the case is such that an exception could scarcely have escaped
notice. But we cannot affirm confidently that this general law
prevails beyond the possible range of our experience, in distant
parts of the stellar region. It must be received not as a law of
the universe, but of that portion of it only which is within
the range of our means of sure observation, with a reasonable
degree of extension to adjacent cases.
The law of the uniform course of nature and the law of uni-
versal causation are both the results of experience. They are
not necessary or a priori truths ; indeed, there are
pwot no gucj1 truths. Even the principles of logic and
the generalizations of mathematics are generaliza-
tions from experience. The proposition that two straight lines
cannot inclose a space is an induction from all the experiences,
we have ever made. Besides, mathematical propositions are only
approximately true ; we cannot conceive a line without breadth ;
the radii of a perfect circle would be equal, but such circles do
not exist. There are no real points, lines, circles which conform
to the definitions of geometry; they are idealized copies of the
points, lines, etc., which we experience, — abstractions, mere fie-
*Mill has, however, forgotten his assumption of causation as an uncon-
ditional sequence, and that there are certain primeval and permanent
causes in nature, which determine the whole series of events in the
history of the universe. On this view, the particular conclusion could be
liable to no doubt whatever, for it assumes that all phenomena are the
effects of these primeval and permanent causes of nature.
V
EMPIRICISM OF JOHN STUART MILL 525
ons. Mathematical propositions, therefore, have only hypo-
hetical validity. The argument that propositions, the opposite
f which is inconceivable, cannot be derived from experience,
, also unavailing. The inconceivableness of a thing proves noth-
_ig against the experimental origin of our conviction with re-
pect to it. The results of the so-called deductive sciences are
ecessary in the sense of necessarily following from first prin-
iples called axioms and definitions; that is, of being certainly
rue if these axioms and definitions are true. These latter are
xperimental truths which rest on superabundant and obvious
ividence, while the axioms are but the most universal class of
nductions from experience, the simplest and easiest cases of
generalization furnished to us by our senses and by our internal
jonsciousness. The demonstrative sciences are all without ex-
jeption inductive sciences, their evidence is that of experience,
mt they are also hypothetical sciences because their conclusions
^ire only true on certain suppositions, which are, or ought to
)e, approximations to truth, but are seldom if ever exactly true.
With critical idealism, Mill holds that we can know phenomena
mly and not things-in-themselves. On the inmost nature of the
thinking principle, as well as on the inmost nature
of matter, we are and, with our faculties, must ^JJ^
always remain in the dark. As bodies manifest gelf
themselves to me only through the sensations of
which I regard them as the causes, so the thinking principle,
or mind, in my own nature makes itself known to me only by
the feelings of which it is conscious. But if all we know i
sensations, the effects of an unknown external cause, how do we
eome to believe in things independent of ust Mill gives a psj
chological explanation of our belief, based on memory, expect
tion, and the laws of association. I see a piece of white papei
on the table, I shut my eyes or go into another room ; I no long
see the paper, but I remember it and expect or
see it again, under the same circumstances, if tin- same cone
tions exist. I form the notion of something permanent, i
during; the so-called external thing is simply the possib
certain sensations will recur in the same order in win
have occurred. My past sensations are permanent p«
of sensation;— there is always the possibility of their return
526 MODERN PHILOSOPHY
ing, — the external world is a permanent possibility of sensation.
We come to believe that the permanent possibilities are the true
realities, and the passing sensations merely the accidents or rep-
resentations of the possibilities. The belief, then, in external!
objects is the belief that sensations may recur. This belief is
not an original belief, not an innate notion, but the result of
our experience, an acquired belief, the result of the association
of ideas. Mill is not here trying to prove that objects are
external to us; he is simply trying to account for the fact that,
although we experience nothing but a succession of ideas, we
are yet able to form the picture of a persisting world of objects
outside of consciousness.
We find also, however, the thing-in-itself in Mill's philosophy,
the notion of an unknown something or external cause, to which
we refer our sensations. In spite of his idealism, Mill cannot
let go of the transcendent substance, or cause of sensations. The
world of knowledge is a phenomenal world, but there is, besides,
a noumenal world, an unknown and unknowable world of things-
in-themselves. We have a problem here which Mill does not
consider: the problem of the possibility of such a world and of
our notion of it, on his own premises. He speaks of the thing,
in-itself as substance and cause, without even inquiring into the
possibility of such a view on his definition of substance and cause.
If by substance we mean a complexus of sensations, and by cause
the invariable phenomenal antecedent, how can we speak of
something outside of the sensation-series as substance and
cause ?
Mill 's conception of mind, or the ego, is somewhat vacillating.
With Hume and James Mill, he calls mind a series of feelings.
He tries to explain our belief in the constancy or permanency
of the self as he explained our belief in an external world: It
is the belief in a permanent possibility of feelings, and this
belief accompanies our actual feelings. But he sees difficulties
in the associationistic conception of mind as a mere succession
of feelings and is frank enough to confess them. " If, therefore,
we speak of mind as a series of feelings," he says, "we are
obliged to complete the statement by calling it a series of fee -
ings which is aware of itself as past and future; and we are
reduced to the alternative of believing that the mind, or ego.
EMPIRICISM OF JOHN STUART MILL 527
is something different from any series of feelings, or possibili-
ties of them, or of accepting the paradox that something which
ex hypothesi is but a series of feelings, can be aware of itself
as a series. ... I think by far the wisest thing we can do is
to accept the inexplicable fact, without any theory of how it takes
place; and when we are obliged to speak of it in terms which
assume a theory, to use them with a reservation as to their
meaning." *
As was pointed out before, Mill was deeply interested in the
reform of society and the happiness of man. He believed that
the progress of knowledge in the social and po-
litical fields would be attended by results equal JJcntal and
to those of the natural sciences. But in order g^cgg
to attain such knowledge, he held it to be necessary
to apply the methods which had been so successfully employed
in physics, anatomy, and physiology. What is needed, he
insists, is a reform of the mental and moral sciences.
The scientific treatment of human nature, however, presup-
poses that there is order, uniformity, law, invariable sequence
in the mental realm; and the question at once arises: Can
there be science here; are human actions subject to law! The
objection is raised that man is not subject to law, not
determined, but free. Mill finds, with Hume, that the chief
objection to the necessitarian doctrine rests on a misappre-
hension. Determinism, properly understood, means invariable,
certain, and unconditional sequence, and not compulsion or
restraint, not that one phenomenon compels another, that
a given motive compels a certain effect. It means: <
motives, character, and circumstances, we can predict conduct.
The act does not necessarily follow on a certain condil
other conditions may supervene to bring about a different
result. Necessity means that a given cause will be followed
the effect subject to all possibilities of counteraction by otlu-r
causes; not that the cause is irresistible. The fatalistic error
is that my character is molded for me, not by me, wher
due to •""«'
•Many inconsistencies in Mill's thought »'* due to JJ ./• ,
herence to the English association-psycholo^, *h,rh he inherited «
Sr and to his8 tacit acceptance, or at least appreciation, of many «
the doctrines of the rationalistic thinkers of his tune.
528 MODERN PHILOSOPHY
the desire to mold my character is a cause. I can change
my character if I will; I can resist my habits and tempta-
tions if I wish. The sense of moral freedom consists in the
consciousness that I can if I wish. Another misapprehension is
that the motive of my action is always the anticipation of pleas-
ure or pain. According to the law of association, pleasure or
pain as a motive drops out, and I form a habit of desiring or
willing without being moved by the thought of pleasure or pain.
Wherever, then, facts follow each other according to law, we
can have science. These laws, however, may not have been dis-
covered, and, indeed, may not be discoverable by our existing
resources. We cannot predict in the science of human nature
because we do not know all the circumstances and because we
do not know the characters of the individuals. Yet, many of
the effects are determined by general causes; they depend on
circumstances and qualities common to all mankind. With re-
gard to these, we can make predictions which will almost always
be verified, and we can formulate general propositions which are
almost always true. Such approximate generalizations must be
connected deductively with the laws of nature from which they
result; we must show that they are corollaries from the uni-
versal laws of nature. In other words, we need a deductive
science of human nature. We do not ask, however, what is the
nature of mind, but what are the laws of its various thoughts,
emotions, volitions, and sensations. Moreover, psychology is
not physiology; its subject-matter is not nerve-excitations but
mental events. The simple and elementary laws of mind are
found by the ordinary methods of experimental inquiry. Among
such laws are the law of reproduction (memory) and the laws
of the association of ideas: these compose the abstract or uni-
versal portion of the philosophy of human nature. . All the
maxims of common experience (e.g., old men for counsel, young
men for war) are the results or consequences of these laws.
We have no assurance, however, in the case of such empirical
laws, that they will hold true beyond the limits of our observa-
tion, because the consequent (wisdom, for example) is not
really the effect of the antecedent (old age), and because there
is ground for believing that the sequence is resolvable into sim-
pler sequences. The real scientific truths are the causal laws
EMPIRICISM OF JOHN STUART MILL 529
;vhich explain these empirical maxims; the latter verify the
theory. Empirical laws are never exactly true except in the
simplest sciences, e.g., in astronomy, where the causes, or forces,
ire few in number: few causes, great regularity.
Psychology ascertains the simple laws of mind in general;
t is a science of observation and experiment. Ethology, or the
science of the formation of character, traces the
>peration of these simple laws in complex combi-
lations of circumstances and is altogether deductive. The lat-
er science is one still to be created; its great problem is to
leduce the requisite middle principles from the simple or gen-
eral laws of psychology; to determine from the general laws
if mind, combined with the general position of our species in
he universe, what actual or possible combinations of circum-
tances are capable of promoting or of preventing the production
>f those qualities of human nature (or characters) which are
nteresting to us. Such a science will be the foundation of a
;orresponding art, of the art of education. To be sure, verifi-
ation a posteriori must go hand in hand with deduction a priori.
["he conclusions of theory cannot be trusted unless confirmed
>y observation; nor those of observation, unless they can be
ffiliated to theory, by deducing them from the laws of human
lature and from a close analysis of the circumstances of the
^articular situation.
Next, after the science of individual man, comes the science
of man in society, — of the actions of collective masses of man-
kind and of the various phenomena which consti-
tute social life. Can we make the study of politics
and of the phenomena of society scientific? All
phenomena of society are phenomena of human nature, generated
by outward circumstances upon masses of human beings; hence
the phenomena of society, too, must conform to fixed laws. Pre-
diction is impossible here because the data are innumerable and
perpetually changing, and the multitude of causes is so great
as to defy our limited powers of calculation. There are two
erroneous methods of philosophizing on society and government,
the experimental or chemical mode of investigation and the
abstract or geometrical mode. The true method proceeds de-
ductively indeed, but by deduction from many, not from one
530 MODERN PHILOSOPHY
or a very few, original premises (as in geometry) ; it considers
each effect as (what it really is) an aggregate result of many
causes, operating sometimes through the same, sometimes through
different mental agencies or laws of human nature. The social
science is a deductive science, not after the model of geometry,
but after that of the more complex physical sciences. It is
difficult, to be sure, to calculate the result of the conflicting tend-
encies which are acting in a thousand different directions and
promoting a thousand different changes at a given instant in
a given society. But our remedy here consists in verification:
the process of comparing our conclusions either with the con-
crete phenomena themselves or, when such are obtainable, with
their empirical laws.
Sociology, however, as a system of deductions a priori, can-
not be a science of positive predictions, but only of tendencies.
All its general propositions are, therefore, hypothetical: they
are grounded on some suppositious set of circumstances and
declare how some given cause would operate in those circum-
stances, supposing that no others were combined with them.
Mill also points out that different species of social facts, being,
in the main, dependent on different kinds of causes, e.g., the
desire of wealth, must be studied apart, which gives us distinct
and separate, though not independent, branches or departments
of sociological speculation. Political economy, for example, pro-
ceeds to inquire into the laws which govern various operations,
under the supposition that man is occupied solely in acquiring
and consuming wealth. What are the actions which would be
produced by the desire of wealth if it were unimpeded by others ?
The conclusions, however, of each separate science must after-
ward be corrected for practice, by the modifications supplied by
the other separate sciences.
But there can be no separate science of government, because
that is the fact which is mixed up, both as cause and effect,
with the qualities of the particular people or of the particular
age. It must be a part of the general science of society. In this
general science of society, nothing of a really scientific char
acter is possible except by the inverse deductive method. Thai
is, it asks not what will be the effect of a given cause in a certain
state of society, but what are the causes which produce, and
EMPIRICISM OF JOHN STUART MILL 531
:he phenomena which characterize, states of society generally.
The fundamental problem is to find the laws according to which
my state of society produces the state which succeeds it and
akes its place. This opens up the question of the progressive-
less of man and society. There is a progressive change both
n the character of the human race and in their outward cir-
umstances. History, when judiciously examined, affords em-
pirical laws of society. Sociology must ascertain these and con-
lect them with the laws of human nature, by deductions show-
ng that such were the derivative laws naturally to be expected
is the consequences of those ultimate ones. The only check or
;orrective on the empirical laws is constant verification by psy-
hological and ethological laws. The empirical laws are uni-
'ormities of coexistence and uniformities of succession, and we
lave, in consequence, social statics and social dynamics. Social
dynamics is the study of society considered in a state of pro-
gressive movement; social statics is the study of the consensus,
that is, of the mutual actions and reactions of contemporary
social phenomena, the study of the existing order. One of the
main results of the science of social statics would be to ascer-
tain the requisites of stable political union, among which Mill
mentions: a system of education, the feeling of allegiance or
loyalty, and sympathy.
It is necessary to combine the statical view of social phe-
nomena with the dynamical, considering not only the progres-
sive changes of the different elements, but the contemporaneous
condition of each ; and thus obtain, empirically, the law of corre-
spondence, not only between the simultaneous states, but between
the simultaneous changes, of those elements. This law of corre-
spondence it is which, duly verified a priori, would become
the real scientific derivative law of the development of hu-
manity and human affairs. The evidence of history and that
of human nature show that the state of the speculative facu!
of mankind, including the nature of the beliefs which by
means they have arrived at, concerning themselves and the world
by which they are surrounded, is predominant among the agents
of social progress. The influence of speculation is the main
determining cause of the social progress; all the other disposi-
tions of our nature which contribute to that progress being
532 MODERN PHILOSOPHY
dependent on it for the means of accomplishing their share o:
the work. The order of human progression in all respects wili
mainly depend on the order of progression in the intellectua
convictions of mankind, that is, on the law of the successive
transformations of human opinions.* But can this law be de
termined, at first from history as an empirical law, then con
verted into a scientific theorem by deducing it a priori frorr
the principles of human nature? To do this, it is necessary tc
take into consideration the whole of past time, to the memorable
phenomena of the last and present generations. It has become
the aim of really scientific thinkers to connect by theories the
facts of universal history.
In his ethical theories Mill largely follows the traditional
English hedonistic school, the most important representatives
of which are Locke, Hutcheson, Hume, and J,
Bentham (1748-1832). The reading of Dumont's
Traite de legislation, an exposition of Bentham 's principal
speculations, Mill regarded as an epoch in his life, one of the
turning-points in his intellectual history. In his Utilitarianism,
he agrees with Bentham that happiness, or the greatest good
of the greatest number, is the summum bonum and the cri-
terion of morality. He differs from his master, however, on
several important points. According to Bentham, the value oi
pleasures is to be measured by their intensity, duration, cer-
tainty or uncertainty, propinquity or remoteness, fecundity,
purity, and extent (the number of persons affected by them).
No difference is to be made in quality ; other things being equal,
" push-pin is as good as poetry." Mill teaches that pleasures also
differ in quality, that those/which go with the exercise of intel-
lectual" capacities are higher, better, than sensuous pleasures,
and that persons who have experienced both prefer the higher
ones. No intelligent person would consent to be a fool ; no
instructed person would be an ignoramus; no person of feelirg
or conscience would consent to be selfish or base. You wou'd
not exchange your lot for that of a fool, dunce, or rascal, even
if you were convinced that a fool, dunce, or rascal is better
satisfied with his lot than you with yours. It is better to be a
* Thomas H. Buckle (1821-1862) attempts to show that progress depends
solely on intelligence in his History of Civilization in England, 1857-1861.
EMPIRICISM OF JOHN STUART MILL 533
mman being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; it is better to be
, Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. The fool and the pig
nay think otherwise, but that is because they know only one side
)f the question, the fool's and the pig's. Bentham and Mill
Jso agree that we ought to strive for the greatest happiness
f the greatest number ; but Bentham justifies this on the ground
f self-interest, while Mill bases it on the filial fppliflgff nf mon-
ind, the desire to be in unity with our fellow-creatures. Aa
•etween the agent's own happiness and that of others, he tells
is, Utilitarianism requires him to be as strictly impartial as a
lisinterested and benevolent spectator. " In the golden rule of
esus of Nazareth, we re.adJLhe complete spirit of the ethics
f utility. To do as one would be done by, and to lo\
leighbor as oneself, constitute the ideal perfection of utilitarian
norality." Indeed, the greatest happiness principle is a mere
brm of words without rational signification, unless one per-
on's happiness, supposed equal in degree (with the proper
illowance made for kind), is counted for exactly as much as
nother 's ; Bentham 's dictum, ' ' Everybody to count for one, no-
ody for more than one," might be written under the principle
f utility as an explanatory commentary.
Mill 's Utilitarianism, like many other of his theories, vacillates
etween opposing views ; in addition to the empirical association-
>sychology with its hedonism, egoism, and determinism, we find
anings towards intuitionism, perfectionism, altruism, and free
will. The very inconsistency of the theory, however, made it
ttractive to many minds, and there is much in it with which
he opposing schools may agree. As Green pointed out, it had
reat practical value; it substituted a critical and intelligent
or a blind and unquestioning conformity. The theory of the
greatest happiness of the greatest number has tended to improve
human conduct and character ; it has helped men to fill up their
ideals in a manner beneficial to a wider range of persons. And
it has done this, we may add, not because of its hedonistic ele-
ments, but because of the emphasis which it placed on universal-
ism ; for, after all, what the Utilitarians were aiming at was the
realization of a better social life, in which each man should count
for one and no one for more than one. Mill, particularly, became
the philosophical spokesman of liberalism in England, and fought
534 MODERN PHILOSOPHY
the intellectual battles of democracy. In his works on Liberty
and the Subjection of Women he insisted on the fullest possible
individual rights because he regarded social well-being as in-
evitably bound up with individual well-being. He pointed out
" the importance, to man and society, of a large variety in
types of character, and of giving full freedom to human nature
to expand itself in innumerable and conflicting directions," and
he regarded the repression of women as a greater loss to~ the
community than to women themselves. In the first edition of
his Political Economy (1848), he favored economic individual-
ism, but in time his " ideal of ultimate improvement went far
beyond Democracy " and brought him close to Socialism.
" While we repudiated with the greatest energy," he tells us
in his Autobiography, il that tyranny of society over the indi-
vidual which jnost Socialistic systems are supposed to involve,
we yet looked forward to a time when society will no longer
be divided into the idle and the industrious ; when the rule that
they who do not work shall not eat, will be applied not to paupers
only, but impartially to all; when the division of the produce
of labor, instead of depending, as in so great a degree it now
does, on the accident of birth, will be made by concert, on an
acknowledged principle of justice; and when it will no longer
either be, or be thought to be, impossible for human beings to
exert themselves strenuously in procuring benefits which are
not to be exclusively their own, but to be shared with the
society they belong to. The social ,,.piuible«i^af-JJie_. Juture, we
considered to be, how to unite the greatest individual liberty
of action, with a common ownership in the raw material of the
globe, and an equal participation of all in the benefits of com-
bined labor." He had an abiding faith in the possibilities of:
human nature ; ' ' education, habit, and the cultivation of tho
sentiments, will make a common man dig or weave for his coun-
try, as readily as fight for his country."
Among those teaching Utilitarianism is Henry Sidgwick (1838-1900 ;
Methods of Ethics, 6th ed., 1901, History of Ethics, 5th ed., 1902,
Elements of Politics, 2d ed., 1897), whose work on ethics also show:
the influence of Butler and Kant. He abandons the psychologica
hedonism of Mill, but accepts ethical hedonism, — the view tha
universal happiness is the highest good or ultimate standard o]
right and wrong. There are self-evident practical principles whicl
EVOLUTIONISM OF HERBERT SPENCER 535
erve as guides in reaching the goal: rational self-love or prudence,
he duty of benevolence, and justice. (For the hedonistic school see
'hilly, Introduction to Ethics, chaps, vi, viii.)
69. EVOLUTIONISM OP HERBERT SPENCER
Spencer's ideal of knowledge is that of a completely unified
ystem of thought. The knowledge of the ordinary man is un-
inified, disconnected, inconsistent; the various
arts do not hang together. Science furnishes *f*eal °*
s with partially-unified knowledge. Philosophy,
owever, is completely-unified knowledge, an organic system:
:s problem is to discover the highest truths from which the
rinciples of mechanics, physics, biology, sociology, and ethics
an be deduced. All these propositions must be in harmony with
ne another. In the First Principles, which forms the basis
f the entire system, the fundamental axioms are set forth,
which are afterward applied in the Principles of Biology, Prin-
ciples of Psychology, Principles of Sociology, and Principles
of Ethics. In the last-named book we have the restatement of all
the generalizations reached in the preliminary works : so that the
truths of ethics are grounded on the results of all the other
fields of knowledge. These generalizations of the sciences may
be empirically ascertained, but they can also be derived from
first principles.
Spencer calls his philosophy synthetic philosophy, and would
agree with Wundt that it is the function of such a universal
science to combine into a consistent system the universal truths
arrived at by the particular sciences. In this respect, he dif-
fers from Hamilton and Mill. Hamilton offered no system of
philosophy at all and regarded it beyond human capacity to
offer one, the Absolute being unknowable. Mill criticised Comte
for his relapse into philosophy in attempting to unify the
sciences. It is true, Mill, too, has the ideal of a system of truths
held together by universal principles in his logic of the moral
sciences, and also suggests the possibility of an a priori science
of nature, but he himself made no effort to systematize his
thoughts; indeed it was impossible, from his general standpoint,
to reach a universal synthesis, as his predecessor Hume clearly
saw. Spencer also differs from the empiricists in his attempt
536 MODERN PHILOSOPHY
to base knowledge on what Kant called a priori forms of the
mind, and to reduce these functions to simple principles. In
this respect, he is influenced by the critical philosophy, with
which he became acquainted largely through Hamilton's works.
All our knowledge, he holds, rests on the primary act of thought ;
even the skeptic who seeks to deny the possibility of knowledge
presupposes the basal functions of thinking. Knowledge would
be impossible if it were not for the mind's capacity to discover
likeness and difference as well as for its demand for logical con-
sistency. None of these functions is the result of individual
experience. Applying the evolutionary hypothesis, Spencer at-
tempts to explain them as products of racial experience, thus
seeking a compromise between intuitionism and empiricism from
the side of empiricism. Absolute uniformities of experience gen-
erate absolute uniformities of thought. External uniformities
are repeated for millions of generations, giving rise to fixed asso-
ciations of ideas and necessary forms of thought. How it is pos-
sible for such connections to be made at the dawn of knowledge
as are now not possible without an a priori synthetic mind,
Spencer does not tell us. Nor does he establish the validity of
knowledge on this basis : the fact that principles, which are felt
to be necessary now, represent the inherited experiences of count-
less generations of men, does not guarantee their absolute
truth.
1 ' :
Herbert Spencer was born in 1820 at Derby, England, the descendant
of a family of teachers. He seems to have inherited his intellectual
gifts from his father, who is described as a man of fine culture and
independence of thought, and whose example in teaching his pupils
to think instead of to memorize, influenced Spencer's views on education.
Owing to the boy's delicate health, his father did not push him in his
work, and we hear that he was inattentive and lazy, stubborn and dis-
obedient at school. He made better progress outside of the class-room,
under the guidance of his father, who taught him to draw from nature,
encouraged his desire to make collections, and introduced him to physical
and chemical experiments. Spencer afterward (1833-1836) received
instruction from his uncle, Thomas Spencer, a clergyman of the estab-
lished church, a man of public spirit and democratic ideals, who was
to prepare him for Cambridge, but Spencer refused to go to a place
where things were taught in which he was not interested. He could
grasp principles and draw conclusions, and surpassed his fellow-students
in mathematics and mechanics, but memorizing words and rules of
grammar did not appeal to him. His works show the effects of the
EVOLUTIONISM OF HERBERT SPENCER 537
nanner in which he was trained : he is independent, original, and natural,
n 1837 he assisted his father in teaching, and then studied eh
jineering. He followed his profession intermittently until 1846, when
ic devoted himself to journalism. His spare hours, which were many,
ic devoted to the study of geology and other sciences. His first great
vork, which attracted the attention of a small though select circle of
hinkers, was Social Statics (1848-1850). In 1852 Spencer relinquished
lis editorship of the Economist and devoted the rest of his life to
working out his system of synthetic philosophy, a prospectus of which
ppeared in 1860. He suffered great financial losses in publishing his
vorks, and his literary ventures did not prosper until American ad-
nirers arranged for the publication of his books in the United States.
e died in 1903.
Proper Sphere of Government, 1842; Social Statics, 1850; Principles
of Psychology, 1855; Education, 1858-1859; First Principles, 1860-
1862; Principles of Biology, 1864-1867; Principles of Sociology, 1876-
1896; Principles of Ethics, 1879-1893; The Man versus the State;
Essays, 5th ed., 3 vols., 1891; Facts and Comments, 1902; Autobiogra-
phy, 2 vols., 1904.
Collins, Epitome of Spencer's Philosophy (preface by Spencer, giv-
ing summary of his philosophy), 5th ed., 1905; W. H. Hudson, /»-
troduction to Philosophy of H. Spencer, and Spencer; Ritchie,
Principles of State Interference; Sidgwick, Ethics of Green, Spencer,
and Martineau; Bowne, Kant and Spencer; Ward, Naturalism and
Agnosticism, vol. I; Gaupp, Spencer; Duncan, Life and Letters of
Spencer; books by Royce, Haberlin, Grosse, Sfhwarze; Ueberweg-
Heinze, op. cit., § 59. See also works on English philosophy, pp. -
f., and under Mill.
Like Hamilton, Spencer calls attention to the relativity of
knowledge, and shows that this may be inferred from an analysis
of the product of thought as well as by an exami-
nation of the process of thought. The most gen-
eral cognition at which we arrive cannot be reduced
to a more general one, and cannot, therefore, be understood,
interpreted, or explained. Explanation must eventually bring
us down to the inexplicable; and the deepest truth which we
can get at, must be unaccountable. Moreover, the process of
thought itself involves relation, difference, and likeness; what-
ever does not admit of these, does not admit of
Thinking being relationing, no thought can ever express mor
than relations. The primary act of thought through which i
discover likeness and difference underlies all our knowledge,
both perception and inference. Without it there could be neit
perception nor inference, hence the validity of this primary func-
tion of mind must be presupposed.
538 MODERN PHILOSOPHY
It is the business of philosophy to work out the system of
ideas rooted in consciousness, to discover the implications of our
basal intuitions, and to construct a related body of propositions.
The criterion of the validity of thought is its necessity (the
testimony of truth is the inconceivability of the opposite), on
the one hand, and the agreement of our results with actual ex-
perience, on the other.
If knowledge is relative in the sense indicated, it follows that
we can know only the finite and the limited. The Absolute, the
First Cause, the Infinite cannot be known, since it cannot be
likened to, or differentiated from, anything else. We can, how-
ever, always relate things to an Absolute ; indeed, we must have
an Absolute to which to relate them, — a relative is itself incon-
ceivable except as related to a real non-relative, — the relative
presupposes an Absolute. Hence, we can know things in relation
to one another and to an Absolute. If we could not relate them
to an Absolute, they would not be known; indeed, they would
themselves be absolutes. We reach the consciousness of a sub-
stance that underlies all phenomena. It is impossible to get
rid of the consciousness of an actuality lying behind appear-
ances; and from this impossibility results our indestructible
belief in that actuality (realism}. The Absolute itself, how-
ever, cannot be related to anything else : there is no head under
which it can be brought, hence it is unknowable. The unknow-
ableness of the Absolute is not only proved deductively, from the
nature of our intelligence, but also inductively, by the facts of
science: we cannot comprehend ultimate scientific ideas, such
as space, time, matter, motion, force, the ego, the origin of mind,
and so forth.
Nevertheless, the fact that we can form no notion of the
Absolute is no reason for denying its existence. Science and
religion can agree on this point: there is an Absolute Bein^
behind all phenomena. Eeligion seeks to interpret this uni-
versal substance for us; it has given us all kinds of definition;?
of it, but the more advanced a religion is, the more it under-
stands that the Absolute is a complete mystery. Thought con-
tinues to seek for some definition of it, to form some idea of it,
and there is no objection to this, so long as it is remembered tha ;
the forms in which we endeavor to express it are merely sym-
EVOLUTIONISM OF HERBERT SPENCER 539
bols. We are compelled to conceive it, vaguely, as the objective
orrelate of our subjective feeling of activity, or muscular strain,
that is, as power, or force. Noumenon and phenomenon are
two sides of the same change, of which we are obliged to regard
the last as no less real than the first.
This objective power, which is the necessary correlate of the
subjective feeling of force, must be thought of as persistent.
[t is inconceivable that something should become
nothing ; when we say that something becomes noth- Persistence ^
ing, we are establishing a relation between two
deas, one of which does not exist. By the persistence of power
we mean the persistence of some cause that transcends our knowl-
edge and conception. In asserting it, we assert an unconditional
reality without beginning and end. The sole truth which tran-
scends experience by underlying it, is the persistence of force.
[t is the basis of experience, and must, therefore, be the scien-
ific basis of any scientific organization of experiences. To this
an ultimate analysis brings us down; and on this a rational
synthesis must build up.
By the indestructibility of matter we mean the indestructi-
bility of the force with which matter affects us. This truth is
made manifest, not only by analysis of the a posteriori cognition,
but equally so by analysis of the a priori one. Another general
truth is the continuity of motion. It is inconceivable that some-
thing,— motion, — should become nothing. And yet movements
are constantly disappearing. The fact is, translation through
space is not itself an existence, and hence the cessation of motion,
considered simply as translation, is not the cessation of an
existence, but is the cessation of a certain sign of existence.
That is, the space-element in motion is not in itself a thing.
Change of position is not an existence, but the manifestation of
an existence. This existence may cease to display itself as trans-
lation, but can do so only by displaying itself as strain. This
principle of activity, now shown by translation, now by strain,
and often by the two together, is not visible; the principle of
activity which motion shows us, is the objective correlate of our
subjective sense of effort. The continuity of motion is really
known to us in terms of force.
Force is of two classes: force by which matter demonstrates
540 MODERN PHILOSOPHY
itself to us as existing, and force by which it demonstrates itself
to us as acting (called energy). Energy is the common name
for the power shown alike in the movements of masses and in
the movements of molecules. Each manifestation of force can
be interpreted only as the effect of some antecedent force: no
matter whether it be an inorganic action, an animal movement,
a thought or a feeling. Either mental energies, as well as bodily
ones, are quantitatively correlated to certain energies expended
in their production and to certain other energies which they
initiate ; or else nothing must become something, and something
must become nothing. We must either deny the persistence of
force or admit that every physical and psychical change is gen-
erated by certain antecedent forces, and that from given amounts
of such forces neither more nor less of such physical and psy-
chical changes can result.
The basal principle of science, then, is the principle of the
conservation of energy : no energy can originate or be lost. This
principle Spencer does not seek to prove experimentally; in-
deed, it is, according to him, presupposed in all experimentation.
It is a necessity of thought, a postulate : we cannot conceive of
something coming from nothing or going into nothing; the
principle is implied in the notion of causality or is identical
with it. We are compelled to assume something as persisting.
The Absolute or Unknowable manifests itself in two great
groups of facts which are diametrically opposed : subjective and
objective, ego and non-ego, mind and matter. But
Matter*1" li is the one force or Power that expresses itself
in both ; both what we think and our thinking itself
are different kinds of force. And both the physical and the:
psychical are subject to the same laws of experience. If the
mental and the material are conceived as two irreducible phases;
of the Absolute, then mind cannot be derived from matter, the
material cannot pass into the psychical, as motion passes into
heat. In the earlier editions of the First Principles and the
Psychology, Spencer assumed that it could; afterward, however
he saw the impossibility of explaining consciousness by the
principle of the conservation of energy interpreted physically
But he went on applying the formula of evolution, which is
stated in terms of force, matter, and motion, to all phenomena.
EVOLUTIONISM OF HERBERT SPENCER 541
I including those of life, mind, and society. This is what gives
I his system the appearance of materialism, as which it is often
attacked, although he himself warns us against interpreting it
as such. The Absolute is unknowable; we can interpret it in
materialistic or in spiritualistic terms; in either case we are
employing mere symbols. A power the nature of which ever
remains unintelligible to us, and which we cannot think of as
limited in space or in time, produces certain effects in us. We
embrace the most general of these under the terms matter, mo-
tion, force, and between these effects there exist certain similari-
ties of connection, the most constant of which we embrace as
laws of the highest certainty.
We are limited in our knowledge to the relative phenomena,
to the inner and outer expressions of the Absolute. It is our
business, as philosophers, to discover the traits
common to all phenomena, or to find the universal ^aw °?
„ ., . ^ , ' . . Evolution
law of things. Such a law we have in the law of
evolution. We note various phases in the process of evolution:
(1) concentration (as seen in the formation of a cloud, in the
sand-heap, in the primitive nebula, in the organism, and in
society) ; (2) differentiation, or the separation of the mass from
its environment, and the formation of special masses within
it; (3) determination, the formation of the differentiated parts
into a unified, organized whole, the parts being different and yet
in mutual relation with one another. This is what distinguishes
evolution from dissolution, in which we have differentiation, but
not organization. In determination, there is differentiation of
parts and integration or concentration of parts into a whole.
In this sense, evolution is the passage from a state of indefinite,
incoherent homogeneity to a state of definite, coherent hetero-
geneity. This law is derived inductively, but it can also be
reached by deduction from the primary principle of the per-
sistence of force, which, as we have seen, Spencer identifies with
the law of causation, from which follow: the indestructibility
of matter, the continuity of motion (potential and actual), the
persistence of relations among forces, the transformation and
equivalence of forces, including mental and social forces, the
law of the direction of motion, and the unceasing rhythm of
motion. The law of universal synthesis is the law of the con-
542 MODERN PHILOSOPHY
tinuous redistribution of matter and motion. Evolution con-]
sists in the integration of matter and the dissipation of motion ;
dissolution consists in the absorption of motion and the disinte-
gration of matter. When both concentration and differentiation
have reached a state of equilibrium, the climax of evolution has
been reached. This state cannot endure because external influ-
ences will tend to destroy it. In other words, dissolution is bound
to result, and the whole process will begin over again. All this
applies not to the universe as a whole, but only to the particular
wholes which appear in our experience.
The universal principles, obtained in the First Principles, are
applied by Spencer to the various forms of existence, — life,
mind, society, and conduct. They are postulated as true and are
employed to prove the special truths of biology, psychology,
sociology, and ethics: the latter are illustrations of universal
truths; universal truths are explanations of the special truths.
Thus, the law of evolution applies to all phenomena; the spe-
cial laws discovered in the various fields of investigation will,
therefore, be found to come under the universal law, or to be
expressions of this law. Such empirical laws or truths are de-
ductively proved when they are shown to be special cases of the
universal law.
Life is a continuous adaptation of internal (physiological)
relations to external relations. The organism not only receives
impressions, but undergoes changes in consequence,
which enable it to react upon subsequent changes
of the external world in a specific way. That is, inner changes
take place in the organism which adapt it to external relations :
there is reciprocal action between internal and external events.
The organism cannot maintain itself unless it evolves a system
of inner relations corresponding to the external relations. The
more intimate the correspondence between the inner and the
outer relations, the more highly developed is the organism. The
most perfect life would be that in which there is complete adap-
tation, or harmony, between internal and external relations.
Organic forms have not arisen from inorganic matter, but
from an original structureless organic mass, or homogeneous
protoplasm, under the influence of external causes. Difference
are produced in the organic tissue in accordance with the operh-
EVOLUTIONISM OF HERBERT SPENCER 543
tion of the universal law of evolution; that is, the original
heterogeneous mass differentiates. The species arise as a result
of the interaction between the organism and the external world.
Morphological and physiological differentiation is the direct
result of the differentiation of external forces; astronomical,
geological, and meteorological conditions change slowly, but the
changes have been continuous for millions of years. Variations
occur in the organism through external causes, and, if adapted,
are preserved by natural selection* Changes are produced in the
relation of the physiological units composing the organism by
the continuous functioning of the parts (function precedes struc-
ture) and are transmitted to progeny j (inheritance of acquired
characters). Natural selection alone, therefore, according to
Spencer, fails to explain the origin of species; and Darwin ex-
aggerates the influence of this indirect mode of evolution. The
organism adapts itself to an external impression, and such adap-
tation brings about a new state of equilibrium in the organism.
Physics examines external phenomena as such; psychology,
internal phenomena as such; physiology investigates the con-
nection and relation between the internal and the
external. Subjective psychology is introspective:
it studies the feelings, ideas, emotions, and volitions, which
accompany the visible adaptations of the inner relations, and
inquires into the origin and reciprocal relations of states of
consciousness. Psychical occurrences and nerve-action are the
inner and outer sides of one and the same change. What is,
objectively considered, a nervous change, is, subjectively con-
sidered, a phenomenon of consciousness. Objective psychology
does not study mental processes as such, but considers them in
their relation to human and animal actions. As a part of
biology, it examines mental phenomena as functions by means
of which internal relations are adapted to external relations.
Consciousness arises when impressions become so numerous ac
to necessitate their arrangement in a series: when the organism
cannot adapt itself to its environment without such a serial
arrangement. Consciousness is, therefore, defined as a form of
adaptation of serially arranged inner states to outer states. But
it is not a mere sum of feelings and ideas ; there is a substantial
something or combining medium behind them, which, howeyer,
544 MODERN PHILOSOPHY
is unknowable, for the same reason that all ultimates are un-
knowable. We can, however, study the changing states or modi-
fications in which this substance manifests itself. It is the
business of psychology to discover the units of consciousness,
the elements of which it is composed. Analysis of the phenome-
nal aspects of consciousness reveals ultimate units, which Spencer
regards as " something of the same order as that which we call
a nervous shock, ' ' — as the mental equivalent of a nervous shock.
Just as the different sensations are made up of common units,
so a perception is composed of units or atoms of feeling. The
mental unit or atom is irreducible to the material unit or atom.
We conceive the material atom as resistance, in analogy with
our own feeling of effort, that is, we read into the material atom
our own consciousness of activity. In the same way, we inter-
pret our mental events in material terms. Spencer finds in con-
scious life the same features which are exhibited in all relative
reality: concentration, differentiation, and determination; con-
sciousness is an evolution and can be understood only as a proc-
ess of development, as a continuous series of gradations, from
reflex action to instinct, memory, and reason. These are merely
different degrees or stages of intelligence, which pass into one
another imperceptibly, corresponding to the gradually increasing
complexity and differentiation of external conditions. Memory
and reason, for example, arise from instinct. Primary inference
is entirely instinctive. Volition appears when automatic action
becomes impossible, owing to the growing complexity of the situ-
ation. We have already seen how Spencer derives the principles
of knowledge from the experience of the race. In the same evo-
lutionary way he explains the feelings; the feelings of anger,
justice, sympathy, which are original in the individual, are
the result of the constant struggle of our ancestors with the
environment.
It is not true that we are originally conscious only of our
sensations, and that we infer the existence of objects outside
of us. Idealism is a disease of language; it lives
World °n^ *n °ur wor(^s' not *n our thoughts. Reason
which undermines the assertions of perception de-
stroys its own authority. Realism is forced on us by the basal
law of consciousness, the universal postulate of reason. It is
EVOLUTIONISM OF HERBERT SPENCER 545
•inconceivable that there should be no object when I feel it and
|see it. We are compelled to think an extra-mental reality, and
we are compelled to think it as force, as the objective correlate
of the subjective feeling of force or feeling of muscular ten-
sion, which we experience in ourselves and which is the universal
symbol of the unknowable objective existence or persisting some-
thing. This unknown reality is also symbolized in our ideas of
space, time, matter, and motion.
This transfigured realism, as Spencer calls it, takes the place
of crude realism. It holds that the things represented in our
consciousness are not images, or copies, or pictures, of the ob-
jective reality, but symbols which have as little in common with
the realities they represent as letters have in common with the
psychic states for which they stand. But that there is some-
thing beyond consciousness is an inevitable conclusion ; to think
otherwise is to think of change taking place without an antece-
dent. " There is some ontological order whence arises the
phenomenal order we know as space; there is some ontological
order whence arises the phenomenal order we know as time;
and there is some ontological nexus whence arises the phenomenal
relation we know as difference." Such knowledge of the exter-
nal world is greatly limited, but it is the only knowledge which
is of use to us. All we need to know is not the outer agencies
themselves, but their persistent relations, and this knowledge we
have. An ever-present sense of real existence is the very basis
of our intelligence. There ever remains with us a sense of that
which exists persistently and independently of conditions. We
cannot form a conception of this absolute existence; every no-
tion which we frame is utterly inconsistent with itself. Prom
the impossibility of getting rid of the consciousness of an actu-
ality lying behind appearances results our indestructible belief
in that actuality.
In the Preface to the Data of Ethics, Spencer declares all
the preceding parts of his task, as a synthetic philosopher, to
be subsidiary to his Principles of Morality. His Ethicg
purpose had been, ever since the appearance of
his first work, The Proper Sphere of Government (1842), to find
a scientific basis for the principles of right and wrong in con-
duct at large.^In order to understand the meaning of moral
546 MODERN PHILOSOPHY
conduct, he tells us, we must comprehend conduct as a whole,
the conduct of all living creatures and the evolution of conduct,
and we must examine it in its physical, biological, psychological,
and social aspects; in other words, study it in the light of the
results of the other sciences.
Such a study will lead us to define conduct either as acts
adjusted to ends or the adjustment of acts to ends, and will
show us that the most highly evolved and, therefore, ethically
best conduct is such as makes life richer and longer for the
individual performing it, for his offspring, and for the beings
among whichhe^Ji2£s4HThe limit of evolution is reached in a
permanently peaceful society, in which every member achieves
his ends without preventing others from achieving theirs (jus-
tice), and in which members give mutual help in the achievement
of ends (beneficence). Whatever facilitates the adjustments
of each, increases the totality of the adjustments made, and
serves to render the lives of all more complete. We call good
or bad acts which subserve or hinder life, only on the supposition
that life brings more happiness than misery (optimism). The
good is universally the pleasurable (hedonism). Actions are
completely right only when, besides being conducive to future
happiness, special and general, they are immediately pleasurable.
A large part of human conduct is not absolutely right, but only
relatively right because entailing some pain. The ideal code
of absolute ethics formulates the behavior of the completely
adapted man in the completely evolved society. Such a code
will enable us to interpret the phenomena of real societies in
their transitional states, full of miseries due to non-adaptation,
and to form approximately true conclusions respecting the na-
ture of the abnormalities and the courses which tend most in
the direction of the normal/^
Spencer insists that the lives of the units in the social groups
are always the ultimate end of morality, not the welfare of
society as such. The integrity of society is a means to the wel-
fare of ths units, hence whatever threatens this integrity will
hurt the units. In the beginning, egoism is strong and altruism
weak ; hence the relative moral code emphasizing those restraints
on conduct which the presence of fellow-men entails. It prohibits
acts of aggression and commands restraints making cooperation
EVOLUTIONISM OF HERBERT SPENCER 547
possible (justice), as well as enjoins spontaneous efforts to
further welfare (beneficence). Sympathy is the root of both
justice and beneficence. Since the ideal is the greatest amount
of individual perfection and happiness, egoism must come before
altruism: each creature shall take the benefits and evils of ita
own nature, inherited or acquired. But altruism, too, is essen-
tial to the development of life and the increase of happiness, and
self-sacrifice no less primordial than self-preservation. The ego-
istic satisfactions of each unit in a society depend on such altru-
istic actions as being just, seeing justice done, upholding and
improving the agencies for the administration of justice, and
improving others physically, intellectually, and morally. Pure
egoism and pure altruism are both illegitimate. Under increas-
ing social discipline, sympathetic pleasures will come to be spon-
taneously pursued to the fullest extent advantageous to each
and all. Eventually, every one will be eager to surrender his
egoistic claims, while others, similarly natured, will not permit
him in any large measure to do this.
Spencer offers an evolutionary hedonism, combining the
teachings of traditional English Utilitarianism with the new
theory of evolution. This is possible from his standpoint, be-
cause, in his opinion, the most highly evolved conduct yields
the greatest amount of happiness. He also distinguishes his
rational Utilitarianism from the empirical Utilitarianism of
his predecessors, on the ground that his system of ethics de-
duces the rules of morality from fundamental principles sup-
plied by the various sciences upon which it rests.
The ethical ideal, then, is the production of perfect and happy
individuals : the survival of the fittest individuals and the spread
of the most adapted varieties. This end can only Politics
be realized when each individual receives the bene-
fits and the evils of his own nature and its consequent conduct
But since group-life is essential to the survival of the f
every individual has to carry on that conduct subject to t
restriction that it shall not in any large measure impede Un-
equal conduct of others. In the case of defensive
viduals may be further restricted, even to the exte
sacrifice of life. Justice, therefore, demands that each E
man be free to do what he wills, provided he infringe not the
548 MODERN PHILOSOPHY
equal freedom of any other man. Rights, truly so-called, are
corollaries of the law of equal freedom : every man has the right
to act up to a certain limit but not beyond it.
From these premises^Spencer argues against the modern so-
cialistic State. All-embracing State functions, he holds, char-
acterize a low social type; and progress to a higher social type
is marked by relinquishment of functions. The incorporated
mass of citizens has to maintain the conditions under which
each may gain the fullest life possible compatible with the full-
est lives of fellow-citizens. The State must prevent internal
aggressions and protect its members from foreign invasion : when
it goes beyond that, it transgresses justice. Extension of State
functions has proved disastrous all along, while only legislation
which has been guided by considerations of equity has proved
successful. Moreover, the various non-governmental agencies do
best under the stress of competition. Competition likewise im-
pels them to improve, to utilize the best appliances, and to get
the best men. The social needs at large are also best subserved
in this way. Finally, State interference has an evil effect on
character. The nature which we have inherited from an un-
civilized past, and which is still very imperfectly fitted to the
partially-civilized present, will, if allowed to do so, slowly adjust
itself to the requirements of a fully-civilized future. The disci-
pline of social life which has done so much in these few thousand
years, will, in the course of time, do what has to be done. And
it is impossible for artificial molding to do that which natural
molding does. Spencer is bitterly opposed to Socialism; he
thinks it is coming, and that it will be a great misfortune to the
race, but that it will not last. He is not to be understood as
hostile to mutual aid and voluntary cooperation; indeed, he be-
lieves that a voluntary cooperation characteristic of .industri-
alism will come to predominate, in which the units will be molded
to serve the purposes of the aggregate and that the molding wil'.
be spontaneously achieved by self -adjustment to the life of vol-
untary cooperation. He accepts the laisser-faire theory because
he believes that the general happiness can be realized only by
letting individuals work out their own salvation, without undu<
interference by the StaterK
NEW IDEALISM $49
70. NEW IDEALISM IN ENGLAND AND THE UNITED STATES
At the beginning of the nineteenth century, German idealistic
thought, based on Kant, found its way into England through
the great leaders of literature, Coleridge, Words-
worth, Carlyle, and Ruskin, and began to influ- Influence of
nce both empiricism and intuitionism, John Stuart ^JJjJJJ,
Vlill as well as Whewell and Hamilton. But a
lerious study of the new German philosophy was not undertaken
until after the appearance of J. H. Stirling's Secret of Hegel
n 1865; since which time a group of vigorous thinkers, pro-
oundly influenced by Kant and Hegel, and indeed by the entire
dealistic movement, have taken the leadership in British
thought. We mention the names of Thomas Hill Green, Ed-
ward Caird, John Caird, F. H. Bradley, and B. Bosanquet.
The first great work of the Neo-Hegelian school, as it has been
called, was Green's Introduction to Hume (1875), which was
followed by E. Caird 's Critical Account of the Philosophy of
Kant (1877), the predecessor of his larger book, The Critical
Philosophy of Kant (2 vols., 1889), and by a large number of
expositions and translations of German philosophers, to which
additions are being constantly made. James Ward (born 1843;
Naturalism and Agnosticism, 3d ed., 1907 ; The Realm of Ends,
1912) is an idealist of Lotze's type, who teaches pluralism and
substitutes the notion of a creative God, as the unity of the
world, for the Absolute of the monists. The idealistic philosophy,
partly through the mediation of English Neo-Hegelianism, and
partly through a direct study of German thought, has also
won a large following in the United States, counting many pro-
fessors of philosophy in the universities among its adherents,
with Josiah Royce at their head.
What is common to the representatives of this school is the
emphasis they place upon the organic conception of mind and
knowledge in opposition to the atomistic treatment characteristic
of English associationism ; their repudiation of mechanism as a
universal theory; and their view that the world of experience
constitutes the subject-matter of philosophy. Tin- English phi-
losophers did not adopt the a priori or dialectical methods of
the German teachers nor uncritically accept their results, but,
550 MODERN PHILOSOPHY
following Green's hint, " worked over " the 'entire material of
German idealism in a fresh and independent manner, retaining,
however, the fundamental principles of the movement inaugu-
rated by Kant.
On the entire school see : Forsyth and Seth, mentioned on pp. 254, f . ;
last German edition of Falckenberg, History of Modern Philosophy;
Ueberweg-Heinze, op. cit., § 61 ; bibliography in Ueberweg-Heinze. For
contemporary British philosophy, see J. S. Mackenzie, La philosophic
de Grand-Bretagne, Revue de metaphysique et morale, vol. XVI, 5,
pp. 583-606 ; for contemporary philosophy in the United States : Frank
Thilly, Philosophie americaine contemporaine, same place, and in
Studies in Language and Literature in Honor of J. M. Hart; for con-
temporary idealism in general: Chiappelli, Revue philosophique, Sep-
tember, 1911, and Chiappelli's book, Dalla critica al nuovo idealismo;
for contemporary philosophy : Perry, Present Tendencies in Philosophy.
See also bibliography, pp. 563, f.
Thomas Hill Green was born in Birkin, Yorkshire, in 1836, the
son of the rector of the parish. From Rugby he went up to Balliol
College, Oxford, where he spent the rest of his life as
Green student, fellow, tutor, lecturer, and professor. After
lecturing on ancient and modern history and ancient and
modern philosophy, he was chosen professor of moral philosophy, in
1878, a position which he held until his death in 1882. In addition to
his academic duties, Green devoted himself faithfully to practical educa-
tional, political, and social work; he helped to introduce reforms into
his college; acted as member of the town-council; served on the Royal
Commission for reforming popular education in England; was inter-
ested in the temperance movement, the ethical movement, and charity
work. He always manifested a warm sympathy for the humbler
classes and an abiding faith in democracy. Bryce says of him that
" people came to respect his character with its high sense of duty, its
simplicity, its uprightness, its earnest devotion to an ideal, even more
than they admired his intellectual powers."
Introduction to the Philosophy of Hume, first published 1874 in
Green's and Grossed edition of Hume's works; Prolegomena to Ethics,
1883; Lectures on Principles of Political Obligation, 1895. Works
edited by Nettleship, 3 vols., containing all but the Prolegomena.
Memoir by Nettleship, in Works, vol. I (also separate) ; Fairbrother,
Philosophy of Green; R. B. C. Johnson, The Metaphysics of Knowledge,
Being an Examination of T. H. Green's Theory of Reality; Sidgwick,
Lectures on Green, Spencer and Martineau; Grieve, Das geistige Princip
in der Philosophie Greens; G. F. James, Green und der Utilitarismus :
Muirhead, The Service of the State: Four Lectures on the Political
Teaching of Green ; Ritchie, The Principles of State Interference •
Pringle-Pattison, Hegelianism and Personality; McCunn, Six Radical
Thinkers. See also articles in Mind, Philosophical Review, and Inter-
national Journal of Ethics.
NEW IDEALISM 551
The philosophical standpoint of Green is that of objective
dealism, which he developed under the influence of the German
dealists and in opposition to the traditional Eng-
ish conceptions of the world and of life. On the
>asis of Kant's criticism and the idealistic metaphysics of his
uccessors, he attacks the empiricism of Hume, the hedonism of
/Till, and the evolutionism of Spencer, and seeks to supplement
latural science with a spiritualistic metaphysic. His philosophy
s an attempt to do justice to the opposing tendencies of his
ime, — to rationalism and empiricism, religion and science, pan-
heism and theism, Greek culture and Christianity, the theory
f perfection and Utilitarianism, libertarian ism and determin-
sm, individualism and universalism. Man for Green is not merely
a child of nature: how could a being that is merely a result
f natural forces form a theory of those forces as explaining
limself ? Man is a spiritual being and as such not a member
n the series of natural events (phenomena). There is in him
principle not natural, and the specific function of this prin-
ciple is to render knowledge possible. The same spiritual prin-
ciple that makes knowledge possible has another expression, which
consists in the consciousness of a moral ideal and the deter-
mination of human action thereby. Without the assumption of
such a spiritual self, there can be neither knowledge nor
morality.
Natural science deals with the natural, the phenomenal, the
temporal and spatial, with matters of fact which are ascertain-
able by observation and experience. Philosophy, or metaphysics,
deals with the spiritual or noumenal, the principle of which
these facts are the expression. The fault of the empiricists and
the evolutionists is that they treat that which produces this
phenomenal order as the product of this order. There can be
no knowledge of nature without a unifying, organizing spiritual
principle ; so far Green agrees with the Critique of Kant. But
he goes beyond it in concluding with the post-Kantian idealists,
that there can be no order of nature itself without such a prin-
ciple. Nature is a manifold, and yet there is unity in it ; hence,
we must interpret it in analogy with self-consciousness, and
regard it as a spiritual cosmos, as a system of related facts,
rendered possible by an eternal intelligence. That there is
552 MODERN PHILOSOPHY
an all-uniting consciousness, is implied in the existence of I
world. What it is, we can know only through its acting in us
it enables us to have knowledge of a world and a moral ideal.
The question arises, What is man's place in such a universe 1
As a knowing, self-conscious being, man exists as free activity, —
as activity that is not in time, not a link in the
Man's Place chain of natural becoming, — which has no ante-
in Nature . „ 0 „
cedents other than itself. Self-consciousness has
no origin, it never began because it never was not. All the
processes of brain and nerve and tissue, all the functions of life
and sense, including the successive phenomena of our mental
history, are determined by the universal consciousness. But
human consciousness itself is a reproduction of the universal
mind, at least so far as it is synthetic and self -originative. We
are not so much determined by the universal consciousness as
made the subjects of its self-communication. The evolution
theory, Green thinks, does not affect this view. The human
organism may have evolved out of the animal; the animal or-
ganism may have been modified so, in countless generations,
that an eternal consciousness could realize itself and reproduce
itself through its functions.
Green shows that a mere succession of impressions or sensa-
tions is not knowledge, that knowledge is not possible with-
out a self that has these sensations and organizes them. Simi-
larly, he points out, a mere succession of animal wants,, or
impulses, or appetites, does not constitute human action: it is
not the same as a subject presenting such wants to himself. An
appetite or animal want is a natural event, but not a motive
proper: it does not move to a distinctively human action unless
it is presented by a self-conscious subject to himself, unless, in
other words, he consciously makes the want or impulse his own,
adopts it, identifies himself with it, and strives to bring into
real existence the ideal object of which he is conscious in the
impulse or want. Merely to be pushed into action by an anima!
appetite is not human action or conduct. When a man identi-
fies himself with one of the impulses, or passions, or influences,
or tendencies towards different objects, he wills. His willing is
a desire in which the man enacts himself, as distinct from one
which acts upon him. Now, it is true, the kind of good a person
NEW IDEALISM 553
resents to himself depends on his past passion and action and
n circumstances, is due to the past history of his inner life
determinism) . But throughout the past experience, he has been
object to himself, and thus the author of his acts. He is,
tierefore, responsible for the kind of good that moves him now.
besides, he can conceive a better state for himself and can, there-
ore, seek to become, and become in the future, other and better
ian_hejs now (freemUJi.
It is because man can conceive a better state of himself, can
ek to realize this state, can will, that he is a moral agent,
le can do this because he is a self-conscious sub-
ect, a reproduction of the eternal self-conscious-
ess. The idea of a better state is a communication in germ
f the ideal, or ultimate end, in God's mind. This idea operates
n a man by keeping before him an object which he presents
to himself as absolutely desirable. It has been the moralizing
agent in human life.
What, then, is the moral good? It is that which satisfies the
desire of a moral agent. The true good is an end in which the
effort of a moral agent can really find rest, it is an end which
his basal self, his real will, regards as an unconditional good,
as something having absolute worth, as absolutely desirable.
Now man has the conception of something absolutely desirable
in himself. This self is a self affected by many interests, also
by interests in other persons. The other men are ends to me;
or rather, they are part of the end, included in it, included in
the end for which I live in living for myself. That is, I con-
ceive as the highest good the realization of human personality,
the perfection of the human soul, the unfolding of its capacities ;
and in striving after this goal I needs must help other souls;
there must be at work in my mind the idea of an absolute and
common good, good for me and others. With this idea, however
restricted in range it may be, there is given, in promise and
potency, the ideal of which the realization would be perfect
morality, the ideal of a society in which every one shall treat
every one else as a neighbor, in which to every rational agent
the well-being or perfection of every other such agent ahall be
included in that perfection of himself for which he lives.
It is said that we should not be what we aret morally, if it
554 MODERN PHILOSOPHY
had not been for the action upon our ancestors of law and
authoritative custom. This is true. But such law and custon:
are themselves the products of rational beings, of beings with
ideals. Besides, the individuals submitting to them recognize
an interest in them, set a value on these forms of behavior which
require them to restrict their inclination to pleasure.
At first, the moral ideal is only a demand unconscious of the
full nature of its object, but it is different from the desire for
pleasure. At its lowest, it is a demand for some well-being
which shall be common to the individual desiring it with others ;
and only as such a demand does it yield those institutions of the
family, the tribe, and the State, which further determine the
morality of the individual. The natural development of insti-
tutions, and reflection on them as well as on the well-reputed
habits of action which have been formed in their maintenance
and as their effect, help to influence the formation of a more
adequate conception of the end or demand. An ever-widening
conception of the range of persons involved results, and the ideal
of a universal society coextensive with all mankind develops.
We have no adequate idea of the perfect life, but the ideal
is the perfection of the whole man and the perfection of man
in society. Such a life must be determined by one harmonious
will, — a will of all which is the will of each, — a devoted will.
By such a devoted will Green means nothing abstract, but a
whole world of beneficent activities, which the devoted will shall
sustain and coordinate. Moreover, he holds that the moral value
of an action depends on the motives or the character which it
represents, assuming, however, that the truly moral motive will
always produce moral acts.
Green exalts the self-sacrificing, social type of goodness, the
type of the reformer, and in this gives expression to the spirit
of our times. But he seems to have even a higher regard for
the saint, for the religious type of goodness, for the medieva.
type of perfection. The most final form of moral endeavor, h(
tells us, is a spiritual act in which the heart is lifted up to God
in which the whole inner man goes forth after an ideal of per-
sonal holiness. This has an intrinsic value, not derived froir.
any result beyond itself to which it contributes. Both the good
will (the social will) and this spiritual act have intrinsic value:
NEW IDEALISM 555
he difference is that the practical expressions of good will have
Jso value as means, because they issue in ameliorations of hu-
lan society. But, after all, the purpose of all these ameliora-
ions is to produce such a holy heart. After all, the supreme
alue for man is man himself in his perfection. Hence, the
Tactical type of goodness and the more self-questioning or con-
ciously God-seeking type are each intrinsically valuable, be-
ause the value of each rests on character, heart, and will.
Neither type is barren of effects, only the effects in the case
f the reformer are more overt and transient, while in the case
f the saint they are more impalpable and immanent.
The truth in Green's thought is this: the purpose of all social
evotion and reform is, after all, the perfection of man on the
piritual side, the development of men of character and ideals,
l-reen expresses the idea in language that has a religious tinge :
e speaks of holiness as a lasting mode of this perfection; of
tie spirit of self-abasement before the ideal of holiness, as a
tate of mind having the highest value. The final purpose of all
loral endeavor must be the realization of an attitude of the
uman soul, of some form of noble consciousness in human
ersonalities. Social reform is a good thing, but social reform
nust have some end beyond the promotion of mere physical
omfort and material satisfaction. It is well enough to feed
nd house human bodies, but the paramount question will always
e : What kind of souls are to dwell in these bodies T
Among modern writers on ethics who have been influenced by
£ant and Green as well as by Utilitarianism (in so far as that theory
nds the criterion of moral conduct in its effect on human welfare)
re: J. S. Mackenzie, Manual of Ethics, 1892; J. H. Muirhead, Ek-
lents of Ethics, 1892; Rashdall, Theory of Good and Evil, 1907,
thics, 1913; J. Dewey, Ethics (with J. II. Tufts), 1908. (For other
ipresentatives of idealistic ethics see Thilly, Introduction to Etkia,
lap. vii.)
The most subtle and best known of contemporary Eng-
sh idealistic thinkers is F. H. Bradley (bora
846), the Zeno of modern philosophy, as he
as been called, whose metaphysical system is
resented in its maturest form in Appearance and Reality.
The Presuppositions of Critical History, 1874; Ethical Studin, It 77 ;
he Principles of Logic, 2 vols., 1883; Appearance and Reality, 11 J3;
556 MODERN PHILOSOPHY
articles in Mind. On Bradley see references on p. 550; RashdallJ
The Metaphysic of Bradley; articles in philosophical journals; H6ff-j
ding, Moderns Philosophen. Cf. the work of Bosanquet, The Principle!
of Individuality and Value, 1911.
With the German idealists Bradley agrees that metaphysics
is an attempt to know reality as against mere appearance; orj
the study of first principles or ultimate truths; or the effort)
to comprehend the universe, not simply piecemeal or by frag-
ments, but somehow as a whole. We have a knowledge of the
Absolute, certain and real, though incomplete. Since man has ;
an instinctive longing to reflect on ultimate truth, it is well that
the attempt to think about and comprehend reality be as thor-j
ough as our nature permits. With Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, and
the Romanticists he regards the discursive understanding as in- >
competent to understand the world. A critical examination of
a number of ways of regarding reality (the notions of primary
and secondary qualities, substantive and adjective relation and
quality, space and time, motion and change, causation and ac-
tivity, the self, things-in-themselves) reaches the negative result
that they are all self -contradictory : we can discover no unity
in phenomena; everything turns out to be mere appearance.
Appearances, however, exist, that is absolutely certain. But
though appearance is inconsistent with itself, and cannot, there-
fore, be true of the real, it cannot be divorced from reality. The
question arises, What is the nature of this reality to which ap-
pearances belong? Can we say more of it than that it exists f
Is it merely Kant's thing-in-itself or Spencer's Unknowable!?
Bradley conceives ultimate reality as a self-consistent whole
embracing all differences in an inclusive harmony: the bewilder-
ing mass of phenomenal diversity must be at unity and self-
consistent; for it cannot be elsewhere than in reality. More-
over, its contents are nothing but sentient experience; feeling,
thought, and volition are all the material of existence, and the re
is no other material actual or possible. It is impossible for -is;
finite beings to construct this absolute life in its detail, to have1
the specific experience in which it consists; but we can gain uni
idea of its main features because these are within our OTHI
experience, and the idea of their combination is, therefore, ini
the abstract, quite intelligible to us.
NEW IDEALISM 557
I At this point, Bradley joins the ranks of those who seek foi
lelp, in solving the world-problem, in other functions of thi
mind than intellect. He does not, however, appeal
p mystical intuitions to bring him face to face Immediate
Irith the Absolute, but finds in ordinary human
Ixperience a hint of the meaning of ultimate real-
ity. We have the experience of a whole in mere feeling or
pimediate presentation. This whole contains diversity, and, on
me other hand, is a harmony. It serves to suggest to us the
reneral idea of a total experience, where will and thought and
eeling may all once more be one. We can form the general
dea of an absolute experience in which phenomenal distinctions
,re merged. Hence, Bradley concludes, we have real knowledge
the Absolute, positive knowledge built on experience, and
nevitable when we think consistently.
Mere thinking, therefore, will not bring us into the promised
and. Thought is relational and discursive: it shows a dissec-
;ion and never an actual life. If it ceases to be this, it commits
suicide ; and yet if it remains this, how does it contain immediate
)resentation ? Thought aims to reach an immediate, self-
lependent, all-inclusive individuality, but in reaching it, it would
ose its own character. Bradley tries to solve this dilemma by
showing that it can form the idea of an apprehension, some-
hing like feeling in directness, which contains all the character
sought by its relational efforts and so satisfies it. Merely imme-
diate feeling will tell us nothing of the Absolute, nor will mere
discursive relational thinking ; but we can understand the Abso-
ute if we try to come as near to immediate feeling or apprehen-
sion as we can, that is, if we form an idea of it. The entire
reality will be merely the object thought out in such a way that
mere thinking is absorbed. This same reality will be feeling
that is satisfied completely. In both these cases, we possess the
immediacy and strength of simple apprehension, and are not
forced by its inconsistencies to pass into the infinite process,
that is, to keep on relating and dissecting without ever seeing
things whole. So, too, volition, if willed out, becomes our Abso-
lute; for here, too, we reach the identity of idea and reality,
or unity in diversity. It is true, we cannot imagine how in
detail the outline of such an immediate experience is filled up,
558 MODERN PHILOSOPHY
but we can say that it is real and that it unites certain
general characters within the living system of one undivided
apprehension.
The Absolute, then, is knowable in the way described. It u
a harmonious system, not the sum of things; it is the unity it
which all things coming together are transmuted
3 in which they are changed all alike, though noi
changed equally. In this unity, relations of isolation and hos-
tility are affirmed and absorbed. Error, ugliness, and evil art
transmuted and absorbed in it; they are all owned by and al
essentially contribute to the wealth of the Absolute. There ij
not one mode to which the others belong as its adjectives, 01
into which they can be resolved. Nature, taken in the sense oj
a bare skeleton of primary quality, is dead, and cannot be callec
either beautiful or adorable. So understood, it has but littlt
reality, it is an ideal construction required by science, and r
is a necessary working fiction. We must add to our conceptior
of nature the secondary qualities, joys and sorrows, affections
the emotions excited by it, beauty. All the special sciences
physical as well as mental, deal with fictions only : soul and bod?
are both abstractions, appearances, or special aspects of reality
and both idealism and materialism are half-truths.
Reality is one experience. We can discover nothing in it thai
is not either feeling or thought or will or emotion or something
else of the kind. Does not solipsism follow from this? No, say
Bradley, finite experience never, in any of its forms, is shut ii
by a wall. In our first immediate experience the Whole Realit;
is present; the Whole, as a substantive, is present in each of it
adjectives. A finite experience already partially is the universe
The total universe, present imperfectly in finite . experience
would, if completed, be merely the completion of this experience
What I experience is in one aspect the state of myself or or
soul. But it cannot be the mere adjective of my self. The »elJ
is an outgrowth of reality, a phenomenon; how then can exs
perience be its product?
Reality, then, is not merely my experience; nor does it con
sist of souls or selves. The Absolute is not personal because
it is more, it is superpersonal. It is personal in the sense thai
it is nothing but experience, that it contains all the highest
NEW IDEALISM 559
that we can possibly know and feel, and is a unity in which
the details are utterly pervaded and embraced. But the term
is misleading; the Absolute stands above, and not below its
internal distinctions, includes them as elements of its fullness.
The Absolute has no history of its own, though it contains
histories without number. They are but partial aspects in the
region of temporal appearance. To deny progress to the uni-
verse, leaves morality where it was. As to immortality, a per-
sonal continuance is possible, and it is but little more. Still,
if any one can believe in it and finds himself sustained by that
belief, — after all it is possible. But it is better to be quit of
both fear and hope than to lapse back into any form of degrad-
ing superstition.
Truth is one aspect of experience. So far as it is absolute,
it does give the general type and character of all that possibly
can be true and real. And the universe in this general char-
acter is known completely. It is not known, and never can be
mown, in all its details. It is not known, and it never, as a
whole, can be known, in such a sense that knowledge would be
the same as experience or reality. Truth is the whole world
in one aspect, an aspect supreme in philosophy, and yet even in
philosophy conscious of its own incompleteness.
The leader of the idealistic school in the United States is
Josiah Royce (born 1855), professor at Harvard University,
a man of broad scholarship, speculative grasp, and R e
literary taste. Our world of common sense, ac-
cording to his teaching, has no fact in it which we cannot inter-
pret in terms of ideas, so that this world is throughout such
stuff as ideas are made of. All the reality that we can attribute
to it, in so far as we know and can tell what we mean thereby,
becomes an ideal. There is, in fact, a certain system of ideas
forced upon us by experience, which we have to use as the guide
for our conduct. We call it the world of matter. But is there
not something yonder that corresponds in fact to this series of
experiences in us? Yes, but it is itself a system of ideas out-
side of our minds but not outside of every mind. If my world
yonder is anything knowable at all, it must be in and for itielf
essentially a mental world. It exists in and for a standard, a
560 MODERN PHILOSOPHY
universal mind, whose system of ideas simply constitutes the
world. Minds I can understand because I am myself a mind.
An existence that has no mental attribute is to me wholly
opaque. Either a mind yonder or else the unknowable, that is
your choice. But nothing absolutely unknowable can exist ; the
notion of it is nonsense. Everything knowable is an idea, the
content of some mind. If capable of being known by a mind,
this essence is then already essentially ideal and mental. The
real world must be a mind or a group of minds.
But how do I ever reach those ideas of the minds beyond
me? In one sense you never do or can get beyond your own
ideas, nor ought you to wish to do so, because all those other
minds that constitute your outer and real world are in essence
one with your own self. The whole world is essentially one
world, and so it is essentially the world of one self and That art
Thou. The self that means the object is identical with the
larger self that possesses the object, just as when you seek a,
lost idea. This deeper self is the self that knows in unity all
truth. There is then but one self, organically, reflectively, con-
sciously inclusive of all selves, and so of all truth. It is the
Logos, problem-solver, all-knower. Absolutely the .only thing
sure from the first about this world is that it is intelligent,
rational, orderly, essentially comprehensible, so that all its prob-
lems are somehow solved, all its darkest mysteries are known
to the Supreme Self. This Self infinitely and reflectively tran-
scends our consciousness, and, therefore, since it includes usy,
it is at the very least a person, and more definitely conscious
than we are ; for what it possesses is self -reflecting knowledge,
and what is knowledge aware of itself, but consciousness? The1
natural and spiritual orders, the physical and the moral orders,
the divine and the human, the fatal and the free, may, accord-
ing to Royce, be reconciled on Kant's doctrine of the tran-
scendental or extra-temporal freedom and the temporal necessity
of all our actions.
This account of Royce's philosophy is taken from his Spirit
of Modern Philosophy. In his large systematic work, The Woi Id
and the Individual, the theory is worked out with great detiili
and applied to the interpretation of the facts of nature and off
man. Partly owing to the nature of the problems with whicha
NEW IDEALISM 561
he is dealing, and partly, perhaps, in order to ward off the
criticism of exaggerating the intellectualistic element, Royce
places greater emphasis upon the volitional and purposive side
of experience in these later volumes than in the earlier presen-
tations of his views. " To be means simply to express, to em-
body the complete internal meaning of a certain absolute system
of ideas, — a system, moreover, which is genuinely implied in
the true internal meaning or purpose of every finite form of the
idea, however fragmentary." The final form of the idea, the
" final object sought when we seek Being, is (1) a complete ex-
pression of the internal meaning of the finite idea with which,
in any case, we start our quest; (2) a complete fulfilment of
the will or purpose partially embodied in this idea; (3) an indi-
vidual life for which no other can be substituted."
In other words, Royce seeks to escape the charge of intellec-
tualism by emphasizing the active aspect of ideas, and the charge
of mysticism, by emphasizing the place of the individual self in
the absolute self.
In his Philosophy of Loyalty, an eloquent presentation of his
ethical theory, Royce deduces the idealistic world-view from
the basal moral principle, loyalty to loyalty, that is, loyalty to
a cause that makes possible the greatest amount of loyalty or
devotion to a cause. My causes must form a system, they must
constitute a single cause, a life of loyalty ; they must make uni-
versal loyalty possible. Loyalty, therefore, implies faith in a
universal cause, in a highest good, in a highest spiritual value.
If this principle is to have any meaning, if it is no mere illu-
sion, there must be a spiritual unity, a unity in which all values
are preserved. The principle of loyalty is not only a guide of
life, it shows us or reveals to us an eternal all-embracing unity
of spiritual life, a being that preserves and upholds truth and
goodness. We have here a moral argument for the existence of
God, similar to that presented in Kant's Critique of Practical
Reason.
Works: The Religious Aspects of Philosophy, 1885; The Spirit of
Modern Philosophy, 1892; The Conception of God, 1897; Studies of
Good and Evil, 1898; The World and the Individual, 2 vols., 1900. 1901;
Outlines of Psychology, 1902; Herbert Spencer, 1904; The Philot-
ophy of Loyalty, 1908 ; W. James and Other Essays, 1911 ; The Source
tf Religious Insight, 1912; The Problem of Christianity, 2 vols., 1913,
562 MODERN PHILOSOPHY
Among American writers who have been influenced by Kant,
the post-Kantians, Lotze, or kindred thinkers of Germany, Eng-
land, and France, either through an independent study of these;
philosophers or through American teachers of philosophy, wel
mention: W. T. Harris (+1909), J. Watson, G. T. Ladd, G. HJ
Howison, A. T. Ormond, B. P. Bowne (+ 1910), J. E. Creighton,
J. G. Hibben, E. Albee, Mary W. Calkins, R. M. Wenley, HJ
Gardiner, C. B. Strong, J. H. Tufts, A. K. Rogers, C. M. Bake-;
well, A. 0. Lovejoy, J. A. Leighton, and W. E. Hocking. The
younger members of this group (notably Creighton, Bake well,
Lovejoy, Albee), in defending idealism against the criticisms of
pragmatism and neo-realism, have developed this doctrine in such
a way as to include what they regard as the valid elements inj
these opposing schools.
CONTEMPORARY REACTION AGAINST RATIONALISM
AND IDEALISM
We find in present-day thought many signs of dissatisfaction,
not only with idealism, which has long been the predominant sys-
tem, but also with the methods and results of ra-i
JjJ6^ . tionalistic science and philosophy in general, bothi
of which, so it is held, destroy the freedom of the!
individual and leave no room for human values. Whether, with,
natural-scientific mechanism, we proceed from moving particles*
of matter or, with objective idealism, from logical concepts or
universal purposes, human life is said to be degraded to a me:re'
epiphenomenon. Many attempts have been made in the history
of speculation to escape the consequences to which human thin'i-r
ing seemed to lead, — attempts which are being renewed to-dry
in slightly varying forms. The opposition to rationalism,
however, is not confined to those whose chief concern is to save
the individual from the determinism of both naturalism ai.d
spiritualism, but exists in the ranks of natural science itself,
among thinkers influenced in their theory of knowledge by Hurie
and the positivists. We may distinguish several lines of thoug it
in the contemporary reaction against the traditional school, sor i&
of which, it is to be noted, are followed by men of widely diffe r-
EACTION AGAINST RATIONALISM AND IDEALISM 563
Qt temperaments, — by skeptics, faith-philosophers, and rational-
jts alike. According to some, the human intellect is unable to
olve the world-riddle: metaphysics is impossible. They hold
ither that knowledge is limited to the study and description of
he facts of experience or that it is a mere instrument in the serv-
of the will to live or that its conclusions, — even in the field of
atural science, — are mere conventions, or symbols, or approxi-
lations to the truth ; or they accept every one of these positions,
ther thinkers, agreeing that the intellect or the discursive under-
tanding cannot comprehend the meaning of reality, discover a
urer source of knowledge in other phases or functions of the
uman soul, — in feeling, belief, immediate or pure experience,
rill, or intuition, — and seek in them a way of escape from skepti-
sm, mechanism, determinism, atheism, and all the cheerless
octrines against which the individual revolts. This movement
j not new in philosophy, as we have seen ; indeed, we find anti-
itellectualistic or anti-rationalistic tendencies within the ranks
f the idealistic school itself, — in Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, Lotze,
lucken, Windelband, Miinsterberg, Renouvier, Bradley; — and
it is in this school that the leading innovators of the day have
been reared and with which they continue to have much in com-
mon. Another group of men, who resemble Herbart in many
respects, defend rational intelligence against its scientific and
philosophical critics, but oppose the organic conception of
idealism, its monism, and its alleged subjectivism, regarding
analysis as the true method of a scientific philosophy, and
pluralism and realism as its logical results. There are also those
who lay the chief stress of their opposition on the spiritualistic
phase of the traditional views and return to a natural realism,
conceiving things not as the appearances of a subjective or ob-
jective mind, but as wholly independent of mind, and mind as
something that has arisen in the process of the evolution of the
things themselves.
We shall consider some of the contemporary writers who give
expression to the spirit of discontent which characterizes latter-
day philosophical thought.
Merz, History of European Thought in the Nineteenth Centur
vols ; Perry, Present Philosophical Tendencies; Thilly, Romanticiim
and Rationalism. Phil. Rev., March. 1913, and The Characteristic* of the
564 MODERN PHILOSOPHY
Present Age, Hibbert Journal, October, 1911; van Becalaire, La phi-\
losophie en Amerique; Lyman, Theology and Human Problems;]
Walker, Theories of Knowledge; Fouillee, La pensee; A. Rey, La phi-\
losophie moderne; articles on contemporary philosophy by Benrubi,
Mackenzie, Thilly, Amendola, Hb'ffding, Calderon in Revue de meta-\
physique et de morale, September, 1908; Chiappelli, Les tendences vives\
de la philosophic contemporaine, in Rev. phil., March, 1910, and Dalla\
critica al nuovo idealismo; Berthelot, Un romanticisme utilitairem
Ruggiero, La filosofia contemporanea; Gaultier, La pensee contem-\
poraine; Goldstein, Wandlungen in der Philosophic der Gegenwart;
Eucken, Main Currents of Modern Thought; Stein, Philosophische
Stromungen der Gegenwart; Riehl, Philosophic der Gegenwart;
Windelband, Die philosophischen Richtungen der Gegenwart, in Grosse
Denker; Hoffding, Moderne Philosophen (in French: Philosophes con-
temporains), and Englische Philosophic; Baumann, Deutsche und ausser-
deutsche Philosophic der letzten Jahrzehnte; Ueberweg-Heinze, op. cit.,
Part III, vol. II; Falckenberg, Geschichte der neuern Philosophief
7th ed. ; W. Caldwell, Pragmatism and Idealism, 1913.
71. THE NEW POSITIVISTIC THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE
Ernst Mach (professor of physics and philosophy, born 1838 ;
Analysis of Sensations, 1886, 5th ed. 1906, Popular Scientific
Lectures, 4th ed. 1910) offers a theory of knowledge
based on the phenomenalism of Hume and the posi-
tivists : the world consists solely of our sensations, and the thing-
in-itself is an illusion. Not axioms or a priori truths, but im-
mediate pure experience constitutes the basis of his theory of
knowledge. The aim of science is the complete description of
facts, that is, of the contents of our consciousness ; its sole busi-
ness is to discover the connection of the not-further-analyzable
elements of sensation, — to recognize these connections instead o:?
seeking to explain them by metaphysical presuppositions. The
way to develop a universal physical phenomenology, one embrac-
ing all fields, a physics free from all hypotheses, is by analogies.
Science begins with hypotheses, but these are mere temporary
expedients to enable us to understand the facts, a kind of in-
direct description, and are gradually replaced by direct observa-
tion, that is, verified by experience or the appearance of sensa-
tions. All science consists in a schematic reproduction of facts,
in thought. It would be futile to mirror the world in thought i::
it were not possible to find something relatively constant in mani
fold change. In every scientific judgment a great number o::
NEW POSITIVISTIC THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 565
observations are embraced or compressed : our concepts and judg-
ments are abbreviated thought-symbols for groups of sensations,
a kind of shorthand method of expressing the facts. This is the
principle of the economy of thought. A law is nothing more
than a comprehensive and condensed statement of facts, a state-
ment only of that phase of the facts which is important to us.
Matter is merely a uniform complexus of sensations. The self,
likewise, is a group of sensations. The relatively more fixed and
constant phase of the sensation-complex is impressed upon the
memory and experience in language (body). The complex of
memories, moods, feelings (connected with a particular body)
which is called the ego, is another relatively constant phase.
Sensations considered as dependent on my body constitute the
subject-matter of psj^chology; the same sensations considered
as dependent on other bodies form the subject-matter of physics.
Bodies do not produce sensations, but complexes of sensations con-
stitute bodies. The world does not consist of mysterious things-
in-themselves that produce, in interaction with the ego, other
mysterious things called sensations. The aim of science is to
connect the less constant, not yet sufficiently established rela-
tions with the more constant, established ones.
Although this theory limits knowledge to the field of our
sensations and is, therefore, opposed to metaphysics, — a futile
undertaking that merely disturbs the economy of science, — Mach
seeks a philosophical basis for it in voluntarism. Knowledge is
an instrument of the will, the result of the needs of practical
life (pragmatism). Thoughts are not the whole of life; they
are, as it were, fugitive flashes of light, intended to illuminate
the path of the will. We need a world-view that will bring
us into some sort of relation with the environment: in order
to obtain it in an economic manner, we create science. The agree-
ment of thought and observation is a means of adaptation
and selection. The notions of body and ego are mere tempo-
rary makeshifts for practical orientation in the world, and most
be given up; likewise the notions of atoms, forces, and laws.
Every practical and intellectual need is satisfied as soon as our
thoughts succeed in reproducing the sensible facts. We are
satisfied when our thoughts bring before us the totality of tht
sense-data which belong together, so that they almost seem to
566 MODERN PHILOSOPHY
be a substitute for them. Mach speaks of an impulse to ideal-
ize, schematize, and complete facts.
The empiric-critical school, of which R. Avenarius (1843-1896;
Kritik der reinen Erfahrung, 1888, f., Der menschliche Welt-
begriff, 1891) is the founder, follows along similar
lines pursued by Mach. The only method of
knowledge is description based on exact perception. Scientific
philosophy is the descriptive determination of the form and con-
tent of the universal notion of experience. Pure experience is
the experience common to all possible individual experiences, and
the business of knowledge is to eliminate the illogical individual
elements. We are approximating to such a pure empirical con-
ception of the universe. Originally, all men had the same notion
of the world; but by " introjecting " into experience thought,
feeling, and will, by splitting it up into outer and inner experi-
ence, into subject and object, reality has been falsified. By
eliminating " introjection, " we restore the original natural view
of the world: pure experience.
Views similar to those of Mach are expressed by James Clerk Max-
well (1831-1879; Scientific Papers), William Clifford (1845-1879; See-
ing and Thinking, 1879, Common Sense of the Exact Sciences, 1885),
Karl Pearson (born 1857; Grammar of Science, 1892, 2d ed. 1900), and
H. Hertz (1857-1894). According to Henri Poincare (1857-1913; La
science et I'hypothese, 1902, transl., La valeur de la science, 14th ed.,
1906), the axioms of science are convenient definitions or conventions;
our choice among all the possible conventions is guided by experi-
mental facts, but is arbitrary and is limited only by the necessity of
avoiding all contradiction.
72. PRAGMATISM
William James (1842-1910) was influenced in his thinkii
by his biological studies, by English empiricism, and by the teach-
ing of Charles Renouvier. It was Renouvier's
masterly advocacy of pluralism, he himself tells us.
that freed him from the monistic superstition under which he
had grown up. The " block-universe," the rigoristic, deter-
ministic systems of both materialistic and spiritualistic monism
did not satisfy him: " if everything, man included, is the mere
effect of the primitive nebula or the infinite substance, whal
becomes of moral responsibility, freedom of action, individual
PRAGMATISM 567
Iffort, and aspiration ; what, indeed, of need, uncertainty, choice,
lovelty, and strife? " Does not the individual become a mere
luppet in the hands of the absolute substance, whether con-
leived as universal matter or as universal mind? Such a sys-
|em cannot satisfy all the demands of our nature, and hence
;annot be true. The test, then, of a theory, of a belief, of a
loctrine, must be its effect on us, its practical consequences. Thig
s the pragmatic test. Always ask yourself what difference it
vill make in your experience whether you accept materialism or
piritualism, determinism or free will, monism or pluralism,
itheism or theism. One is a doctrine of despair, the other a
loctrine of hope. " On pragmatic principles, if the hypothesis
f God works satisfactorily, in the widest sense of the word, it
s true/'
The test of truth, then, is its practical consequences : the pos-
session of truth is not an end in itself, but only a preliminary
neans to other vital satisfactions. Knowledge is an instrument ;
t is for the sake of life, life not for the sake of knowledge.
Tames enlarges this pragmatic or instrumental conception so as
,o include in the idea of practical utility: logical consistency
ind verification. True ideas are those that we can assimilate,
alidate, corroborate, and verify. Ideas that tell us which of the
•ealities to expect count as the true ideas. You can, therefore,
lay of truth that it is useful because it is true, or that it is
me because it is useful. " Truth in science is what gives us
-he maximum possible sum of satisfactions, taste included, but
sonsistency both with previous truth and novel fact is always
Jie most imperious claimant."
Even with these important additions to the pragmatic formula,
it is anti-intellectualistic in the sense that, in order to be true,
a philosophy must satisfy other than logical demands. And the
practical moral and religious demands favor pluralism, freedom
and individualism, spiritualism, and theism, according to James.
These are the conceptions in which the will believes and to
save which our pragmatist repudiates the intellect as the absolute
judge of truth. Still, consistency is always the most imperious
claimant.
Although the absolutistic hypothesis that perfection is eternal,
aboriginal, and most real, has a perfectly definite meaning and
568 MODERN PHILOSOPHY
works religiously, the pluralistic way agrees with the pragmati
temper best. For it sets definite activities at work ; a pluralist!
world can only be saved piecemeal and de facto as the result o
the behavior of a lot of caches. We may believe, also, that ther
is a higher form of experience extant in the universe than ou
human experience ; on the proofs that religious experience affords)
we may well believe that higher powers exist and are at work!
to save the world on ideal lines similar to our own.
James reaches the same results from another side, from the
side of radical or pure empiricism, which opposes both the]
classical rationalism and the classical English empiricism. It isi
not true that whatever is rational is real ; whatever is experienced
is real. Only, we must take experience as it exists before it has
been manipulated by conceptual thinking, — experience in its
purity and primitive innocence, — if we would reach reality. We
must go behind the conceptual function altogether and look to
the more primitive flux of the sensational life for reality's true
shape. Philosophy should seek this kind of living understanding
of the movement of reality, — not follow science in vainly patch-
ing together fragments of its dead results. Philosophy is more a
matter of passionate vision than of logic, logic only finding rea-
sons for the vision afterwards.
With German idealism James agrees that the scientific under-
standing mutilates reality, and he agrees with it, also, in the
view that our ordinary sense-experience does not reveal it in its
true colors. But, not unlike Bradley, he puts his faith in a
living unsophisticated human experience. Reality is pure experi-
ence independent of human thinking; it is something very
hard to find; it is what is just entering into experience and
yet to be named, or else it is some imagined aboriginal presence
in experience, before any belief about the presence has arisen,
before any human conception has been applied. It is what is
absolutely dumb and evanescent, the merely ideal limit of ou*
minds. We may glimpse it, but we never grasp it; what wo
grasp is always some substitute for it which previous human
thinking has peptonized and cooked for our consumption. Yet,
this immediate experience is a unity in diversity; the unity is a:?
original as the diversity. Empiricism is, therefore, wrong in
saying that our psychic life consists of a multiplicity of inde-
PRAGMATISM 569
pendent sensations, and rationalism is wrong in saying that
hese are combined by categories in the unity of a soul. The
lotion of a combining medium called soul is superfluous because
.here are no independent elements to combine. Both conceptions
ire abstractions. Reality is, in part, the flux of our sensations,
oming we know not whence; partly, the relations that obtain
)etween our sensations or between their copies in our mind ; and,
tartly, previous truths. Some of these relations are mutable and
iccidental, others are fixed and essential, but both are matters
if immediate perception. Relations, categories, are matters of
lirect experience, not different from the things or phenomena:
deas and things are " consubstantial, " made of the same stuff.
James seems to vacillate between two views: reality is pure
ixperience, experience independent of all thought, to which the
ife of the infant or semi-comatose person approximates; and
reality is the entire field of the adult consciousness, experience
permeated with thought. Perhaps his meaning is that the latter
!orm of it grows out of the former. There is a sensible flux, he
;ells us, but what is true of it seems from first to last largely
a matter of our own creation. The world stands really malleable,
waiting to receive its final touches at our hands. Reality is not
ready-made and complete from all eternity, but still in the
making, unfinished, growing in all sort of places where thinking
beings are at work. Truth grows up inside of all the finite ex-
periences; they lean on each other, but the whole of them, if
such there be, leans on nothing. Nothing outside of the flux
secures the issue of it ; it can hope salvation only from its own
intrinsic promises and potencies. Behind the bare phenomenal
facts there is nothing, no thing-in-itself, no Absolute, no Un-
knowable ; it is absurd to attempt to explain the given concrete
reality by an assumed reality of which we can form no idea
except through symbols drawn from our experience itself. This
sounds like subjective idealism, but is not intended as such by
James, who never doubted the existence of an extra-mental
world; the pure original experience is not subjective, but ob-
jective; it is the primordial stuff which grows conscious.
Radical empiricism makes for pluralism : experience shows us
multiplicity, diversity, opposition, and not a block-universe,
not the completely organized harmonious system of the Absolo-
570 MODERN PHILOSOPHY
tists or Monists, in which all differences and oppositions are recon-
ciled. Besides, the pluralistic universe satisfies the demands of i
our moral nature, which the absolutistic universe does not :
it is justified by the pragmatic method. Indeed, monism, too, 1
is not a mere doctrine of the intellect ; its acceptance depends j
on its consequences: it satisfies the aesthetic and mystical irn- :
pulses of some natures. But it does not account for our finite i
consciousness; it creates a problem of evil; it does not account \
for change; and it is fatalistic. Pluralism takes perceptual ex-
perience at its face value, and the concrete perceptual flux,
taken just as it comes, offers in our own activity-situations
perfectly comprehensible instances of causal agency or free will. •
There is room for change, for novelty, for the unconditioned \
in the world (tychism or fortuitism). And pluralism is melioris- \
tic : the world may be saved on condition that its parts shall do
their best. The melioristic universe is conceived after a social
analogy, as a pluralism of independent powers. It will suc-
ceed just in proportion as more of these work for its success. If
none work, it will fail ; if each does his best, it will not fail. And
in such a world man is free to risk realizing his ideal.
Theism is the only conception of God that will satisfy our
emotional and volitional nature. God is a part of the universe,
a sympathetic and powerful helper, the great Companion, a con-
scious, personal, and moral being of the same nature as our-
selves, with whom we can come into communion, as certain ex-
periences (sudden conversions, faith-cure) show. To be sure,
this theistic hypothesis cannot be completely proved, but neither
can any system of philosophy be proved; every one of them is
rooted in the will to believe. The essence of faith is not feeling
or intelligence, but will, the will to believe what cannot b3
scientifically demonstrated or refuted.
Works of James: The Principles of Psychology, 2 vols., 1890; Thi
Will to Believe, 1897; Talks to Teachers, 1899; Varieties of Religious
Experience, 1902; Pragmatism, 1907; The Meaning of Truth, 1909;
A Pluralistic Universe, 1909; Some Problems of Philosophy, 1910;
Memories and Studies, 1911 ; Essays in Radical Empiricism, 1912.
Flournoy, The Philosophy of W. James, transl. ; Boutroux, W. Jamet ,
transl. by Henderson; Royce, W. James and Other Essays; Pratl,
What is Pragmatism?; Schinz, Anti-Pragmatism; Murray, Pragmatism;
Hebert, Le pragmatisme; article on " Pragmatism " by F. C. S. Schiller
in the Britannica; many articles in the philosophical' journals.
PRAGMATISM 871
John Dewey (born 1859) is no less radical than James in la
pposition to the old philosophies. He does not tire of flouting
;he old methods, which he conceives as aiming at Dgwey
•ealities lying behind and beyond the process of
lature and as carrying on the search for these realities by means
>f rational forms transcending ordinary modes of perception
and inference. Such problems, he thinks, have no real meaning,
and are solved very simply by evaporating. He protests against
setting up a universe, in analogy with the cognitive side of
human nature, as a system of fixed elements in fixed relations,
be they mechanical, sensational, or conceptual, and making all
the other phases of man's nature —beliefs, aversions, affections —
mere epiphenomena, appearances, subjective impressions or
fects in consciousness; against relegating concrete selves, specif
feeling and willing beings with the beliefs in which they declare
themselves, to the phenomenal; and against a world m ^
man's strivings are already eternally fulfilled, his errors already
eternally transcended, his partial beliefs already eternally c
prehended, in which need, uncertainty, choice, novelty, s
have no place. Reality is for him, the evolutionist, not a com-
pletely given, ready-made, fixed system, not a system at all, b
changing, growing, developing things. A real philosophy i
abandon inquiry after absolute origins and absolute finalU
order to explore specific values and specific conditions that
erate them. The sole verifiable and fruitful object of know edge
is the particular set of changes that generate the object of study,
together with the consequences that flow from them.
telligible question can be asked about what is assumed to he c
side,-about the whole essence back of special change* abo«
an intelligence that shaped things once for all, or abc
ultimate goal of good. The interesting quest.ons t
tionistic philosopher are not the old questions of onto ogy
practical, living, moral, and social question*: how spec.al
sTrve and defeat concrete purposes, how J^^T"."?
shaping particular intelligences, how to reahze the di
ments of justice and happiness that int.ll.ient admuustraUon
of existent conditions may beget and that present ca,
stupidity will destroy or forego. To .deahze and at,
universe at large is to shift a burden of responsibly upon th«
372 MODERN PHILOSOPHY
shoulders of the transcendent. Philosophy must become a
method of moral and political diagnosis and prognosis; — thei
world is in the making, and we must help to make it.
Such a new philosophy calls for a revision of the theory of]
thinking, for a new evolutionary logic which frankly starts out!
from the fact of thinking as inquiring and purely external ex-j
istences as terms in inquiries. The revised theory of thinking will
construe validity, objectivity, truth, and the test and system of
truth, on the basis of what they actually mean and do within
Vthe inquiry-activity. Dewey sees in thinking an instrument for
the removal of collisions between what is given and what is
wanted, — a means of realizing human desire, of securing an
arrangement of things which means satisfaction, fulfilment,
happiness. Such a harmony is the end and test of thinking : suc-
cess in this sense is the end and test. When the ideas, views,
conceptions, hypotheses, beliefs, which we frame succeed, secure
harmony, adjustment, we call them true. Successful ideas are
true. We keep on transforming, changing our ideas until they
work, that is, we make them true, verify them. The effective
working of an idea, its success, is its truth. When I say the
idea works, it is the same as saying it is true. Successful work-
ing is the essential characteristic of a true idea. The success of
the idea is not the cause nor the evidence of its truth, but is its
truth : the successful idea is a true idea. The test or criterion of
truth lies in the harmonized reality effected by the idea, Wher-
ever there is an improved or tested idea, an idea which has made
good, there is a concrete existence in the way of a completed
or harmonized situation. We must not, however, separate the
achieved existence from its process. When it is taken just as
given, separated from its process, it is neither truth nor a
criterion of truth, but just a state of facts like any other. There
are cases in which an idea ceases to exist as idea just as soon
as it is made true. Scientific ideas, however, like the law of
gravitation, operate in many other inquiries no longer as mere
ideas, but as proved ideas.
Thinking serves human purposes, is useful, removes collision,
satisfies desire; and its utility, its teleology, is its truth. The
human will, in other words, instigates thinking, which is an in-
strument for realizing human aims. The fixities (atoms, God)
PRAGMATISM 573
lave existence and import only in the problems, needs, struggles,
nd instrumentalities of conscious agents and patients. We have
, universe in which uncertainty, doubtfulness, really inhere,
,nd in which personal attitudes are real.
The revision of the theory of thinking also brings the prin-
iple of belief into its own. Belief, — sheer direct unmitigated
>ersonal belief, — reappears in science as working-hypothesis.
Beliefs are the most natural and most metaphysical of all things ;
:nowledge is the human and practical outgrowth of belief;
:nowledge is an organized technique for working out the im-
plications and interrelations of beliefs, and for directing their
'ormation and employment. Beliefs, therefore, modify and
hape reality; and empirical conscious beings genuinely deter-
nine existences. If this is so, there is no need of fear that
natural sciences are going to encroach upon and destroy our
spiritual values, because we can always translate our values
(social and political) into existences (institutions). The world
in which Dewey is interested is the practical social world of
living, working individuals.
The world is in the making and will always be in the making, —
we shape it to our ends; — and in this process the thinking and
belief of conscious personal beings play an active part. It is to
be remembered that knowing is not the sole and genuine mode
of experiencing for Dewey. Things, — anything, everything,—
are what they are experienced as being, and every experience
is some thing. Things are experienced as known, but they
are also experienced aesthetically, morally, economically, and
technologically ; hence to give a just account of anything is to
tell what that thing is experienced as. This is the fundamental
postulate of immediate empiricism. If you want to find out what
any philosophical term, — subjective, objective, physical, mental,
cosmic, cause, substance, purpose, activity, evil, being, quan-
tity, means, go to experience and see what it is experienced
as. The individual is not merely a knower, but an emotional,
impulsive, willing being ; the reflective attitude is evoked by the
will, the basal or primal side of self.
Works of Dewey: Psychology, 1886; Study of Ethics, 1891; Studies
in Logical Theory (with his pupils), '1903, 2d ed., 1909; Ethics (with
J H Tufts). 1909; Influence of Darwin on Philosophy, and Other
574 MODERN PHILOSOPHY
Essays, 1910; The School and Society, 1899; and many articles in
philosophical journals.
Other pragmatists are: F. C. S. Schiller (Studies in Humanism, 1907
Personal Idealism, with Sturt and others, 1902, Plato or Protagoras
1908, Formal Logic, 1912) ; H. Sturt (Personal Idealism, 1902, Idola
theatri, 1906) ; A. W. Moore (Pragmatism and its Critics, 1910) ; B
Bawden (Principles of Pragmatism, 1910) ; Father Tyrrell (Lex orandi
1903, Lex credendi, 1906) ; J. E. Boodin, Truth and Eeality, 1912; G
Blondel (L'action, 1893) ; W. Jerusalem (Introduction to Philosophy
5th ed., 1910, transl.) ; H. Vaihinger (Die Philosophie des Als Ob
1911) ; G. Jaboby (Der Pragmatismus, 1909) ; Papini (Introduzione a
pragmatismo, 1907, in " Leonardo "). See also article by C. S. Peirce in
Popular Science Monthly, January, 1878.
The protest against our traditional conceptions reaches a
climax in the teaching of the German individualist Friedrich
Nietzsche (1844-1900), who, although he wrote be
fore the appearance of American pragmatism, may
be regarded as the enfant terrible of the whole movement of dis-
content. He not only antagonizes the old theories and methods,
but sweeps away the old values and condemns the entire trend of
our modern civilization, considering the historical attitude as the
cause of the weakness of our age ; strong, reverent, burden-bear-
ing man carries too many heavy strange words and values of the
past on his back. It is the function of philosophy, so he de-
clares, to transform all values (Umwertung aller Werte), to
create new values, new ideals, and a new civilization.
Nietzsche accepts the fundamental notion of Schopenhauer that
the will is the principle of existence, but this will he conceives
not merely as the will to live, but as the will for power: life
is essentially a striving for a surplus of power, and this exuberant
instinct is good : Alles Gute ist Instinkt. Upon this idea he bases
his estimate of the intellect, — of knowledge, science, philosophy,
and truth. The mind or intellect is merely an instrument in
the hands of instinct, of the will for life and power; it is the
11 little reason," created by the body; the body and its instinc:s
are the " big reason." " There is more reason in your body than
in your wisest wisdom." Knowledge has value only in so far i*
it preserves and promotes life, or preserves and develops tie
species; hence, illusion is as necessary as truth. To put truth
above error and illusion, to love truth for its own sake instead :>f
as a means of life, is turning things upside down, is a diseased
PRAGMATISM 575
istinct. Indeed, this ideal of truth for the truth's sake is only
lother form of asceticism: the denial or negation of life for
jmething else.
Besides, Nietzsche goes on to tell us, there is no such thing
j universal truth. The propositions which have been offered
3 such are errors. Thinking is really inaccurate perception:
looks for similarities and ignores differences, thus producing
false picture of reality. There is nothing permanent, no sub-
tance, no universal causal nexus, no purpose in nature, no
efinite goal ; the universe does not care for our happiness or our
lorality, and there is no divine power outside of it that can
elp us. Knowledge is a tool for power: utility for preservation
3 the motive behind the development of the organs of knowl-
dge. We arrange the world in our thoughts in such a way as to
lake our existence possible, hence we believe in something
>ermanent and regularly recurring. We reduce the confused
>lurality of experiences Offered us, to a rational and man-
igeable scheme by means/bf formulas and signs which we invent ;
lie purpose being to deceive ourselves in a useful way.
;his sense the will for truth is the will to master the plurality of
lensations— to string the phenomena on certain categoric
BLence, logic and the categories of reason are simply means
>f arranging the world for utility-purposes, of arranging
;hat we can handle it. But the philosophers have made the mis-
ake of regarding these categories, these formulas, these han
forms, as criteria of truth, as criteria of reality; they I
naively made this human way of looking at things for the J
of preservation,-this anthropocentric idiosyncrasy-
ure of things, the standard of the " real " and " unreal,
in this way it came to pass that the world was divided into
real world and a seeming world, and that the very world to live
in which man had invented his reason,-this world of change,
becoming, plurality, opposition, contradiction war,-was c
credited and calumniated; that it, the real world, was called
world of semblance, a mere appearance, a false world, and
the invented fictitious world, the alleged world of permanence,
the unchanging, supersensuous world, the false world, was
throned as the true world.
All we know directly is the world of our desires and instmcte;
576 MODERN PHILOSOPHY
and all our instincts may be reduced to the fundamental
stinct, — the will for power. Every living being strives to
crease its power by vanquishing other beings ; that is the law of
life. The goal is the creation of supermen, of a higher type, of a
race of heroes; and this cannot be realized without struggle, painj
suffering, and injury to the weak. Hence, war is preferable to
?ace; indeed, peace is a symptom of~3ealn^ We^are not here
for our pleasure, for our happiness; we are not here for any
purpose, but being here we must hold our own, assert ourselves
or go down. Pity, therefore, which Schopenhauer had made the
source of all morality, is bad : it injures him that gives and him
that takes ; it weakens both the strong and the weak, it saps the
strength of the race, and is bad.
It is true that life is terrible, but that is no reason for pessi-
mism. Indeed, pessimism and renunciation are impossible except
in a diseased and degener^rfe^^ac^v^or the desire for life is
too strong in a healthy m^n^ to be overcome by pain and battle.
Life is an experiment, a/ silting process in which the sheep are
separated from the goats^. / It is selectivejttiristocratic. It brings
out the inequalities in hitfnan^nature, it inows that men are not
equal. Some men are feietter tham^othejps, stronger in body and
mind. The better n/erij the natural-born aristocrats, should
have more privileges Wciause they have more duties than the
plebeians, the rabble. Tfebest men should rule. Hence democ-
racy, socialism, communism, .anarchism are all impossible, they
all contradict the ideal, theV\all prevent the development of
strong individuals. Slavery in\s()me foVm or/ other has always
existed and will always exist. Tfhe mo^ern^laborer has simply
taken the place of the ancient slave.^Npr can women have the
same rights as men because they are not equul to men in initiative,
energy, and will. Our greatest danger to-daySLies in the mania
for equality.
Our traditional morality is also rejected by Nietzsche because it
is based on pity and favors the weak and decadent against tie
strong. Religion, too, particularly Christianity, is repudiated
for the same reason ; and his contempt for science and philosophy
is to be explained in the same way, — by his glorification of tie
will for power. Peace, happiness, pity, self-denial, contempt of
the world, effeminacy, non-resistance, socialism, communism.
INTUITIONISM OF HENRI BERGSON 577
quality, religion, philosophy, and science are all rejected because
hey contradict life ; and all systems of thought and all institu-
ions which regard these things as valuable and worthy to be
ought after for their own sakes are symptoms of decadence.*
Among the predecessors of Nietzsche is the extreme individualist
lax Stirner (Caspar Schmidt, 1806-1856; Der Einzige und sein Ei-
entum, 1845, transl. by Mackay).
Works of Nietzsche: Die Geburt der Tragodie, 1872; Also sprach
larathustra, 1883, ff. ; Jenseits von Gut und Bose, 1886 ; Zur Genealogie
ler Moral, 1887. Collected works ed. by Koegel, 1895, ff.; collected
etters, 1900, ff . English translations ed. by A. Tille ; and by 0. Levy.
E. Foerster-Nietzsche, Das Leben F. Nietzsches, 2 vols.; mono-
Taphs by Dolson, Miigge, Riehl, Vaihinger, Gallwitz, Ziegler, R. Rich-
er, R. M. Meyer, Lichtenberger (French and German) ; Rud. Eisler,
Nietzsches Erkenntnistheorie und Metaphysik.
73. INTUITIONISM OF HENI
The most interesting and popular figure in the anti-rational-
stic movement of our day is Henri Bergson (born 1859), whose
writings, like those of William James, have found
*"
large number of sympathetic readers outside of
cademic circles. With the Romanticists, prag-
atists, and mystics he_ proclaims the incapacity of science
nd logic to penetrate the husk of reality ; in tfie presence
f life and movement, conceptual thinking stands helpless.
cience can apprehend only what is crystallized in death, t
aste product of creation, that which stands still, the inert
esidue that escapes time or becoming, that about which we can
ake predictions. And yet, the work of the intellect is no'
without its purpose ; it is, as the pragmatists declare, an insti
ent in the service of the will to live. But it is also mor
han that, according to Bergson ; and pragmatism is only a half
truth. Conceptual thought is well adapted for employra
in a dead, static world, in the world of inert matter
mechanism reigns, and here it has won its greatest vie
Where there is no individuality, no inwardness, nothm
dead surface, science and logic have both practical and
* Cf Thilly The Philosophy of Fricdrich Xictztche. Popular 8ci<
M JiAfe Cmber, 1905, from which part- of the above account hare I
taken.
578 MODERN PHILOSOPHY
worth. When, however, they extend their operations to thai
world in which everything is moving, growing, becoming, living,!
they mutilate and falsify the real. Baffled by the infinite variety;
and change of forms, and taking the whirling flux for illusion,}
the intellect proceeds to construct a bony skeleton, a rigid)
framework, and substitutes this as the true reality for the dis-j
turbing and unpleasant temporal succession. It keeps forever
reading static elements, eternal substances and causes, into the!
flux, and dropping out, as mere appearance, what does not fit!
into the logical scheme. The ideal of science is a static world;
it translates the flowing time into space relations: for it dura-
tion, movement, life, and evolution are mere illusions ; it mecha-
nizes them all. Life and consciousness cannot be treated mathe-j
matically, scientifically, logically; the scientist who studies and
analyzes them in the ordinary mathematical-physical ways, cuts
them up, destroys them, and misses their meaning. The meta-
physician cannot give us scientific knowledge of them ; philosophy
is and must remain a direct vision of reality, a Weltanschauung
in the literal sense of the term, an intuition. Intuition is life,
real and immediate life envisaging itself. There is something in
the universe analogous to the creative spirit of the poet, a liv-
ing, pushing force, an elan vital, which eludes the mathematical
intelligence and which can be appreciated only by a kind of
divining sympathy, a feeling which approaches nearer to the
essence of things than reason. Philosophy is the art of com-
prehending or seizing the universe in its process, in its vital
impetus. Our intuitions are something like instinct, — a con-
scious, refined, spiritualized instinct, — and instinct is still nearer
life than intellect and science. The real, the * ' becoming, ' ' the in-
ward " duree," life and consciousness, we can apprehend only
through the faculty of intuition. Only by observing for the
sake of observing and not for the sake of acting, will the Abso-
lute reveal itself. Its -essence is psychological, not mathemati-
cal or logical. A normal philosophy must do justice to bolh
intelligence and intuition, for only by a union of these two
faculties will the philosopher succeed in approximating to the
truth.
The sharp distinction which Bergson makes between intelli-
gence and intuition, science and philosophy, has its ground :n
INTUITIONISM OF HENRI BERGSON 579
•is dualistically-tinged metaphysics.* \\ Matter is a kind of iin-
lense machine without memory,; mind or consciousness is a force
ssentially free and essentially memory, a creative
., Metaphysics
orce whose character is to pile up the past on the
ast, like a rolling snowball, and at every instant of duration to
rganize with this past something new which is real creation.
Consciousness is not a mere arrangement of parts succeeding
ach other, but an indivisible process in which there is no repeti-
tion,— free, creative action. Consciousness is in principle pres-
nt in all living matter ; indeed, life is nothing but consciousness
ising matter for its purposes. A living being is a reservoir of
ndetermination and unforeseeability, a reservoir of possible
ictions, or, in a word, of choice. Life avails itself of a certain
lasticity in matter, and turns it to the profit of liberty by
•tealing into whatever infinitesimal fraction of indetermination
hat inert matter may present. The animal performs voluntary
novements by simply producing the infinitesimal spark which
ets off the potential energy stored up in the foodstuffs.
Consciousness is action that continually creates and multi-
3lies, while matter is action that continually unmakes itself
ind wears out. Neither the matter constituting the world
aor the consciousness which utilizes this matter can be ex-
plained by itself ; there is a common source of both this matter
and this consciousness. The whole evolution of life on our planet
.s an effort of this essentially creative force to arrive, by trav-
ersing matter, at something which is only realized in man and
which, even in man, is realized only imperfectly. In seeking
to organize matter and to make it an instrument of liberty,
consciousness has itself been ensnared: liberty is dogged by
automatism and necessity, and in the long run is stifled by i
With man alone the chain has been broken ; the human brain
can oppose to every contracted habit another habit ; it sets neces-
sity to fight against necessity. We are free when our acts spring
from our whole personality, when they are the expression of that
personality ; hence, real acts of freedom are rare in our lives,
Matter plays the role both of obstj"»l«? Md ptimulua. causes us
to feel our force and also enables us to intensify it. Jo;
pleasure) is a sign which apprises us every time our activity is
• See his article, Life and Consciousness, in Hibbcrt Journal, October, 1911.
580 MODERN PHILOSOPHY
in full expansion, an emphatic signal of the triumph of iifeJ
wherever joy is, creation has been. The ultimate reason on
human life is a creation which can be pursued at every moment!
and by all men alike, the creation of self by self, the continual
enrichment of personality by elements which it does not draw!
from outside, but causes to spring forth from itself. The pas-i
sage of consciousness through matter is destined to bring toj
precision, — in the form of distinct personalities, — tendencies!
or potentialities which at first were confused, and also to permit;
these personalities to test their force whilst at the same time
increasing it by an effort of self-creation. But consciousness ist
also memory, one of its essential functions is to accumulate and.
preserve the past ; in pure consciousness nothing of the past is,
lost, the whole life of the conscious personality is an indivisible
continuity. This leads us to suppose that the effort continues
beyond. Perhaps in man alone is consciousness immortal.
Works of Bergson: Time and Free Will, 1888, transl. by Pogson;
Matter and Memory, 1896, transl. by Paul and Palmer ; Laughter, 1900,
transl. by Rothwell; Introduction to Metaphysics, 1903, transl. by
Hulme; Creative Evolution, 1910, transl. by Mitchell; Life and Con-
sciousness, in Hibbert Journal, October, 1911.
Carr, Bergson; Le Roy, A New Philosophy: II . Bergson, transl. by
Brown; A. D. Lindsay, The Philosophy of Bergson; J. M. Stewart,
Critical Exposition of Bergson's Philosophy; Dodson, Bergson and the
Modern Spirit; Berthelot, Un Yomanticisme utilitaire; Grandjean, Une
revolution dans la philosophic; Coignet, De Kant a Bergson; Brod
and Weltsch, Anschauung und Begriff; numerous articles in the phi-
losophical journals.
74. REALISTIC REACTION AGAINST IDEALISM
Bergson, agreeing with the German idealists, finds scientific
knowledge wanting because it analyzes and divides existence:
and seeks a method that will do justice to the
Neo-Realists . .. .. x.
organic nature of reality. A realistic reaction
against idealism has arisen in England and in the United States
which regards science as the most certain body of knowledge
and looks upon the divorce of philosophy from science as dis-
astrous for philosophy.* In accordance with what it believes tc
be the spirit of the scientific method, this school rejects the ideal-
* See Marvin, A First Book in Metaphysics, chap. i.
REALISTIC REACTION AGAINST IDEALISM 581
Itic theory of knowledge that relations are internal or organic,
Ind conceives them as not affecting the nature of the things or
lerms related, thaf is, as external. A straight line is the same
Itraight line whether it is the radius of a circle, the side of a
Jquare, or the altitude of a triangle. The school, therefore,
Imphasizes analysis, — the very method of knowledge which Hegel
Ind his followers, no less than pragmatists and intuitionists,
pad repudiated as an inadequate instrument of truth, — and finds
[tself driven to pluralism rather than to monism. '* My philos-
phy is analytic," says Bertrand Russell, " because it holds that
t is necessary to seek the simple elements of which the com-
)lexes are composed, and that the complex things presuppose the
simple things whereas the simple things do not presuppose the
omplex things."* This philosophy is also realistic in the sense
)f considering existence as not depending upon knowledge.
' The entities under study in logic, mathematics, physics, and
nany other sciences are not mental in any proper or usual mean-
ng of the word mental." " The being and nature of these
mtities are in no sense conditioned by their being known, "f
To this school belong the Englishmen Bertrand Russell, G. E.
VToore, and S. Alexander; and the six American realists E. B.
Holt, W. T. Marvin, W. P. Montague, R. B. Perry, W. B. Pitkm,
and E. G. Spaulding, joint authors of The New Realism, 1912,
and " The Program and First Platform of Six Realists." E. B.
McGilvary sympathizes with the realistic movement.
F. J. E. Woodbridge directs his opposition mainly against
subjective idealism and the " traditional conception of con-
sciousness as an end- term in a relation." Consciousness, ac-
cording to him, is itself a relation, — a relation ff meaning, —
which is just as much a relation between things as are space and
time. Awareness is nothing but the manifold and irresistible
meaning-connections which the things in the conscious situation
have. The addition of knowledge to a reality hitherto without
it, is simply an addition to it and not a transformation of it.
It is not an external mind which knows reality by means of its
own ideas, but reality itself becomes known through its own
* Bulletin of the 8oci6t6 francaise, March, 1011. See also Marvin, op.
oit., chap. viii.
f Quoted from " The Program and First Platform of Six Realists," J. of
Phil, vol. VII, no. 16.
582 MODERN PHILOSOPHY
expanding and readjusting processes. The things are not ideas!
representing other things outside of consciousness, but real
things, which, by being in consciousness, have the capacity of
representing each other, of standing for or implying each other.
Russell, Foundations of Geometry, 1901, Principles of Mathematics,
1903, Philosophical Essays, 1910, The Problems of Philosophy, 1911;
G. E. Moore, Principia Ethica, 1903, Ethics, 1912; Marvin, A First
Book in Metaphysics, 1912; Perry, Approach to Philosophy, 1907, The
Moral Economy, 1909, Present Philosophical Tendencies, 1911. See
also the articles by all the realists in the philosophical journals.
75. RATIONALISM AND ITS OPPONENTS *
Peculiar to the anti-intellectualistic philosophies of the pres-
ent day is their antagonism to ultra-deterministic systems of any
kind, materialistic or idealistic. They all plead for
Merits of a m0re elastic universe, for a world in which human
lectualism" ^e can amoun^ to something more than a mere
puppet-show or a drama in which the characters
simply play the parts cast for them. They all repudiate a world
in which freedom, initiative, individual responsibility, novelty,
adventure, risk, chance, romance, — life as the individual un-
touched by philosophy seems to live it, — are lacking ; the interest
is shifted from the universal to the particular, from the machine-
like to the organic, from the intellect to the will, from logic to
intuition, from the theoretical to the practical, from God to man.
Recent Romanticism demands a world in which the human
being shall have a fighting chance, which, with effort, he can
fashion to his purposes and ideals, in which he can succeed and
fail. It wants the world back again as it revealed itself to
ordinary unreflecting common sense.
There is much that is good in these new tendencies. For ono
thing they have put the old classical systems on their mettle and
are making them justify their existence. Without antagonisms,
without battles to fight, philosophy easily falls to sleep, sink:!
into " the deep slumber of a decided opinion." Conflict is bet-
ter than self-satisfied assurance or indifference. " War is tht
Father of all and the King of all," in the domain of mind as
* The following pages have been taken from the author's article Roman
ticism and Rationalism, Phil. Rev., March. 1913.
RATIONALISM AND ITS OPPONENTS 583
rerywhere else, and there is nothing so dead as an accepted
:eed. " Both teachers and learners go to sleep at their post,"
[ill is right, " as soon as there is no enemy in the field." A
hilosophy that is done, is a philosophy that is done for.
In addition to the important service which the new thinkers
ave rendered in helping to rejuvenate philosophy, they have
Iso aided in focusing attention upon points that are apt to be
)st sight of. They have again pushed to the front the question
f the relation of natural science and philosophy, the whole
nowledge-problem, and have emphasized the significance of
uman values in the scheme of things: questions which call for
ver new answers with the progress of human inquiry. They
lave warned us against mistaking the universal framework of
•eality for reality itself, and have insisted on our keeping close to
ioncrete experience. They protest against a one-sided meta-
Dhysic, a metaphysic that fails to do justice to all the varied
xperiences of mankind and interprets the world in terms of
mere aspects of experience, conceiving it as a physical, logical, or
eleological machine. They refuse to accept as complete the ac-
jount of reality written by the outward-looking intellect and
o picture it in analogy with the knowing human mind. They
accentuate the dynamic character of reality, the Heraclitean
world-view as against the static Absolute of the Eleatics, and
conceive being in analogy with the human will.
All these points and many others in the writings of the newest
reformers of philosophy are well taken and have been emphasized
again and again in the history of speculation. The
motives behind their wholesale distrust of the in-
tellect are fear of depreciation of standard moral
and religious values, a preconceived metaphysic, and a somew
narrow conception of intelligence. It should not be forgotten,
however that distrust of reason based on cravings of
will is not necessarily a bona fide distrust. What satisfies
the will to believe may not satisfy the will to underst
our world of experience. The will to believe must
be rendered intelligible; reasons must be given for ac<
its demands, and these reasons must satisfy the will to
It is necessary to give reasons for taking the side of
to believe, that is, to appeal to the intelligence, the same inte
584, MODERN PHILOSOPHY
gence that has helped to free us from the slavery of nature an<|
the slavery of our own superstitions. Such an appeal is mad<i
by every anti-intellectualist, yes, by every pragmatist who ask:
us to accept his theory because it is rational, because it accounts
for the facts as he sees the facts, because it is true, — true in th(
old sense of the word. And reasons are always given, even by
faith-philosophers; they construct a world for us in which the
will to believe will not constitute an irrational element. Kanli
accepted the categorical imperative and its implications because1
he believed in a rational universe and because a universe did
not seem intelligible to him in which human reason could demand
an irrational thing, a meaningless law.
It would, however, be a valid objection against the competence
of the intellect if it could be shown that it falsifies reality, that it
compels us to construct a world-view that simply is
Intelligence not true. Such an objection presupposes the posses-
Reality s*on °^ a metaphysic or other sources of knowledge
which we are able to oppose to the conclusions of
reason as something more real and authoritative. If the in-
telligence saddles us with a block-universe and there is no block-
universe, intelligence ought to be drummed out of camp. But the
question quite naturally arises: Does the human understanding
really squeeze all life out of existence and leave us nothing but
a bony skeleton? Does rational thought demand an absolutely
closed system, one in which nothing exists that was not there
before, nothing that cannot be deduced in principle, without a
remainder, from preexistent elements? Does it follow from
the very nature of reason that what now is always has been
and always will be, that there is nothing new under the SUE,
that the new is nothing but a rearrangement of the old ? If we
define reality, in the first place, as rigid, inert blocks of matte r
that can be pushed and pulled and nothing else, it follows that
nothing can come out of it that was not there before. If w?
conceive reality as mind, and mind as a thing, as something that
can do nothing unless pushed by something else, or as a static
universal purpose, then, again, the world is a closed system :
nothing can come into it that was not already there before. Bu;
we are not compelled to define reality in either way, and human
intelligence is not by nature forced to conceive it so; it is com-
RATIONALISM AND ITS OPPONENTS 585
elled only to accept the consequences of such a definition if
ich a definition be accepted. Moreover, this is not the view of
sality which the great historical systems have given us; to
mstrue them in this sense is to misconstrue them. It is true,
le human mind has its ways of thinking; our very problems
3llow from the nature of our thought and certain results follow.
here is not a single faith-philospher, intuitionist, or pragmatist
ho does not think in these general human ways, who does not
ry hard to be consistent, who does not look out for similarities
ad differences in his experiences, who does not single out and
old fast certain phases of them, and who does not relate them
L definite ways. The mind has its ways, and some of these
ays, if left to themselves, tend to stretch reality upon a static
rocrustean frame to make it fit ; there is always danger of one-
dedness in intelligence, that, instinct-like, it will spin the same
Id web around everything it meets, that it will apply everywhere
le methods which Kant, Pichte, Schelling, and Bergson allow it
o use only in the dead world, that it will try to handle life and
onsciousness as it would handle its corpses. There is this danger,
nd the thinker who deals largely in abstract formulas often
uccumbs to it. But it is just the business of philosophy to
void this very danger, to apply the methods intelligibly; the
ure for intelligence is more intelligence.
There is nothing whatever in the nature of the human mind to
orce it to reduce all reality to dead blocks that can be counted,
rranged in order, and measured. There is nothing to hinder
t from doing justice to the dynamic, living, flowing, galloping
>hase of experience, to that phase about which the new philos-
phers are so much concerned. Rationalism is not fatally bound
to the mathematical-physical method of procedure and static
absolutes, nor prevented by any presuppositions from reaching
the conception of a dynamic and developing universe. II
assumed such a world and made reason move to keep step with it ;
or, rather, he could not hinder reason from keeping step, for,
in his opinion, rational thought is just such a dynamic process
as the world. No Romanticist can be more pronounced in his
distrust of mere intelligence than he was of the Verstand, and
more insistent on avoiding its pitfalls. But he was not, on that
account, ready to throw thinking overboard and to take on faith
586 MODERN PHILOSOPHY
and intuition as pilots; reason itself provided the remedy fo
the short-sightedness of the discursive understanding, as he con
ceived it.
But whether or not Hegel succeeded in his attempt to repro
duce in thought the dynamic cosmic process, human reason doe
not demand a static world for its satisfaction
Pin h ^or must we> ^ be rational, conceive reality, i
analogy with the mind of the logician, as a fleshlesa,
and bloodless skeleton of categories, or reduce it to a passionless
contemplative God. Philosophy has as its aim the interpreta-
tion of experience as it finds it; it seeks to understand it, toj
render it intelligible, to put certain questions to the given
and to answer them. It does not seek to spin reality out of
a priori truths, to construct a conceptual system independently
of experience, to shut its eyes and stop up its ears and just think
the world out in the dark, as it were. It proposes to look experi-
ence squarely in the face, to see things as they are and then to
understand them in the only sense in which human beings can
understand them, that is, in their manifold relations to one an-
other. It will not reject any methods or sources of experiencing
that promise to throw light on its business, be they intellectual,
artistic, or religious intuitions ; but it will not accept any one of
them without criticism, any more than it will accept ordinary
sense-experience offhand.
And, so far as can be seen, no new school of philosophy
attempts to force its intuitions or wills to believe upon us without
giving reasons for our accepting these methods of knowledge
rather than others : the only question is whether or not the rea-
sons are adequate. There is always some more or less rations!
theory behind, the view that pure experience, or immediate es>
perience, or intellectual intuition, or sympathetic artistic feeling,
or moral or religious faith, gives us the clearest and truest insight
into reality. Blind faith in witches and demons is not accepted
on its own testimony by those in whom the will to know is strong,
and no alleged experience is going to pass unchallenged that
cannot give an account of itself.
The inner experiences emphasized and variously named by
Fichte, Schelling, Bergson, and countless others, the inner psychij
life of man himself, cannot be cast aside or reduced to mere ap-
RATIONALISM AND ITS OPPONENTS 587
learance unless there is ample cognitive warrant for so doing.
•he protests of the new movements against the mechanization of
Ife and mind may be justified, but they are not
totests against intelligence and rationalism ; ra- Univer^ "
lonalism itself has protested against a static and
mechanical view in the persons of a long line of illustrious think-
Irs ever since the days of Plato. And the protests of the re-
lormers against a spiritual block-universe, against the atomic
lonception of mental life or the idea of a teleological despotism
tiled by an arch-purpose, may be justified, but it is not a valid
Irotest against rationalism, which is in no wise compelled to look
It mental life in such a wooden way. Rationalism is committed
jfo nothing but the business of understanding experience, of put-
ling questions to it— not such as any fool may ask but only such
Its a wise man can answer.
I It is true, reason can operate only in a rational world, 11
Irorld in which there is likeness besides difference, unity besides
lurality, permanence besides change. It does not demand
lead, static world for its workshop; it is not baffled by life and
^hancre and evolution, even by creative evolution and novel
provided creation and novelty are not absolutely capnc
in a topsy-turvy world reason would grow dizzy and shut
eyes With absolute caprice, with novelty that is utter!
out rhyme or reason, that appears and disappears at
and is absolutely unrelated to anything else, neither mt<
nor intuition can do anything whatsoever There ,s no *
in novelty except in relation with the old: where t
oldness there can be no newness. The entrance of no,
not, however, put a quietus on rational inquiry.
of life and the phenomena of consciousness may I
in comparison with mechanical occurrence, and rat,
have to admit their uniqueness if it cannot redt «o a
ave
single principle. It is not the business of human reason to feUQ
688 MODERN PHILOSOPHY
gence and giving another name to the function or function!
through which we reach a different conception. We may dis'
tinguish, if we will, between intelligence and intui1
Intellect tion, Verstand and Vernunft, regarding thf
Intuition former as the method of scientific study, the
latter as the source of metaphysical knowledge
of a higher order. But the distinction would be an arti-
ficial one, the very kind of distinction against which Romanti-
cists inveigh as cutting up what cannot be cut up. There
can be no intuition that is absolutely devoid of intelligence, no
philosophy, no knowledge, where intellect is dumb. Radical
empiricism, naive realism, and intuitionism, all represent an ef-
fort to get directly at the heart of things, all are expressions of
an intense longing for reality, symptoms of metaphysical home-
sickness. Rationalism can accept any one or all of these heroic
attempts at taking reality by storm, — if they can pass muster.
But can any experience, pure, immediate, or intuitive, be made
the basis of philosophical truth without being inspected by the
same intelligence that operates in ordinary life ; can this intelli-
gence be silenced, can it lose itself in mere unintelligent mystical
gazing, and if it can, of what use will it ever be to science or
philosophy ? No theory that endeavors, as every theory must, to
validate its methods and sources of knowledge, can or does refuse
to reflect upon its immediate experiences, to analyze them for
us, to tell us how they are constituted, and to employ categories
in doing all this. The pure experience as described by the new
philosophers is not a pure experience at all, but the product of
analysis and reflection, the result of the very conceptual opera,-
tions which they condemn. The voice is Heraclitus's voice, but
the hand is the hand of Parmenides.
If, however, it is insisted that the intellect reveals to us onlv
an external world, physical objects in causaf-mechanical relatior,
then it is true that it does not tell us the whole story. And if th 3
intellect paralyzes everything it lays its eyes on, stops motion,
kills life, butchers reality, then, indeed, scientific thinking in
inadequate and there is need of a special method or the abandon -
ment of philosophy. The intuitionists are right in throwing*
logic and concepts cverboard, or at least in limiting their depre-
dations to the field of things already dead, if conceptual though ;
RATIONALISM AND ITS OPPONENTS 589
guilty of playing such havoc. They are right in holding that
nse- perception is not the sole source and sense-perceived things
Dt the sole objects of knowledge. A being capable only of
oking outward would miss a body of experiences which mere
itward-gazing intelligence can never reach. Living conscious-
3ss is an event in the world which living consciousness alone can
aow. If there can be science only where there are static abso-
ites, then every attempt to treat life and mind scientifically
ust be a falsification of them, and science had better let them
one. But it is not necessary to take such a one-sided view of
itelligence and knowledge. Science is not limited to outward
srception. Intelligence is not limited to the function of chop-
ng things up and counting, measuring, and arranging the bits;
nthesis is as much its function as analysis. The two functions
nply each other, one is impossible without the other ; how could
lere be counting, measuring, and arranging without either!
Our conclusion then would be this: If anyone finds grounds
>r supposing that the object of rationalism is to deduce a world
om a priori principles, to construct an absolute Conclllsion
Astern independently of experience, his hostility to
is fully justified. The aim of all thinking is to interpret ex-
erience as we find it, not to spin it out of an a priori principle.
Ve are in search of theories, and, if the thing is possible, of a
niversal theory that will help us to understand what is ; and
uch theories must be laid on the foundations of experience
hey cannot hang in mid-air. And though the mind longs for
certainty and has for its ideal a system of interrelated judgments,
present-day rationalism cannot and does not lay claim to the pa
session of complete truth. Again, human thinking has il
or habits, and rationalism is right in recognizing such habi
categories of thought. But they are not mere arbitrary 1
and they do not falsify the real. It is natural to suppa
mind that has grown up in the world should have caugl
thing of its spirit ; it is hard to see how a mind could \
habits in a world that has no habits, or how a imn.l
an environment that knows no law and y
to law. If to categorize the world is to falsify i
fronted with the double miracle of a sane mind
bedlam and remaining sane in bedlam.
590 MODERN PHILOSOPHY
Moreover, if rationalism is taken to mean the degradation of
the seeming diversity of experience to mere illusion, and thej
absolute domination of concrete particulars by an abstraction^
call it matter, energy, spirit, or God, the protests of pluralismj
are just. Unity without plurality is death, as plurality without
unity is chaos. Indeed, thinking itself would be as absolutely"
dumb in the presence of absolute monotony as in the presence]
of absolute chaos. And so would sense-perception and feeling
and intuition. Rationalism does not compel us to reduce all
processes to a single principle; a world of differences, opposi-i
tions, changes is not an irrational world. It is true that knowl-i
edge would be impossible in a world in which there are ncj
unities and uniformities, but it is just as true that it would be
impossible in a world in which there is neither difference non
change. Rationalism does not prescribe the goal and path of!
science or philosophy a priori; it does not fasten the mind in the
strait-jacket of mathematical-physical method; it does not com-
pel us to reduce biology, psychology, and history to physics;!
it does not force us to reduce everything to static absolutes
and block-universes. It leaves ample room for adventure and;
change; it takes experience as it comes and finds rhyme and!
reason in it. Even if nature and her laws were conceived as
constantly changing, rationalism would not give up the ghost
so long as there remained the possibility of discovering a law
of change in the changing laws. Only in case there were na
law of change, if nature were utterly lawless, would rationalism
fail. But in that case, all the other philosophies, — pragmatism,
intuitionism, and the rest, — would go down with the wreck, fori
every one of them is an attempt to understand experience, anl!
none of them could thrive in an irrational world. And in such a
world as that nothing would work.
The fundamental postulate of rationalism is that experience
is somehow intelligible, that all genuine problems are somehow
and sometime soluble ; if reason can ask them intelligibly, reaso i
can answer. But the demand for rationality does not neces-
sarily preclude the possibility of freedom, responsibility, change >,
novelty, evolution, and play into the hands of absolute deter-
minism. It is true, if reality is broken up into a physical series
of causes and effects or into a mental series of the same character,
RATIONALISM AND ITS OPPONENTS 591
ien the concrete particular, thing or person, is caught in the
utches of circumstance, be they mechanical or teleological.
Tiether he is coerced by the physical machinery or by a uni-
rersal purpose, man is equally a slave. But why should we
rterpret our categories of cause, purpose, and evolution in
ich a wooden way and insist on seeing everything, life and
insciousness included, in the form of static absolutes f To
mceive them so is to take a decidedly narrow and unhistorical
iew of reason and intelligence and to give an easy victory to
Lechanism. The way of escape from the block-universe is not
rough Romanticism, but through a broad-minded rationalistic
ihilosophy.
INDEX
(The asterisk indicates the important places in which phllowpberi »r«
reated. For special phases of their doctrines, see the Table of
\belard, 172* ff., 225.
Absolute, 28, 127, 164 f., 239,
295 ff., 411 f., 451 ff., 455, 463,
466, 470 f., 475 f., 500, 515 f.,
538 f., 557 ff., 566 ff., 569, 578.
Bee also Pantheism, Substance,
Theism.
Absolutism, political, 159, 250, 271,
327.
Abstract ideas, 336 f., 343. See also
Ideas, Nominalism, and Uni-
versals.
Abubacer, 186.
Academic skepticism, 75, 116 f.
Academy, 59, 74 f., 116 f.
Actual and potential, 83, 88, 193 f.,
370, 376, 465 ff.
Actus purus, 85, 370, 500.
Adelard of Bath, 174, 204.
Adickes, E., 493.
^Egidius of Colonna, 203.
jEgidius of Lessines, 203.
^Eneas of Gaza, 145.
^schylus, 41.
Esthetics. See Art.
Agnosticism, 345.
Agricola, R., 232.
Agrippa of Nettesheim, 234.
d'Ailly, Pierre, 217, 218.
Alo&nffis, 60.
Alanus ab Insulis, 175.
l^rt thereat, 162, 189, 1«OM
204.
Albert of Saxony, 217.
Albigenses, 224.
Alcseus, 9.
Alchemy, 234, 235.
Alcibiades, 51.
Alcuin, 158.
d'Alembert, J., 384.
Alexander of Aphrodisias, 180, 181,
231, 232.
Alexander the Great, 76, 95, 11«,
122.
Alexander of Hales, 171, 189* f.
Alexander, S., 581.
Alexandria, 121.
Alexandrian-Roman School, 126 ff.
Alexinus, 58.
Alfarabi, 184.
Algazel, 185.
Alkindi, 184.
Allegorical interpretation, H4,
122 f., 137, 139.
Althusius, J., 243, 245.
Altruism, 509, 546 f. 8e€ Social
Feeling.
Alvarus Pelagius, 223.
Amalric (Amaury), 178.
Amalricians, 178.
Ambrose, 147, 152.
Ammonius Saccas, 126.
Amor Dei, 304.
Anabaptists, 248.
Analysis, 581, 589.
Analytic judgments, 345, 353. 3
Anamnesis, 67.
Anaxagoras, 16, 81, 33» ff., 43, 64.
Anaximander, 17* f.
Anaximine«, 18* f.
Ancilla theologia, 136.
Andronicus of Rhodes 77, M.
Angelology, 121, 124.
Animal spirit*. 261, 266, •».
Aruckauung, 398 ff.
Anselm, 162, lW»ff,225.
Anthropomorphism, 87, *
Antinomies 410 ff.
Antlochu. IV, 122.
AntiochuB of A^akm, 117, 11^
593
594
INDEX
Antipater of Tarsus, 104.
Anti-Rationalism, 178 ff., 361,
388 ff., 393, 408 ff., 428 ff., 448 f.,
562 ff. See also Faith, Intuition-
ism, Mysticism, Pragmatism, and
Skepticism.
Antonius Andrese, 214.
Apathy, 113.
Apollonius of Perga, 122 n.
Apollonius of Rhodes, 122 n.
Apollonius of Tyana, 126.
Apologists, 135, 140* ff.
A posteriori knowledge, 397, 400.
See also A priori Knowledge.
Appearances, 22 f., 30, 39, 63 f., 73,
266 ff., 268, 343, 367, 480 ff., 556,
574 f. See also Primary and Sec-
ondary Qualities, Subjective Ideal-
ism, Things-in-themselves.
Apperception, 369.
Appetition, 304, 369, 375, 380, 512.
A priori knowledge, 60, 62, 80 f.,
148, 162 f., 193, 253, 274 ff., 277 f.,
286, 349, 362 ff., 376 f., 394, 397 ff.,
472, 478 f., 513 ff., 524 f., 536,
564, 575, 586, 589; criticism of,
105 ff., 309, 349 ff., 524 f., 564 f.,
575; defense of, 376 ff.
A priori method, 274 ff., 292 ff., 453,
455 ff. See also Deduction, Tran-
scendental Method.
Apuleius, 126, 163.
Aquinas, Thomas, 162, 170, 189,
191 *ff., 511; Duns Scotus and,
226.
Arabians, philosophy of, 181* ff.
Arcesilaus, 75, 117*f.
Archilochus, 9.
Archytas, 20.
Aretinus, Leonardus, 229.
Arianism, 144.
Aristarchus, 22.
Aristippus, 58.
Aristobulus, 122.
Aristophanes, 43, 44.
Aristotelianism, 229, 231 f.; opposi-
tion to, 232 f., 247, 248.
Aristotelian realism, 162 f., 167.
Aristotle, 12, 59, 75* ff., 94, 123,
163, 269, 331, 371, 488; in Ara-
bian philosophy, 180 ff.; in Chris-
tian theology, 188f, 225 f.; ii
medieval philosophy, 180 f., 188 ff.j
in the Renaissance, 231 f., 232 f.j
works of, in Middle Ages, 163,
174, 180 f.
Aristoxenus, 94.
Arnauld, A., 273, 288.
Arnold, E., 493.
Arnold of Brescia, 223.
Arius, 144.
Art, 72, 229, 455, 476, 484 f.
Artistic intuition, 457.
Arystillus, 122 n.
Asceticism, 58, 68, 69, 70 f., 95,
121, 125, 131, 138, 142, 146,
151 ff., 201, 249, 489 f., 575, 576 f,
Asharites, 183.
Association of ideas, 88, 331 f.,
348 f., 482 ff., 518 ff., 528 f., 533.
Astrology, 206, 233 f., 235, 263.
Astronomy, 17, 21 f., 86 f., 235, 237.
Ataraxia, 118.
Athanasius, 144.
Atheism, 335, 342, 563.
Athenagoras, 140.
Atom, 15 f., 37 ff., 99 ff., 188 f., 280,
370.
Atomism, 15 f., 31, 36* ff., 86, 99 ff.,
237, 370.
Atticus, 103.
Attraction, 32, 344.
Attribute, 267, 280, 293, 296, 311,
316 f., 318 f., 365, 367; infinite,
296 f.
Aufkldrung, 381, 385 f. See En-
lightenment.
Augustine, 147* ff., 225, 246 ff.
Augustinianism, 158, 169, 176, 189,
203 f., 207 ff., 289, 291.
Augusti nus Triumphus, 223.
Authority, 148, 158 ff., 169, 227 fr.,
250. See also Faith.
Autonomy, 424.
Avempace, 186.
Avenarius, R., 566.
Avendeath, J., 180 n.
Averroes, 186* ff., 281.
Averroists, 232, 294.
Avicebron, 188.
Avicenna, 184.
Ayala, 244.
INDEX
aeon, F., 251, 254, 255* ff., 285,
307, 332, 392.
aeon, R., 190, 204, 205* f., 208,
362.
ikewell, C. M., 562.
afiez, 203.
arclay, W., 325 n.
arnabas, Epistle of, 138.
asedow, J. B., 390. ^
asil the Great, 145.
auer, B., 477.
aumgarten, A., 381, 388.
awden, H., 574.
ayle, P., 246, 254, 291* f., 384,
392.
eattie, J., 364.
eck, J. S., 428.
eda Venerabilis, 157.
ekker, B., 288.
lellarmin, 244.
\ellwm, omnium contra omnes, 269.
teneke, F. H., 485*, 492.
Jentham, J., 517 f., 5321
Jerengar of Tours, 167.
Berkeley, G., 254, 329, 335* ff., 345,
386, 392, 494.
ergson, H., 512, 577* ff., 585, 586.
Jernard of Chartre8, 174, 225.
Jernard of Ciairvaux, 176.
Jernard of Tours, 174.
Jerzelius, J. J., 388.
Jessarion, 230.
Jible, 228 246.
Jichat, M., 388.
Jiel, G., 217.
Jilfinger, G. B., 381.
iologV, 87, 371, 387 f, 420 f., 453,
486 f., 495 f., 508, 542 f.
Black arts, 235.
blessedness, 151 f., 198.
Block-universe, 566, 569 f., 587.
Blondel, G., 574.
Boccaccio, 229.
Bodin, J., 243.
Body and Mind. Bet Mind and
Body.
Boehme, J-, 248* f., 450
Boethius, 132, 157, 163, 167, 187.
Bogomils, 224.
Bonaventura, 177, 203* f.
de Bonnet, C., 331, 388.
Boodin, J. E., 574.
Bordaa-Demoulin, J., 611.
Bosanquet, B., 549.
Boutroux, E., 512.
Bowne, B. P., 562.
Boyle, R., 237, 238.
Bradley, F. H., 549, 555* ff., 563,
568.
Bradwardine, Thomas, 203.
Brandis, C. A., 477.
Brotherhood, 115.
Brothers of Common Life, 218.
Brothers of Sincerity, 183.
Brown, T., 364.
Browne, P., 329, 333.
Bruno, G., 23T f •, 294.
Biichner, L., 492.
Buckle, T., 532 n.
Buffon, G., 387 f.
Buridan, 217.
Burleigh, Walter, 214.
Butler, J., 330, 333* f., 534.
Cabala, 233, 256, 294.
Cabanis, P., 387, 504.
Csesalpinus, 232.
Caird, E., 549.
Caird, J., 549.
Calkins, M. W., 562.
Callicles, 46 f.
Callimachus, 122.
Calvin, J., 247.
Cambridge School, 362, 513.
Campanella, T., 239 f.
Canonic, 98.
Capella, Martianus, 157, 1*3, 167.
Capreolus, J., 203.
Garden, 235.
Carlyle, T., 549.
Carneades, 75, 117*1
Cartesian School, 21
Cmwiodorut, 157, 163.
Catechetical School, 140
Categorical imperative, 4
Categories 62, 81 f., til. WO. JTJ
402ff,437.4S4f..4W.4S3f.,4aj,
496, 4W, 513 f.. 524 f.,
569, 575, 589 ff.
596
INDEX
296, 298 f., 312, 344 f., 348 ff.,
372, 379, 403, 405, 412 ff., 497,
515, 521 ff., 539 f.
Celsus, 126.
Cerinthus, 139.
Chalcedon, Synod of, 145.
Chalcidius, 167.
Chalybaeus, H. M., 477.
Chance, 511 f.
Change, 15, 16, 17, 18, 26 ff., 30 ff.,
82 f., 86, 481 f., 577 ff.
Charlemagne, 157.
Charron, P., 246.
Chartres, School of, 174 f.
Chemistry, 235, 237.
Christian culture and barbarism,
155 ff.
Christian ethics, 133 f., 142, 151 ff.,
576; Greek ethics and, 198 ff.;
Kant and, 426.
Christian philosophy, 133 ff.
Christian Platonism, 362. See also
Augustinianism.
Christian schools, 157 f.
Christian theology, development of,
137 ff.
Christianity, 121, 131, 132; begin-
nings of, 133ff.; classical culture
and, 134 f.; Greek philosophy and,
135 ff.; and life, 152 f.
Christological problem, 145.
Chrysippus, 104, 113.
Chrysoloras, Manuel, 229.
Chubb, T., 330.
Church and State, 159, 202 f., 222 f.,
241. See also Politics.
Cicero, 120.
City of God, 153.
Clarke, S., 332, 362*.
Classical culture, 228 ff.; Christian-
ity and, 134 f.
Classification, 61; of sciences, 260,
265, 274, 508 f.
Clauberg, J., 288.
Claudianus Mamertus, 163.
Cleanthes, 104.
Clement of Alexandria, 140.
Clement, Epistle of, 138.
Clifford, W., 566.
Clitomachus, 117.
Cogito, ergo sum, 276.
Cohen, H., 493.
Coincidence of opposites, 231. See
Opposites, Union of.
Coleridge, S. T., 549.
Collins, A., 330.
Columbus, 205.
Common sense, 88.
Common sense, philosophy of, 118,
119f., 363* f., 371, 373, 379 ff.,
504.
Communism, 19, 72.
Comte, A., 505* ff., 517, 535.
Concepts. See Ideas, Nominalism,
Realism, and Universals.
Conceptualism, 173.
Conceptual thought. See Discursive
Thought.
Concomitance, 372.
Concrete universal, 467 ff.
Condillac, E., 329, 331*, 503 f.
Conditioned, law of, 514 f.
Condorcet, M., 331, 388.
Conscience, 46 f., 174, 200, 228, 322,
332 ff., 455 ff.
Conservation of energy, 367, 492,
540; of motion, 281, 367, 540 f.
Constitutive use of reason, 417 f.
Contemptus mundi, 151.
Continuity, principle of, 367, 370,
371, 373, 417 f., 511.
Contract theory, 103, 243 f., 270,
306, 326.
Contradiction, 23 f., 28, 29, 249,
465 ff., 479 ff., 556. See also Op-
posites, Union of.
Conybeare, J., 330.
Copernican theory, 237.
Copernicus, N., 235, 237, 264.
Cordemoy, G., 228.
Corinthus, 104.
Cornutus, 120.
Corpuscles, 280, 321, 341.
Cosmogony, 9 ff., 66 f.
Cosmological argument, 149 f ,
169 f., 195, 211, 262, 267, 296,
322, 358, 373; criticism of, 415.
Cosmology, 64 ff., 85 ff., 109 ff,
410 ff.
Cosmopolitanism, 114.
Cournot, A., 511 f.
Cousin, V., 504, 511.
INDEX
597
Crates, 75, 104.
Creatio continua, 149.
Creation, 124, 127, 128, 141 f., 149,
164, 196.
Creationism, 151.
Creative evolution, 451 ff., 579, 587.
Creative reason, 88 ff., 185, 198. See
also Logos.
Creed, 135f.; Nioene, 144 f.
Creighton, J. E., 562.
Cremonini, 232.
Creskas, 294 n.
Critical idealism, 525.
Critical philosophy, 391 ff.; revival
of, 493 f. See Knowledge, Theory
of.
Critical realism, 499.
Cudworth, R., 332, 362*.
Culture, Christianity and, 134 f.,
157 f., 179 f.
Cumberland, R., 332.
Cusa, Nicolas of, 230* f., 239.
Cynics, 58, 95, 104.
Cyprian, 140.
Cyrenaics, 58, 95, 97.
Czolbe, H., 492.
Damascius, 132.
Dante, 203, 223, 229.
Dark Ages, 155ff.
Darwin, C., 371, 388, 492, 543.
Darwin, E., 331, 385.
Darwinian theory, 237, 54£ f.
David of Dinant, 178, 225.
Davy, H., 388.
Deduction, 54 f., 61 f., 80 f., 107,
117 f., 161, 208 f., 211, 238,
255 ff., 265, 275 f., 292 ff., 314 f.,
324, 349, 374, 378 f., 479 f., 525,
528 ff., 635 f., 542. See also Syl-
logism, and Transcendental
Method.
Definition, 53 f.
De generibus et speciebus, 171 f.
Deism, 245, 330* f., 381, 383 f., 385.
Demiurge, 66, 74, 75, 137, 138.
Democracy, 8, 159, 223, 250, 327 ff.,
329, 383 f., 388 ff., 504 ff., 610,
533 f.
Democritus, 36* ff., 85, 96, 116, 237,
260, 370.
Demonology, /31.
Demonstrative knowledge, 254. Bee
also Deduction.
Descartes, R., 254, 264, 266, 272* ff.,
307, 345, 362, 365, 369, 370, 386,
392; Leibniz and, 366; Spinoza
and, 292 f., 294.
Description, 564 ff.
Design, argument from. See Tele-
©logical Argument, and Teleology.
Destutt de Tracy, A., 387.
Determinism, 110, 113, 154 f., 198,
268 f., 295, 303, 325, 356 f., 374,
375, 384, 393, 411, 412 ff., 420,
444 f., 527 f., 552 f., 562, 567. See
also Free Will, and Original Sin.
Development, 82 ff., 87, 380. Bee
also Evolution.
Dewey, J., 555, 571*ff.
Dialectical method, 467 ff.
Dialectical process, 453, 465 f.
Dialectics, 26, 29 f., 43, 45, 52 ff.,
57, 60 ff., 117, 409 ff., 460. See
also Logic.
Dialogues of Plato, 59.
Dianoetical virtues, 90.
Dicaearchus, 94.
Diderot, D., 387 f., 506.
Dietrich of Freiberg, 205.
Digby, E., 256.
Dilthey, W., 501 f.
Diodorus, 58.
Diogenes of Apollonia, 18.
Diogenes of Babylon, 104.
Dionysius, 59.
Dionysius the Areopagite, 145, 163,
164, 166, 178.
Discontinuity, 511.
Discursive thought, 60 ff., 84, 128 f.,
165, 231, 393, 433, 437 ff., 456 f..
459 f., 467 f ., 556, 663 ff., 677 ff.,
683 ff.
Dogma, 135 f.
Dogmatism, 12, 48, «87, 1ft, 3M.
398, 439.
Dominic of Flandera, SOS.
Dominicans, 179, 207.
Dorner, A., 4M.
Doxa, 60.
Dualism, 13. 16, 66, 66, 76 f.. 121 ff..
123 f., 146, 151, 231, 281 ff., 287,
598
INDEX
293, 318 ff., 342 f., 370, 380, 460,
578 f.
A(wa/Mf, 76, 83.
Duns Scotus, John, 162, 207* ff.,
278; Aquinas and, 226.
Durand, William, 208, 215.
Duree, 578.
Durkheim, E., 511.
Dynamism, 22 ff., 76, 82 f., 86, 367,
433 f., 442 ff., 448 f., 450 ff., 461,
462 ff., 496 f., 539 ff., 577 ff., 583,
585 f.
Eckhart, 218* ff., 249.
Economy, law of, 409, 565.
Eclecticism, 119ff., 125, 381.
Ecphantus, 22.
Ecstasy, 125, 131, 166, 177, 200 f.,
221.
Education, 44 f., 72 f., 157, 159, 240,
328 f., 390, 484.
Ego, 331, 355, 407 f., 433 ff., 482 f.,
496, 565; absolute, 441 ff., 450 f.;
absolute, and individual, 442 ff.,
525 f. See also Soul-Substance.
Egoism, 91, 101 ff., 269 ff., 300 f.,
304 ff., 324, 332, 489 f., 546 ff.
See also Individualism, and So-
ciety.
Einhard, 158.
Elan vital, 578.
Elean school, 58, 116.
Eleatic school, 22 f ., 26* ff.
Elements, 14 ff., 16, 17, 18, 19 ff.,
22, 30 ff., 86, 109 f., 234.
Emanation, theory of, 13, 126 ff.,
141 ff., 181 ff.
Emotions, 284 ff., 303 f., 482 f. See
also Passions.
Empedocles, 15, 31, 31* ff., 64.
Empiricism, 98 ff., 106 f., 216 f.,
218 ff., 252 ff., 255 ff., 307 ff.,
345 ff., 516 ff., 535 ff., 573; cri-
tique of, 25, 29, 60 ff., 362 ff., 376,
513 ff., 568 f.; rationalism and,
252 ff., 263, 264, 335 ff., 345 ff.,
391 ff., 516 ff., 551, 568 f.; recon-
ciliation of empiricism and ra-
tionalism, 81, 378 ff., 394 f., 535 f.
Encyclopedia of the Sciences, 183.
Encyclopedias, 181.
Encyclopedists, 331, 503.
'Evtpyeia, 83.
Energy, conservation of, 367, 492,
540.
Engel, J. J., 381.
English ethics, 332 ff., 385.
Enlightenment, Greek, 40 ff. ; me- 1
dieval, 227 ff. ; modern, 329, 365,
380 ff.
'EvreAe^em, 83.
Entelechy, 83, 197, 370.
Epictetus, 104.
Epicureanism, 13, 58, 94* ff., 232.
Epicurus, 13, 97* ff., 116, 238.
Epigenesis, 371.
Epiphenomenalism, 268, 562, 571.
'ETriarqw, 61, 78, 107.
Epistemology. See Knowledge, The-
ory of.
Equality, 93, 115, 250, 326, 383,
388 f., 576. See also Democracy,
and Politics.
Eratosthenes, 122.
Erdmann, B., 493.
Erdmann, J. E., 296, 477.
Eric of Auxerre, 167.
Erigena, John Scotus, 158, 164* ff.,
224.
Eristic, 58.
Eros, 61, 68 f.
Error, 279, 302 f., 558.
Ethical idealism, 64, 434 f., 441,
496 f., 500 ff.
Ethical skepticism, 46 ff.
Ethics, 9f., 11, 12 f., 19, 21, 25 f.,
40, 42 ff., 45, 46 f., 49, 55, 56 ff.,
60, 69 ff., 89 ff., 94 ff., 101 ff.,
lllff., 115 f., 133 f., 151 ff.,
173 f., 198 ff., 212 ff., 261, 269 ff.,
274, 285, 305 ff., 322 ff., 332 ff.,
374 ff., 421 ff., 445 ff., 474 ff., 484,
488 ff., 507 ff., 532 ff., 545 ff.,
553 ff., 570, 571 f., 576 f.
Ethology, 529.
Eubulides, 58.
Eucken, R., 502* f., 563.
Euclid, 122.
Euclides, 57.
Eudaemonia, 89.
Eudemus, 94.
Eudoxus, 75.
INDEX
399
Eugenics, 72.
Euler, L., 388.
Euripides, 41, 43.
Euthydemus, 46.
Evangelical counsels, 201.
Evil, 66, llOf., 124, 125, 129, 138,
150, 165 f., 201 f., 279, 374.
Evolution, 18, 32 f., 370, 371, 380,
387 f., 428, 431, 433, 448 f., 451 ff.,
462 ff., 469 ff., 496, 500, 541 f., 547,
57 Iff., 577 ff.
Evolutionary logic, 572 ff.
Evolutionism, 386, 535 ff., 551 f.
Experiment, 256.
External relations, 481, 580 f.
External world, 279 f ., 335 ff ., 354 f.,
440 f., 525 f., 544 f.
Faculty-psychology, 482 f.
Faith, knowledge and, 138, 140,
148 f., 160 f., 163, 164, 169, 173,
191 f., 203 f., 208 f., 214 ff., 216,
218, 221 f., 226 f., 227, 262, 278,
318, 379, 381 f., 393, 428 ff., 459 f.,
563, 567, 570, 571 ff., 583 ff.
Faith-philosophy, 253, 254, 381 f.,
393, 428 ff. See Mysticism.
Fall of man, 68, 125, 128, 130, 139,
140, 143, 146 f., 153 ff., 165 f.,
202.
Fathers, 135, 137* ff., 160.
Faust, 234.
Feclmer, Th., 494, 498*.
Ferguson, A., 329, 333, 381.
Feuerbach, L., 477.
Fichte, J. G., 427, 431* ff., 453,
454 f., 458 f., 460, 461, 468, 478,
485, 491, 495, 500 ff., 656, 563,
685, 586.
Fichte, J. H., 477.
Ficinus, Marsilius, 230.
Fidanza. See Bonaventura.
Filmer, R., 325.
Final causes. See Teleology.
First mover, 85, 289.
First philosophy, 78 f., 260, 266.
Fischer, K., 296, 477, 493.
Florentine Academy, 230.
Fludd, R., 234.
Force, 367 f., 639 f., 640. 8w also
Dynamitm.
de la Forge, L., 288.
Forms, 63 ff.; Aristotelian, 76,
78 ff.; Baconian, 258 f. Set Ideas,
and Universals.
Fortlage, K., 493.
Fortuitism, 570.
Fouillee, A., 512 f.
Fourth Gospel, 138.
Francis of Assisi, 204.
Francis of Mayronis, 214.
Franciscans, 179, 207.
Francke, A. H., 382.
Frank, S., 248.
Fredegisus, 158.
Freedom, as principle, 433 f., 450 ff.
Free thought, progress of, 40 ff.,
182ff., 22 Iff., 227 ff., 250 ff.,
382 ff.
Free Will, 100, 110, 111, 113, 125,
130, 142, 146 f., 153 ff., 165 f., 174,
198, 202, 212, 279, 286, 287, 304,
325, 356 f., 375, 382 ff., 410, 411,
412 ff., 421, 424, 429, 431 ff.,
436 ff., 444 f., 456 f., 461, 475,
489, 511, 527 f., 535, 537, 552 f.,
562 f., 567, 579, 582.
French Enlightenment, 291.
French Revolution, 383.
Fries, J., 430, 485, 492.
Froebel, F., 390.
Fulbert, 167.
Gabler, G. A., 477.
Gale, Th., 362.
Galen, 126.
Galileo, G., 237 f., 264, 281, 288,
507.
Gall, F. J., 608.
Callus, T., 177.
Galvani, L., 388.
Gardiner, H., 682.
Garve, C., 381, 426.
Oassendi, P., 238, 264, 271.
Gaunilo, 170.
Gay, J., 331.
Gellert, C. P., 386.
Gennadius, 230.
Gentile. A., 243, 244.
Geocentric theory, 22.
Geometric method. 292 ff.. 456.
Georgius of Trebisond, 230.
600
INDEX
Gerbert, 167.
German culture, 364 f.
German Theology, 218, 221.
Germanic mysticism, 218.
Gerson, J., 217, 218.
Geulincx, A., 288, 289*.
Gilbert of Poitiers, 174, 225.
Gilbert, William, 256.
Glanvil, J., 246.
Gnomic poets, 9.
Gnostics, 138 f.
God, proofs for existence of, 85,
149 f., 169 f., 195 f., 211, 216, 262,
277 ff., 322, 357 ff., 360 f., 373 f.,
415 f., 515; critique of, 118, 195 f.,
211, 216, 357 ff., 415 ff. See Ab-
solute, and Theology.
Godwin, W., 385.
Goeschel, K. F., 477.
Goethe, J. W., 386, 391, 432 f., 448,
457 f., 461.
Golden mean, 90.
Gomperz, Th., 41.
Gorgias, 46.
Gottfried of Fontaines, 203.
Gottsched, J. C., 291, 386.
Grace, 152, 154 f., 199, 202, 204,
212, 221.
Grammar, 105.
Gravitation, 344.
Greathead, Robert, 181.
Greek Church, Roman and, 145.
Greek civilization, 7 ff .
Greek ethics, resum6 of, 115 f.;
Christian ethics and, 201.
Greek literature, 9 f . ; in Italy, 229.
Greek philosophy, Christianity and,
135 ff.; Judaism and, 120 ff.
Green, T. H., 533, 549, 550* ff.
Gregory VII, 222.
Gregory of Nazianzen, 145.
Gregory of Nyssa, 145.
Gregory of Rimini, 217.
Groot, G. de, 218.
Grote, G., 48.
Grotius, H., 243 f.
Gundisalvi, 180 n., 181.
Guyau, J. M., 512 f.
Hades, 143.
Haeckel, E., 492.
Haller, A., 388.
Hamann, J. G., 381, 426, 430.
Hamilton, W., 364, 513, 514* ff.,
535 f., 549.
Happiness. See Hedonism.
Harmony, 20 ff., 24, 63 f., 65, 109,
129, 366; of spheres, 22; prees-
tablished, 372.
Harnack, A., 140, 144.
Harris, W. T., 562.
Hartley, D., 329, 331, 387, 517 f.
Hartmann, E. von, 490* f., 494.
Harvey, W., 264.
Haiiy, R. J., 388.
Haym, R., 493.
Hedonism, 13, 40, 58, 92, 95 f., 99,
101 ff., 115 f., 322 ff., 332 f., 376,
421 f., 425, 522 ff., 546 f., 551, 554.
Hegel, G. F. W., 48, 296, 427, 432 f.,
453, 462* ff., 485, 490 f., 504, 549,
556, 563, 581, 585 f.; predecessors
of, 462 f.
Hegelian school, 476 f. See also
Neohegelians.
Hegelianism, opposition to, 478,
491 f.
Heinze, M., 59.
Heliocentric theory, 22.
van Helmont, J. B., 234.
van Helmont, F. M., 234.
Helvetius, C., 329, 331, 334*, 388.
Hembucht, H., 217.
Hemming, N., 244.
Henry of Brabant, 181.
Henry of Ghent, 189, 208.
Heraclides, 22.
Heraclides of Pontus, 75.
Heraclitus, 15, 22* ff., 62, 64, 104.
Herbart, J. F., 478* ff., 492, 498,
563.
Herbert of Cherbury, 230, 245.
Herder, J. G., 381, 386, 391, 428* f.,
430, 431, 432 f., 448, 453, 461.
Heresies, 139, 206, 224 ff. See alst
Pantheism.
Hermann, K. F., 59.
Hermann, W., 494.
Hermas, Shepherd of, 138.
Herocles, 104.
Herodotus, 41.
Herschel, W., 388.
INDEX
601
Elertz, H., 566.
3erv6 of Nedellec, 203.
Elesiod, 9.
lestiseus, 75.
Hibben, J. G., 562.
Hicetas, 22.
Binrichs, H. F. W., 477.
3ippo, 18.
Bippocrates, 41, 43.
Hippolytus, 16, 140.
Hirnheim, H., 246.
Historical view, 361, 428, 431, 433,
448 f., 451 ff. See also Evolution.
Hobbes, T., 243, 254, 263* ff., 273,
285, 288, 307, 331, 332, 334, 345,
362, 392.
Hocking, W. E., 562.
Holbach, Baron P., 387, 503.
Holcot, Robert, 217.
Holt, E. B., 581.
Homer, 9, 10.
Homoiomere, 34.
Homoiousios, 145.
Homoousios, 145.
Hooker, R., 325 n.
Horace, 103.
Howison, G. H., 562.
Huet, P., 246.
Hufeland, G., 427.
Hugo of Rouen, 175.
Hugo of St. Victor, 175, 176.
Humanism, 11, 12, 13, 40 ff., 228,
345. See also Pragmatism.
Humanitarianism, 116, 383, 424,
510 f.
Humboldt, A. von, 388.
Hume, D., 254, 290, 291, 329, 331,
332, 345* ff., 362, 392 f., 395, 398,
494, 506, 513, 516 ff., 528, 532,
535, 551, 562, 564.
Huss, J., 224.
Hutcheson, F., 329, 332, 532.
Hylozoism, 12, 15, 27, 84, 108, 421.
Hymn of Cleanthes, 105.
Hypatia, 132.
Iconoclasts, 248.
Ideeus, 18.
Idealism, 58 ff., 62 ff., 272, 288 f.t
335 ff., 364 ff., 431 ff., 440, 441 ff.,
448 ff., 458 f., 462 ff., 435 ff.,
491 ff., 494 ff., 51 Iff., 525 f.,
549 ff.; subjective, 335 ff., 354,
400, 428 f., 440 f., 563, 565 f.,
569 f. See Realism, Medieval.
Ideas, 63 ff., 78 ff., 124, 128 ff., 142,
310 ff., 335 ff., 345, 347 f. Bee
Universals.
Idees-forces, 512 f.
Idola, 257.
Ignatius, 138.
Imitation of Christ, 218.
Implicit knowledge, 62, 80, 371, 376,
452, 465.
Impressions, ideas and, 345, 347 f.
Immanency, 74, 76, 83, 165, 296.
Immanent philosophy, 494.
Immediate experience, 573. See
Pure Experience.
Immortality, 19, 39, 68, 89, 101,
111, 134, 142, 151, 197, 232, 307,
357, 410, 421 f., 425, 462, 497, 580.
Incarnation, 141 ff., 145.
Incasement theory, 371.
Inconceivability, 514 f., 525.
Indiscernibles, principle of, 370.
Individual, 194 f., 210 f., 215, 368,
379, 562 f. See also Society.
Individualism, 43 ff., 46 ff., 49 ff., 91,
101 ff., 250 ff., 269 ff., 304 ff., 324,
325 ff., 329, 332, 333 f., 370, 382 ft*.,
449, 461 f., 546 ff., 562, 566 ff.,
573, 574 ff.
Individuation, principle of, 194 f.,
210 f.
Induction, 53 f., 61, 80, 81, 216,
257 ff., 519 ff.; methods of, 259,
266.
Industrialism, 510.
Inference. See Deduction, and In-
duction.
Infinitesimal calculus, 365.
Infinity, 277 f., 311 f., 321 f.
Innate* truths, 62, 80, 253. 277 f.,
286, 345, 378 f . ; criticism of, 309 ff.
Bee also A priori Knowledge.
Instrumental ism. £«• Pragmatism.
Intellect 8n Discursive Thought
Intellect, will and. 197 f.. 212 f..
298 f., 303; in God, 295 f.
Intellectual intuition, 400, 432, 438,
441, 456.
602
INDEX
Intellectual love of God, 307.
Intelligible species, 193.
Intention, 174.
Interaction, 282 f., 288, 289, 300 f.,
319 f., 365, 497. Bee also Mind
and Body.
Introjection, 566.
Intuition, 84, 128, 130, 148, 199,
205 f., 215 f., 253, 302, 398 ff.,
429 f., 438, 449, 455 ff., 460, 461,
557 ff., 568 f., 577 ff., 587 ff.
Intuitive knowledge, 314.
lonians, 12, 16 ff.
Irenams, 140, 142.
Isidore of Seville, 157, 163.
Isidorus, 132.
Jacobi, F. H., 381, 429* f., 449, 458.
Jacoby, G., 574.
Jamblichus, 126, 132*.
James, W., 512, 566* ff., 577.
Jansenism, 288, 290 f.
Jerusalem, W., 574.
Jesuits, 244.
Jesus Christ, 133 f., 139, 141.
Jewish Cabala, 233.
Jewish-Greek philosophy, 120 ff.
Jewish philosophy, 188.
Joachim of Floris, 178, 223, 225.
Johannes Grammaticus, 145.
Johannes Philoponus, 145.
John Duns Scotus. See Duns
Scotus.
John of Bassolis, 214.
John of Brescia, 208.
John of Damascus, 156.
John of Salisbury, 175, 225.
John Scotus Erigena. See Erigena.
Jouffroy, Th., 364, 504.
Judaism, 121 f., 133.
Julian the Apostate, 132.
Julius II, 229.
Justice, 46 ff., 53 f., 70, 71 ff., 91,
103, 114, 250, 269 f., 547 f. See
Natural Rights.
Justin the Martyr, 140, 142.
Justinian, 132.
Kaftan, J., 494.
Kant, I., 286, 329, 378, 386, 391,
391* ff.. 434, 4581, 460, 467 f.,
478, 485 f., 491 ff., 494, 500 f., 511,
513 f., 536, 549, 551, 650, 684 f.
Katharsis, 131.
Kehrbach, K., 493.
Kepler, J., 237 f., 507.
Kilwardby, Robert, 181, 208.
Knowledge, faith and. See Faith.
Knowledge, relativity of, 515 f.,
537 ff. See also Critical Philoso-
phy, and Skepticism.
Knowledge, theory of, 12, 40 ff., 46,
48 ff., 51 ff., 60 ff., 79 ff., 96, 98 f.,
105 ff., 148 f., 194 f., 255 ff., 264 f.,
274 ff., 291, 302 ff., 307 ff., 335 ff.,
346 ff., 375 ff., 391 ff., 435 ff.,
448 ff., 459 f., 467 f., 471 f., 479 f.,
486 ff., 49 Iff., 498, 500 ff., 506 ff.,
513 f., 516 ff., 535 ff., 551, 556 ff.,
559 ff., 562 f., 564 ff., 567 ff.,
571 ff., 574 f., 582.
Knutzen, M., 381.
Kdoyzof voirr6c , 64, 128.
Kostlin, K., 494.
Kvpiai 66f;ai, 97.
Ladd, G. T., 562.
Lagrange, J. L., 388.
Laissez-faire, 250, 334 f., 534, 548.
Lamarck, J. B. de, 388.
Lamarre, William, 208.
Lambert, J. H., 381.
Lambert of Auxerre, 204.
Lamennais, R., 511.
La Mettrie, J. O. de, 288, 387 f.
Lange, F. A., 493.
Lange, J. J., 382.
Laplace, P. S., 388.
Lassalle, F., 477.
Lasson, A., 219.
Lavoisier, A., 388.
Law, 19 ff., 24 f., 63 f., 65 f., 258 f.
Laws of nature, 289, 339, 372 f., 506.
See also Uniformity.
Leibniz, G. W., 254, 286, 291,
364* ff., 381, 386, 392, 461, 478,
495 ff., 511.
Leibniz- Wolffian philosophy, 380 f,
386 f ., 395, 408.
Leighton, J. A., 562.
Leo X, 229.
Leo XIII, 203.
INDEX
603
Basing, G., 386, 432 f., 448.
Leucippus, 36* ff.
Leuwenhoek, 371.
Le Vayer, F. de la Motte, 246.
lex ceterna, 199.
'jex natures, 199.
.iberal arts, 157.
liberalism. See Democracy, and In-
dividualism.
jiebmann, 0., 493.
Jnne", K., 388.
.ittre", E., 511.
jocke, J., 243, 245, 254, 286, 307* ff.,
335, 345, 362, 376, 383, 389 ff.,
392, 395.
Logic, 9, llff., 29 f., 48 f., 52 ff.,
60 ff., 79 ff., 96, 98 f., 105 ff., 161,
172, 178, 184, 204, 207, 233,
255 ff., 261, 264 ff., 274 ff., 292 ff.,
303 ff., 307 ff., 335 ff., 345 ff.,
375 ff., 391 ff., 435 ff., 455 ff., 467,
471 f., 479 f., 491 f., 493 f., 506 ff.,
518 ff., 535 ff., 568, 572 ff., 575.
>gic and intuition, 455 ff., 568,
577 f.
>gic and metaphysics, 463 f., 469 ff.,
471 f.
jogical ground and real ground, 294,
379.
^ogical judgments, 401 f.
jOgical-mathematical method, 457,
459,
.ogos, 25, 28, 64, 106, 109, 122* ff.,
124, 138, 141, 143 ff., 164 f., 469.
Logos-doctrine, Christian creed and,
143 f.
Lotze, H., 494* ff., 498, 500, 549, 563.
jove and Hate, 31, 32.
Lovejoy, A. 0., 562.
Loyola, 203.
Lucretius, 98, 101, 103, 238.
ully, Raymond, 207.
Luther, M., 221, 244, 247, 251.
Lutoslawski, W., 59.
Lyceum, 76.
Lyco, 94.
Lysis, 20.
Mach, E., 564 ff.
Machiavelli, N., 241.
Mackenzie, J. 8., iff.
Macrobius, 132, 163, 167.
Magic, 131, 206, 233 ff., 259, 260.
Maimon, 8., 428.
Maimonides, M., 188, 190, 294.
Maine de Biran, F., 504.
Maistre, J. de, 504.
Malebranche, N., 254, 288, 289* f.,
386.
Mandeville, B., 334.
Mani, 146.
Manichaeans, 146, 147.
Marcion, 132, 139, 224.
Marcionites, 224.
Marcus Aurelius, 104.
Mariana, J., 244.
Marius, 132.
Marsilius ab Inghen, 217.
Marsilius Ficinus, 230.
Marsilius of Padua, 223.
Marvin, W. T., 581.
Marx, K., 477.
Materialism, 13, 36 ff., 99 ff., 267 f.,
288, 297, 335, 386 ff., 439, 487, 492,
503 f., 541.
Mathematics, 19 ff., 62, 80, 98, 235,
237, 260, 265, 273, 275, 292 ff.,
343, 345, 353, 366. 37«, 377, 394,
397 ff., 407, 524 f.
Matter, 65 ff., 75, 76, 82 f., 108, 124,
128 ff., 139, 142, 194 f., 280 f.,
318 ff., 335 ff., 340, 343, 367 f., 565,
577, 579. See also Materialism.
Matters of fact, knowledge of, 353 f.
Matthew of Aquasparta, 208.
Maxwell, J. C., 566.
Mayer, R., 492.
McGilvary, E. B., 581.
Mechanism, 13, 34, 36 ff., 86, Wff.,
236, 237 f., 238, 260. 265 f., 272,
279 ff., 282, 287 f., 303, 320, 365,
372, 386 f., 431 f., 584 ff., 588; tele-
ology and, 272, 372 f., 433, 453 f.,
490 f., 495, 56.3, 577 ff.
Mechanistic psychology, 482 f.
Medicine, 41, 233, -2
Medieval philosophy, 134 ff.
Megarinn school. 57. 104. 114.
Melanchton, P.. 244, 24S*.
Meliorism, 570.
Melissus, 30.
MondtlMohn, M., 381.
604
INDEX
Mental sciences, 501 f., 527 ff.
Mersenne, Pere, 238, 264, 273.
Metaphysics, 1 ff., 9 ff., 11 ff., 49, 58,
63 ff., 77, 78 f., 82 ff., 96, 98, 99 ff.,
107 ff., 194 f., 255 ff., 260, 261 ff.,
267, 274, 318 ff., 346 f., 347, 480 ff.,
486 ff., 494 ff., 511 f., 538 f., 549 ff.,
555 ff. ; opposition to, 12, 45, 45 f.,
55, 345, 355, 392, 394, 407 ff.,
491 f., 502, 507, 562, 564 f., 571 ff.,
574 ff.
Middle Stoa, 105, 120.
Mill, James, 331, 517 f., 528.
Mill, J. S., 259, 516*ff., 535, 549,
551.
Milton, J., 325 n.
Mind, 11, 12, 16, 25, 28, 31, 38 f.,
64 ff., 67 f., 197, 281 ff., 3001,
318 ff., 337, 339, 355 f., 368 ff., 387,
551 ff.; absolute, 473, 475 f.; ob-
jective, 473; philosophy of, 451 f.3
454 f., 473; subjective, 473. See
also Ego, Psychology, Soul-Sub-
stance.
Mind and Body, 65, 82, 150, 197, 261,
266, 281 ff., 287, 288 f., 297 f.,
3001, 318 ff., 351, 3711, 5401,
543 f. See also Interaction, Occa-
sionalism, Parallelism, and Psy-
chology.
Mirabaud, 387.
Miracles, 235.
de Mirandola, John Francis, 233.
de Mirandola, John Pico, 232, 233.
Miskaweihi, 183.
Modalism, 144.
Modality, category of, 403.
Moderatus, 126.
Modern philosophy, spirit of, 250 ff. ;
progress of, 391 ff.
Modes, 280, 298 ff.; ideas of, 3111;
infinite and necessary, 298 ff.
Moerbecke, William, 181.
Moleschott, J., 492.
Molina, 203.
Monad, 239, 368 ff., 496.
Monasteries, 157.
Monastic life, 153; monastic orders,
179; monastic schools, 157 f., 179.
Monism, 12, 14 ff., 23 ff., 26 ff., 293,
479, 487, 538 ff., 570. See also
Absolute, Idealism, Materialism,
and Pantheism.
Monotheism. See Pantheism, and
Theism.
Montague, W. P., 581.
Montaigne, M., 246.
Montesquieu, C. de, 329, 383, 388.
Moore, A. W., 574.
Moore, G. E., 581.
Moral argument for existence of
God, 360, 421 ff., 425.
Moral freedom, 412 ff., 421.
Moral law, 309; God and, 213; nat-
ural law and, 4611; society and,
269 ff.
Moral sciences, 527 ff. See Ethics.
Moral skepticism, 43 f.
Morality, happiness and, 421 f., 425;
religion and, 445.
More, H., 362.
More, T., 243.
Morgan, T., 330.
Motion, 15 f., 23 f., 27, 28, 29 1, 34,
36 ff., 84, 86, 265, 2801, 2981,
337, 367, 539 ff., 578. See also
Materialism, and Mechanism.
Muirhead, J. H., 555.
Munsterberg, H., 501*, 563.
Miinzer, T., 224.
Musonius, Rufus, 104, 120.
Mutazilites, 18& 1
Mysteries, Greek, 19, 27, 43, 68, 134.
Mysticism, 68, 71, 121 ff., 125, 130,
131, 151, 166, 175 ff., 187, 199,
2001, 2031, 2051, 212, 218 ff.,
225, 227, 229, 2481, 254, 2901,
3811, 393, 428 ff., 450, 458, 561,
570.
Mythology, 3, 9 ff., 66, 68, 139.
Nationalism, 2221, 242, 250, 385
446 1, 475.
Natorp, P., 494.
Natura naturans, 239, 296.
Natural law. See Natural Rights.
Natural rights, 46 ff., 112, 114.
243 1, 269 1, 326, 327, 334 1, 327.
365, 383, 388 ff., 547 f. See also
Equality, Individualism, Politics.
Natural science, 3, 16, 17, 18, 23 1,
27, 41, 76, 771, 85 ff., 161, 174,
INDEX
605
178 f., 180, 182, 190, 204 f., 215,
226 f., 232, 233 ff., 236 ff., 250 ff.,
255 ff., 260, 264 ff., 272, 308, 317,
321, 341, 343 f., 345, 353 f., 365,
372, 388, 394, 397 ff., 407, 449,
478 ff., 492, 494 ff., 505, 506 ff.,
518, 535, 551.
Natural selection, 543.
Naturalism and supernaturalism, 11,
226, 251.
Mature, laws of, 289, 339, 372 f., 506.
See also Uniformity.
Mature, philosophy of, 12, 14 ff.,
16 ff., 64 ff., 85 ff., 233 ff., 450 ff.,
472 f., 486 f.
Nausiphanes, 97.
Necessary connection, 350 ff.
Necessitarianism. See Determinism.
Neckham, Alexander, 205.
kelson, L., 430.
Nemesius, 145, 163.
Neocriticism, 510 f.
Neohegelianism, 549 ff.
Neokantianism, 491 ff., 511, 549 ff.
Neoplatonism, 13, 121, 125* ff., 140,
145, 147, 164 ff., 177 f., 181 ff.,
219 ff., 230, 234 f., 236, 240, 256,
294, 374.
Neopythagoreanism, 121, 125* f.
Neorealism, 563, 580 f.
tfew Academy, 120.
Newton, I., 237, 264, 281, 383, 507.
Nicsea, 144.
Nicene creed, 144 f.
Nicolai, F., 381.
Nicolas V, 229.
Nicolas d'Autrecourt, 217.
Nicolas d'Oresme, 217.
Nicolas of Cusa, 230* f., 239.
Nicolas of Paris, 204.
ficomachus, 126.
Nietzsche, F., 574 ff.
figidius Figulus, 126.
Nominalism, 99, 106, 162, 166 ff.,
214* ff., 254, 258, 265, 266, 336 f.
Morris, J., 362.
Notion, 466 ff.
Jotker Labeo, 167.
foumenon, 406; phenomenon and,
412 ff. See Things-in-thpmsolvea.
lovt, 35, 80, 87 f., 123 ff., 128 ff.
Novalis, 449.
Novelty, 567, 579, 582, 584, 587, 590.
Number-theory. Bee Pythagorean*.
Numcnius, 126.
Objective reason, 474 f.
Occam. See William of Occam.
Occasionalism, 272, 288 f., 297.
Occultism, 233 f.
Oldendorp, 244.
Old Testament, 138f.
Olympiodorus, 132.
Olympiodorus the younger, 132.
Ontological argument, 170 f., 195,
278, 415; criticism of, 171, 415 f.
Ontology, 12, 26, 28.
Opposites, union of, 20 f., 23 ff., 127,
231. See also Contradiction, Dia-
lectical Method.
Optimism, 15, 196, 255, 546.
Organic conception, 361, 360, 448 f.,
451 ff., 457 f., 460 f., 465 ff., 467 f.,
469 ff., 556 ff., 563. See abo En-
telechy, Evolution, and Evolution-
ism.
Organism, 18, 32 f., 35, 38, 87, 371,
542 f.
Oriental religion, 13, 120 ff., 133.
Origen, 140, 142 f., 144, 145.
Original sin, 125, 130, 143, 146 f.,
153 ff., 165 f., 202, 291.
Ormond, A. T., 562.
Orphic mysteries, 43, 68.
Osiander, 248.
Ostwald, W., 493.
Oswald, J., 364.
Overman, 46 f., 576.
Pagan virtues, 152.
Paine, T., 385.
Paley, W., 334.
Palingenesis, 110. Ill, 130.
Pametius, 104, 120.
Panpsychism. 368 ff., 388, 498.
Pantcnus, 140.
Pantheism, 25, 27. 73 f.. 109. 125 ff.,
131. 164 ff., 177 f.. 203 f.. 219<f.,
•:
373 n., 442 ff .. 450. 455, 460 ff ..
470 f., 477. 478 f.. 487, 497 f., 603.
Bee alto Absolut*.
606
INDEX
Papini, G., 574.
Paracelsus, 234* f., 249.
Parallelism, 288 f., 293, 297 f., 300 f.,
372, 390 f .
Paris University, 179.
Parmenides, 28* ff., 62, 64.
Particulars. See Universals.
Pascal, B., 290 f.
Paschasius Radbertus, 166.
Passions, 113, 131, 134, 200, 284 f.,
303 ff., 482 f .
Paternalism, 250.
Patripassianism, 144.
Patristic. See Fathers.
Patrizzi, F., 236.
Paul, St., 138.
Paulicians, 224.
Paulsen, F., 494, 498.
Peace, universal, 447.
Pearson, K., 566.
Peckham, John, 204, 208.
Pelagianism, 146 f.
Pelagius, 146 f.
Perceptions petites, 369 f.
Pericles, 43.
Peripatetic school, 94.
Permanence and change, 15 f., 22 ff.
Perry, R. B., 581.
Persian dualism, 145.
Personalism, 511.
Personality of God, 295 f., 307, 461,
498; of Jesus, 141, 145.
Pessimism, 23, 151, 488 ff., 576.
Pestalozzi, J. H., 390.
Peter Aureoli, 215, 216.
Peter John Olivi, 208.
Peter of Poitiers, 175.
Petrarch, 229.
Petrus Damiani, 167.
Petrus Hispanus, 204.
Petrus Lombardus, 172, 175*, 225.
Pfleiderer, O., 477.
Phaedo, 58.
Phariseeism, 134.
Phenomenalism, 354, 394, 399 ff.,
485 ff., 495 f. See also Appear-
ance.
Phenomenon, 480 ff., 507.
Pherecydes, 10.
Phidias, 43.
Philip of Macedon, 95.
Philippus of Opus, 75.
Philo the Jew, 123* ff., 138.
Philo of Larissa, 117, 119*.
Philolaus, 20.
Philoponus, 132.
Philostratus, 126.
Phocylides, 9.
Physico-theological argument, 416 f.
Physics, 85 ff.
Physics of Aristotle, 178.
Physiocrats, 334.
Physiological psychology, 33, 38 f.,
261, 267 f., 282, 284 ff., 305.
Pietism, 381.
Pitkin, W. B., 581.
Pity, ethics of, 488 ff.; critique of,
576 f.
Platner, Ev 381.
Plato, 12, 58* ff., 75, 79, 82, 94, 147,
587; influence on Christian
thought, 74, 162.
Platonic Academy, 59, 74 f., 116f.
Platonic Ideas, 488.
Platonic realism, 162 f., 166 ff.
Platonic school, 74 f., 116f.
Platonic works in Middle Ages, 162,
182.
Platonism, 162, 166 ff., 229 f., 289 f.,
362, 366, 370, 511, 513.
Pletho, 230.
Plotinus, 126* ff.
Pluralism, 15, 20 ff., 30 ff., 368 ff.,
370, 478 ff., 497 f., 563, 567 ff.
Plutarch of Chaeronea, 126.
Plutarch the younger, 126.
Poincare", H., 566.
Polemo, 75, 104.
Political economy, 334 f., 509, 513,
530, 534.
Politics, 8, llf., 19, 43 f., 45, 46 f?.,
49, 71 ff., 93 ff., 103 f., 113f., 153,
159, 202 f., 222 f., 240, 241 ff., 250,
264 f., 269 ff., 306 f., 325 ff., 361,
388 ff., 474 f., 509 f., 529 ff., 533 :'.,
547 f.
Polus, 46.
Polytheism, 3, 9 f ., 27, 39, 101 r.f
131, 132, 143.
Pomponazzi, P., 232.
Poppo, 167.
Popular philosophy, 381.
INDEX
607
Porphyry, 126, 131*, 182.
Porphyry's Introduction to the Cate-
gories, 131, 163, 167.
Porta, 232.
3ort-Royal, logic of, 288.
Posidonius, 120.
Positive philosophy, Spelling's, 450.
Positivism, 345, 503* ff., 517, 562,
564 ff.; opposition to, 511 f.
Post-Kantian philosophy, 431 ff.
Potential reason, 88.
Power, 267, 350 ff.
Pragmatism, 418 f., 438, 441, 508,
562, 563, 565, 566* ff., 577.
Predestination, 154 f., 202.
Predetermination, 372.
Preestablished harmony, 372, 380.
Preexistence, 67.
Preformation theory, 371.
Pre-Sophistic philosophy, 7ff., 12,
14 ff.
Price, R., 363.
Priestley, J., 331, 387, 388.
Primary and secondary qualities, 39,
311, 317, 318, 319, 338, 354.
Primary philosophy. See Meta-
physics.
Primitive Christianity, 152 f., 247.
Probability, 118, 216, 253, 317, 345.
Proclus, 126, 132*.
Progress, 509 ff., 531 f.
Protagoras, 45, 46.
Protestantism, 246 ff.; scholasticism
and, 247 f., 365, 366.
Pseudo-Dionysius. See Dionysius
the Areopagite.
Psychology, 18, 25, 33, 38, 67 ff.,
87 f., 101, 111, 124 f., 130 f., 150 f.,
161, 196 ff., 212, 260 f., 267 ff.,
281 ff., 300 ff., 310 ff., 339, 355 ff.,
410, 454 f., 472 f., 482 ff., 486 f.,
508 f., 543 f.
Piycho-physics, 498.
Ptolemy, 122.
Ptolemy II, 122.
Pufendorf, S., 243 f., 365.
Pulleyn, Robert, 178.
Pure experience, 432, 557 f., 563, 564,
566, 668 f., 588.
Pure intelligence, 125, 128.
Pure knowledge, 398.
Purgatory, 143.
Purification, 19, 131.
Purpose. Bee Teleology.
Pyrrho, 97, 116*f.
Pyrrhonism, 116* ff.
Pythagoras, 18* ff.
Pythagorean brotherhood, 19.
Pythagoreanism, 15, 18* ff., 28, 59,
68, 121, 125 f., 230, 233, 235, 365,
366.
Qualitative change, 23 ff.
Quality, category of, 403.
Quantity, category of, 402 f.
Quesnay, F., 334, 388.
Rabanus Maurus, 158.
Radical empiricism. See Pure Ex-
perience.
Ramus, Petrus, 232* f., 256.
Rashdall, H., 555.
Ratio cognoscendi, ratio essendi and,
294, 379.
Rational Utilitarianism, 547.
Rationalism, 11 ff., 15, 25, 28!., 39,
51 ff., 60 ff., 73, 136, 184 ff., 221 ff.,
227 ff., 250 ff., 264, 272 ff., 286 f.,
292 ff., 362 ff., 364 ff., 375 f.,
382 ff., 39 Iff., 408 ff., 431 ff.,
455 ff., 462 ff., 51 Iff., 613 ff.,
562 ff., 568 f., 57 Iff., 574 f.,
582 ff.; criticism of, 357 ff., 389.
408 ff., 428 ff., 459 f., 478 ff.,
562 ff. See also Empiricism.
Rationalism and Romanticism,
43 Iff., 448 f., 582 ff.
Ravaisson, F., 511.
Raymond of Sabunde, 218.
Real ground, logical ground and.
294, 379.
Realism, 478 ff., 644 f., 563, 580 ff.
Realism, medieval, 162 f.. 166 ff..
169* ff., 173, 174 f., 178, 181 (L.
194 f., 217.
Realism, natural, 363, 429, 432. Sit.
Reals, 481 f.
Reason and authority, 227. AM «!to
Faith.
Recurrence, 110, 111, 130.
Redemption. 134. 143. 153,
Reflection, 331.
Cos
INDEX
Reflection, sensation and, 310.
Reform of logic, 175, 232 f., 572 ff.;
of science and philosophy, 232 f.,
255 f., 505 ff., 518.
Reformation, 137, 246 ff.
Regis, S., 288.
Regulative use of reason, 417 f.
Rehmke, J., 494.
Reicke, R., 493.
Reid, T., 363* f., 380, 504, 513.
Reimarus, S., 381.
Reinhard, 167.
Reinhold, K. L., 426 f., 434.
Relation, category of, 403.
Relations, 20 ff.; external, 481,
580 f.; ideas of, 312 f.; knowledge
of, 342; of ideas, 353.
Religion, 3, 10, 13, 19, 49, 114,
120 ff., 133, 360, 361, 510. See
also Pantheism, Theism, and The-
ology.
Religious liberty, 243, 251, 383.
Religious philosophy, 120 ff., 245,
271, 458 ff., 476, 538 f.
Religious reform, 224.
Remigius, 167.
Reminiscence, 67.
Renaissance, 137, 227* ff.
Renan, E., 511.
Renouvier, C., 511* f., 563, 566.
Resurrection, 142, 202, 343.
Reuchlin, J., 233.
Revelation, 140, 148, 317 f.
Revealed theology, 262; rational
theology and, 191 f , 209. See
Faith.
Rhetoric, 43.
Ribot, Th., 511.
Richard of Middletown, 208.
Richard of St. Victor, 176.
Richter, F., 477.
Rickert, H., 501.
Right, philosophy of, 474 f.
Rights. See Natural Rights.
Ritschl, A., 494.
Ritter, C., 477.
Robert of Melun, 175.
Robinet, J. B., 387 f.
Rogers, A. K., 562.
Roman philosophy, 119f.
Roman Stoicism, 104.
Romanticism, 448 f., 458 f., 556, 577,
582 ff.
Roscelin, 168*, 169, 171, 172, 215,
225.
Rousseau, J. J., 243, 245, 329,
388* ff., 393.
Royce, J., 549, 559* ff.
Royer-Collard, P., 364, 504.
Ruge, A., 477.
Ruskin, J., 549.
Russell, B., 581.
Ruysbroek, J., 218.
Sabellianism, 144, 149, 178.
Saint-Simon, C. H. de, 504 f.
Sanchez, F., 246.
Sarchel, Alexander, 205.
Saturninus, 139.
Scaliger, 232.
Schelling, F. W. J., 427, 432 f.,
448* ff., 458, 461, 466 ff., 478,
485, 490 f., 504, 556, 563, 585, 586.
Schematism of the understanding,
405 f.
Schiller, Friedrich, 386, 391, 427.
Schiller, F. C. S., 574.
Schlegel, A. W., 449 f.
Schlegel, Friedrich, 449.
Schleiermacher, F., 59, 433, 458* ff.
Scholastic method, 160 f.
Scholastic problem, 159 f.
Scholastic sources, 163.
Scholasticism, 135 ff., 155 ff.; de*
cline of, 207 ff.; opposition to,
178ff., 203 ff., 227 if.; Protestant-
ism and, 247 f.
School of Athens, 126.
Schopenhauer, A., 478, 485* ff., 492,
574, 576.
Schubert-Soldern, R., 494.
Schultz, H., 494.
Schultze, J., 426.
Schulze, G. E., 428, 437.
Schuppe, W., 494.
Schiitz, 427.
Schwenkfeld, C., 248.
Science. See Natural Science.
Scientific method, criticism of
431 ff., 437 ff., 453 f.
Scottish philosophy, 363 f., 380, 504
513 ff.
INDEX
609
Scotus, Du^s. See Duns Scotus.
Scotus Erigena. See Erigena.
Secondary qualities. See Primary
Qualities.
Secretan, C., 511.
Self-evident knowledge, 60, 80 f.,
107, 274 if., 314, 315, 316, 354,
363. See A priori Knowledge.
Self-interest, 43 f., 71, 101 ff., 115,
261, 269 f., 323 ff., 333 f., 334, 509,
533. See Egoism.
Self-preservation, 112, 261, 269,
304 ff., 481 f.
Self-realization, 69 ff., 89 ff., 96,
11 Iff., 305 f., 554 ff.
Seneca, 104, 120.
Sensation, permanent possibility of,
525 ff.
Sensationalism, 253 f., 307 f., 330 f.,
386 f., 503 f., 564 f., 568 f. See
also Empiricism.
Sense-perception, 25, 28, 33, 39,
60 ff., 67 f., 73, 81, 87, 98 f., 106,
117, 150 f., 199 f., 216, 265 ff., 302,
310 ff., 330 f., 339, 347 ff., 399 ff.,
427 f., 430, 440 f., 452, 454, 473,
480, 482, 525 f., 543 ff., 564 ff.,
568 f., 573.
Sentences, 175*, 190.
Septuagint, 122.
Sermones, 172 f.
Sextius, 120, 125.
Sextus Empiricus, 117, 119*.
Shaftesbury, A., 329, 332*, 395.
Shepherd of Hermas, 138.
Shyreswood, William, 204.
Sibylline Oracles, 123.
Sidgwick, H., 534 f.
Sidney, A., 325 n.
Siger of Brabant, 189, 208.
Simon of Tournay, 178, 225.
Simonides, 9.
Simplicius, 132.
Sin. See Original Sin.
Birach, Wisdom of, 123.
Sitte, 474.
Sittlichkeit, 475.
Skepticism, 12, 16, 40 ff., 75, 104,
116ff., 234, 246, 254, 275 ff.,
291 f., 335, 342, 343, 345, 354, 355,
384, 392, 428, 563.
Slavery, 93, 115.
Smith, A., 325, 333, 334* f., 381,
388.
Social feeling, 112, 113, 243, 261,
326, 332 f., 509, 533, 546 f.,
553 ff.
Social science, 505, 506 ff., 508,
509 f., 518, 529 ff.
Social statics and dynamics, 509,
531.
Socialism, 534, 548.
Society, the individual and, 71 ff.,
91, 93, 103, 114, 155, 159, 202 f.,
261, 269 ff., 306, 323 f., 325 ff., 424,
446 f., 455, 462, 474 f., 504 ff.,
546 f., 553 ff., 576 f.
Socrates, 12, 43, 45, 50* ff., 58, 59,
60, 62, 64.
Socratic irony, 52.
Socratic method, 52 ff.
Socratic school, 57 f.
Solidity, 321.
Solipsism, 494, 558.
Solomon, Wisdom of, 123, 138.
Solon, 9.
Sophists, 12, 16, 40* ff., 63, 64.
Sophocles, 41, 43.
Sotion, 126.
Soul-Substance, 150, 197, 267, 276,
28 Iff., 318ff., 339, 355 f., 368 ff.,
407 f., 410, 482 f., 496 ff., 626,
543 f., 565, 569.
Sovereignty, 243, 271.
Space, 21, 28, 29 f., 37, 65, 85 f., 100,
124, 130, 149, 267, 280 f., 290,
295 f., 318, 338, 340, 343, 367 f.,
378, 399 ff., 486.
Spaulding, E. 8., 581.
Spencer, H., 635* ff., 551, 6*6.
Spener, P. J., 382.
Spermata, 34 ff., 100.
Speusippus, 75.
Spinoza, 254, 287, 288, 292* ff., 366,
366. 380, 392, 456.
Spinoziam, 294, 366, 432, 449, 418,
460, 495. 498.
Spirit of Middle AgM, 168 ff.
Spirit*. 336, 339 f., 342.
Spiritualism. 66. 73 f.. 272. W8. »7.
362. 370, 410. 8
Stammler, R., 494.
610
INDEX
State Church, 135.
State and Church, 159, 202 f., 222 f.,
241. See also Politics.
Statics and dynamics, 508.
Stewart, D., 364.
Stilpo, 58, 104.
Stirling, J. H., 549.
Stirner, M., 577.
Stoicism, 13, 58, 96, 104* ff., 117 f.,
123, 232, 236, 285, 374.
Strato, 94.
Strauss, D., 477.
Strong, C. B., 562.
Sturt, H., 574.
Suarez, F., 203.
Subjective idealism, 335 ff., 354, 400,
428 f., 440 f., 563, 565 f., 569 f.
Sub specie ceternitatis, 294, 299.
Substance, 14, 16 ff., 26 ff., 63, 81 ff.,
194, 267, 279 ff., 292 f., 295 ff., 312,
315, 316 f., 338, 341, 345, 352,
353, 365, 367, 403, 480 f., 516.
Substantial forms, 63, 352, 362.
See also Realism, Medieval.
Sufism, 184.
Sufficient reason, principle of, 379.
Summists, 175*, 190.
Swaywy^, 61.
Superman, 46 f., 576.
Supernaturalism, 140, 141, 1881,
225 f., 250 ff., 503. See also
Transcendency.
Supernaturalistic ethics, 189, 198 f.
Suso, H., 218.
Swammerdam, 371.
Syllogism, 61, 80, 107, 161, 258,
520. See Deduction.
Sylvester II, 167.
Sympathy. See Social Feeling.
Syncretism, 121.
Synderesis, 200.
Syneidesis, 200.
Synesius, 132, 145.
Synthesis, 265, 535 f., 581, 589.
Synthetic Judgments, 397 ff.
Synthetic unity of apperception, 403.
Taine, H., 511.
Tarde, G., 511.
Tatian, 140, 141.
Tauler, J., 218.
Taurellus, N., 248.
Teleological argument for existence i
of God, 109, 118, 195 f., 295,
343 f., 358 f., 416 f.; critique of, :
118, 3581, 4161
Teleology, 34 1, 64 ff., 74, 76, 78,
82 ff., 86, 109, 142, 295, 304, 358 1,
368, 441, 443 1, 451 ff., 465 ff., |
500; critique of, 358 f.; mechan-
ism and, 260, 373, 433, 4531,
495 ff. ; use of, in science, 420 f .
Telesian Academy, 236.
Telesio, B., 236*, 258.
Temple, W., 256.
Termini, 215.
Tertullian, 140.
Tetens, N., 381.
Text-books of early Middle Ages,
163.
Thales, 16*.
Theism, 74, 85, 1231, 131, 134,
195 1, 238, 278, 281, 321 1, 335 1,
357 ff., 373 1, 425 1, 477, 570. See
also Deism, Pantheism, and The-
ology.
Themistius, 132, 180, 181.
Theocritus, 122.
Theodorus of Asine, 132.
Theodorus of Gaza, 230.
Theognis, 9.
Theogony, 10.
Theology, Greek, 101, 13, 261, 49,
661, 731, 75, 85, 1091, 120 ff.,
127 ff.; Christian, 133 ff., 137 ff.,
138 f., 140 ff., 149 ff., 156 1, 160 ff.,
1641, 168, 169 ff., 173, 195 ff.,
2111, 214 ff.; Arabian, 181 ff.;
modern, 261 ff., 277 ff., 289, 295 ff.,
307, 3211, 330, 342 ff., 357 ff.,
3< J 1, 415 ff., 442 ff., 458 ff., 470 1,
494, 497, 508. See also Deism.
Pantheism, and Theism.
Theology, moral, 421 ff.
Theophany, 165.
Theophilus, 140.
Theophrastus, 94.
Theophrastus von Hohenheim. Set
Paracelsus.
Theory of Knowledge. See Know!
edge.
Theory of State. See Politics.
INDEX
611
Theosophy, 120 ff.
Theurgy. See Magic.
Thierry, 174.
Things-in-themselves, 39 f., 266 f.,
280, 286, 394, 401, 406 ff., 427 f.,
43 If., 440 f., 479 f., 486 f., 496,
516, 525 f., 538, 544 f., 556 ff., 571,
575.
Thomas Aquinas. See Aquinas,
Thomas.
Thomas a Kempis, 218.
Thomas de Vio, 203.
Thomas of Strasburg, 203.
Thomasius, C., 365.
["homasius, J., 366.
Chemists and Scotists, 217.
Thought and Being, 469 ff.
Thucydides, 41, 43, 44.
Pieck, L., 449.
rimceus, 66 ff., 163.
Time, 124, 129 f., 149, 196, 343,
398 ff., 405 f., 577 f. See Space.
?imocharus, 122.
Timon of Phlius, 116.
Tindal, M., 330.
Toland, J., 330, 387.
Traducianism, 151.
Transcendency, 74, 75 f., 123 f., 127,
141 f., 165, 296.
Transcendent principles, 409 ff.
Transcendental Esthetic, 398 ff.
Transcendental Analytic, 402 ff.
Transcendental Deduction, 403 ff.
Transcendental Dialectic, 408 ff.
Transcendental idealism, 451 f.
Transcendental Ideas, 409 ff.
Transcendental illusion, 409 ff.
Transcendental Logic, 398, 402 ff.
Transcendental method, 398, 400,
430, 435 ff., 453, 454 f., 479 fc-
Translations of Aristotle in Middle
Ages, 163, 180 f.
Transmigration of souls, 68, 130,
143.
Trendelenburg, F. A., 477.
Trinity, 141 f., 142 ff., 149, 168, 171,
173.
Trivium, 158.
Truth, 40 ff. See Theory of Knowl-
edge.
Truth and error. 279, 302 f.
Tschirahauaen, W., 3«.
Tufta, J. H., 555, 562.
Turgot, A., 334, 388.
Twofold truth, 160, 190 f., 182, 204.
209.
Tychiam, 670.
Tyler, Wat, 224.
Tyrannies, 8 f.
Tyrannic, 94.
Tyrrell, Father, 574.
, 82.
Unconditioned, 410 ff., 515 f.
Unconscious, 129, 214 ff., 369, 372,
376 f., 451 ff., 466, 487, 490 f.
Understanding, theory of, 402 ff.
See Discursive Thought.
Uniformity, law of, 520 ff.
Universal brotherhood, 115.
Universal intellect, 89, 185, 187,
197, 232, 298 f.
Universal and necessary knowledge,
52, 60 ff., 80 f., 194 f., 375 f., 394,
397 ff., 520 ff., 524 f., 575. Be*
A priori Knowledge.
Universal parallelism, 390 f.
Universals, 52, 57 f., 60 ff., «3 ff.,
78, 80 f., 82 f., 99, 106, 182 f.,
166 ff., 171, 172 f., 178, 179, 181 ff.,
194 f., 209 f., 214 ff., 370 f.
Universities, 179, 217, 365.
Utilitarianism, 332, 518, 532* ff,
545 f., 551.
Utility of knowledge, 255 f., 257,
264, 272. Set Pragmatism.
Vacherot, E., 511.
Vaihinger, H., 493, 574.
Valentine, 139.
Valla, Laurentius, 229.
Value, philosophy of, 500 ff., MIL}
science of, 484 f.
Vaaqutz, G., 203.
Vaudois, 224.
Victorine., 170* f., 225.
Victorious, 163.
Vincent of Beaurmii, 181, 204.
da Vinci, Leonardo. 236.
Virtues. 70, 00, 102 f., 112 ff., lit,
152, 200 f. 809
Vision, 340.
612
INDEX
Vitalism, 87, 197, 237, 282.
Vittoria, F., 203.
Vives, L., 232.
Vogt, K., 492.
Volksgeist, 475.
Volney, C. F. de, 331.
Volta, A., 388.
Voltaire, 292, 329, 383* f., 389, 391.
Volition. See Will.
Voluntarism, 212 f., 249, 361, 485 if.,
490 f., 499 f., 512 f., 565, 571 ff.,
574 ff.
Waldenses, 224.
Waldo, Peter, 224.
Walter of Mortagne, 174.
Walter of St. Victor, 176.
War, 243 f., 475.
Ward, J., 549.
Warro, 208.
Watson, J., 562.
Weigel, E., 366.
Weigel, V., 248.
Weisse, C. H., 477, 403.
Wenley, R. M., 562.
Whewell, W., 513* f., 549.
Will, 88, 90, 101, 111, 151, 192,
197 f., 208, 211, 216 f., 268 f.,
279, 303 f., 339, 351, 499 f., 504,
523. See Freedom of Will, and
Voluntarism.
Will and intellect, 192, 197, 212,
303 f.; God and, 10», 110, 294 f.
William of Auvergne, 181.
William of Auxerre, 171.
William of Champeaux, 171*, 172.
William of Conches, 174, 225.
William of Occam, 215* ff., 223, 226,
362, 513.
Winckelmann, J. J., 386, 483.
Windelband, W., 477, 500* f., 563.
Winkler, B., 244.
Wissenschaftslehre, 433 ff ., 459 f.
Witelo, 205.
Wolff, Christian, 254, 380* f., 382,
393.
Wolff, C. F., 371, 388.
Wollaston, W., 363.
Woodbridge, F. J. E., 581 f.
Woolston, T., 330.
Wordsworth, W., 549.
World-soul, 39, 66, 123 f., 129, 498.
See Pantheism.
Wundt, W., 494, 498* f.
Wyclif, 223, 224.
Xenocrates, 75.
Xenophanes, 26* ff.
Xenophon, 53 ff.
Zacharias Scholasticus, 145.
Zeller, E., 59, 65, 77, 121, 137,. 493,
Zeno the Eleatic, 29* f.
Zeno the Stoic, 13, 104*.
Zwingli, 247.
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