or) C O <！--{ <！--{ CO LCD º e -> . 37 I 2. Theory of Ethics º • S - - o º º . 383 3. Theory of the Beautiful and of Ends in Nature. - . 4OO (a) AEsthetic Judgment . º e - gº - . . 40 I (3) Teleological Judgment . - º e º . 409 4. From Kant to Fichte . e e - º º © . 4I4 CHAPTER X. FICHTE * @ is tº . . . . . . . 4 I 9 I. The Science of Knowledge . * © º ſº º . 424 (a) The Problem e º - º e e . 424 (3) The Three Principles. e º • & º . 429 (c) The Theoretical Ego . g © g g º . 432 (d) The Practical Ego . º © o º & . 434 2. The Science of Ethics and of Right . & e e . 436 xiv. COAV ZAZAV Z'.S. PAGE 3. Fichte's Second Period: his View of History and his Theory of Religion & e © tº & gº . 439 CHAPTER XI. SCHELLING • º ºs tº º ºs . . . . . 445 Ia. Philosophy of Nature º & e . e & . 448 Ió. Transcendental Philosophy . o º e e • 454 2. System of Identity . º e e e • ' . . 456 3a. Doctrine of Freedom e & g g & tº . 461 3%. Philosophy of Mythology and Revelation º º . 465 CHAPTER XII. SCHELLING'S CO-WORKERS . . . . . . . 468 I. The Philosophers of Nature e - e • º . 468 2. The Philosophers of Identity (F. Krause) . o e . 47O 3. The Philosophers of Religion (Baader and Schleier- macher). - º º º º & e º . 472 CHAPTER XIII. HEGEL . . . e • * , , • * º . . 487 1. Hegel's View of the World and his Method . e . 489 2. The System - * e & - & © e . 494 (a) Logic . - º - º - g º • . 495 (5) The Philosophy of Nature . - º to e . 496 (c) The Doctrine of Subjective Spirit . & & . 497 (d) The Doctrine of Objective Spirit . º e . .498 (e) Absolute Spirit . e º o e e ſº . 50 I CHAPT E R XIV. THE OPPOSITION TO CONSTRUCTIVE IDEALISM : FRIES, HERBART, SCHOPENHAUER © - . . 505 1. The Psychologists: Fries and Beneke e © ſº , 506 2. Realism : Herbart * º º e e o & . 516 3. Pessimism : Schopenhauer . º e tº e e . 537 CHAPTER XV. PHILOSOPHY OUT OF GERMANY . . . . . 548 I. Italy . e e e º & º g Q º . 548 2. France e © e º e & * e * . 5 ; 2 COAV 7'EAV 7"S. XV PAGE 3. Great Britain and America . . . g g 563 4. Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and Holland . . 583 CHAPTER XVI. GERMAN PHILOSOPHY SINCE THE DEATH OF HEGEL . 587 I. From the Division of the Hegelian School to the Ma- terialistic Controversy . tº © & e e . 588 2. New Systems: Trendelenburg, Fechner, Lotze, and Hart- TIn a n In 4. & & gº q9. * g tº . 599 3. From the Revival of the Kantian Philosophy to the Present Time & & † e e * . 614 (a) Neo-Kantianism, Positivism, and Kindred Phe- In OIII] e Ila . * * * & g & ſº . 614 (ó) Idealistic Reaction against the Scientific Spirit. . 622 (c) The Special Philosophical Sciences . 625 4. Retrospect e g & g . 629 INDEX . . . . . . . . . . . . 635 INTRODUCTION. IN no other department is a thorough knowledge of his- tory so important as in philosophy. Like historical science in general, philosophy is, on the One hand, in touch with exact inquiry, while, on the other, it has a certain relation- ship with art. With the former it has in common its method- ical procedure and its cognitive aim ; with the latter, its intuitive character and the endeavor to compass the whole of reality with a glance. Metaphysical principles are less easily verified from experience than physical hypotheses, but also less easily refuted. Systems of philosophy, there- fore, are not so dependent on Our progressive knowledge of facts as the theories of natural Science, and change less quickly; notwithstanding their mutual conflicts, and in spite of the talk about discarded standpoints, they possess in a measure the permanence of classical works of art, they retain for all time a certain relative validity. The thought of Plato, of Aristotle, and of the heroes of modern philosophy is ever proving anew its fructifying power. Nowhere do we find such instructive errors as in the sphere of philoso- phy; nowhere is the new so essentially a completion and development of the old, even though it deem itself the whole and assume a hostile attitude toward its predecessors; nowhere is the inquiry so much more important than the final result ; nowhere the categories “true and false " so inadequate. The spirit of the time and the spirit of the people, the individuality of the thinker, disposition, will, fancy—all these exert a far stronger influence on the devel- opment of philosophy, both by way of promotion and by way of hindrance, than in any other department of thought. If a system gives classical expression to the thought of an epoch, a nation, or a great personality; if it seeks to attack the world-riddle from a new direction, or brings us nearer 2 ZN 7RODUCTION. its solution by important original conceptions, by a subtler or a simpler comprehension of the problem, by a wider out- look or a deeper insight; it has accomplished more than it could have done by bringing forward a number of in- disputably correct principles. The variations in philosophy, which, on the assumption of the unity of truth, are a rock of Offense to many minds, may be explained, on the one hand, by the combination of complex variety and limitation in the motives which govern philosophical thought, for it is the whole man that philosophizes, not his understanding merely,–and, on the other, by the inexhaustible extent of the field of philosophy. Back of the logical labor of proof and inference stand, as inciting, guiding, and hindering agents, psychical and historical forces, which are themselves in large measure alogical, though stronger than all logic; while just before stretches away the immeasurable domain of reality, at once inviting and resisting conquest. The grave contradictions, so numerous in both the subjective and the objective fields, make unanimity impossible con- cerning ultimate problems; in fact, they render it difficult for the individual thinker to combine his convictions into a self-consistent system. Each philosopher sees limited sections of the world only, and these through his own eyes; every system is one-sided. Yet it is this multiplicity and variety of systems alone which makes the aim of philosophy practicable as it endeavors to give a complete picture of the soul and of the universe. The history of philosophy is the philosophy of humanity, that great individual, which, with more extended vision than the instruments through which it works, is able to entertain opposing princi- ples, and which, reconciling old contradictions as it dis- covers new ones, approaches by a necessary and certain growth the knowledge of the one all-embracing truth, which is rich and varied beyond our conception. In order to energetic labor in the further progress of philosophy, it is necessary to imagine that the goddess of truth is about to lift the veil which has for centuries concealed her. The historian of philosophy, on the contrary, looks on each new system as a stone, which, when shaped and fitted into its place, will help to raise higher the pyramid of knowledge. AW 7'A'O DUC 7/OAV. 3 Hegel's doctrine of the necessity and motive force of con- tradictories, of the relative justification of standpoints, and the systematic development of speculation, has great and permanent value as a general point of view. It needs only to be guarded from narrow scholastic application to become a safe canon for the historical treatment of philosophy. In speaking above of the worth of the philosophical doc- trines of the past as defying time, and as comparable to the standard character of finished works of art, the special ref- erence was to those elements in speculation which proceed less from abstract thinking than from the fancy, the heart, and the character of the individual, and even more directly from the disposition of the people ; and which to a certain degree may be divorced from logical reasoning and the scientific treatment of particular questions. These may be summed up under the phrase, views of the world. The necessity for constant reconsideration of them is from this standpoint at once evident. | The Greek view of the world is as classic as the plastic art of Phidias and the epic of Homer; the Christian, as eternally valid as the architec- ture of the Middle Ages; the modern, as irrefutable as Goethe's poetry and the music of Beethoven. The views of the world which proceed from the spirits of different ages, as products of the general development of culture, are not so much thoughts as rhythms in thinking, not theories but modes of intuition saturated with feelings of worth. We may dispute about them, it is true ; we may argue against them or in their defense; but they can neither be established nor overthrown by cogent proofs. It is not only optimism and pessimism, determinism and indeterminism, that have their ultimate roots in the affective side of our nature, but pantheism and individualism, also idealism and materialism, even rationalism and sensationalism. Even though they operate with the instruments of thought, they remain in the last analysis matters of faith, of feeling, and of resolution. The aesthetic view of the world held by the Greeks, the transcendental-religious view of Christianity, the intellectual view of Leibnitz and Hegel, the panthelistic views of Fichte and Schopenhauer are vital forces, not doctrines, postulates, not results of thought. One view of the world is forced to 4. AV ZAZOZ) OCZ ZOAV. yield its pre-eminence to another, which it has itself helped to produce by its own one-sidedness; only to reconquer its opponent later, when it has learned from her, when it has been purified, corrected, and deepened by the struggle. But the elder contestant is no more confuted by the younger than the drama of Sophocles by the drama of Shakspere, than youth by age or spring by autumn. If it is thus indubitable that the views of the world held in earlier times deserve to live on in the memory of man, and to live as something better than mere reminders of the past— the history of philosophy is not a cabinet of antiquities, but a museum of typical products of the mind—the value and interest of the historical study of the past in relation to the exact scientific side of philosophical inquiry is not less evi- dent. In every science it is useful to trace the origin and growth of problems and theories, and doubly so in philoso- phy. With her it is by no means the universal rule that progress shows itself by the result ; the statement of the ques- tion is often more important than the answer. The prob- lem is more sharply defined in a given direction ; or it be- comes more comprehensive, is analyzed and refined ; or if now it threatens to break up into subtle details, some genius appears to simplify it and force our thoughts back to the fundamental question. This advance in problems, which happily is everywhere manifested by unmistakable signs, is, in the case of many of the questions which irresistibly force themselves upon the human heart, the only certain gain from centuries of endeavor. The labor here is of more value than the result. In treating the history of philosophy, two extremes must be avoided, lawless individualism and abstract logical formalism. The history of philosophy is neither a dis- connected succession of arbitrary individual opinions and clever guesses, nor a mechanically developed series of typical standpoints and problems, which imply one another in just the form and order historically assumed. The former supposition does violence to the regularity of philo- sophical development, the latter to its vitality. In the one case, the connection is conceived too loosely, in the other, too rigidly and simply. One view underestimates the IV7 Rop UCZZOA. 5 power of the logical Idea, the other overestimates it. It is not easy to support the principle that chance rules the destiny of philosophy, but it is more difficult to avoid the opposite conviction of the one-sidedness of formalistic con- struction, and to define the nature and limits of philosophical necessity. The development of philosophy is, perhaps, one chief aim of the world-process, but it is certainly not the only one ; it is a part of the universal aim, and it is not sur- prising that the instruments of its realization do not work exclusively in its behalf, that their activity brings about re- sults which seem unessential for philosophical ends or ob- stacles in their way. Philosophical ideas do not think them- selves, but are thought by living spirits, which are some- thing other and better than mere thought machines—by spirits who live these thoughts, who fill them with per- sonal warmth and passionately defend them. There is often reason, no doubt, for the complaint that the person- ality which has undertaken to develop some great idea is inadequate to the task, that it carries its subjective defects into the matter in hand, that it does too much or too little, or the right thing in the wrong way, so that the spirit of philosophy seems to have erred in the choice and the prepara- tion of its instrument. But the reverse side of the picture must also be taken into account. The thinking spirit is more limited, it is true, than were desirable for the perfect execution of a definite logical task; but, on the other hand, it is far too rich as well. A soulless play of concepts would certainly not help the cause, and there is no disadvantage in the failure of the history of philosophy to proceed so directly and so scholastically, as, for instance, in the system of Hegel. A graded series of interconnected general forces mediate between the logical Idea and the individual thinker —the spirit of the people, of the age, of the thinker's voca- tion, of his time of life, which are felt by the individual as part of himself and whose impulses he unconsciously obeys. In this way the modifying, furthering, hindering correlation of higher and lower, of the ruler with his com- mands and the servant with his more or less willing obedi- ence, is twice repeated, the situation being complicated fur- ther by the fact that the subject affected by these historical 6 JAW 7'A'O/O UC 7"/OAV. forces himself helps to make history. The most important factor in philosophical progress is, of course, the state of inquiry at the time, the achievements of the thinkers of the immediately preceding age ; and in this relation of a phil- osopher to his predecessors, again, a distinction must be made between a logical and a psychological element. The successor often commences his support, his development, or his refutation at a point quite unwelcome to the con- structive historian. At all events, if we may judge from the experience of the past, too much caution cannot be exer- cised in setting up formal laws for the development of thought. According to the law of contradiction and recon- ciliation, a Schopenhauer must have followed directly after Leibnitz, to oppose his pessimistic ethelism to the optimistic intellectualism of the latter ; when, in turn, a Schleiermacher, to give an harmonic resolution of the antithesis into a concrete doctrine of feeling, would have made a fine third. But it turned out otherwise, and we must be content. The estimate of the value of the history of philosophy in general, given at the start, is the more true of the history of modern philosophy, since the movement introduced by the latter still goes on unfinished. We are still at work on the problems which were brought forward by Descartes, Locke, and Leibnitz, and which Kant gathered up into the critical or transcendental question. The present continues to be governed by the ideal of culture which Bacon pro- posed and Fichte exalted to a higher level; we all live under the unweakcncá spell of that view of the world which was developed in hostile opposition to Scholasticism, and through the enduring influence of those mighty geographical and scientific discoveries and religious reforms which marked the entrance of the modern period. It is true, indeed, that the transition brought about by Kant's noétical and ethical revolution was of great significance,—more sig- nificant even than the Socratic period, with which we are fond of comparing it much that was new was woven on, much of the old, weakened, broken, destroyed. And yet, if we take into account the historical after-influence of Cartesianism, we shall find that the thread was only knotted ZAVTRODUCTION. 7 and twisted by Kantianism, not cut through. The con- tinued power of the pre-Kantian modes of thought is shown by the fact that Spinoza has been revived in Fichte and Schelling, Leibnitz in Herbart and Hegel, the sensationalism of the French Illuminati in Feuerbach ; and that even materialism, which had been struck down by the criticism of the reason (one would have thought forever), has again raised its head. Even that most narrow tendency of the early philosophy of the modern period, the apotheosis of cognition is, in spite of the moralistic counter-movement of Kant and Fichte,_the controlling motive in the last of the great idealistic systems, while it also continues to exer- cise a marvelously powerful influence on the convictions of our Hegel-weary age, alike within the sphere of philosophy and (still more) without it. In view of the intimate relations between contemporary inquiry and the progress of thought since the beginning of the modern period, acquaintance with the latter, which it is the aim of this History to facili- tate, becomes a pressing duty. To study the history of phi- losophy since Descartes is to study the pre-conditions of contemporary philosophy. We begin with an outline sketch of the general charac- teristics of modern philosophy. These may be most con- veniently described by comparing them with the characteris- tics of ancient and of mediaeval philosophy. The character of ancient philosophy or Greek philosophy, -for they are practically the same, is predominantly aesthetic. The Greek holds beauty and truth closely akin and inseparable; “cosmos” is his common expression for the world and for ornament. The universe is for him a harmony, an organ- ism, a work of art, before which he stands in admiration and reverential awe. In quiet contemplation, as with the eye of a connoisseur, he looks upon the world or the indi- vidual object as a well-ordered whole, more disposed to en- joy the congruity of its parts than to study out its ulti- mate elements. He prefers contemplation to analysis, his thought is plastic, not anatomical. He finds the nature of the object in its form ; and ends give him the key to the comprehension of events. Discovering human elements everywhere, he is always ready with judgments of worth— 8 JAW TRO/DUCTIOAV. the stars move in circles because circular motion is the most perfect; the right is better than left, upper finer than lower, that which precedes more beautiful than that which follows. Thinkers in whom this aesthetic reverence is weaker than the analytic impulse—especially Democritus—seem half modern rather than Greek. By the side of the Greek philosophy, in its sacred festal garb, stands the modern in secular workday dress, in the laborer's blouse, with the merciless chisel of analysis in its hand. This does not seek beauty, but only the naked truth, no matter what it be. It holds it impossible to satisfy at once the understanding and taste; nay, nakedness, ugliness, and offensiveness seem to it to testify for, rather than against, the genuineness of truth. In its anxiety not to read human elements into nature, it goes so far as completely to read spirit out of nature. The world is not a living whole, but a machine; not a work of art which is to be viewed in its totality and enjoyed with reverence, but a clock-movement to be taken apart in order to be understood. Nowhere are there ends in the world, but everywhere mechanical causes. The charac- ter of modern thought would appear to a Greek returned to earth very Sober, unsplendid, undevout, and intrusive. And, in fact, modern philosophy has a considerable amount of prose about it, is not easily impressed, accepts no limit- ations from feeling, and holds nothing too sacred to be at- tacked with the weapon of analytic thought. And yet it com- bines penetration with intrusiveness; acuteness, coolness, and logical courage with its soberness. Never before has the de- mand for unprejudiced thought and certain knowledge been made with equal earnestness. This interest in knowledge for its own sake developed so suddenly and with such strength that, in presumptuous gladness, men believed that no pre- vious age had rightly understood what truth and love for truth are. The natural consequence was a general overesti- mation of cognition at the expense of all other mental activi- ties. Even among the Greek thinkers, thought was held by the majority to be the noblest and most divine function. But their intellectualism was checked by the aesthetic and eudaemonistic element, and preserved from the one-sidedness which it manifests in the modern period, because of the lack AAV7'A&O/) UC 7TWOAV. 9 of an effective counterpoise. However eloquently Bacon commends the advantages to be derived from the conquest of nature, he still understands inquiry for inquiry's sake, and honors it as Supreme ; even the ethelistic philosophers, Fichte and Schopenhauer, pay their tribute to the prejudice in favor of intellectualism. The fact that the modern period can show no one philosophic writer of the literary rank of . Plato, even though it includes such masters of style as Fichte, Schelling, Schopenhauer, and Lotze, not to speak of lesser names, is an external proof of how noticeably the aesthetic impulse has given way to one purely intel- lectual. When we turn to the character of mediaeval thinking, we find, instead of the aesthetic views of antiquity and the purely scientific tendency of the modern era, a distinctively religious spirit. Faith prescribes the objects and the lim- itations of knowledge ; everything is referred to the here- after, thought becomes prayer. Men speculate concern- ing the attributes of God, on the number and rank of the angels, on the immortality of man—all purely tran- scendental subjects. Side by side with these, it is true, the world receives loving attention, but always as the lower story merely,” above which, with its own laws, rises the true fatherland, the kingdom of grace. The most subtle acuteness is employed in the service of dogma, with the task of fathoming the how and why of things whose ex- istence is certified elsewhere. The result is a formalism in thought side by side with profound and fervent mysticism. Doubt and trust are strangely intermingled, and a feeling of expectation stirs all hearts. On the one side stands sinful, erring man, who, try as hard as he may, only half unravels the mysteries of revealed truth ; on the other, the God of grace, who, after our death, will reveal himself to us as clearly as Adam knew him before the fall. God alone, however, can comprehend himself—for the finite spirit, even truth unveiled is mystery, and ecstasy, unresisting devotion to the incomprehensible, the culmination of knowl- * On the separation and union of the three worlds, natura, gratia, gloria, in Thomas Aquinas, cf. Rudolph Eucken, Die Philosophie des 7% omas von Aquino aund die Kultur der AVeuzeit, Halle, 1886. IO AAV7'A’O/O UC 7/OAV. edge. In mediaeval philosophy the subject looks longingly upward to the infinite object of his thought, expecting that the latter will bend down toward him or lift him upward toward itself; in Greek philosophy the spirit confronts its object, the world, on a footing of equality; in modern philosophy the speculative subject feels him- self higher than the object, superior to nature. In the conception of the Middle Ages, truth and mystery are identical ; to antiquity they appear reconcilable ; modern thought holds them as mutually exclusively as light and darkness. The unknown is the enemy of knowledge, which must be chased out of its last hiding-place. It is, therefore, easy to understand that the modern period stands in far sharper antithesis to the mediaeval era than to the ancient, for the latter has furnished it many princi- ples which can be used as weapons against the former. Grandparents and grandchildren make good friends. When a new movement is in preparation, but there is a lack of creative force to give it form, a period of tumultu- ous disaffection with existing principles ensues. What is wanted is not clearly perceived, but there is a lively sense of that which is not wanted. Dissatisfaction prepares a place for that which is to come by undermining the existent and making it ripe for its fall. The old, the outgrown, the doctrine which had become inadequate, was in this case Scholasticism ; modern philosophy shows throughout—and most clearly at the start—an anti-Scholastic character. If up to this time Church dogma had ruled unchallenged in spiritual affairs, and thc Aristotelian philosophy in things. temporal, war is now declared against authority of every sort and freedom of thought is inscribed on the banner.” “Modern philosophy is Protestantism in the sphere of the thinking spirit” (Erdmann). Not that which has been con- sidered true for centuries, not that which another says, * The doctrine of twofold truth, under whose protecting cloak the new liberal movements had hitherto taken refuge, was now disdainfully repudiated. Cf. Freudenthal, Zur Beurtheilung der Scholastić, in vol. iii. of the Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie, 1890. Also, H. Reuter, Geschichte der religiösen Aufklärung im Mittelalter, 1875-77; and Dilthey, Æinleitung in die Geistes- wissenschaftem, 1883. AV 7TRO/DUCT/OA/. II though he be Aristotle or Thomas Aquinas, not that which flatters the desires of the heart, is true, but that only which is demonstrated to my own understanding with Con- vincing force. Philosophy is no longer willing to be the handmaid of theology, but must set up a house of her own, The watchword now becomes freedom and in- dependent thought, deliverance from every form of Con- straint, alike from the bondage of ecclesiastical decrees and the inner servitude of prejudice and cherished inclinations. But the adoption of a purpose leads to the consideration of the means for attaining it. Thus the thirst for knowl- edge raises questions concerning the method, the instru- ments, and the limits of knowledge; the interest in noétics and methodology vigorously develops, remains a constant factor in modern inquiry, and culminates in Kant, not again to die away. This negative aspect of modern tendencies needs, however, a positive supplement. The mediaeval mode of thought is discarded and the new one is not yet found. What can more fittingly furnish a support, a preliminary substitute, than antiquity ? Thus philosophy, also, joins in that great stream of culture, the Renaissance and humanism, which, starting from Italy, poured forth over the whole civilized world. Plato and Neoplatonism, Epicurus and the Stoa are opposed to Scholasticism, the real Aristotle to the transformed Aristotle of the Church and the distorted Aristotle of the schools. Back to the sources, is the cry. With the revival of the ancient languages and ancient books, the spirit of antiquity is also revived. The dust of the schools and the tyranny of the Church are thrown off, and the classical ideal of a free and noble humanity gains en- thusiastic adherents. The man is not to be forgotten in the Christian, nor art and science, the rights and the riches of individuality in the interest of piety; work for the future must not blind us to the demands of the present nor lead us to neglect the comprehensive cultivation of the natural capac- ities of the spirit. The world and man are no longer viewed through Christian eyes, the one as a realm of darkness and the other as a vessel of weakness and wrath, but nature and life gleam before the new generation in joyous, I 2 JAV7'A'O/DU/C 7TWOAV. hopeful light. Humanism and optimism have always been allied. This change in the spirit of thought is accompanied by a corresponding change in the object of thought : theol- ogy must yield its supremacy to the knowledge of nature. Weary of Christological and soteriological questions, weary of disputes concerning the angels, the thinking spirit longs to make himself at home in the world it has learned to love, demands real knowledge, knowledge which is of practical utility, and no longer seeks God outside the world, but in it and above it. Nature becomes the home, the body of God. Transcendence gives place to immanence, not only in theology, but elsewhere. Modern philosophy is natural- istic in spirit, not only because it takes nature for its favorite object, but also because it carries into other branches of knowledge the mathematical method so successful in natural science, because it considers everything sub ratione natura and insists on the “natural ” explanation of all phenomena, even those of ethics and politics. In a word, the tendency of modern philosophy is anti- Scholastic, humanistic, and naturalistic. This summary must suffice for preliminary orientation, while the detailed division, particularization, modification, and limitation of these general points must be left for later treatment. Two further facts, however, may receive preliminary notice. The indifference and hostility to the Church which have been cited among the prominent characteristics of modern philosophy, do not necessarily mean enmity to the Christian religion, much less to religion in gen- eral. In part, it is merely a change in the object of religious feeling, which blazes up especially strong and enthusiastic in the philosophy of the sixteenth century, as it transfers its worship from a transcendent deity to a universe indued with a soul : in part, the opposition is directed against the mediaeval, ecclesiastical form of Christianity, with its monastic abandonment of the world. It was often noth- ing but a very deep and strong religious feeling that led thinkers into the conflict with the hierarchy. Since the ele- ments of permanent worth in the tendencies, doctrines, and institutions of the Middle Ages are thus culled out from that AV 7"RO/D UC 7/OM. I 3 which is corrupt and effete, and preserved by incorporation into the new view of the world and the new science, and as fruitful elements from antiquity enter with them, the prog- ress of philosophy shows a continuous enrichment in its ideas, intuitions, and spirit. The old is not simply dis- carded and destroyed, but purified, transformed, and assimi- lated. The same fact forces itself into notice if we consider the relations of nationality and philosophy in the three great eras. The Greek philosophy was entirely national in its origin and its public, it was rooted in the character of the people and addressed itself to fellow-countrymen ; not until toward its decline, and not until influenced by Chris- tianity, were its cosmopolitan inclinations aroused. The Middle Ages were indifferent to national distinctions, as to everything earthly, and naught was of value in comparison with man's transcendent destiny. Mediaeval philosophy is in its aims un-national, cosmopolitan, catholic ; it uses the Latin of the schools, it seeks adherents in every land, it finds everywhere productive spirits whose labors in its service remain unaffected by their national peculiarities. The modern period returns to the nationalism of antiquity, but does not relinquish the advantage gained by the extension of mediaeval thought to the whole civilized world. The roots of modern philosophy are sunk deep in the fruit- ful soil of nationality, while the top of the tree spreads itself far beyond national limitations. It is national and cosmopolitan together; it is international as the common property of the various peoples, which exchange their philosophical gifts through an active commerce of ideas. Latin is often retained for use abroad, as the universal lan- guage of savants, but many a work is first published in the mother-tongue—and thought in it. Thus it becomes possible for the ideas of the wise to gain an entrance into the consciousness of the people, from whose spirit they have really sprung, and to become a power beyond the circle of the learned public. Thilosophy as illumination, as a factor in general culture, is an exclusively modern phe- nomenon. In this speculative intercourse of nations, how- ever, the French, the English, and the Germans are most involved, both as producers and consumers. France gives I4. AVTRODUCTION. the initiative (in Descartes), then England assumes the leadership (in Locke), with Leibnitz and Kant the hegem- ony passes over to Germany. Besides these powers, Italy takes an eager part in the production of philosophical ideas in the period of ferment before Descartes. Each of these nations contributes elements to the total result which it alone is in a position to furnish, and each is rewarded by gifts in return which it would be incapable of producing Out of its own store. This international exchange of ideas, in which each gives and each receives, and the fact that the chief modern thinkers, especially in the earlier half of the era, prior to Kant, are in great part not philosophers by pro- fession but soldiers, statesmen, physicians, as well as natural Scientists, historians, and priests, give modern philosophy an unprofessional, worldly appearance, in striking contrast to the clerical character of mediaeval, and the prophetic character of ancient thinking. Germany, England, and France claim the honor of having produced the first modern philosopher, presenting Nicolas of Cusa, Bacon of Verulam, and René Descartes as their candidates, while Hobbes, Bruno, and Montaigne have received only scattered votes. The claim of England is the weakest of all, for, without intending to diminish Bacon's im- portance, it may be said that the programme which he develops—and in essence his philosophy is nothing more— was, in its leading principles, not first announced by him, and not carried out with sufficient consistency. The dispute between the two remaining contestants may be easily and equitably settled by making the simple distinction be- tween forerunner and beginner, between path-breaker and founder. The entrance of a new historical era is not accompanied by an audible click, like the beginning of a new piece on a music-box, but is gradually effected. A consid- erable period may intervene between the point when the new movement flashes up, not understood and half uncon- scious of itself, and the time when it appears on the stage in full strength and maturity, recognizing itself as new and so acknowledged by others: the period of ferment between the Middle Ages and modern times lasted almost two cen- turies. It is in the end little more than logomachy to AV 7"RO/DUCTIOAV. I5 discuss whether this time of anticipation and desire, of endeavor and partial success, in which the new struggles with the old without conquering it, and the opposite tend- encies in the conflicting views of the world interplay in a way at once obscure and wayward, is to be classed as the epi- logue of the old era or the prologue of the new. The simple solution to take it as a transition period, no longer mediaeval but not yet modern, has met with fairly general acceptance. Nicolas of Cusa (L40 I-64) was the first to announce fundamental principles of modern philosophy—he is the leader in this intermediate preparatory period. , Des- cartes (1596–1650) brought forward the first system—he is the father of modern philosophy. A brief survey of the literature may be added in conclu- S1 O1] . Heinrich Ritter's Geschächte der neuerem Philosophie (vols. ix.-xii. of his Geschzchte der P/ºzłosophze), 1850–53, to Wolff and Rousseau, has been superseded by more recent works. J. E. Erdmann's able Versuch ezmer zyzssenschaft/ec/ien Darstel/ung der neuerez, PAz/osoft/.2e (6 vols., 1834– 53) gives in appendices literal excerpts from non-German writers; the same author's Grundrzss der Geschzchte der PAzłosophée (2 vols., 1869; 3d ed., 1878) contains at the end the first exposition of German Philosophy since the Death of Hegel [English translation in 3 vols., edited by W. S. Hough, 1890.-TR.J. Ueberweg's Grundráss (7th ed. by M. Heinze, 1888) is indispensable for reference on account of the completeness of its bibliographical notes, which, however, are confusing to the beginner [English translation by G. S. Morris, with additions by the translator, Noah Porter, and Vincenzo Botta, New York, 1872–74.—TR.]. The most detailed and brilliant exposition has been given by Kuno Fischer (1854 seq.; 3d ed., 1878 seq.; the same author's Baco Zezed segme AWachfolger, 2d ed., 1875,-English translation, 1857, by Oxenford, Sup- plements the first two volumes of the Gesc/.2c/ºte der meuerem PAz/oso/Aze). This work, which is important also as a literary achievement, is better fitted than any other to make the reader at home in the ideal world of the great philosophers, which it reconstructs from its central point, and to prepare him for the study (which, of course, even the best exposition cannot replace) of the works of the thinkers themselves. Its excessive simplification of problems is not of great moment in the first introduc- tion to a system [English translation of vol. iii. book 2 (1st ed.), A Commentary on Kant's Critzcá of Zhe Pure Reason, by J. P. Mahaffy, London, 1866; vol. i. part I and part 2, book I, Descarfes and his School, by J. P. Gordy, New York, 1887; of vol. v. chaps. i.-v., A Crzłżgue of Kant, by W. S. Hough, London, 1888.-TR.]. Wilhelm Windelband (Geschzchºſe der neuerem Philosop/.2e, 2 vols., 1878 and I6 AV ZA’O/DUCT/OAV. 1880, to Hegel and Herbart inclusive) accentuates the connection of philosophy with general culture and the particular sciences, and empha- sizes philosophical method. This work is pleasant reading, yet, in the interest of clearness, we could wish that the author had given more of positive information concerning the content of the doctrines treated, instead of merely advancing reflections on them. A projected third volume is to trace the development of philosophy down to the present time. Windelband's compendium, Geschächte der Philosop/.2e, 1890–91, is dis- tinguished from other expositions by the fact that, for the most part, it confines itself to a history of Żroblems. Baumann's Geschächte der P///- osoft/ºze, 1890, aims to give a detailed account of those thinkers only who have advanced views individual either in their content or in their proof. Eduard Zeller has given his Geschächte der deutschem Philoso/Aze seaf Leibniz (1873; 2d ed., 1875) the benefit of the same thorough and com- prehensive knowledge and mature judgment which have made his PAz/- osoft/ºze der Grzechen a classic. [Bowen's Modern Philosophy, New York, 1857 (6th ed., 1891); Royce's Søzraž of Modern Philosophy, 1892.—TR.] Eugen Dühring's hypercritical Árzzzsche Geschächte der PAz/oso//ze (1869; 3d ed., 1878) can hardly be recommended to students. Lewes (German translation, 1876) assumes a positivistic standpoint; Thilo (1874), a position exclusively Herbartian ; A. Stoeckl (3d ed., 1889) writes from the standpoint of confessional Catholicism ; Vincenz Knauer (2d ed., 1882) is a Güntherian. With the philosophico-historical work of Chr. W. Sigwart (1854), and one of the same date by Oischinger, we are not intimately acquainted. Expositions of philosophy since Kant have been given by the Hegelian, C. L. Michelet (a larger one in 2 vols., 1837-38, and a smaller one, 1843); by Chalybaeus (1837; 5th ed., 1860, formerly very popular and worthy of it, English, 1854); by Fr. K. Biedermann (1842–43); by Carl Fortlage (1852, Kantio-Fichtean standpoint); and by Friedrich Harms (1876). The last of these writers unfortunately did not succeed in giving a suf- ficiently clear and precise, not to say tasteful, form to the valuable ideas and original conceptions in which his work is rich. The very popular exposition by an anonymous author of Hegelian tendencies, Deutsc//azid's Penſéer seat Kant (Dessau, 1851), hardly deserves mention. Further, we may mention some of the works which treat the historical development of particular subjects: On the history of the philosophy of religion, the first volume of Otto Pfleiderer's Religions/hi/osophze auf geschzc///zcher Grund/age (2d ed., 1883;-English translation by Alexander Stewart and Allan Menzies, 1886–88.-TR.), and the very trustworthy exposition by Bernhard Pünjer (2 vols., 1880, 1883; English translation by W. Hastie, vol. i., 1887.-TR.). On the history of Żracázca/ Žhilosophy, besides the first volume of I. H. Fichte's AEłżzà (1850), Franz Worländer's Geschächte der Z/2Zoso/Azschen Moral, Rechts- und Staats- Zehre der Eng/&nder tend Franzosen (1855); Fr. Jodl, Geschzchte der Ełż żn der neuerem Philosophze (2 vols., 1882, 1889), and Bluntschli, Geschächte der neuerem Staatswissenschaft (3d ed., 1881); [Sidgwick's ZvZRODUCTION. - 17 Outlines of the History of Ethics, 3d ed., 1892, and Martineau's Types of Æthica/ 7%eory, 3d ed., 1891.-TR.]. On the history of the Žhilosophy of history : Rocholl, Die Philosophie der Geschächte, 1878; Richard Fester, /ēousseau uſed die deutsche Gesc/.2c/a/S//ºz/osop/.2e, 1890 [Flint, The Philosophy of History in Europe, vol. i., 1874, complete in 3 vols., 1893 seq.]. On the history of asthetzcs, R. Zimmermann, 1858; H. Lotze, 1868; Max Schasler, 1871 ; Ed. von Hartmann (since Kant), 1886; Heinrich von Stein, Dze AEm/ste/ºung der neuereſt Asſhe/24 (1886); [Bosanquet, A History of Æsthetze, 1892.--TR.]. Further, Fr. Alb. Lange, Geschzchte des Materialismus), 1866; 4th ed., 1882; [English translation by E. C. Thomas, 3 vols., 1878–81.--TR.]; Jul. Baumann, ZOze Zehren Z/oz, A’azemz, Zezi zazed Małżemzazzá 27, der 7zettereſt P/12/osoft/.2e, 1868–69; Edm. König, Dze Entwicke/ung des Causa/ſroblems won Carzeszus ózs Áant, 1888, sezł Kazuń, 1890 ; Kurd Lasswitz, Geschzcáſe der Azomezszzá wome Mzłże/a/zer Öz's AWezvāozz, 2 vols., 1890 ; Ed. Grimm, Zur Geschachte des Erkemmänz'ss/rob/ems, von Bacon gaz //ume, 1890. The following works are to be recommended on the period of transition: Moritz Carrière, ZX2e //,2/oso/Azsche Weſłazischauung der Æeforma- Žzonsgezt, 1847; 2d ed., 1887; and Jacob Burckhardt, Kultur der Renaz's- sance 27, Z/a/zen, 4th ed., 1886, Reference may also be made to A. Trendelenburg, Historische Beiträge zur Philosophie, 3 vols., 1846–67; Rudolph Eucken, Geschächte und Krzłż der Grundbegºrzffe der Gegent- zwarz, 1878; [English translation by M. Stuart Phelps, 1880.-TR.]; the same, Geschzchte der Z/2Zosophzschen Termeznologize, 1879; the same, Beiträge zur Geschächte der neuerem Philosophze, 1886 (including a valuable paper on parties and party names in philosophy); the same, Dze Debensanschauungen der grossen Denker, 1890; Ludwig Noack, Philos- of Azegeschächtliches Zerzcon, 1879; Ed. Zeller, Vorträge und A&hand- /ungen, three series, 1865–84; Chr. von Sigwart, Klezme Schräften, 2 vols., 1881; 2d ed., 1889. R. Seydel's Á'e/ºgzon und PAzłosoft/.2e, 1887, contains papers on Luther, Schleiermacher, Schelling, Weisse, Fechner, Lotze, Hartmann, Darwinism, etc., which are well worth reading. Among the smaller compends Schwegler's (1848; recent editions revised and supplemented, by R. Koeber) remains still the least bad [English. translations by Seelye and Smith, revised edition with additions, New York, 1880; and J. H. Stirling, with annotations, 7th ed., 1879.--TR.]. The meager sketches by Deter, Koeber, Kirchner, Kuhn, Rabus, Vogel, and others are useful for review at least. Fritz Schultze’s Stamzzzzóazzzzz der Philosophze, 1890, gives skillfully constructed tabular outlines, but, unfortunately, in a badly chosen form. CHAPTER I. THE PERIOD OF TRANSITION : FROM NICOLAS OF CUSA TO DESCARTES. THE essays at philosophy which made their appearance between the middle of the fifteenth century and the middle of the seventeenth, exhibit mediaeval and modern charac- teristics in such remarkable intermixture that they can be assigned exclusively to neither of these two periods. There are eager longings, lofty demands, magnificent plans, and promising outlooks in abundance, but a lack of power to endure, a lack of calmness and maturity ; while the shackles against which the leading minds revolt still bind too firmly both the leaders and those to whom they speak. Only here and there are the fetters loosened and thrown off; if the hands are successfully freed, the clanking chains still hamper the feet. It is a time just suited for original think- ers, a remarkable number of whom in fact make their appearance, side by side or in close succession. Further, however little these are able to satisfy the demand for per- manent results, they ever arouse our interest anew by the boldness and depth of their brilliant ideas, which alternate with quaint fancies or are pervaded by them ; by the youth- ful courage with which they attacked great questions; and not least by the hard fate which rewarded their efforts with misinterpretation, persecution, and death at the stake. We must quickly pass over the broad threshold between, modern philosophy and Scholastic philosophy, which is bounded by the year 1450, in which Nicolas of Cusa wrote his chief work, the Idiota, and 1644, when Descartes began the new era with his Principia Philosophiae; and can touch, in passing, only the most important factors. We shall begin our account of this transition period with Nicolas, and end it with the Englishmen, Bacon, Hobbes, and Lord Herbert of Cherbury. Between these we shall arrange the I8 AV/CO/AS OF COWSA. I9 various figures of the Philosophical Renaissance (in the broad sense) in six groups: the Restorers of the Ancient Systems. and their Opponents; the Italian Philosophers of Nature; the Political and Legal Philosophers; the Skeptics; the Mystics; the Founders of the Exact Investigation of Nature. In Italy the new spiritual birth shows an aesthetic, scientific, and humanistic tendency; in Germany it is pre- eminently religious emancipation—in the Reformation. I. Nicolas of Cusa. Nicolas * was born in 1401, at Cues (Cusa) on the Moselle near Treves. He early ran away from his stern father, a boatman and vine-dresser named Chrypps (or Krebs), and was brought up by the Brothers of the Common Life at Deventer. In Padua he studied law, mathematics, and philosophy, but the loss of his first case at Mayence so disgusted him with his profession that he turned to theology, and became a distinguished preacher. He took part in the Council of Basle, was sent by Pope Eugen IV. as an ambassador to Constantinople and to the Reichstag at Frankfort; was made Cardinal in 1448, and Bishop of Brixen in 1450. His feudal lord, the Count of Tyrol, Archduke Sigismund, refused him recognition on ac- count of certain quarrels in which they had become engaged, and for a time held him prisoner. Previous to this he had undertaken journeys to Germany and the Netherlands on missionary business. During a second sojourn in Italy death overtook him, in the year 1464, at Todi in Umbria. The first volume of the Paris edition of his collected works (1514) contains the most important of his philosophical writings; the second, among others, mathematical essays and ten books of selections from his sermons; the third, the * R. Zimmermann, AWiżolaus Cusanus als Worläufer Zeibnizens, in vol. viii. of the Sitzungsberichte der philosophisch-historischen Æ7asse der AAEademie der Wissenschaftem, Vienna, 1852, p. 306 seq. R. Falckenberg, Grund'zāge der Phil- osophie des AWiÁolaus Cusanus mit besonderer Berzicăsăchtigung der Zehre wom Arkennen, Breslau, 1880. R. Eucken, Beiträge zur Geschichte der neuerem Philosophie, Heidelberg, 1886, p. 6 seq., Joh. Uebinger, Die Gotteslehre des AWikolaus Cusamus, Münster, 1888. Scharpff, Des Mikolaus won Cusa wichtigste Schriftem in deutscher Oebersetzung, Freiburg i. Br., 1862. 2O 7A/A2 A3/EA’/O/D OA' 7"A’AAVS/T/O/V. extended work, De Comecordantza Cat/ho/ica, which he had completed at Basle. In 1440 (having already written on the Reform of the Calendar) he began his imposing series of philosophical writings with the De Docta /gnorantia, to which the De Conjecturis was added in the following year. These were succeeded by smaller treatises entitled De Quaerendo AJezuma, De Dato Patris /...uminum, De Fi/iazione /Dež, De Genesi, and a defense of the De Docła Ignorantza. His most im– portant work is the third of the four dialogues of the /diota (“On the Mind”), 1450. He clothes in continually changing forms the one supreme truth on which all depends, and which cannot be expressed in intelligible language but Only comprehended by living intuition. In many different ways he endeavors to lead the reader on to a vision of the inexpressible, or to draw him up to it, and to develop fruitfully the principle of the coincidence of opposites, which had dawned upon him on his return journey from Constan- tinople (De Visione Dei, Dialogus de Possest, De Bery/lo, De Ludo G/oôi, De Venatione Sapientia, De Apice 7%.eoria, Com- pendium). Sometimes he uses dialectical reasoning ; some- times he soars in mystical exaltation; sometimes he writes with a simplicity level to the common mind, and in con- nection with that which lies at hand ; sometimes, with the most comprehensive brevity. Besides these his philoso- phico-religious works are of great value, De Pace Fidei, De Crzóratione A/chorazz. Liberal Catholics reverence him as one of the deepest thinkers of the Church; but the fame of Giordano Bruno, a more brilliant but much less original figure, has hitherto stood in the way of the general recognition of his great importance for modern philosophy. Human knowledge and the relation of God to the world are the two poles of the Cusan's system. He distinguishes four stages of knowledge. Lowest of all stands sense (together with imagination), which yields only confused images; next above, the understanding (ratio), whose functions comprise analysis, the positing of time and space, numerical opera- tions, and denomination, and which keeps the opposites distinct under the law of contradiction; third, the specu- lative reason (intellectus), which finds the opposites rec- AZCOZAS OF COSA. 2 I oncilable ; and highest of all the mystical, supra-rational intuition (visio sine comprehensione, intuitio, unio, filiatio), for which the opposites coincide in the infinite unity. The intuitive culmination of knowledge, in which the soul is united with God, since here even the antithesis of subject and object disappears, is but seldom attained ; and it is difficult to keep out the disturbing symbols and images of sense, which mingle themselves in the intuition. But it is just this insight into the incomprehensibility of the infinite which gives us a true knowledge of God; this is the mean- ing of the “learned ignorance,” the docto ignorantia. The distinctions between these several stages of cognition are not, however, to be understood in any rigid sense, for each higher function comprehends the lower, and is active therein. The understanding can discriminate only when it is furnished by sensation with images of that which is to be discriminated, the reason can combine only when the under- standing has supplied the results of analysis as material for combination ; while, on the other hand, it is the under- standing which is present in sense as consciousness, and the reason whose unity guides the understanding in its work of separation. Thus the several modes of cognition do not stand for independent fundamental faculties, but for connected modifications of one fundamental power which work together and mutually imply one another. The posi- tion that an intellectual function of attention and discrimi- nation is active in sensuous perception, is a view entirely foreign to mediaeval modes of thought ; for the Scholastics were accustomed to make sharp divisions between the cog- nitive faculties, on the principle that particulars are felt through sense and universals thought through the under- standing. The idea on which Nicolas bases his argument for immortality has also an entirely modern sound : viz., that space and time are products of the understanding, and, therefore, can have no power over the spirit which pro- duces them ; for the author is higher and mightier than the product. . The confession that all our knowledge is conjecture does not simply mean that absolute and exact truth remains con- cealed from us; but is intended at the same time to en- 22 - THE PER/op of TRANS/7/ow. courage us to draw as near as possible to the eternal verity by ever truer conjectures. There are degrees of truth, and our surmises are neither absolutely true nor entirely false. Conjecture becomes error only when, forgetting the inad- equacy of human knowledge, we rest content with it as a final solution ; the Socratic maxim, “I know that I am ig- norant,” should not lead to despairing resignation but to courageous further inquiry. The duty of speculation is to penetrate deeper and deeper into the secrets of the divine, even though the ultimate revelation will not be given us until the hereafter. The fittest instrument of speculation is furnished by mathematics, in its conception of the infinite and the wonders of numerical relations: as on the infinite sphere center and circumference coincide, so God's essence is exalted above all opposites; and as the other numbers are unfolded from the unit, so the finite proceeds by explication from the infinite. A controlling significance in the serial construction of the world is ascribed to the ten, as the sum of the first four numbers—as reason, under- standing, imagination, and sensibility are related in human cognition, so God, spirit, soul, and body, or infinity, thought, life, and being are related in the objective sphere; so, further, the absolute necessity of God, the concrete necessity of the universe, the actuality of individuals, and the possibility of matter. Beside the quaternary the tern also exercises its power—the world divides into the stages of eternity, imperishability, and the temporal world of sense, or truth, probability, and confusion. The divine trinity is reflected everywhere : in the world as creator, creafed, and love ; in the mind as creative force, concept, and will. The triunity of God is very variously explained—as the subject, object, and act of cognition ; as creative spirit, wisdom, and goodness; as being, power, and deed; and, preferably, as unity, equality, and the combination of the two. God is related to the world as unity, identity, complicatio, to otherness, diversity, earplicatio, as necessity to contin- gency, as completed actuality to mere possibility; yet, in such a way that the otherness participates in the unity, and receives its reality from this, and the unity does not have AV/CO/AS OF COWSA. 23 the otherness confronting it, outside it. God is triune only as the Creator of the world, and in relation to it; in him- self he is absolute unity and infinity, to which nothing dis- parate stands opposed, which is just as much all things as not all things, and which, as the Areopagite had taught of old, is better comprehended by negations than by affirma- tions. To deny that he is light, truth, spirit, is more true than to affirm it, for he is infinitely greater than anything which can be expressed in words; he is the Unutterable, the Unknowable, the supremely one and the supremely abso- lute. In the world, each thing has things greater and smaller by its side, but God is the absolutely greatest and smallest ; in accordance with the principle of the coinci- dentia oppositorum, the absolute maarāmzzzzzz and the absolute mainimumz coincide. That which in the world exists as con- cretely determinate and particular, is in God in a simple and universal way; and that which here is present as incom- pleted Striving, and as possibility realizing itself by gradual development, is in God completed activity. He is the realization of all possibility, the Can-be or Can-is (possest); and since this absolute actuality is the presupposition and cause of all finite ability and action, it may be uncondition- ally designated ability (posse ipsum), in antithesis to all de- terminate manifestations of force; namely, to all ability to be, live, feel, think, and will. -- However much these definitions, conceived in harmony with the dualistic view of Christianity, accentuate the anti- thesis between God and the world, this is elsewhere much softened, nay directly denied, in favor of a pantheistic view which points forward to the modern period. Side by side with the assertion that there is no proportion whatever between the infinite and the finite, the following naïvely presents itself, in open contradiction to the former: God excels the reason just as much as the latter is superior to the understanding, and the understanding to sensibility, or he is related to thought as thought to life, and life to being. Nay, Nicolas makes even bolder statements than these, when he calls the universe a sensuous and mutable God, man a human God or a humanly contracted infinity, the creation a created God or a limited infinity; thus hinting 24 7TA/AE A2/5/8/O/O OF 7"RAAWSZ 7'/OAV. that God and the world are at bottom essentially alike, differing only in the form of their existence, that it is one and the same being and action which manifests itself abso- lutely in God, relatively and in a limited way in the system of creation. It was chiefly three modern ideas which led the Cusan on from dualism to pantheism—the boundless- ness of the universe, the connection of all being, and the all-comprehensive richness of individuality. Endlessness belongs to the universe as well as to God, only its endlessness is not an absolute One, beyond space and time, but weak- ened and concrete, namely unlimited extension in space and unending duration in time. Similarly, the universe is unity, yet not a unity absolutely above multiplicity and diversity, but one which is divided into many members and obscured thereby. Even the individual is infinite in a cer- tain sense ; for, in its own way, it bears in itself all that is, it mirrors the whole world from its limited point of view, is an abridged, compressed representation of the universe. As the members of the body, the eye, the arm, the foot, in- teract in the closest possible way, and no one of them can dispense with the rest, so each thing is connected with each, different from it and yet in harmony with it, so each con- tains all the others and is contained by them. All is in all, for all is in the universe and in God, as the universe and God in all. In a still higher degree man is a microcosm (parvus mundus), a mirror of the All, since he not merely, like other beings, actually has in himself all that exists, but also has a knowledge of this richness, is capable of develop- ing it into conscious images of things. And it is just this which constitutes the perfection of the whole and of the parts, that the higher is in the lower, the cause in the effect, the genus in the individual, the soul in the body, reason in , the senses, and conversely. To perfect, is simply to make active a potential possession, to unfold capacities and to elevate the unconscious into consciousness. Here we have the germ of the philosophy of Bruno and of Leibnitz. As we have noticed a struggle between two opposite tendencies, one dualistic and Christian, one pantheistic and modern, in the theology of Nicolas, so at many other points AV/CO/AS OF COWSA. 25 a conflict between the mediaeval and the modern view of the world, of which our philosopher is himself unconscious, becomes evident to the student. It is impossible to follow out the details of this interesting opposition, so we shall only attempt to distinguish in a rough way the beginnings of the new from the remnants of the old. Modern is his interest in the ancient philosophers, of whom Pythagoras, Plato, and the Neoplatonists especially attract him ; modern, again, his interest in natural science * (he teaches not only the boundlessness of the world, but also the motion of the earth); his high estimation of mathematics, although he often utilizes this merely in a fanciful symbolism of numbers; his optimism (the world an image of the divine, everything perfect of its kind, the bad simply a halt on the way to the good); his intellectualism (knowing the primal function and chief mission of the spirit; faith an undeveloped knowledge; volition and emotion, as is self-evident, incidental results of thought; knowledge a leading back of the creature to God as its source, hence the counterpart of creation); modern, finally, the form and application given to the Stoic-Neoplatonic concept of individuality, and the ideal- istic view which resolves the objects of thought into prod- ucts thereof." This last position, indeed, is limited by the lingering influence of nominalism, which holds the con- cepts of the mind to be merely abstract copies, and not archetypes of things. Moreover, explicatio, evolutio, un- folding, as yet does not always have the meaning of develop- ment to-day, of progressive advance. It denotes, quite neutrally, the production of a multiplicity from a unity, in, which the former has lain confined, no matter whether this multiplicity and its procession signify enhancement or attenuation. For the most part, in fact, involution, come- p/icatio (which, moreover, always means merely a primal, germinal condition, never, as in Leibnitz, the return thereto) * The attention of our philosopher was called to the natural sciences, and thus also to geography, which at this time was springing into new life, by his fricnd Paul Toscanelli, the Florentine. Nicolas was the first to have the map of Ger- many engraved (cf. S. Ruge in Globus, vol. Ix., No. 1, 1891), which, however, was not completed until long after his death, and issued in I491. + On the modern elements in his theory of the state and of right, cf. Gierke, Zas deutsche Genossenschaftszecht, vol. iii. § II, 1881. 26 7A/AE PAE/8/O/O O/7 7/8 AAVS/7”/OAV. represents the more perfect condition. The chief examples. of the relation of involution and evolution are the prin- ciples in which science is involved and out of which it is. unfolded ; the unit, which is related to numbers in a similar way; the spirit and the cognitive operations; God and his creatures. However obscure and unskillful this application of the idea of development may appear, yet it is indisputa- ble that a discovery of great promise has been made, ac- companied by a joyful consciousness of its fruitfulness. Of the numberless features which point backward to the Middle Ages, only one need be mentioned, the large space taken up by speculations concerning the God-man (the whole third book of the De Docta Ignorantia), and by those con- cerning the angels. Yet even here a change is noticeable, for the earthly and the divine are brought into most inti- mate relation, while in Thomas Aquinas, for instance, they form two entirely separate worlds. In short, the new view of the world appears in Nicolas still bound on every hand by mediaeval conceptions. A century and a half passed be- fore the fetters, grown rusty in the meanwhile, broke under the bolder touch of Giordano Bruno. 2. The Revival of Ancient Philosophy and the Oppo- sition to it. t Italy is the home of the Renaissance and the birthplace of important new ideas which give the intellectual life of the sixteenth century its character of brave endeavor after high and distant ends. The enthusiasm for ancient literature already aroused by the native poets, Dante (1300), Petrarch (1341), and Boccaccio (1350), was nourished by the influx of Greek scholars, part of whom came in pur- suance of an invitation to the Council of Ferrara and Florence (1438) called in behalf of the union of the Churches (among these were Pletho and his pupil Bessarion ; Nicolas Cusanus was one of the legates invited), while part were fugitives from Constantinople after its capture by the Turks in 1453. The Platonic Academy, whose most cele- brated member, Marsilius Ficinus, translated Plato and the Neoplatonists into Latin, was founded in 1440 on the Sug- AºA. V/ WAZ OA' A MC/AAV7' AAIZZOSOAA/Y. 27 gestion of Georgius Gemistus Pletho” under the patronage of Cosimo dei Medici. The writings of Pletho (“On the Distinction between Plato and Aristotle”), of Bessarion (Adversus Calumniatorem Platonis, 1469, in answer to the Comparatio Aristotelis et Platonis, 1464, an attack by the Aristotelian, George of Trebizond, on Pletho's work), and of Ficinus (Theologia Platonica, I482), show that the Platon- ism which they favored was colored by religious, mystical, and Neoplatonic elements. If for Bessarion and Ficinus, just as for the Eclectics of the later Academy, there was scarcely any essential distinction between the teachings of Plato, of Aristotle, and of Christianity ; this confusion of heterogeneous elements was soon carried much farther, when the two Picos (John Pico of Mirandola, died 1494, and his nephew Francis, died 1533) and Johann Reuchlin (De Verôo Mirifico, 1494; De Arte Cabbalistica, I517), who had been in- fluenced by the former, introduced the secret doctrines of the Jewish Cabala into the Platonic philosophy, and Cor- nelius Agrippa von Nettesheim of Cologne (De Occulta Philo- sophia, I 5 IO; cf. Sigwart, Kleine Schriften, vol. i. p. I seq.) made the mixture still worse by the addition of the magic art. The impulse of the modern spirit to subdue nature is here already apparent, only that it shows inexperience in the selection of its instruments; before long, however, nature will willingly unveil to observation and calm reflection the secrets which she does not yield to the compulsion of magic. - - A similar romantic figure was Phillipus Aureolus Theo- phrastus Bombast Paracelsust von Hohenheim (1493–1541), a traveled Swiss, who endeavored to reform medicine from the standpoint of chemistry. Philosophy for Paracelsus is lºnowledge of nature, in which observation and thought must co-operate; speculation apart from experience and worship * Pletho died at an advanced age in 1450. His chief work, the N6uot, was given to the flames by his Aristotelian opponent, Georgius Scholarius, surnamed Gen- nadius, Patriarch of Constantinople. Portions of it only, which had previously become known, have been preserved. On Pletho's life and teachings, cf. Fritz Schultze, G. G. Plethon, Jena, 1874. *. + On Paracelsus cf. Sigwart, Kleine Schriften, vol. i. p. 25 seq., Eucken, Aeiträge zur Geschichteder neueren Philosophie, p. 32 seq.; Lasswitz, Geschichte der Atomistić, vol. i. p. 294 seq. - 28 - 7A/AE A/2/8/O/O OF 7/8.4 AVS/7/OAV. of the paper-wisdom of the ancients lead to no result, The world is a living whole, which, like man, the microcosm, in whom the whole content of the macro- cosm is concentrated as in an extract, runs its life course. Originally all things were promiscuously intermingled in a unity, the God-created prima materia, as though in- closed in a germ, whence the manifold, with its various forms and colors, proceeded by separation. The de- velopment then proceeds in such a way that in each genus that is perfected which is posited therein, and does not cease until, at the last day, all that is possible in nature and his- tory shall have fulfilled itself. But the one indwelling life of nature lives in all the manifold forms ; the same laws. rule in the human body as in the universe; that which works secretly in the former lies open to the view in the latter, and the world gives the clew to the knowledge of man. Natural becoming is brought about by the chemical separation and coming together of substances; the ulti- mate constituents revealed by analysis are the three º fundamental substances or primitive essences, quicksilveº sulphur, and salt, by which, however, something more priº cipiant is understood than the empirical substances beari . these names: mercurius means that which makes bodfºs liquid, sulfur, that which makes them combustible, sal, that which makes them fixed and rigid. From theseºfe CO IIl- pounded the four elements, each of which ſºruled by elemental spirits—earth by gnomes or pygiftes, water by undines or nymphs, air by sylphs, fire by salańnders (cf. with this, and with Paracelsus's theory of the world as a whole, Faust's two monologues in Goethe's drama); which are to be understood as forces or sublimated "substances, not as personal, demoniacal beings. To each individual being there is ascribed a vital principle, the Archeus, an individualiza- tion of the general force of nature, Vulcanus ; so also to men. Disease is a checking of this vital principle by con- trary powers, which are partly of a terrestrial and partly of a sidereal nature ; and the choice of medicines is to be de- termined by their ability to support the Archeus against its enemies. Man is, however, superior to nature—he is not merely the universal animal, inasmuch as he is completely A’Aº VZ WA L OF AAVC//º/VT PAM/ZOSOA'Aſ V. 29 that which other beings are only in a fragmentary way ; but, as the image of God, he has also an eternal element in him, and is capable of attaining perfection through the ex- ercise of his rational judgment. Paracelsus distinguishes three worlds: the elemental or terrestrial, the astral or ce- lestial, and the spiritual or divine. To the three worlds, which stand in relations of sympathetic interaction, there correspond in man the body, which nourishes itself on the elements, the spirit, whose imagination receives its food, sense and thoughts, from the Spirits of the stars, and, finally, the immortal soul, which finds its nourishment in faith in Christ. Hence natural philosophy, astronomy, and the- ology are the pillars of anthropology, and ultimately of medicine. This fantastic physic of Paracelsus found many adherents both in theory and in practice.* Among those who accepted and developed it may be named R. Fludd (died 1637), and the two Van Helmonts, father and son (died 1644 and 1699). - Beside the Platonic philosophy, others of the ancient systems were also revived. Stoicism was commended by Justus Lipsius (died 1606) and Caspar Schoppe (Scioppius, born 1562); Epicureanism was revived by Gassendi (1647), and rhetorizing logicians went back to Cicero and Quintilian. Among the latter were Laurentius Valla (died I457); R. Agricola (died 1485); the Spaniard, Ludovicus Vives (1531), who referred inquiry from the authority of Aristotle to the methodical utilization of experience; and Marius Nizolius (1553), whose Antibarðarus was reissued by Leibnitz in 1670. The adherents of Aristotle were divided into two parties, one of which relied on the naturalistic interpretation of the Greek exegete, Alexander of Aphrodisias (about 200 A.D.), the other on the pantheistic interpretation of the Arabian commentator, Averroës (died 1198). The conflict over the question of immortality, carried on especially in Padua, was the culmination of the battle. The Alexan- * The influence of Paracelsus, as of Vives and Campanella, is evident in the great educator, Amos Comenius (Komensky, I592–1670), whose pansophical treatises appeared in 1637–68. On Comenius cf. Pappenheim, Berlin, 1871 ; Kvacsala, Doctor's Dissertation, Leipsic, I886; Walter Mueller, Dresden, I887. 3O 7A/E PAEA/OA) OF 7'A'AAVS/ZZON. drists asserted that, according to Aristotle, the Soul was mortal, the Averroists, that the rational part which is common to all men was immortal ; while to this were added the further questions, if and how the Aristotelian view could be reconciled with the Church doctrine, which demanded a continued personal existence. The most eminent Aristotelian of the Renaissance, Petrus Pompona- tius (De Immortalite Anima, 1516; De Fato, Zibero Arbitrio, Arovidentia et Praedestimatione), was on the side of the Alex- andrists. Achillini and Niphus fought on the other side. Caesalpin (died 1603), Zabarella, and Cremonini assumed an intermediate, or, at least, a less decided position. Still others, as Faber Stapulensis in Paris (15OO), and Deside- rius Erasmus (152O), were more interested in securing a cor- rect text of Aristotle's works than in his philosophical principles. Among the Anti-Aristotelians only two famous names need be mentioned, that of the influential Frenchman, Petrus Ramus, and the German, Taurellus. Pierre de la Ramée (assassinated in the massacre of St. Bartholomew, 1572), attacked the (unnatural and useless) Aristotelian logic in his Aristotelica Animadversiones, I543, objecting, with the Ciceronians mentioned above, to the separation of logic and rhetoric ; and attempted a new logic of his own, in his Institutiones Dialectica, which, in spite of its formalism, gained acceptance, especially in Germany.* Nicolaus Oechslein, Latinized Taurellus (born in 1547 at Mömpelgard ; at his death, in 1606, professor of medicine in the University of Altdorf), stood quite alone because of his independent position in reference to all philosophical and religious parties. His most important works were his Philo- sophia 7 riumphus, I 573 ; Synopsis Aristotelis Metaphysica, I 596; A/pes Casa (against Caesalpin, and the title pun- ning on his name), I 597; and De Rerum Żtermitate, 1604.h The thought of Taurellus inclines toward the ideal of a Christian philosophy, ; which, however, Scholasticism, in his * On Ramus cf. Waddington’s treatises, one in Latin, Paris, 1849, the other in French, Paris, I855. + Schmid-Schwarzenburg has written on Taurellus, 1860, 2d ed., 1864. OAA’OSZ 7/OAV 7"O AAVC/AEAV 7" AA/ZZOSOAA/ Y. 3 I view, did not attain, inasmuch as its thought was heathen in its blind reverence for Aristotle, even though its faith was Christian. In order to heal this breach between the head and the heart, it is necessary in religion to return from confessional distinctions to Christianity itself, and in philosophy, to abandon authority for the reason. We should not seek to be Lutherans or Calvinists, but simply Christians, and we should judge on rational grounds, in- stead of following Aristotle, Averroës, or Thomas Aquinas. Anyone who does not aim at the harmony of theology and philosophy, is neither a Christian nor a philosopher. One and the same God is the primal source of both rational and revealed truth. Philosophy is the basis of theology, the- ology the criterion and complement of philosophy. The one starts with effects evident to the senses and leads to the suprasensible, to the First Cause; the other follows the reverse course. To philosophy belongs all that Adam knew or could know before the fall ; had there been no sin, there would have been no other than philosophical knowl- edge. But after the fall, the reason, which informs us, it is true, of the moral law, but not of the divine purpose of salvation, would have led us to despair, since neither pun- ishment nor virtue could justify us, if revelation did not teach us the wonders of grace and redemption. Although Taurellus thus softens the opposition between theology and philosophy, which had been most sharply expressed in the doctrine of “twofold truth" (that which is true in philosophy may be false in theology, and conversely), and endeavors to bring the two into harmony, the antithesis between God and the world still remains for him im- movably fixed. God is not things, though he is all. He is pure affirmation ; all without him is composed, as it were, 6f being and nothing, and can neither be nor be known independently: negatio mon nihil est, alias mec esset mec in- telligeretur, sed limitatio est affirmationis. Simple being or simple affirmation is equivalent to infinity, eternity, unity, uniqueness, properties which do not belong to the world. He who posits things as eternal, sublates God. God and the world are opposed to each other as infinite cause and finite effect. . Moreover, as it is our spirit which philoso- 32 7A/A2 AAA’/O/D OA' 7"Me AAVS/7/O/V. phizes and not God's spirit in us, so the faith through which man appropriates Christ's merit is a free action of the human spirit, the capacity for which is inborn, not in- fused from above; in it, God acts merely as an auxiliary or remote cause, by removing the obstacles which hinder the operation of the power of faith. With this anti-pantheistic tendency he combines an anti-intellectualistic one—being and production precedes and stands higher than contempla- tion ; God's activity does not consist in thought but in pro- duction, and human blessedness, not in the knowledge but the love of God, even though the latter presupposes the former. While man, as an end in himself, is immortal— and the whole man, not his soul merely—the world of sense, which has been created only for the conservation of man (his procreation and probation), must disappear; above this world, however, a higher rears its walls to subserve man's eternal happiness. The high regard which Leibnitz expressed for Taurellus may be in part explained by the many anticipations of his own thoughts to be found in the earlier writer. The intimate relation into which sensibility and under. standing are brought is an instance of this from the theory of knowledge. Receptivity is not passivity, but activity arrested (through the body). All knowledge is inborn; all men are potential philosophers (and, so far as they are loyal to conscience, Christians); the spirit is a thinking and a thinkable universe. Taurellus's philosophy of nature, recognizing the relative truth of atomism, makes the world consist of manifold simple substances com- bined into formal unity : he calls it a well constructed. system of wholes. A discussion of the origin of evil is also given, with a solution based on the existence and misuse of freedom. Finally, it is to be mentioned to the great credit of Taurellus, that, like his younger contemporaries, Galileo and Kepler, he vigorously opposed the Aristotelian and Scholastic animation of the material world and the anthro- pomorphic conception of its forces, thus preparing the way for the modern view of nature to be perfected by Newton. - A 7'A/.../AAV A///ZOSOAAW V OA' A/A 7"UA’A. 33 3. The Italian Philosophy of Nature. We turn now from the restorers of ancient doctrines and their opponents to the men who, continuing the opposition to the authority of Aristotle, point out new paths for the study of nature. The physician, Hieronymus Cardanus of Milan (15O1–76), whose inclinations toward the fanciful were restrained, though not suppressed, by his mathemat- ical training, may be considered the forerunner of the school. While the people should accept the dogmas of the Church with submissive faith, the thinker may and should subordinate all things to the truth. The wise man belongs to that rare class who neither deceive nor are de- ceived ; others are either deceivers or deceived, or both. In his theory of nature, Cardanus advances two prin- ciples: one passive, matter (the three cold and moist elements), and an active, formative one, the world-soul, which, pervading the All and bringing it into unity, ap- pears as warmth and light. The causes of motion are attraction and repulsion, which in higher beings become love and hate. Even superhuman spirits, the demons, are subject to the mechanical laws of nature. The standard bearer of the Italian philosophy of nature was Bernardinus Telesius * of Cosenza (1508–88; De Rerum Matura ſurfa Propria Principia, I565, enlarged 1586), the founder of a scientific society in Naples called the Tele- sian, or after the name of his birthplace, the Cosentian Academy. Telesius maintained that the Aristotelian doc- trine must be replaced by an unprejudiced empiricism ; that nature must be explained from itself, and by as few princi- ples as possible. Beside inert matter, this requires only two active forces, on whose interaction all becoming and all life depend. These are warmth, which expands, and cold, which contracts; the former resides in the sun and * Cf. on Telesius, Fiorentino, 2 vols., Naples, 1872–74; K. Heiland, Er- Åenntniss/ehre und Ethik des 7 elesius, Doctor's Dissertation at Leipsic, 1891. Further, Rixner and Siber, Leben und Zehrmeinungen berähmter Physiker am Ande des XVI. und am Anfang des X VII. Jahrhunderts, Sulzbach (1819-26), 7 Hefte, 2d ed., 1829. Hefte 2-6 discuss Cardanus, Telesius, Patritius, Bruno, and Campanella; the first is devoted to Paracelsus, and the seventh to the older Van Helmont (Joh. Bapt.). 34 7TA/AE PAEA’ſ O/O OA' 7"A’AAWS/7”/OM. thence proceeds, the latter is situated in the earth. Al- though Telesius acknowledges an immaterial, immortal Soul, he puts the emphasis on sensuous experience, without which the understanding is incapable of attaining certain knowledge. He is a sensationalist both in the theory of knowledge and in ethics, holding the functions of judgment and thought deducible from the fundamental power of per- ception, and considering the virtues different manifesta- tions of the instinct of self-preservation (which he ascribes to matter as well). With the name of Telesius we usually associate that of Franciscus Patritius (1529–97), professor of the Platonic philosophy in Ferrara and Rome (Discussiones Peripatetica, I58I ; AVova de Oniversis Philosophia, I 591), who, com- bining Neoplatonic and Telesian principles, holds that the incorporeal or spiritual light emanates from the divine Original light, in which all reality is seminally contained ; the heavenly or ethereal light from the incorporeal; and the earthly or corporeal, from the heavenly—while the original light divides into three persons, the One and All (Unomnia), unity or life, and spirit. The Italian philosophy of nature culminates in Bruno and Campanella, of whom the former, although he is the earlier, appears the more advanced because of his freer attitude toward the Church. Giordano Bruno was born in 1548 at Nola, and educated at Naples; abandoning his 1membership in the Dominican Order, he lived, with various changes of residence, in France, England, and Germany. Returning to his native land, he was arrested in Venice and imprisoned for seven years at Rome, where, on February 17, 1600, he suffered death at the stake, refusing to re- cant. (The same fate overtook his fellow-countryman, Vanini, in 1619, at Toulouse.) Besides three didactic poems in Latin (Frankfort, 1591), the Italian dialogues, Della Causa, Principio ed Uno, Venice, I 584 (German translation by Lasson, 1872), are of chief importance. The Italian treatises have been edited by Wagner, Leipsic, 1829, and by De Lagarde, 2 vols., Göttingen, 1888; the Latin ap- peared at Naples, in 3 vols., 1880, 1886, and 1891. Of a passionate and imaginative nature, Bruno was not an essen- A 7'A L/AAW AA///, O.SO/2// Y O A' AVA 7"UA’A. 35 tially creative thinker, but borrowed the ideas which he pro- claimed with burning enthusiasm and lofty eloquence, and through which he has exercised great influence on later philosophy, from Telesius and Nicolas, complaining the while that the priestly garb of the latter sometimes hin- dered the free movement of his thought. Beside these thinkers he has a high regard for Pythagoras, Plato, Lucre- tius, Raymundus Lullus, and Copernicus (died 1543).” He forms the transition link between Nicolas of Cusa and Leibnitz, as also the link between Cardanus and Spinoza. To Spinoza Bruno offered the naturalistic conception of God (God is the “first cause ’’ immanent in the universe, to which self-manifestation or self-revelation is essential ; He is natura naturams, the numberless worlds are matura naturata); Leibnitz he anticipated by his doctrine of the “monads,” the individual, imperishable elements of the existent, in which matter and form, incorrectly divorced by Aristotle as though two antithetical principles, constitute one unity. The characteristic traits of the philosophy of Bruno are the lack of differentiation between pantheistic and individualistic elements, the mediaeval animation and endlessness of the world, and, finally, the religious relation to the universe or the extravagant deification of nature (nature and the world are entirely synonymous, the All, the world-soul, and God nearly so, while even matter is called a divine being).t Bruno completes the Copernican picture of the world by doing away with the motionless circle of fixed stars with which Copernicus, and even Kepler, had thought our solar system * Nicolaus Copernicus (Koppernik; 1473–1543) was born at Thorn ; studied astronomy, law, and medicine at Cracow, Bologna, and Padua ; and died a Canon of Frauenberg. His treatise, De Revolutionibus Orbium Caelestium, which was dedicated to Pope Paul III., appeared at Nuremberg in 1543, with a preface added to it by the preacher, Andreas Osiander, which calls the heliocentric system merely an hypothesis advanced as a basis for astronomical calculations. Copernicus reached his theory rather by speculation than by observation; its first suggestion came from the Pythagorean doctrine of the motion of the earth. On Copernicus cf. Leop. Prowe, vol. i. Copernicus' Zeben), vol. ii. (Urkunden), Berlin, 1883–84; and K. Lohmeyer in Sybel's Historische Zeitschrift, vol. lvii., 1887. - + - - ... i # Cf. on Bruno, H. Brunnhofer (somewhat too enthusiastic), Leipsic, 1882; also Sigwart, Kleine Schriſten, vol. i. p. 49 seq. 36 7 'AAA. AAEA’/O/O O/7 7/8A AVS/7/OAV. surrounded, and by opening up the view into the immeasur- ability of the world. With this the Aristotelian antithesis of the terrestrial and the celestial is destroyed. The in- finite space (filled with the aether) is traversed by number- less bodies, no one of which constitutes the center of the world. The fixed stars are suns, and, like our own, sur- rounded by planets. The stars are formed of the same materials as the earth, and are moved by their own souls or forms, each a living being, each also the residence of infinitely numerous living beings of various degrees of per- fection, in whose ranks man by no means takes the first place. All organisms are composed of minute elements, (i. minima or monads ; each monad is a mirror of the \All; each at once corporeal and soul-like, matter and form, / each eternal ; their combinations alone being in constant ) change. The universe is boundless in time, as in space; | development never ceases, for the fullness of forms which slumber in the womb of matter is inexhaustible. The Absolute is the primal unity, exalted above all antitheses, from which all created being is unfolded and in which it re- mains included. All is one, all is out of God and in God. In the living unity of the universe, also, the two sides, the spirit- ual (world-soul), and the corporeal (universal matter), are distinguishable, but not separate. The world-reason per- vades in its omnipresence the greatest and the smallest, but in varying degrees. It weaves all into one great system, so that if we consider the whole, the conflicts and contra- dictions which rule in particulars disappear, resolved into | the most perfect harmony. Whoever thus regards the world, becomes filled with reverence for the Infinite and bends his will to the divine law—from true science proceed true religion and true morality, those of the spiritual hero, of the heroic sage. Thomas Campanella º (1568–1639) was no less dependent on Nicolas and Telesius than Bruno. A Calabrian by birth like Telesius, whose writings filled him with aversion to Aristotle, a Dominican like Bruno, he was deprived of his freedom on an unfounded suspicion of conspiracy against * Campanella's works have been edited by Al, d'Ancona, Turin, 1854. Cf. Sigwart, Kleine Schriften, vol. i. p. 125 seq. A 7.4/_/AAW AAZZOSOAA/ Y OA' AVA Z'OA’A. 37 the Spanish rule, spent twenty-seven years in prison, and died in Paris after a short period of quiet. Renewing an old idea, Campanella directed attention from the written volume of Scripture to the living book of nature as being also a divine revelation. Theology rests on faith (in the- ology, Campanella, in accordance with the traditions of his order, follows Thomas Aquinas); philosophy is based on per- ception, which in its instrumental part comprises mathe- matics and logic, and in its real part, the doctrine of nature and of morals, while metaphysics treats of the highest presup- positions and the ultimate grounds,--the “pro-principles.” Campanella starts, as Augustine before him and Descartes in later times, from the indisputable certitude of the spirit's Own existence, from which he rises to the certitude of God's existence. On this first certain truth of my own ex- istence there follow three others : my nature consists in the three functions of power, knowledge, and volition ; I am finite and limited, might, wisdom, and love are in man constantly intermingled with their opposites, weakness, foolishness, and hate ; my power, knowledge, and volition do not extend beyond the present. The being of God fol- dows from the idea of God in us, which can have been de- rived from no other than an infinite source. It would be impossible for so small a part of the universe as man to produce from himself the idea of a being incomparably greater than the whole universe. I attain a knowledge of God's nature from my own by thinking away from the lat- ter, in which, as in everything finite, being and non-being are intermingled, every limitation and negation, by raising to infinity my positive fundamental powers, posse, cognoscere, and velle, or potentia, Sapientia, and amor, and by transfer- ring them to him, who is pure affirmation, ems entirely with- out non-ems. Thus I reach as the three pro-principles or primalities of the existent or the Godhead, omnipotence, omniscience, and infinite love. But the infrahuman world may also be judged after the analogy of our fundamental faculties. The universe and all its parts possess souls; there is naught without sensation ; consciousness, it is true, is lacking in the lower creatures, but they do not lack life, feeling, and desire, for it is impossible for the ani- 38 TA/AF AAA’/O/O OA' TA24 AVS/7/OAV. mate to come from the inanimate. Everything loves and hates, desires and avoids. Plants are motionless animals, and their roots, mouths. Corporeal motion springs from an obscure, unconscious impulse of self-preservation ; the heav- enly bodies circle about the sun as the center of sympathy; space itself seeks a content (horror vacut). The more imperfect a thing is, the more weakened is the divine being in it by non-being and contingency. The entrance of the naught into the divine reality takes place by degrees. First God projects from himself the ideal or archetypal world (mundus archetypus), i. e., the totality of the possible. From this ideal world proceeds the meta- physical world of eternal intelligences (mundus menta/is), including the angels, the world-soul, and human spirits. The third product is the mathematical world of space (mundus sempiternus), the object of geometry; the fourth, the temporal or corporeal world ; the fifth, and last, the em- pirical world (mundºus situalis), in which everything appears at a definite point in space and time. All things not only love themselves and seek the conservation of their own being, but strive back toward the original source of their being, to God ; i. e., they possess religion. In man, natural and animal religion are completed by rational religion, the limitations of which render a revelation necessary. A re- ligion can be considered divine only when it is adapted to all, when it gains acceptance through miracles and virtue, and when it contradicts neither natural ethics nor the reason. Religion is union with God through knowledge, purity of will, and love. It is inborn, a law of nature, not, as Machia- velli teaches, a political invention. Campanella desired to see the unity in the divine government of the world em- bodied in a pyramid of states with the papacy at the apex : above the individual states was to come the province, then the kingdom, the empire, the (Spanish) world-monarchy, and, finally, the universal dominion of the Pope. The Church should be superior to the State, the vicegerent of God to temporal rulers and to councils. - AA/ZZOSOAA/ Y OF 7//ZZ SZTA 7TA. AAVZ) OA' ZA W. 39 4. Philosophy of the State and of Law. The originality of the modern doctrines of natural law was formerly overestimated, as it was not known to how considerable an extent the way had been prepared for them by the mediaeval philosophy of the state and of law. It is evident from the equally rich and careful investigations of Otto Gierke” that in the political and legal theories of a Bodin, a Grotius, a Hobbes, a Rousseau, we have system- atic developments of principles long extant, rather than new principles produced with entire spontaneity. Their merit consists in the principiant expression and accentu- ation and the systematic development of ideas which the Middle Ages had produced, and which in part belong to the common stock of Scholastic science, in part constitute the weapons of attack for bold innovators. Marsilius of Padua (Defensor Pacis, 1325), Occam (died 1347), Gerson (about 1400), and the Cusant (Concordanția Catholica, 1433) especially, are now seen in a different light. “Under the husk of the mediaeval system there is revealed a continu- ously growing antique-modern kernel, which draws all the living constituents out of the husk, and finally bursts it ’’ (Gierke, Deutsches Genossenschaffsrecht, vol. iii. p. 312). Without going beyond the boundaries of the theocratico- organic view of the state prevalent in the Middle Ages, most of the conceptions whose full development was accomplished by the natural law of modern times were already employed in the Scholastic period. Here we already find the idea of a transition on the part of man from a pre-political natural state of freedom and equality into the state of citizenship ; the idea of the origin of the state by a contract (social and of submission); of the sover- eignty of the ruler (rea major populo, plenitudo poſestaſis), and of popular sovereignty (populus major principe); *Gierke, Johannes Althusius und die Entwickelung der naturrechtlichen Staats- theorien, Breslau, 1880; the same, Deutsches Genossenschaftszecht, vol. iii. § II, Berlin, 1881. Cf. further, Sigm. Riezler, ZXie literarischeme Widersacher der A&psie, Leipsic, 1874; A. Franck, Réformateurs et Publicistes de l'Azurope, Paris, 1864. + Nicolas' political ideas are discussed by T. Stumpf, Cologne, 1865. † Cf. F. von Bezold, Die Zehre zon der Voléssouzerāmātāţ im Mitte/alter, (Sybel’s Historische Zeitschrift, vol. xxxvi., 1876). - 4.O ZTA/A2 AAA’ ZOA) OA' ZTA’AAVS/2"/O/W. of the original and inalienable prerogatives of the general- ity, and the innate and indestructible right of the individual to freedom ; the thought that the Sovereign power is Sup- erior to positive law (princeps legibus solutus), but subordinate to natural law ; even tendencies toward the division of powers (legislative and executive), and the representative system. These are germs which, at the fall of Scholast- icism and the ecclesiastical reformation, gain light and air for free development. *- The modern theory of natural law, of which Grotius was the most influential representative, began with Bodin and Althusius. The former conceives the contract by which the state is founded as an act of unconditional submission on the part of the community to the ruler, the latter con- ceives it merely as the issue of a (revocable) commission ; in the view of the one, the sovereignty of the people is entirely alienated, “transferred,” in that of the other, administra- tive authority alone is granted, “conceded,” while the sover- eign prerogatives remain with the people. Bodin is the founder of the theory of absolutism, to which Grotius and the school of Pufendorf adhere, though in a more moderate form, and which Hobbes develops to the last extreme. Althusius, on the other hand, by his systematic development. of the doctrine of social contract and the inalienable sover- eignty of the people, became the forerunner of Locke” and Rousseau. The first independent political philosopher of the mod- ern period was Nicolo Machiavelli of Florence (1469– 1527). Patriotism was the soul of his thinking, questions of practical politics its subject, and historical fact its basis. He is entirely unscholastic and unecclesiastical. The power and independence of the nation are for him of supreme importance, and the greatness and unity * Ulrich Huber (1674) may be called the first representative of constitution- alism, and so the intermediate link between Althusius and Locke. Cf. Gierke, Althusius, p. 29O. # In his Assays on the First Decade of Zivy (Discorsi), Machiavelli investigates the conditions and the laws of the maintenance of states ; while in 7"he Prince (// Arincipe, I515), he gives the principles for the restoration of a ruined state. Besides these he wrote a history of Florence, and a work on the art of war, in which he recommended the establishment of national armies. A ///ZOSOAA/ Y OF THE S Z'A 7A. AAVZ) OA' LA W. 4. I of Italy, the goal of his political system. He opposes the Church, the ecclesiastical state, and the papacy as the chief hindrances to the attainment of these ends, and considers the means by which help may be given to the Fatherland. In normal circumstances a republican constitution, under which Sparta, Rome, and Venice have achieved greatness, would be the best. But amid the corruption of the times, the only hope of deliverance is from the absolute rule of a strong prince, one not to be frightened back from severity and force. Should the ruler endeavor to keep within the bounds of morality, he would inevitably be ruined amid the general wickedness. Let him make himself liked, especially make himself feared, by the people; let him be fox and lion together ; let him take care, when he must have recourse to bad means for the sake of the Fatherland, that they are justified by the result, and still to preserve the appearance of loyalty and honor when he is forced to act in their despite—for the populace always judges by appearance and by results. The worst thing of all is half-way measures, courses intermediate between good and evil and vacillating between reason and force. Even Moses had to kill the envious refractories, while Savonarola, the unarmed prophet, was destroyed. God is the friend of the strong, energy the chief virtue ; and it is well when, as was the case with the ancient Romans, religion is associ- ated with it without paralyzing it. The current view of Christianity as a religion of humility and sloth, which preaches only the courage of endurance and makes its fol- lowers indifferent to worldly honor, is unfavorable to the development of political vigor. The Italians have been made irreligious by the Church and the priesthood; the nearer Rome, the less pious the people. When Machiavelli, in his proposals looking toward Lorenzo (II.) dei Medici (died I519), approves any means for restoring order, it must be remembered that he has an exceptional case in mind, that: he does not consider deceit and severity just, but only un- avoidable amid the anarchy and corruption of the time. But neither the loftiness of the end by which he is inspired, nor the low condition of moral views in his time, justifies his treatment of the laws as mere means to political ends, and 42 7 HAE A*/2/8/O D OAP 7/84 AVS/7”/OAV. his unscrupulous subordination of morality to calculating prudence. Machiavelli's general view of the world and of life is by no means a comforting one. Men are simple, governed by their passions and by insatiable desires, dis- satisfied with what they have, and inclined to evil. They do good only of necessity; it is hunger which makes them. industrious and laws that render them good. Everything rapidly degenerates: power produces quiet, quiet, idleness, then disorder, and, finally, ruin, until men learn by misfortune, and SO. Order and power again arise. History is a continual rising and falling, a circle of order and disorder. Govern- mental forms, even, enjoy no stability; monarchy, when it has run out into tyranny, is followed by aristocracy, which gradually passes over into oligarchy; this in turn is replaced by democracy, until, finally, anarchy becomes unendurable, and a prince again attains power. No state, however, is so powerful as to escape succumbing to a rival before it com- pletes the circuit. Protection against the corruption of the state is possible only through the maintenance of its princi- ples, and its restoration only by a return to the healthy source whence it originated. This is secured either by some external peril compelling to reflection, or internally, by wise thought, by good laws (framed in accordance with the general welfare, and not according to the ambition of a minority), and by the example of good men. : In the interval between Machiavelli and the system of nat- ural law of Grotius, the Netherlander (1625 : De Vure Bel/? et Pacis), belong the socialistic ideal state of the English- man, Thomas More (De Optimo Reipzublica Szała, degue AVova Insula Otopia, 1516), the political theory of the Frenchman, Jean Bodin (Siaº Zivres de la Répub/igue, I 577, Latin 1584; also a philosophico-historical treatise, Methodus ad Facilem A/?storiarum Cognitionem, and the Co/loguium Heptap/omeres, edited by Noack, 1857), and the law of war of the Italian, Albericus Gentilis, at his death professor in Oxford (De Jure Belli, 1588). Common to these three was the advocacy of religious tolerance, from which atheists alone were to be excepted ; common, also, their ethical standpoint in opposi- tion to Machiavelli, while they are at one with him in regard to the liberation of political and legal science from, theology AA/ZZOSOAA/ Y OA' 7 AAA. S. 7.4 ZAZ AAVZ) OA' Z4 W. 43 and the Church. With Gentilis (1551–16II) this separa- tion assigns the first five commandments to divine, and the remainder to human law, the latter being based on the laws of human nature (especially the Social impulse). In place of this derivation of law and the state from the nature of man, Jean Bodin (1530–96) insists on an histori- cal interpretation ; endeavors, though not always with suc- cess, to give sharp definitions of political concepts;* rejects composite state forms, and among the three pure forms, monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy, rates (hereditary) monarchy the highest, in which the subjects obey the laws of the monarch, and the latter the laws of God or of nature . by respecting the freedom and the property of the citizens. So far, no one has correctly distinguished between forms of the state and modes of administration. Even a demo- cratic state may be governed in a monarchical or aristo- cratic way. So far, also, there has been a failure to take into account national peculiarities and differences of situa- tion, conditions to which legislation must be adjusted. The people of the temperate zone are inferior to those of the North in physical power and inferior to those of the South in speculative ability, but superior to both in political gifts and in the sense of justice. The nations of the North are guided by force, those of the South by religion, those between the two by reason. Mountaineers love freedom. A fruitful soil enervates men, when less fertile, it renders them temperate and industrious. Attention has only recently been called (by O. Gierke, in the work already mentioned, Heft vii. of his Untersuchum- gen gur deutschen Staats- und Rechtsgeschichte, Breslau, 1880) to the Westphalian, Johannes Althusius (Althusen or Althaus) as a legal philosopher worthy of notice. He was born, 1557, in the Grafschaft Witgenstein; was a teacher of law in Herborn and Siegen from 1586, and Syndic in Emden from 1604 to his death in 1638. His chief legal work was * What is the state? What is sovereignty 2 The former is defined as the rational and supremely empowered control over a number of families and of whatever is common to them ; the latter is absolute and continuous authority over the state, with the right of imposing laws without being bound by them. The prince, to whom the sovereignty has been unconditionally relinquished by the people in the contract of submission, is accountable to God alone. 44 TAZAZ AAA’ MO/D OA' 7"A’AAVS/T/OAV. the Dicaeologica, 1617 (a recasting of a treatise on Roman law which appeared in 1586), and his chief political work the Politica, 1603 (altered and enlarged 16IO, and reprinted, in addition, three times before his death and thrice subse- quently). Down to the beginning of the eighteenth century he was esteemed or opposed as chief among the Monarchomachi, so called by the Scotchman, Barclay (De A'eguo et Regali Potestate, 1600); since that time he has fallen into undeserved oblivion. The sovereign power (meaſestas) of the people is untransferable and indivisible, the authority vested in the chosen wielder of the adminis- trative power is revocable, and the king is merely the chief functionary; individuals are subjects, it is true, but the community retains its sovereignty and has its rights represented over against the chief magistrate by a college of ephors. If the prince violates the compact, the ephors are authorized and bound to depose the tyrant, and to banish or execute him. There is but one normal state- form ; monarchy and polyarchy are mere differences in administrative forms. Mention should finally be made of his valuation of the Social groups which mediate between the individual and the state : the body politic is based on the narrower associations of the family, the corporation, the commune, and the province. While with Bodin the historical, and with Gentilis the a priori method of treatment predominates, Hugo Grotius’ combines both standpoints. He bases his system on the traditional distinction of two kinds of law. The origin of positive law is historical, by voluntary enactment; natural law is rooted in the nature of man, is eternal, unchange- able, and everywhere the same. He begins by distinguish- *Hugo de Groot lived. I583–1645. He was born in Delft, became Fiscal of Holland in 1607, and Syndic of Rotterdam and member of the States General in 1613. A leader of the aristocratic party with Oldenbarneveld, he adhered to the Arminians or Remonstrants, was thrown into prison, freed in 162 I through the address of his wife, and fled to Paris, where he lived till 1631 as a private scholar, and, from 1635, as Swedish ambassador. Here he composed his epoch-making work, ZXe /ure Belli et Pacis, I625. Previous to this had appeared his treatise, Oe Veritate A’eligionis Christiana, 1619, and the Mare Liberum, 1609, the latter a chapter from his maiden work, De /ure Praedae, which was not printed until 1868. AA/ZZOSO/2//Y OAP 7//Z S 7.4 TAZ AAV/D OA' LA W. 45 ing with Gentilis the ſus humanume from the 7us divinum given in the Scriptures. The former determines, on the one hand, the legal relations of individuals, and, on the other, those of whole nations; it is jus personale and jus gentium.* The distinction between natural and conventional law which has been already mentioned, finds place within both: the positive law of persons is called 7us civile, and the positive law of nations, jus gențium voluntarizºme. Positive law has its origin in regard for utility, while unwritten law finds its source neither in this nor (directly) in the will of God, but in the rational nature of man. Man is by nature social, and, as a rational being, possesses the impulse toward Ordered association. Unlawful means whatever renders such association of rational beings impossible, as the viola- tion of promises or the taking away and retention of the property of others. In the (pre-social) state of nature, all belonged to all, but through the act of taking possession (occupatio) property arises (sea and air are excluded from appropriation). In the state of nature everyone has the right to defend himself against attack and to revenge him- self on the evil-doer; but in the political community, founded by contract, personal revenge is replaced by punish- ment decreed by the civil power. The aim of punishment is not retribution, but reformation and deterrence. It belongs to God alone to punish because of sin committed, the state can punish only to prevent it. (The antithesis guia peccatum est—ne peccefur comes from Seneca.) ^ This energetic revival of the distinction already com- mon in the Middle Ages between “positive and natural,” which Lord Herbert of Cherbury brought forward at the same period (1624) in the philosophy of religion, gave the * The meaning which Grotius here gives to jus gentium (=international law), departs from the customary usage of the Scholastics, with whom it denotes the law uniformly acknowledged among all nations. Thomas Aquinas understands by it, in distinction to jus naturale proper, the sum of the conclusions deduced from this as a result of the development of human culture and its departure from primitive purity. Cſ. Gierke, Althusius, p. 273; Deutsches Genossen- schaftsrecht, vol. iii. p. 612. On the meaning of natural law cf. Gierke's Inaugural Address as Rector at Breslau, AWaturrecht und Deutsches Recht, Frankfort-on-the-Main, 1883. + Natural law would be valid even if there were no God. With these words the alliance between the modern and the mediaeval philosophy of law is severed. 46 THE PAEA’/O/D OF TRAAWSZ 7/OM. catchword for a movement in practical philosophy whose de- velopments extend into the nineteenth century. Not only the illumination period, but all modern philosophy down to Kant and Fichte, is under the ban of the antithesis, natural and artificial. In all fields, in ethics as well as in noëtics, men return to the primitive or storm back to it, in the hope of finding there the source of all truth and the cure for all evils. Sometimes it is called nature, sometimes reason (natural law and rational law are synonymous, as also natural religion and the religion of the reason), by which is under- stood that which is permanent and everywhere the same in contrast to the temporary and the changeable, that which is innate in contrast to that which has been developed, in contrast, further, to that which has been revealed. What- ever passes as law in all places and at all times is natural law, says Grotius; that which all men believe forms the content of natural religion, says Lord Herbert...ſ Before long it comes to be said : that alone is genuine, true, healthy, and valuable which has eternal and universal validity ; all else is not only superfluous and valueless but of evil, for it must be unnatural and corrupt. This step is taken by Deism, with the principle that whatever is not natural or rational in the sense indicated is unnatural and irrational. Parallel phenomena are not wanting, further, in the philosophy of law (Gierke, Althusius, p. 303, note 99). But these errors must not be too harshly judged. ~The confidence with which they were made sprang from ‘the real and the historical force of their underlying idea. _2~~ º º As already stated, the “natural ” forms the antithesis to the supernatural, on the one hand, and to the historical, on the other. This combination of the revealed and the his- torical will not appear strange, if we remember that the mediaeval view of the world under criticism was, as Chris- tian, histórico-religious, and, moreover, that for the phil- osophy of religion the two in fact coincide, inasmuch as revelation is conceived as an historical event, and the his- torical religions assume the character of revealed. The term arbitrary, applied to both in common, was question- able, however: as revelation is a divine decree, so his- torical institutions are the products of human enactment, AAIZZOSOPHY OF THE STA 7E AAVZ) OA LA W. 47 the state, the result of a contract, dogmas, inventions of the priesthood, the results of development, artificial con- structions / It took long ages for man to free himself from the idea of the artificial and conventional in his view of history. Hegel was the first to gather the fruit whose seeds had been sown by Leibnitz, Lessing, Herder, and the historical school of law. As often, however, as an attempt was made from this standpoint of Origins to show laws in the course of history, only one could be reached, a law of necessary degeneration, interrupted at times by Sudden restorations—thus the Deists, thus Machiavelli and Rous- seau. Everything degenerates, science itself only con- tributes to the fall—therefore, back to the happy begin- nings of things | ſ If, finally, we inquire into the position of the Church in regard to the questions of legal philosophy, we may say that, among the Protestants, Luther, appealing to the Scrip- ture text, declares rulers ordained by God and sacred, though at the same time he considers law and politics but remotely related to the inner man ; that Melancthon, in his Elements of Ethics (1538), as in all his philosophical text- books,” went back to Aristotle, but found the source of natural law in the Decalogue, being followed in this by Oldendorp (1539), Hemming (1562), and B. Winkler (1615).f On the Catholic side, the Jesuits (the Order was founded in 1534, and confirmed in I54O), on the one hand, revived the Pelagian theory of freedom in opposition to the Luthero-Augustinian doctrine of the servitude of the will, and, on the other, defended the natural origin of the state in a (revocable) contract in opposition to its divine origin asserted by the Reformers, and the sovereignty of the people even to the sanctioning of tyrannicide. Bellarmin (1542–1621) taught that the prince derives his authority from the people, and as the latter have given him power, so they retain the natural right to take it back and bestow it elsewhere. The view of Juan Mariana (1537–1624; De Rege, *The edition of Melancthon's works by Bretschneider and Bindseil gives the ethical treatises in vol. xvi. and the other philosophical treatises in vol. xiii. (in part also in vols. xi. and xx.). - # , + Cf. C. v. Kaltenborn, Die Worläufer des Hugo Grotius, Leipsic, 1848. 48 7A/A2 FAA’/O/D OA' ZTA’AAVS/ZTAOAV. I599) is that, as the people in transferring rights to the prince retain still greater power themselves, they are entitled in given cases to call the king to account. If he corrupts the State by evil manners, and, degenerating into the tyrant, despises religion and the laws, he may, as a public enemy, be deprived by anyone of his authority and his life. It is lawful to arrest tyranny in any way, and those have always been highly esteemed who, from devotion to the public welfare, have sought to kill the tyrant. 5. Skepticism in France. Toward the end of the sixteenth century, and in the very country which was to become the cradle of modern phi- losophy, there appeared, as a forerunner of the new think- ing, a skepticism in which that was taken for complete and ultimate truth which with Descartes constitutes merely a moment or transition point in the inquiry. The earliest and the most ingenious among the representatives of this philosophy of doubt was Michel de Montaigne (1533–92), who in his Essays—which were the first of their kind and soon found an imitator in Bacon ; they appeared in 1580 in two volumes, with an additional volume in 1588—combined delicate observation and keen thinking, boldness and pru- dence, elegance and solidity. The French honor him as one of their foremost writers. The most important among these treatises or essays is considered to be the “Apology for Raymond of Sabunde" (ii. 12) with valuable excursuses on faith and knowledge. Montaigne bases his doubt on the diversity of individual views, each man's opinion differing from his fellow's, while truth must be one. There exists no certain, no universally admitted knowledge. The human reason is feeble and blind in all things, knowledge is decep- tive, especially the philosophy of the day, which clings to tradition, which fills the memory with learned note-stuff, but leaves the understanding void and, instead of things, interprets interpretations only. Both sensuous and rational knowledge are untrustworthy : the former, because it can- not be ascertained whether its deliverances conform to reality, and the latter, because its premises, in order to be SATA, P 7/C/S// ZAV FMCA A/CAE. 49 valid, need others in turn for their own establishment, etc., ad infinitum. Every advance in inquiry makes our ignor- ance the more evident; the doubter alone is free. But though certainty is denied us in regard to truth, it is not withheld in regard to duty. In fact, a twofold rule of practical life is set up for us: nature, or life in accordance with nature and founded on self-knowledge, and superna- tural revelation, the Gospel (to be understood only by the aid of divine grace). Submission to the divine ruler and benefactor is the first duty of the rational soul. From obedience proceeds every virtue, from over-subtlety and conceit, which is the product of fancied knowledge, comes every sin. Montaigne, like all who know men, has a sharp eye for human frailty. He depicts the universal weakness of human nature and the corruption of his time with great vivacity and not without a certain pleasure in the obscene; and besides folly and passion, complains above all of the fact that so few understand the art of enjoyment, of which he, a true man of the world, was master. - The skeptico-practical standpoint of Montaigne was de- veloped into a system by the Paris preacher, Pierre Charron (1541–1603), in his three books On Wisdom (1601). Doubt has a double object: to keep alive the spirit of inquiry and to lead us on to faith. From the fact that reason and ex- perience are liable to deception and that the mind has at its disposal no means of distinguishing truth from false- hood, it follows that we are born not to possess truth but to seek it. Truth dwells alone in the bosom of God ; for us doubt and investigation are the only good amid all the error and tribulation which surround us. Life is all misery. Man is capable of mediocrity alone; he can neither be entirely good nor entirely evil; he is weak in virtue, weak in vice, and the best degenerates in his hands. Even religion suffers from the universal imperfection. It is dependent on nationality and country, and each religion is based on its predecessor; the supernatural origin of which all religions boast belongs in fact to Christianity alone, which is to be accepted with humility and with submission of the reason. Charron lays chief emphasis, however, on the practical side of Christianity, the fulfillment of duty; 5O ZTA/A2 AAA’ ZO/O OA” 7/24 AVS/ ZYOAV. and the “wisdom '' which forms the subject of his book is synonymous with uprightness (probité), the way to which is opened up by self-knowledge and whose reward is repose of spirit. And yet we are not to practice it for the sake of the reward, but because nature and reason, i. e., God, abso- lutely (entirely apart from the pleasurable results of virtue) require us to be good. True uprightness is more than mere legality, for even when outward action is blameless, the motives may be mixed. “I desire men to be upright without paradise and hell.” Religion seeks to crown morality, not to generate it ; virtue is earlier and more natural than piety. In his definition of the relation between religion and ethics, his delimitation of morality from legality, and his insistence on the purity of motives (do right, because the inner rational law commands it), an anticipation of Kantian principles may be recognized. Under Francis Sanchez (died 1632; his chief work is entitled Quod AVihil Scitur), a Portuguese by birth, and pro- fessor of medicine in Montpellier and Toulouse, skepticism was transformed from melancholy contemplation into a fresh, vigorous search after new problems. In the place of book-learning, which disgusts him by its smell of the closet, its continued prating of Aristotle, and its self-exhaus- tion in useless verbalism, Sanchez desires to substitute a knowledge of things. Perfect knowledge, it is true, can be hoped for only when subject and object correspond to each other. But how is finite man to grasp the infinite universe? Experience, the basis of all knowledge, gropes about the outer surface of things and illumines particulars only, with- out the ability either to penetrate to their inner nature or to comprehend the whole. We know only what we produce. Thus God knows the world which he has made, but to us is vouchsafed merely an insight into mediate or second causes, causa secunda. Here, however, a rich field still lies open before philosophy—only let her attack her problem with observation and experiment rather than with words. The French nation, predisposed to skepticism by its pre- vailing acuteness, has never lacked representatives of skep- tical philosophy. The transition from the philosophers GERMAM MYSTICISM. 5 I of doubt whom we have described to the great Bayle was formed by La Mothe le Vayer (died 1672; Five Dialogues, 1671), the tutor of Louis XIV., and P. D. Huet(ius), Bishop of Avranches (died 1721), who agreed in holding that a recognition of the weakness of the reason is the best preparation for faith. 6. German Mysticism. In a period which has given birth to a skeptical phi- losophy, one never looks in vain for the complementary phenomenon of mysticism. The stone offered by doubt in place of bread is incapable of satisfying the impulse after knowledge, and when the intellect grows weary and despair- ing, the heart starts out in the quest after truth. Then its path leads inward, the mind turns in upon itself, seeks to learn the truth by inner experience and life, by inward feel- ing and possession, and waits in quietude for divine illumi- nation. The German mysticism of Eckhart º (about 1300), which had been continued in Suso and Tauler and had received a practical direction in the Netherlands,-Ruys- broek (about I 350) to Thomas à Kempis (about 1450), H now puts forth new branches and blossoms at the turning point of the centuries. Luther himself was originally a mystic, with a high appreciation of Tauler and Thomas à Kempis, and pub- lished in 1518 that attractive little book by an anonymous Frankfort author, the German Theology. When, later, he fell into literalism, it was the mysticism of German Protes- tantism which, in opposition to the new orthodoxy, held fast to the original principle of the Reformation, i.e., to the principle that faith is not assent to historical facts, not the acceptance of dogmas, but an inner experience, a renewal of the whole man. Religion and theology must not be * Master Eckhart's Works have been edited by F. Pfeiffer, Leipsic, 1857. The following have written on him : Jos. Bach, Vienna, I864; Ad. Lasson, Berlin, 1868; the same, in the second part of Ueberweg's Grundriss, last section ; Denifle, in the Archiz, fºr Zitteratur und Kulturgeschichte des Mittelalters, ii. 417 seq., H. Siebeck, Der Beg, iff des Gemzets in der deutschen Mystiž (Beiträge 2ur Entstehungsgeschichte der neueren Psychologie, i), Giessen Programme, I891. - 52 7AE PERIOD OF TRANSZZZOA. confounded. Religion is not doctrine, but a new birth. With Schwenckfeld, and also with Franck, mysticism is still essentially pietism; with Weigel, and by the addition of ideas from Paracelsus, it is transformed into theosophy, and as such reaches its culmination in Böhme. Caspar Schwenckfeld sought to spiritualize the Lutheran movement and protested against its being made into a pastors' religion. Though he had been aroused by Luth- er's pioneer feat, he soon saw that the latter had not gone far enough ; and in his Zetter on the Eucharist, I 527, he defined the points of difference between Luther's view of the Sacrament and his own. Luther, he maintained, had fallen back to an historical view of faith, whereas the faith which saves can never consist in the outward acceptance of an historical fact. He who makes salvation dependent on preaching and the Sacrament, confuses the invisible and the visible Church, Ecclesia interna and externa. The layman is his own priest. According to Sebastian Franck (I 500–45), there are in man, as in everything else, two principles, one divine and one selfish, Christ and Adam, an inner and an outer man; if he submits himself to the former (by a timeless choice), he is spiritual, if to the latter, carnal. God is not the cause of sin, but man, who turns the divine power to good or evil. He who denies himself to live God is a Christian, whether he knows and confesses the Gospel or not. Faith does not consist in assent, but in inner transformation. The historical element in Christianity and its ceremo- nial observances are only the external form and garb (its “figure"), have merely a symbolic significance as media of communication, as forms of revelation for the eternal truth, proclaimed but not founded by Christ; the Bible is merely the shadow of the living Word of God. Valentin Weigel (born in 1533, pastor in Zschopau from 1567), whose works were not printed until after his death, combines his predecessors' doctrine of inner and eter- ºnal Christianity with the microcosmos-idea of Paracelsus. God, who lacks nothing, has not created the world in order to gain, but in order to give. Man not only bears the earthly world in his body, and the heavenly world of the angels in GAEA’/MAAW M VS 7/C/S/M. 53. his reason (his spirit), but by virtue of his intellect (his im- mortal Soul) participates in the divine world also. As he is thus a microcosm and, moreover, an image of God, all his knowledge becomes self-knowledge, both sensuous per- ception (which is not caused by the object, but only occa- sioned by it), and the knowledge of God. The literalist knows not God, but he alone who bears God in himself. Man is favored above other beings with the freedom to dwell in himself or in God. When man came out from God, he was his own tempter and made himself proud and selfish. Thus evil, which had before remained hidden, was revealed, and became sin. As the separation from God is an eternal act, so also redemption and resurrection form an inner event. Christ is born in everyone who gives up the I-ness (/ch/leit), each regenerate man is a son of God. But no vicarious suffering can save him who does not put off the old Adam, no matter how much an atheology sunk in literalism may comfort itself with the hope that man can “drink at an- other's cost” (that the merit of another is imputed to him).” German mysticism reaches its culmination in the Görlitz cobbler, Jacob Böhme (1575–1624 : Aurora, or the Rising AJazvin , Mysterium Magnum, or on the First Book of Moses, etc. The works of Böhme, collected by his apostle, Gichtel, appeared in 1682 in ten volumes, and in 1730 in six volumes; a new edition was prepared by Schiebler in 1831–47, with a second edition in 1861 seq.). Böhme's doctrine + centers about the problem of the origin of evil. He transfers this to God himself and joins there with the leading thought of Eckhart, that God goes through a process, that he proceeds from an unrevealed to a revealed condition. At the sight of a tin vessel glistening in the sun, he conceived, as by inspiration, the idea that as the sunlight reveals itself on the dark vessel so all light needs darkness and all good evil in order to appear and to become knowable. Every- thing becomes perceptible through its opposite alone: gentleness through sternness, love through anger, affirma- * Weigel is discussed by J. O. Opel, Leipsic, 1864. - + Cf. Windelband's fine exposition, Geschichte der neuerem Philosophie, vol. i. § 19. The following have written on Böhme : Fr. Baader (in vols. iii. and xiii. of his Werke); Hamberger, Munich, 1844; H. A. Fechner, Görlitz, 1857 ; A. v. Harless, Berlin, 1870, new edition, Leipsic, 1882. - ! 54 7TA/A2 AAA’ MO D OA' 7TA’AAV,SYZZOAV. tion through negation. Without evil there would be no life, no movement, no distinctions, no revelation ; all would be unqualified, uniform nothingness. And as in nature nothing exists in which good and evil do not reside, so in God, besides power or the good, a contrary exists, without which he would remain unknown to himself. The theo- gonic process is twofold: Self-knowledge on the part of God, and his revelation outward, as eternal nature, in seven In OmentS. At the beginning of the first development God is will with- out object, eternal quietude and rest, unqualified ground- lessness without determinate volition. But in this divine nothingness there soon awakes the hunger after the aught (somewhat, existence), the impulse to apprehend and mani- fest self, and as God looks into and forms an image of him- self, he divides into Father and Son. The Son is the eye with which the Father intuits himself, and the proces- sion of this vision from the groundless is the Holy Ghost. Thus far God, who is one in three, is only understanding or wisdom, wherein the images of all the possible are con- tained; to the intuition of self must be added divisibility; it is only through the antithesis of the revealed God and the unrevealed groundless that the former becomes an actual trinity (in which the persons stand related as essence, power, and activity), and the latter becomes desire or nature in God. At the creation of the world seven equally eternal qual- ities, source-spirits or nature-forms, are distinguished in the divine nature. First comes desire as the contractile, tart quality or pain, from which proceed hardness and heat; next comes mobility as the expansive, sweet quality, as this shows itself in water. As the nature of the first was to bind and the second was fluid, so they both are combined in the bitter quality or the pain of anxiety, the principle of sensibility. (Contraction and expansion are the conditions of percepti- bility.) From these three forms fright or lightning sud- denly springs forth. This fourth quality is the turning- point at which light flames up from darkness and the love of God breaks forth from out his anger; as the first three, or four, forms constitute the kingdom of wrath, so the latter GAEA’Al/AAV // Y.S 7/CZ.S//. 55 three constitute the kingdom of joy. The fifth quality is called light or the warm fire of love, and has for its func- tions external animation and communication ; the sixth, report and sound, is the principle of inner animation and intelligence ; the seventh, the formative quality, corpo- reality, comprehends all the preceding in itself as their dwelling. The dark fire of anger (the hard, sweet, and bitter qualities) and the light fire of love (light, report, and cor- poreality), separated by the lightning-fire, in which God's wrath is transformed into mercy, stand related as evil and good. The evil in God is not sin, but simply the inciting sting, the principle of movement ; which, moreover, is restrained, overcome, transfigured by gentleness. Sin arises only when the creature refuses to take part in the advance from darkness to light, and obstinately remains in the fire of anger instead of forcing his way through to the fire of love. Thus that which was one in God is divided. Lucifer be- comes enamored of the tart quality (the centrum maturaa or the matrix) and will not grow into the heart of God ; and it is only after such lingering behind that the kingdom of wrath become a real hell. Heaven and hell are not future conditions, but are experienced here on earth ; he who instead of subduing animality becomes enamored of it, stands under the wrath of God; whereas he who abjures self dwells in the joyous kingdom of mercy. He alone truly believes who himself becomes Christ, who repeats in himself what Christ suffered and attained. The creation of the material world is a result of Lucifer's fall. Böhme's description of it, based on the Mosaic account of creation, may be passed without notice; similarly his view of cognition, familiar from the earlier mystics, that all knowledge is derived from self-knowledge, that our destina- tion is to comprehend God from ourselves, and the world from God. Man, whose body, spirit, and soul hold in them the earthly, the sidereal, and the heavenly, is at once a microcosm and a “little God.” Under the intractable form of Böhme's speculations and amid their riotous fancy, no one will fail to recognize their true-hearted sensibility and an unusual depth and vigor of 56 TA//5 AAA’/OD OA' 7"RAAVS/T/OAV. | * thought. They found acceptance in England and France, and have been revived in later times in the systems of Baader and Scheſling. 7. The Foundation of Modern Physics. In no field has the modern period so completely broken with tradition as in physics. The correctness of the Co- pernican theory is proved by Kepler's laws of planetary movement, and Galileo's telescopical observations; the scientific theory of motion is created by Galileo's laws of projectiles, falling bodies, and the pendulum ; astronomy and mechanics form the entrance to exact physics—Des- cartes ventures an attempt at a comprehensive mechanical explanation of nature. And thus an entirely new move- ment is at hand. Forerunners, it is true, had not been lack- ing. Roger Bacon (1214–94) had already sought to obtain an empirical knowledge of nature based upon mathematics; and the great painter Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519) had discovered the principles of mechanics, though without gain- ing much influence over the work of his contemporaries. It was reserved for the triple star which has been mentioned to overthrow Scholasticism. The conceptions with which the Scholastic-Aristotelian philosophy of nature sought to get at phenomena-—substantial forms, properties, qualitative change—are thrown aside ; their place is taken by matter, forces working under law, rearrangement of parts. The in- quiry into final causes is rejected as an anthropomorphosis of natural events, and dcduction from efficient causes is alone accepted as Scientific explanation. Size, shape, num- ber, motion, and law are the only and the sufficient princi- ples of explanation. For magnitudes alone are knowable ; wherever it is impossible to measure and count, to deter- mine force mathematically, there rigorous, exact science ceases. Nature a system of regularly moved particles of mass; all that takes place mechanical movement, viz., the combination, separation, dislocation, oscillation of bodies and corpuscles; mathematics the organon of natural sci- ence 1 Into this circle of modern scientific catagories are articulated, further, Galileo's new conception of motion and 7A/AE APO UAVDA 7TWOAW OF MODEA’AV PA/ VS/CS. 57 the conception of atoms, which, previously employed by physicists, as Daniel Sennert (1619) and others, is now brought into general acceptance by Gassendi, while the four elements are definitively discarded (Lasswitz, Ge. schichte der Atomistik, 1890). Still another doctrine of Democritus is now revived ; an evident symptom of the quantification and mechanical interpretation of natural phe- nomena being furnished by the doctrine of the subjectivity of Sense qualities, in which, although on varying grounds, Kepler, Galileo, Descartes, Gassendi, and Hobbes agree.* Descartes and Hobbes will be discussed later. Here we may give a few notes on their fellow laborers in the ser- vice of the mechanical science of nature. We begin with John Kepler + (1571–1630; chief work, 7%e AVezv Astronomy or Ce/estia/ Physics, in Commentaries on the Motions of Mars, 1609). Kepler's merit as an astronomer has long obscured his philosophical importance, although his discovery of the laws of planetary motion was the outcome of endeavors to secure an exact founda- tion for his theory of the world. The latter is aesthetic in character, centers about the idea of a universal world- harmony, and employs mathematics as an instrument of confirmation. For the fact that this theory satisfies the mind, and, on the whole, corresponds to our empirical im- pression of the order of nature, is not enough in Kepler's view to guarantee its truth ; by exact methods, by means of induction and experiment, a detailed proof from empirical facts must be found for the existence not only of a general harmony, but of definitely fixed proportions. Herewith the philosophical application of mathematics loses that obscure mystical character which had clung to it since the time of Pythagoras, and had strongly mani- fested itself as late as in Nicolas of Cusa. Mathematical relations constitute the deepest essence of the real and the object of science. Where matter is, there is geometry; the latter is older than the world and as eternal as the * Cf. chapter vi. in Natorp's work on Descartes' Fréenntnisstheorie, Marburg, 1882, and the same author's Amalekten zur Geschichte der Philosophie, in the Ahilosophische Momatshefte, vol. xviii. 1882, p. 572 seq. #See Sigwart, Kleine Schriften, vol. i. p. 182 seq., R. Eucken, Beiträge 2tº Geschichte der mezzerem Philosophie, p. 54 seq. 58 TAZAZ AAA"/O/D OA' 7/8 AAVS/2 ZOAV. divine Spirit; magnitudes are the source of things. True knowledge exists only where quanta are known ; the pre- supposition of the capacity for knowledge is the capacity to count ; the spirit cognizes sensuous relations by means of the pure, archetypal, intellectual relations born in it, which, before the advent of sense-impressions, have lain concealed behind the veil of possibility; inclination and aversion between men, their delight in beauty, the pleasant im- pression of a view, depend upon an unconscious and instinc- tive perception of proportions. This quantitative view of the world, which, with a consciousness of its novelty as well as of its scope, is opposed to the qualitative view of Aristotle;” the opinion that the essence of the human spirit, as well as of the divine, nay, the essence of all things, consists in activity; that, consequently, the Soul is always active, being conscious of its own harmony at least in a confused way, even when not conscious of external propor- tions; further, the doctrine that nature loves simplicity, avoids the superfluous, and is accustomed to accomplish large results with a few principles—these remind one of Leibnitz. At the same time, the law of parsimony and the methodological conclusions concerning true hypotheses and real causes (an hypothesis must not be an artificially con- structed set of fictions, forcibly adjusted to reality, but is to trace back phenomena to their real grounds), obedi- ence to which enabled him to deduce a priori from causes. the conclusions which Copernicus by fortunate conjecture had gathered inductively from effects—these made our thinker a forerunner of Newton. The physical method of explanation must not be corrupted either by theological conceptions (comets are entirely natural phenomena ) or by anthropomorphic views, which endow nature with spiritual powers. Intermediate between Bacon and Descartes, both in the order of time and in the order of fact, and a co-founder of * Aristotle erred when he considered qualitative distinctions (idem and alized) ultimate. These are to be traced back to quantitative differences, and the aliud' or diversum is to be replaced by plus et minus. There is nothing absolutely light, but only relatively. Since all things are distinguished only by “more or less,” the possibility of mediating members or proportions between them is given. THE AWO UAV ZDA 7TWOM OF MODAEAEAV AA/VS/CS. 59 modern philosophy, stands Galileo Galilei (1564–1641).” Galileo exhibits all the traits characteristic of modern thinking : the reference from words to things, from memory to perception and thought, from authority to self-ascer- tained principles, from chance opinion, arbitrary opinion, and the traditional doctrines of the schools, to “knowl- edge,” that is, to one's Own, well grounded, indisputable in- sight, from the study of human affairs to the study of nature. Study Aristotle, but do not become his slave ; in- stead of yielding yourselves captive to his views, use your own eyes; do not believe that the mind remains unproduc- tive unless it allies itself with the understanding of another; copy nature, not copies merely He equals Bacon in his high estimation of sensuous experience in contrast to the often illusory conclusions of the reason, and of the value of induction ; but he does not conceal from himself the fact that observation is merely the first step in the process of cognition, leaving the chief rôle for the understanding. This, supplementing the defect of experience—the im- possibility of observing all cases—by its a priori concept of law and with its inferences overstepping the bounds of experience, first makes induction possible, brings the facts established into connection (their combination under laws is thought, not experience), reduces them to their primary, simple, unchangeable, and necessary causes by abstraction from contingent circumstances, regulates perception, corrects sense-illusions, i. e., the false judg- ments originating in experience, and decides concerning the reality or fallaciousness of phenomena. Demonstration based on experience, a close union of observation and thought, of fact and Idea (law)—these are the require- ments made by Galileo and brilliantly fulfilled in his dis- coveries; this, the “inductive speculation,” as Dühring terms it, which derives laws of far-reaching importance from inconspicuous facts; this, as Galileo himself recog- nizes, the distinctive gift of the investigator. Galileo antici- pates Descartes in regard to the subjective character of sense * Cf. Natorp's essay on Galileo, in vol. xviii. of the Philosophische Momats- hefte, 1882. 6o - ZAZE AAEAE/OD OF TRANSZZZOAV. qualities and their reduction to quantitative distinctions,” while he shares with him the belief in the typical character of mathematics and the mechanical theory of the world. The truth of geometrical propositions and demonstrations is as unconditionally certain for man as for God, only that man learns them by a discursive process, whereas God's in- tuitive understanding comprehends them with a glance and knows more of them than man. The book of the uni- verse is written in mathematical characters; motion is the fundamental phenomenon in the world of matter ; our knowledge reaches as far as phenomena are measurable ; the qualitative nature of force, back of its quantitative de- terminations, remains unknown to us. When Galileo main- tains that the Copernican theory is philosophically true and not merely astronomically useful, thus interpreting it as more than a hypothesis, he is guided by the conviction that the simplest explanation is the most probable one, that truth and beauty are one, as in general he concedes a guiding though not a controlling influence in scientific work to the aesthetic demand of the mind for order, har- mony, and unity in nature, to correspond to the wisdom of the Creator. w One of the most noted and influential among the con- temporaries, Countrymen, and Opponents of Descartes, was the priest and natural scientist, Petrus Gassendi,t from 1633 Provost of Digne, later for a short period professor of mathe- matics at Paris. His renewal of Epicureanism, to which he was impelled by temperament, by his reverence for Lucretius, and by the anti-Aristotelian tendency of his thinking, was of far more importance for modern thought than the attempts * This doctrine is developed by Galileo in the controversial treatise against Padre Grassi, ZThe Scales (ZZ Saggiatore, 1623, in the Florence edition of his collected works, 1842 seq., vol. iv. pp. I49–369; cf. Natorp, Descartes’ Eréerent- misstheorie, 1882, chap. vi.). In substance, moreover, this doctrine is found, as Heussler remarks, Baco, p. 94, in Bacon himself, in Valerius Zerminus (Works, Spedding, vol. iii. pp. 217–252. -- + Pierre Gassend, 1592–1655 ; On the Zife and Character of Æpicurus, 1647; AVotes on the Zeml/. Aook of Diogenes Laërtius, with a Survey of the Doctrine of Apicurus, 1649. Works, Lyons, 1658, Florence, I727. Cf. Lange, History of Materialism, book i. § 3, chap. I ; Natorp, Analekten, Philosophische Mon- atshefte, vol. xviii. 1882, p. 572 seq. - T///E FO UAV DA 7/OAV OA’ MO/D/E/CAV AA/ Y.S./C.S. 61 to revive the ancient systems which have been mentioned above (p. 29). Its superior influence depends on the fact that, in the conception of atoms, it offered exact inquiry a most useful point of attachment. The conflict between the Gassendists and the Cartesians, which at first was a bitter. one, centered, as far as physics was concerned, around the value of the atomic hypothesis as contrasted with the corpuscular and vortex theory which Descartes had opposed to it. It soon became apparent, however, that these two thinkers followed along essentially the same lines in the philosophy of nature, sharply as they were opposed in their noëtical principles. Descartes' doctrine of body is conceived from an entirely materialistic standpoint, his anthropology, indeed, going further than the principles of his system would allow. Gassendi, on the other hand, recognizes an immaterial, immortal reason, traces the origin of the world, its marvelous arrangement, and the beginning of motion back to God, and, since the Bible so teaches, believes the earth to be at rest,-holding that, for this reason, the deci- sion must be given in favor of Tycho Brahe and against Copernicus, although the hypothesis of the latter affords the simpler and, scientifically, the more probable explanation. Both thinkers rejoice in their agreement with the dogmas of the Church, only that with Descartes it came unsought in the natural progress of his thought, while Gassendi held to it in contradiction to his system. It is the more surprising that Gassendi's works escaped being put upon the Index, a fate which overtook those of Descartes in 1663. As modern thought derives its mechanical temper equally from both these sources, and the natural science of the day has appropriated the corpuscles of Descartes under the name of molecules, as well as the atoms of Gassendi, though not without considerable modification in both conceptions (Lange, vol. i. p. 269), so we find attempts at mediation at an early period. While Père Mersenne (1588–1648), who was well versed in physics, sought an indecisive middle course between these two philosophers, the English chemist, Robert Boyle, effected a successful synthesis of both. The son of Richard Boyle, Earl of Cork, he was born at Lismore in 1626, lived in literary retirement at 62 ZTAZAZ AAEA’/O/O OA” ZTA2AAVS/ZZOZV. Oxford from 1654, and later in Cambridge, and died, 1692, in London, president of the Royal Society. His principal work, The Sceptical Chemist (Works, vol. i. p. 29O seq.), ap- peared in 1661, the tract, De Ipsa Natura, in 1682.* By his introduction of the atomic conception he founded an epoch in chemistry, which, now for the first, was freed from bond- age to the ideas of Aristotle and the alchemists. Atom- ism, however, was for Boyle merely an instrument of method and not a philosophical theory of the world. A sincerely religious man,t he regards with disfavor both the atheism of Epicurus and his complete rejection of teleology—the world-machine points to an intelligent Crea- tor and a purpose in creation ; motion, to a divine impulse. He defends, on the other hand, the right of free inquiry against the priesthood and the pedantry of the schools, holding that the supernatural must be sharply distin- guished from the natural, and mere conjectures concerning insoluble problems from positions susceptible of experi- mental proof; while, in opposition to submission to author- ity, he remarks that the current coin of opinion must be estimated, not by the date when and the person by whom it was minted but by the value of the metal alone. Carte- sian elements in Boyle are the start from doubt, the deri- vation of all motion from pressure and impact, and the ex- tension of the mechanical explanation to the organic world. His inquiries relate exclusively to the world of matter so far as it was “completed on the last day but one of crea- tion.” He defends empty space against Descartes and Hobbes. He is the first to apply the mediaeval terms, primary and secondary qualities, to the antithesis between * Boyle's PWorks were published in Latin at Geneva, in 1660, in six volumes, and in 1714 in five; an edition by Birch appeared at London, I744, in five volumes, second edition, 1772, in six. Cf. Buckle, History of Cîzilization in Zngland, vol. i. chap. vii. pp. 265–268 ; Lange, Aſistory of Materialism, vol. i. pp. 298–306; vol. ii. p. 35 I seq., Georg Baku, Der Streit differ den AWaturbe- griff, Zeitschrift fºr Philosophie, vol. xcviii., 1891, p. 162 seq. # The foundation named after him had for its object to promote by means of lectures the investigation of nature on the basis of atomism, and, at the same time, to free it from the reproach of leading to atheism and to show its harmony with natural religion. Samuel Clarke's work on 7"he Being and Attri- butes of God, 1705, originated in lectures delivered on this foundation. AA COMW’S PACE DA; CAESSO/Q.S. 63 objective properties which really belong to things, and sensuous or subjective qualities present only in the feeling subject.* 8. Philosophy in England to the Middle of the Seventeenth Century. (a) Bacon’s Predecessors.-The darkness which lay over the beginnings of modern English philosophy has been but incompletely dispelled by the meritorious work of Ch. de Rémusat (Histoire de la Philosophie en Angleterre depuis Bacon ſusqu'a Zocke, 2 vols., 1878). The most recent in- vestigations of J. Freudenthal (Beiträge zur Geschächte der Anglischen Philosophie, in the Archiv für Geschichte der Ahilosophie, vols. iv. and v., 1891) have brought assistance in a way deserving of thanks, since they lift at important . points the veil which concealed Bacon's relations to his predecessors and contemporaries, by describing the Scien- tific tendencies and achievements of Digby and Temple. The following may be taken from his results. Everard Digby (died 1592 ; chief work, Theoria Analytica, 1579), instructor in logic in Cambridge from 1573, who was strongly influenced by Reuchlin and who favored an Aristotelian-Alexandrian-Cabalistic eclecticism, was the first to disseminate Neoplatonic ideas in England ; and, in spite of the lack of originality in his systematic presenta- tion of theoretical philosophy, aroused the study of this branch in England into new life. His opponent, Sir William Temple + (1553–1626), by his defense and exposi- tion of the doctrine of Ramus (introduced into Great Britain by George Buchanan and his pupil, Andrew Melville), made Cambridge the chief center of Ramism. He was the first who openly opposed Aristotle. Bacon was undoubtedly acquainted with both these writers and took ideas from both. Digby represented the scholastic tendency, which Bacon vehemently opposed, yet * Eucken, Geschichte der philosophischen, Terminologie, pp. 94, 196. # Temple was secretary to Philip Sidney, William Davison, and the Earl of Essex, and, from 1609, Provost of Trinity College, Dublin. His maiden work, De Unica P. Rami Methodo, which he published under the pseudonym, Mildapettus, 1580, was aimed at Digby’s De Duplic: Methodo. His chief work, A. Rami Dialectica Zibri Duo Scholiis Illustrati, appeared in 1584. w 64 ZTAZAZ AAA’ ZO/O OA' 7/8 AAVS/7/OAV. without being able completely to break away from it. Temple was one of those who supplied him with weapons for this conflict. Finally, it must be mentioned that many of the English scientists of the time, especially William Gilbert (1540–1603; De Magnete, 1600), physician to Queen Elizabeth, used induction in their work before Bacon ad- vanced his theory of method. (b) Bacon.—The founder of the empirical philosophy of modern times was Francis Bacon (1561–1626), a contempo- rary of Shakspere. Bacon began his political career by sit- ting in Parliament for many years under Queen Elizabeth, as whose counsel he was charged with the duty of engaging in the prosecution of his patron, the Earl of Essex, and at whose command he prepared a justification of the process. . Under James I. he attained the highest offices and honors, being made Keeper of the Great Seal in 1617, Lord Chan- cellor and Baron Verulam in 1618, and Viscount St. Albans in 1621. In this last year came his fall. He was charged with bribery, and condemned ; the king remitted the im- prisonment and fine, and for the remainder of his life Bacon devoted himself to science, rejecting every suggestion toward a renewal of his political activity. The moral laxity of the times throws a mitigating light over his fault; but he cannot be aquitted of self-seeking, love of money and of display, and excessive ambition. As Macaulay says in his famous essay, he was neither malignant nor tyrannical, but he lacked warmth of affection and elevation of senti- ment; there were many things which he loved more than virtue, and many which he feared more than guilt. He first gained renown as an author by his ethical, economic, and political AEssays, after the manner of Montaigne; of these the first ten appeared in 1597, in the third edition (1625) in- creased to fifty-eight; the Latin translation bears the title Sermomes Fide/es. His great plan for a “restoration of the sciences” was intended to be carried out in four, or rather, in six parts. But only the first two parts of the Instauratio Magna were developed: the encyclopædia, or division of all sciences,” a chart of the globus intellectualis, on which was * According to the faculties of the soul, memory, imagination, and understand- ing, three principal sciences are distinguished ; history, poesy, and philosophy. AA COAV. 65 depicted what each science had accomplished and what still remained for each to do ; and the development of the new method. Bacon published his survey of the circle of the sciences in the English work, the Advancement of Learn- ing, 1605, a much enlarged revision of which, De Dignitate et Augment is Scientiarum, appeared in Latin in 1623. In 1612 he printed as a contribution to methodology the draft, Cogitata et Visa (written 1607), later recast into the [first book of the] Novum Organum, 1620. This title, Novum Organum, of itself indicates opposition to Aris- totle, whose logical treatises had for ages been collected under the title Organon. If in this work Bacon had given no connected exposition of his reforming principles, but merely a series of aphorisms, and this an incomplete one, the remaining parts are still more fragmentary, only prefaces and scattered contributions having been reduced to writing. The third part was to have been formed by a description of the world or natural history, Historia Maturalis, and the last,-introduced by a Scala /ſate/- lectus (ladder of knowledge, illustrations of the method by examples), and by Prodromi (preliminary results of his own inquiries),--by natural science, Philosophia Secunda. The best edition of Bacon's works is the London one of Spedding, Ellis & Heath, 1857 seq., 7 vols., 2d ed., 1870; with 7 volumes additional of The Zetters and Zife of Francis Bacon, including. His Occasional Works, and a Commentary, by J. Spedding, I862–74. Spedding fol- lowed this further with a briefer Account of the Life and Times of Francis Bacon, 2 vols., 1878.* Of the three objects of the latter, “mature strikes the mind with a direct ray, God with a refracted ray, and man himself with a reflected ray.” Theology is natural or revealed. Speculative (theoretical) natural philosophy divides into physics, concerned with material and efficient causes, and metaphysics, whose mission, ac- cording to the traditional view, is to inquire into final causes, but in Bacon’s own opinion, into formal causes; operative (technical) natural philosophy is mechanics and natural magic. The doctrine concerning man comprises anthropology (in- cluding logic and ethics) and politics. This division of Bacon was still retained by D'Alembert in his preliminary discourse to the Encyclopédie. * Cf. on Bacon, K. Fischer, 2d ed., 1875; Chr. Sigwart, in the Prezassische Jahrödicher, 1863 and 1864, and in vol. ii. of his Zogić H. Heussler, Baco wnd seine geschächtliche Stellung, Breslau, 1889. [Adamson, Æncyclopædia Aritannica, 9th. ed., vol. iii. pp. 200–222; Fowler, English Philosophers Series, 1881; Nichol, Blackwood's Philosophical Classics, 2 vols., 1888–89.-TR.] 66 THAE AAEAE/OD OA' 7"RAAWSZZYOAV. Bacon's merit was threefold: he felt more forcibly and more clearly than previous thinkers the need of a reform in Science ; he set up a new and grand ideal—unbiased and methodical investigation of nature in order to mastery over nature ; and he gave information and directions as to the way in which this goal was to be attained, which, in spite of their incompleteness in detail, went deep into the heart Of the subject and laid the foundation for the work of centuries.” His faith in the omnipotence of the new method was so strong, that he thought that science for the future could almost dispense with talent. He compares his method to a compass or a ruler, with which the unprac- tised man is able to draw circles and straight lines better than an expert without these instruments. All science hitherto, Bacon declarcs, has been uncertain and unfruitful, and does not advance a step, while the me- chanic arts grow daily more perfect ; without a firm basis, garrulous, contentious, and lacking in content, it is of no practical value. The seeker after certain knowledge must | | abandon words for things, and learn the art of forcing Wº: to answer his questions. The seeker after fruitful 'ºnowledge must increase the number of discoveries, and transform them from matters of chance into matters of de- sign. For discovery conditions the power, greatness, and progress of mankind. Man's power is measured by his knowledge, knowledge is power, and nature is conquered by Obedience—scientia est potenţia ; natura parendo vincitºr. Bacon declares three things indispensable for the attain- ment of this power-giving knowledge: the mind must understand the instruments of knowledge ; it must turn to experience, deriving the materials of knowledge from perception ; and it must not rise from particular principles to the higher axioms too rapidly, but steadily and gradually through middle axioms. The mind can accomplish noth- ing when left to itself; but undirected experience alone is also insufficient (experimentation without a plan is groping in the dark), and the senses, moreover, are deceptive and not acute enough for the subtlety of nature—therefore, mes º * His detractors are unjust when they apply the criterion of the present method of investigation and find only imperfection in an imperfect beginning. BA COMW. 67 thodical experimentation alone, not chance observation, is worthy of confidence. Instead of the customary divorce of experience and understanding, a firm alliance, a “laywful marriage,” must be effected between them. The empiricists merely collect, like the ants; the dogmatic metaphysicians spin the web of their ideas out of themselves, like the spiders; but the true philosopher must be like the bee, which by its own power transforms and digests the gathered material. As the mind, like a dull and uneven mirror, by its own nature distorts the rays of objects, it must first of all be cleaned and polished, that is, it must be freed from all prej- udices and false notions, which, deep-rooted by habit, prevent the formation of a true picture of the world. It must root out its prejudices, or, where this is impossible, at least understand them. Doubt is the first step on the way to truth. Of these Phantoms or Idols to be discarded, Bacon distinguishes four classes: Idols of the Theater, of the Market Place, of the Den, and of the Tribe. The most dangerous are the idola theatri, which consist in the ten- dency to put more trust in authority and tradition than in independent reflection, to adopt current ideas simply be- cause they find general acceptance. Bacon's injunction concerning these is not to be deceived by stage-plays (i. e., by the teachings of earlier thinkers which represent things other than they are); instead of believing others, observe for thyself The idola fori, which arise from the use of language in public intercourse, depend upon the confusion of words, which are mere symbols with a conventional value and which are based on the carelessly constructed concepts of the vulgar, with things themselves. Here Bacon warns us to keep close to things. The idola specus are individual prepossessions which interfere with the apprehension of the true state of affairs, such as the excessive tendency of thought toward the resemblances or the differences of things, or the investigator's habit of transferring ideas cur- rent in his own department to subjects of a different kind. Such individual weaknesses are numberless, yet they may in part be corrected by comparison with the perceptions of others. The idola tribus, finally, are grounded in the 68 7A/F PAEAEIO/O, O.F TRAAVS/7ZOAV. nature of the human species. To this class belong, among Others, illusions of the senses, which may in part be cor- rected by the use of instruments, with which we arm our organs; further, the tendency to hold fast to opinions acceptable to us in spite of contrary instances; similarly, the tendency to anthropomorphic views, including, as its most important special instance, the mistake of thinking that we perceive purposive relations everywhere and the working of final causes, after the analogy of human action, when in reality efficient causes alone are concerned. Here Bacon's injunction runs, not to interpret natural phenomena teleologically, but to explain them from mechanical causes; not to narrow the world down to the limits of the mind, but to extend the mind to the boundaries of the world, so that it shall understand it as it really is. To these warnings there are added positive rules. When the investigator, after the removal of prejudices and habitual modes of thought, approaches experience with his senses unperverted and a purified mind, he is to ad- vance from the phenomena given to their conditions. First of all, the facts must be established by observation and experiment, and systematically affänged,” then Tet him go on to causes and laws." The true or scientific induc- * Bacon illustrates the method by the explanation of heat. The results of experimental observation are to be arranged in three tables. The table of pres- ence contains many different cases in which heat occurs ; the table of absence, those in which, under circumstances otherwise the same, it is wanting ; the table of degrees or comparison enumerates phenomena whose increase and decrease accompany similar variations in the degree of heat. That which remains after the exclusion now to be undertaken (of that which cannot be the nature or cause of heat), yields as a preliminary result or commencement of interpreta- tion (as a “first vintage”), the definition of heat : “a motion, expansive, re- strained, and acting in its strife upon the smaller particles of bodies.” # This goal of Baconian inquiry is by no means coincident with that of exact natural science. Law does not mean to him, as to the physical Scientist of to-- day, a mathematically formulated statement of the course of events, but the nature of the phenomenon, to be expressed in a definition (E. König, Æntzwicke- Jung des Causalproblems &is Kant, 1888, pp. I54–156). Bacon combines in a peculiar manner ancient and modern, Platonic and corpuscular fundamental ideas. Rejecting final causes with the atomists, yet handing over material and efficient causes (the latter of which sink with him to the level of mere changing occa- sional causes) to empirical physics, he assigns to metaphysics, as the true science. of nature, the search for the “forms ” and properties of things. In this he is AA COAV. 69 tion * thus inculcated is quite different from the credu- lous induction of common life or the unmethodical induction of Aristotle. Bacon emphasizes the fact that hitherto the importance of negative instances, which are to be employed as a kind of counter-proof, has been completely overlooked, and that a substitute for complete induction, which is never attainable, may be found, on the one hand, in the collection of as many cases as possible, and, on the other, by considering the more important or decisive cases, the “prerogative instances.” Then the inductive ascent from experiment to axiom is to be followed by a deductive descent from axioms to new experiments and discoveries. Bacon rejects the syllogism on the ground that it fits one to overcome his opponent in disputation, but not to gain an active conquest over nature. In his own application of these principles of method, his procedure was that of a dilettante ; the patient, assid- uous labor demanded for the successful promotion of the mission of natural investigation was not his forte. His strength lay in the postulation of problems, the stimulation and direction of inquiry, the discovery of lacunae and the throwing out of suggestions; and many ideas incident- ally thrown off by him surprise us by their ingenious antici- guided by the following metaphysical presupposition : Phenomena, however manifold they may be, are at bottom composed of a few elements, namely, per- manent properties, the so-called “simple naturess,” which form, as it were, the alphabet of nature or the colors on her palette, by the combination of which she produces her varied pictures; e. g., the nature of heat and cold, of a red color, of gravity, and also of age, of death. Now the question to be investigated becomes, What, then, is heat, redness, etc.? The ground essence and law of the natures consist in certain forms, which Bacon conceives in a Platonic way as Con- cepts and substances, but phenomenal ones, and, at the same time, with Democ- ritus, as the grouping or motion of minute material particles. Thus the form of heat is a particular kind of motion, the form of whiteness a determinate ar- rangement of material particles. Cf. Natge, Ueber F. Åacon's Formenlehre, Leipsic, 1891, in which Heussler's view is developed in more detail. [Cf. further, Fowler’s Bacon, English Philosophers Series, 1881, chap. iv.–TR.] - * The Baconian method is to be called induction, it is true, only in the broad sense. Even before Sigwart, Apelt, Zheorie der Znduction, 1854, pp. 151, I53, declared that the question it discussed was essentially a method of ab- straction. This, however, does not detract from the fame of Bacon as the founder of the theory of inductive investigation (in later times carefully elaborated by Mill). . 7o - ZTA/A2 AAFAC/O/O OA' ZTA2AAVS/7/OAV. pations of later discoveries. The greatest defect in his theory was his complete failure to recognize £he Services promised by mathematics to natural science. The charge of utilitarianism, which has been so broadly made, is, on the contrary, unjust. For no matter how strongly he em- phasizes the practical value of knowledge, he is still in agreement with those who esteem the godlike condition of calm and cheerful acquaintance with truth more highly than the advantages to be expected from it; he desires science to be used, not as “a courtezan for pleasure,” but “as a spouse for generation, fruit and comfort,” and—leaving entirely out of view his isolated acknowledgments of the inherent value of knowledge—he conceives its utility wholly in the comprehensive and noble sense that the pursuit of science, from which as such all narrow-minded regard for direct practical application must keep aloof, is the most important lever for the advancement of human culture. Bacon intended that his reforming principles should accrue to the benefit of practical philosophy also, but gave only aphoristic hints to this end. Everything is impelled by two appetites, of which the one aims at indi- vidual welfare, the other at the welfare of the whole of which the thing is a part (bonum suitazis—bonum commu- mionis). The second is not only the nobler but also the stronger; this holds of the lower creatures as well as of man, who, when not degenerate, prefers the general welfare to his individual interests. Love is the highest of the virtues, and is never, as other human endowments, exposed to the danger of excess; therefore the life of action is of more worth than the life of contemplation. By this principle of morals Bacon marked out the way for the Eng- lish ethics of later times.” He notes the lack of a science of character, for which more material is given in ordinary discourse, in the poets and the historians, than in the works of the philosophers; he explains the power of the affections over the reason by the fact that the idea of present good fills the imagination more forcibly than the idea of good to come, and summons persuasion, habit, and morals to the aid of the latter. We must endeavor so to govern the passions * Cf. Vorlaender, p. 267 seq. A/O AE AE AE.S. 71 (each of which combines. in itself a masculine impetuosity with a feminine weakness) that they shall take the part of the reason instead of attacking it. Elsewhere Bacon gives (not entirely unquestionable) directions concerning the art of making one’s way. Acute observations and in- genious remarks everywhere abound. In order to inform one’s self of a man’s intentions and ends, it is necessary to “keep a good mediocrity in liberty of speech, which invites a similar liberty, and in secrecy, which induces trust.” “In order to get on one must have a little of the fool and not too much of the honest.” “As the baggage is to an army, so is riches to virtue. It cannot be spared nor left behind, but it hindereth the march ; yea, and the care of it sometimes loseth or disturbeth the victory '' (impedimenta = baggage and hindrance). On envy and malevolence he says: “For men's minds will either feed upon their own good or upon others' evil : . . . and whoso is out of hope to attain another's virtue will seek to come at even hand by depressing another's fortune.” In ethics, as in theoretical philosophy, Bacon demands the completion of natural knowledge by revelation. The light of nature (the reason and the conscience) is able only to convince us of sin and not to give us complete information concerning our duty,+e. g., the lofty moral principle, Love your enemies. Similarly, natural theology is quite suf- ficient to place the existence of God beyond doubt, by reasoning from the order in nature (“slight tastes of phi- losophy may perchance move one to atheism but fuller draughts lead back to religion ”); but the doctrines of Christianity are matters of faith. Religion and science are separate fields, any confusion of which involves the danger of an heretical religion or a fabulous philosophy. The more a principle of faith contradicts the reason, the greater the obedience and the honor to God in accepting it. (c) Hobbes.—Hobbes stands in sharp contrast to Bacon both in disposition and in doctrine. Bacon was a man of a wide outlook, a rich, stimulating, impulsive nature, filled with great plans, but too mobile and desultory to al- low them to ripen to perfection ; Hobbes is slow, tenacious, persistent, unyielding, his thought strenuous and narrow. 72 7A7A. AAEA’AO/D OA' ZTA’AAVS/7/OAV. To this corresponds a profound difference in their systems, which is by no means adequately characterized by saying that Hobbes brings into the foreground the mathematical element neglected by his predecessor, and turns his atten- tion chiefly to politics. The dependence of Hobbes on Bacon is, in spite of their personal acquaintance, not so great as formerly was universally assumed. His guiding stars are rather the great mathematicians of the Continent, Kepler and Galileo, while Cartesian influences also are not to be denied. He finds his mission in the construction of a strictly mechanical view of the world. Mechanism applied to the world gives materialism ; applied to knowledge, sensationalism of a mathematical type ; applied to the will, determinism ; to morality and the state, ethical and polit- ical naturalism. Nevertheless, the empirical tendency of his nation has a certain power over him ; he holds fast to the position that all ideas ultimately spring from experience. With his energetic but short-breathed thinking, he did not succeed in fusing the rationalistic elements received from foreign sources with these native tendencies, so as to produce a unified system. As Grimm has correctly shown (Zur Geschichte des Erkenntnissproblems), there is an unreconciled contradiction between the dependence of thought on experience, which he does not give up, and the universal validity of the truths derived from pure reason, which he asserts on the basis of the mathematico- philosophical doctrines of the Continent. A similar un- mediated dualism will meet us in Locke also. Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679) was repelled while a student at Oxford by Scholastic methods in thought, with which he agreed only in their nominalistic results (there are no universals except names). During repeated sojourns in Paris, where he made the acquaintance of Gassendi, Mersenne, and Descartes, he devoted himself to the study of mathematics, and was greatly influenced by the doctrines of Galileo ; while the disorders of the En- glish revolution led him to embrace an absolutist theory of the state. His chief works were his politics, under the title Leviatham, 1651, and his Elementa Philosophiæ, in three parts (De Corpore, De Homine, De Cive), of AſO.B.B.A.S. 73 which the third, De Cºve, appeared first (in Latin ; in briefer form and anonymously, 1642, enlarged 1647), the first, De Corpore, in 1655, and the second, De Homine, in 1658. These had been preceded by two books” written, like the two last parts of the Elements, in English : On Human Nature and De Corpore Politico, composed I64O, printed without the author's consent in 1650. Besides these he wrote two treatises Of Liberty and Necessity, I646 and 1654, and pre- pared, 1668, a collected edition of his works (in Latin). In Molesworth's edition, 1839–45, the Latin works occupy five volumes and the English eleven.f Philosophy is formally defined by Hobbes as knowledge of effects from causes and causes from effects by means *—-lily. --— *...* * * ºrg e. 5 ~~~s- -- of legitimate rational inference. This implies the equal validity of the deductive and inductive methods,--while Bacon had proclaimed the latter the most important instru- ment of knowledge, as well as the exclusion of theology based on revelation from the domain of science. Philos- ophy is objectively defined as the theory of body and motion: all that exists is body; all that occurs, motion. Everything real is corporeal; this holds of points, lines, and surfaces, which as the limits of body cannot be incorporeal, as well as of the mind and of God. The mind is merely al (for the senses too) refined body, or, as it is stated in another place, a movement in certain parts of the organic body. All events, even internal events, the feelings and passions, are movements of material parts. “Endeavor " is a diminutive motion, as the atom is the smallest of bodies; sensation and representation are changes in the perceiving body. Space is the idea of an existing thing as such, i. e., merely as existing outside the perceiving sub- ject ; time, the idea of motion. All phenomena are cor- poreal motions, which take place with mechanical necessity. Neither formal nor final causes exist, but only efficient causes. All that happens takes its origin in the activity * Or rather one ; the treatise On Human AWature consists of the first thirteen chapters of the work, AElements of Law, AWatural and Politic, and the De Corpore Politico of the remainder. + Cf. on Hobbes, G. C. Robertson (Blackwood's Philosophical Classics, vol. x.), 1886; Tönnies in the Vierteljahrsschrift fir wissenschaftliche Philoso- £hie, Jahrg. 3-5, 1879–81. 74 7A/AE AAA’ MOD OA' TRAAVS/7”/OA/. of an external cause, and not in itself; a body at rest (or in motion) remains at rest (or in motion) forever, unless affected by another in a contrary sense. And as bodies and their changes constitute the only objects of philosophy, so the mathematical method is the only correct method. There are two kinds of bodies: natural bodies, which man finds in nature, and artificial bodies, which he himself pro- duces. By the latter Hobbes refers especially to the state as a human artefact. Man stands between the two as the most perfect natural body and an element in the political body. Philosophy, therefore, besides the introductory philosophia prima, which discusses the underlying concepts, consists of three parts: physics, anthropology, and politics. Even the theory of the state is capable of demonstrative treatment; moral phenomena are as subject to the law of mechanical causation as physical phenomena. The first factor in the cognitive process is an impression On a sense-organ, which, occasioned by external motion, continues onward to the heart and from this center gives rise to a reaction. The perception or sensation which thus arises is entirely subjective, a function of the knower merely, and in no way a copy of the external movement. The properties light, color, and sound, which we believe to be without us, are merely internal phenomena dependent on outer and inner motions, but with no resemblance to them. Memory consists in the lingering effects or residuary traces of perception; it is a sense or consciousness of hav- ing felt before (sentire se sensisse mem?misse est), and ideas are distinguished from sensations as the perfect from the present tense. Experience is the totality of perceptions retained in memory, together with a certain foresight of the future after the analogy of the past. These stages of cog- nition, which can yield prudence but not necessary and universal knowledge, are present in animals as well as men. The human capacity for science is dependent on the faculty of speech; words are conventional signs to facilitate the retention and communication of ideas. As the memory- images denoted by words are weaker, fainter, and less clearly discriminated than the original sensations, it comes to pass that a number of similar ideas of memory receive a ATO AE AEA.S. 75 common name. Thus abstract general ideas and generic concepts arise, to which nothing real corresponds, for in reality particulars alone exist. The universal is a human artefact. The combination of words into propositions, being an addition or subtraction of arbitrary symbols or marks, is called judgment; the combination of propositions into syllogisms, inference ; the united body of true or demonstrated principles, science--hence mathematics is the type of all knowledge. In short, thought is nothing but calculation and the words with which we operate are mere counters; he who takes counters for coin is a fool. Ani- mals lack reason, i. e., this power of combining artificial symbols. Hobbes's theory of the will is characterized by the same sensationalism and mechanism as his theory of knowledge. All spiritual events originate in impressions of sense. Man responds to the action of objects by a double reaction, adding to the theoretical reaction of sensation a practical one in the feeling of pleasure or pain (according as the impression furthers or hinders the vital function), whence desire and aversion follow in respect to future experience. Further developments from the feelings experienced at the signs of honor (the acknowledgment of superior power) and the contrary, are the affections of pride, courage, anger, of shame and repentance, of hope and love, of pity, etc. De- liberation is the alternation of different appetites; the final, victorious one which immediately precedes action is called will. Freedom cannot be predicated of the will, but only of the 'action, and even in this case it means simply the absence of external restraints, the procedure of the action from the will of the agent; while the action is necessary nevertheless. Every motion is the inevitable result of the sum of the preceding (including cerebral) motions. "Things which we desire are termed good, and those which e shun, evil. Nothing is good perse or absolutely, but only| latively, for a given person, place, time, or set of circum- tances. Different things are good to different men, and there is no objective, universal rule of good and evil, so long as men are considered as individuals, apart from society. A definite criterion of the good is first reached in 76 ZTAZAZ AAFAC/O/O OA' ZTA’AAVS/ ZYOM/. > the state: that is right which the law permits, that wrong which it forbids; good means that which is conducive to the general welfare. In the state of nature nothing is for- ~bidden; nature gives every man a right to everything, and (i. is coextensive with might. What, then, induces man to abandon the state of nature and enter the state of citizenship 2 The opinion of Aristotle and Grotius that the State originates-in-the-social-impulse is false; for man is essentially not social, but selfish, and nothing but regard for his own interests bids him seek the protection of the state: the civil commonwealth is an artificial product of fear ****-exº-4***s-ves , Tand prudence. The highest good is self-preservation; all other goods, as friendship, riches, wisdom, knowledge, and, above all, power, are valuable only as instruments of the former. The precondition of well-being, for which each man strives by nature, is security for life and health. This is wanting in the state of nature, in which the passions govern; for the state of nature is a state of war of everyone against everyone (bellum omnium contra omnes). Each man strives for success and power, and, since he cannot trust his fellow, seeks to subdue, nay, to kill him ; each looks upon his fellow as a wolf which he prefers to devour rather than submit himself to the like operation. Now, as no one is so weak as to be incapable of inflicting on his fellows that worst of evils, death, and thus the strongest is unsafe, \ reason, in the interest of everyone, enjoins a search after peace and the establishment of an ordered community. The conditions of peace are the “laws of nature,” which relate both to politics and to morals but which do not attain their full binding authority until they become positive laws, injunctions of the sovereign power. Peace is attainable only when each man, in return for the protection vouchsafed to him, gives up his natural right to all. The compact by which each renounces his natural liberty to do what he pleases, provided all others are ready for the same renuncia- tion,--to which are added, further, the laws of justice (sanc- tity of covenants), equity, gratitude, modesty, sociability, mercifulness, etc., whose opposites would bring back the state of nature, this compact is secured against violation by the transfer of the general power and freedom to a single *-* *-** ~. -- **------ - - - -- -- *****~~. *-*-ºs--- sº AſOA BAE.S. 77 will (the will of an assembly or of an individual person), which then represents the general will. The civil contract includes, then, two moments: first, renunciation; º irrevocable transference and (absolute) submission. TThe second unites the multitude into a civil personality, the most perfect unity being vouchsafed by absolute monarchy. The sovereign is the soul of the political body; the offi- cials, its limbs; reward and punishment, its nerves; law and equity, its reason. The social contract theory has often experienced demo- cratic interpretation and application, both before and since Hobbes's time; and, in fact, it does not include per se the irrevocability of the transfer, the absoluteness of the sov- ereign power, and the monarchical head, which Hobbes con- sidered indispensable in order to guard against the danger of anarchy. In every abridgment of the Supreme power, whether by division or limitation, he sees a step toward the renewal of the state of nature ; and he defends with iron rigor the omnipotence of the state and the complete lack of legal status on the part of all individuals in contrast with it. The citizen is not to obey his own conscience, which has simply the value of a private opinion, but the laws, as the public conscience; while the supreme ruler, on the contrary, is superior to the civil laws, for it is he that decrees, interprets, alters, and abrogates them. He is lord over the property, the life, and the death of the citizens, and | can do no one wrong. For he alone has retained his original natural right to all, which the rest have entirely and toº ever renounced. He must have regard, indeed, to the wel- \ fare of the people, but he is accountable to God alone. \ The obligation of the subject to obey is extinguished in one case only,–when the civil power is incapable of provid- ing him further with external and internal protection. For the rest, Hobbes declares the existing public order the lawful one, the evils of arbitrary rule much more tolerable than the universal hostility of the state of nature, and aver. sion to tyrants a disease inherited from the republicans of antiquity. - The sovereign, by the laws and by instruction, deter- mines what is good and evil; he determines also what is { 78 7"HA. AAEA8/O/O OF 7'AºAAVS/7ZOAV. to be believed. Religion unsanctioned by the state is su- perstition. The temporâTrufer-is-a- Spiritual ruler, thèTKing, the chief pastor, and the clergy his servants. One and the same community is termed state in so far as it con- sists of men, and church in so far as it consists of Christian men (the ecclesiastical commonwealth). The dogmas which the law prescribes are to be received without investigation, to be swallowed like pills, without mastication. The principle that every passion and every action is in its nature "...º.º.º.º. state, that the will of a despot is to determine what is moral and what immoral, has given just offense. Moreover, this was not, in fact, Hobbes's deepest conviction. Even without ascribing great importance to isolated statements,” it must be admitted that his doctrine was interpreted more narrowly than it was intended. He does not say that no moral distinctions whatever exist before the foundation of the state, but only that the state first supplies a fixed criterion of the good. , Moral ideas have a certain cur- rency before this, but they lack power to enforce them- selves. Further, when he ascribes the origin of the state to self-interest, this does not mean that reason, conscience, generosity, and love for our fellows are entirely wanting in the state of nature, but only that they are not general enough, and, as against the passions, not strong enough to furnish a foundation for the edifice of the state. Not only exaggera- tion in statement but also uncouthness of thought may be forgiven the representative of a movement which is at once new and strengthened by the consciousness of agreement with a naturalistic theory of knowledge and physics; and the vigor of execution compels admiration, even though many obscurities remain to be deplored (e. g., the relation of the two moral standards, the standard of the reason or natural law and the standard of positive law). And recog- * God inscribed the divine or natural law (Do not that to another, etc.) on the heart of man, when he gave him the reason to rule his actions. The laws of nature are, it is true, not always legally binding (in ford externo), but alyays and everywhere binding on the conscience (in fore interno). Justice is the virtue which we can measure by civil laws; love, that which we measure by the law of nature merely. The ruler ought to govern in accordance with the law of # Inature. A.OACA) AZACA3A2/8 7" OA’ CAZZACA UAE V. 79 nition must be accorded to the significant kernel of doc- trine formed, on the one hand, by the endeavor to separate ethics from theology, and on the other, by the thoughts— which, it is true, were not perfectly brought out—that the moral is not founded on a natural social impulse, but on a law of the reason, and first gains a definite criterion in society, and that the interests of the individual are insepar- ably connected with those of the community. In any case, the attempt to form a naturalistic theory of the state would be an undertaking deserving of thanks, even if the promul- gation of this theory had done no further service than to challenge refutation. (d) Lord Herbert of Cherbury.—Between Bacon (1605, 1620) and Hobbes (1642, 1651) stands Lord Herbert of Cherbury (1581–1648), who, by his work De Veritate (1624),” became the founder of deism, that theory of “natural re- ligion,” which, in opposition to the historical dogmatic faith of the Church theology, takes the reason, which is the same in all men, as its basis and morality for its content. Lord Herbert introduces his philosophy of religion by a theory of knowledge which makes universal consent the highest criterion of truth (summa veritatis norma consensus universalis), and bases knowledge on certain self-evident principles (principia), common to all men in virtue of a natural instinct, which gives safe guidance. (These com- mon notions (notitia communes) precede all reflective inquiry, as well as all observation and experience, which would be impossible without them. The most important among them are the religious and ethical maxims of conscience. This natural instinct is both an impulse toward truth and a capacity for good or impulse to self-preservation. The latter extends not only to the individual but to all things with which the individual is connected, to the species, nay, to all the rest of the world, and its final goal is eternal happiness: all natural capacities are directed toward the highest good or toward God. The sense for the divine may indeed be lulled to sleep or led astray by our free will, but not eradicated. To be rational and to be religious are * Tractatus de Veritate prout distinguitur a Revelatione, a Verisimili, a Possi- &iſe, et a Falso. Also, ZXe Religione Gentilizem, I645, complete 1663. 8o ZTAZA. AAEAC/O/D OAP 7/8 AAVS/7”/OAV. ; inseparable; it is religion that distinguishes man from the brute, and no people can be found in which it is lacking. If atheists really exist, they are to be classed with the irrational and the insane. - The content of natural religion may be summed up in the following five articles, which all nations confess: 1. That there is a Supreme Being (numen supremum). 2. That he Ought to be worshiped. 3. That virtue and piety are the chief elements of worship. 4. That man ought to repent of his sins. 5. That there are rewards and punishments in a future life. Besides these general principles, on the dis- covery of which Lord Herbert greatly prides himself, the positive religions contain arbitrary additions, which distin- guish them from one another and which owe their origin, for the most part, to priestly deception, although the rhapsodies of the poets and the inventions of the philoso- phers have contributed their share. The essential principles of natural religion (God, virtue, faith, hope, love, and repent- ance) come more clearly to light in Christianity than in the religions of heathendom, where they are overgrown with myths and ceremonies. , -- The Religio Medici (1642) of Sir Thomas Browne shows similar tendencies. 9. Preliminary Survey. . In the line of development from the speculations of Nicolas of Cusa to the establishment of the English phi- losophy of nature, of religion, and of the state by Bacon, Herbert, and Hobbes, and to the physics of Galileo, modern ideas have manifested themselves with increasing clearness and freedom. Hobbes himself shows thus early the influ- ence of Descartes's decisive step, with which the twilight gives place to the brightness of the morning. In Descartes the empiricism and sensationalism of the Englishis&IFºſted by rationalism—to which the great thinkers of the Continent continue loyal. In Britain, experience, on the Continent the reason is declared to be the source of cognition ; in the former, the point of departure is found in particular im- pressions of sense, on the latter, in general concepts and principles of the understanding; there the method of AAAAAAZZAVAR V, SURVE Y. 8I observation is inculcated and followed, here, the method of deduction. This antithesis remained decisive in the development of philosophy down to Kant, so that it has long been customary to distinguish two lines or Schools, the Empirical and the Rationalistic, whose parallelism may be exhibited in the following table (when only one date is given it indicates the appearance of the philosopher's chief work): Bmpiricism. A’ationalism. Bacon, 162O. (Nicolas, 1450; Bruno, I584). Hobbes, 1651. Descartes, died 1650. Zocke, 1690 (1632–1704). Spinoza, (1632-) I677. Berkeley, I 710. Leibniţa, I 7IO. Hume, I 748. Wolff, died 1754. We must not forget, indeed, the lively interchange of ideas between the schools (especially the influence of Descartes on Hobbes, and of the latter on Spinoza ; further, of Descartes on Locke, and of the latter on Leibnitz) which led to reciprocal approximation and enrichment. Berkeley and Leibnitz, from opposite presuppositions, arrive at the same idealistic conclusion—there is no real world of matter, but only spirits and ideas exist. Hume and Wolff conclude the two lines of development: under the former, empiricism disintegrates into skepticism ; under the latter, rationalism stiffens into a scholastic dogmatism, soon to run out into a popular eclecticism of common sense. If we compare the mental characteristics of the three great nations which, in the period between Descartes and Rant, participated most productively in the work of phi- losophy, the Italians, with their receptive temperament and so active in many fields, exerted a decisive influence on its development and progress in the transition period alone,—it will be seen that the Frenchman tends chiefly to acuteness, the Englishman to clearness and simplicity, the German to profundity of thought. France is the land of mathematical, England of practical, Germany of speculative thinkers. The first is the home of the skeptics, though of the enthusiasts as well; the second, of the realists; the third, of the idealists. - g . . . The English philosopher resembles a geographer who, 82 THE PERIOD OF TRANSZTION. with conscientious care, outlines a map of the region through which he journeys; the Frenchman, an anatomist who, with steady stroke, lays bare the nerves and muscles of the organism ; the German, a mountaineer who loses in clear vision of particular objects as much as he gains in loftiness of position and extent of view. The Englishman describes the given reality, the Frenchman analyses it, the German transfigures it. The English thinker keeps as close as possible to phe- nomena, and the principles which he uses in the explanation of phenomena themselves lie in the realm of concrete experience. He explains one phenomenon by another; he classifies and arranges the given material without analyzing it; he keeps constantly in touch with the popular con- Sciousness. His reverence for reality, as this prescrits itself to him, and his distrust of far-reaching abstraction, are so strong that it is enough for him to take his bearings from the real, and to give a true reproduction of it, while he willingly renounces the ambition to form it anew in concepts. With this respect for concrete reality he combines a similar reverence for ethical postulates. When the development of a given line of thought threatens to bring him into con- flict with practical life, he is honest enough to draw the conclusions which follow from his premises and to give them expression, but he avoids the collision by a simple com- promise, shutting up the refinements of philosophy in the study and yielding in practice to the guidance of natural instinct and conscience. His support, therefore, of theories which contradict current views in morals is free from the levity in which the Frenchman indulges. Life and thought are separate fields, contradictions between them are borne in patience, and if science draws its material from life it shows itself grateful for the favor by giving life the benefit of the useful outcome of its labors, and, at the same time, shielding it from the revolutionary or disinte- grating effect of its doubtful paradoxes. While the deliberate craft of English philosophy does not willingly lose sight of the shores of the concrete world, Trench thought sails boldly and confidently out into the open sea of abstraction. It is not strange that it finds AA’AºA. XM/AWA R Y SUR WE. V. * * 83. the way to the principles more rapidly than the way back to phenomena. A free road, a fresh start, a straight course—such is the motto of French thinking. Whatever. is inconsistent with rectilinearity is ignored, or opposed as unfitting. The line drawn by Descartes through the world between matter and spirit, and that by Rousseau between nature and culture, are distinctive of the philosophical character of their countrymen. Dualism is to them en- tirely congenial ; it satisfies their need for clearness, and with this they are content. Antithesis is in the French- man's blood ; he thinks in it and speaks in it, in the salon or on the platform, in witty jest or in scientific earnestness of thought. Either A or not-A, and there is no middle ground. This habit of precision and sharp analysis facili- tates the formation of closed parties, whereas each individ- ual German, in philosophy as in politics, forms a party of his own. The demand for the removal of the rubbish of existing systems and the sanguine return to the sources, give French philosophy an unhistorical, radical, and revolution- ary character. Minds of the second order, who are incapable of taking by themselves the step from that which is given to the sources, prove their radicalism by following down to the roots that which others have begun (so Condillac and the sensationalism of Locke). Moreover, philosoph- ical principles are to be translated into action ; the thinker has shown himself the doctrinaire in his destructive analysis of that which is given, so, also, he hopes to play the dictator by overturning existing institutions and es- tablishing a new order of things, only his courageous endeavor flags as soon in the region of practice as in that of theory. The German lacks the happy faculty, which distinguishes the two nations just discussed, of isolating a problem near at hand, and he is accustomed to begin his system with Leda's egg; but, by way of compensation, he combines the lofty flight of the French with the phlegmatic endurance of the English, i. e., he seeks his principles far above experi- ence, but, instead of stopping with the establishment of: points of view or when he has set the note, he carries. his principles through in detail with loving industry and 84 ZTA/A2 AA9A2ZOZ) OA' ZTACA AVS/ ZYOAV. comprehensive architectonic skill. While common sense turns the scale with the English and analytical thought with the French, the German allows the fancy and the heart to take an important part in the discussion, though in such a way that the several faculties work together and in har- mony. While in France rationalism, mysticism, and the philosophy of the heart were divided among different thinkers (Descartes, Malebranche and Pascal, Rousseau), there is in every German philosopher something of all three. The skeptical Kant provides a refuge for the postu- lates of thought in the sanctuary of faith ; the earnest, ener- getic Fichte, toward the end of his life, takes his place among the mystics; Schelling thinks with the fancy and dreams with the understanding; and under the broad cloak of the Hegelian dialectic method, beside the reflection of the Critique of Reason and of the Science of Knowledge, the fancies of the Philosophy of Nature, the deep inwardness of Böhme, even the whole wealth of empirical fact, found a place. As synthesis is predominant in his view of things, So a harmonizing, conciliatory tendency asserts itself in his relations to his predecessors: the results of previous philoso- phers are neither discarded out of hand nor accepted in the mass, but all that appears in any way useful or akin to the new system is wrought in at its proper place, though often with considerable transformation. In this work of mediation there is considerable loss in definiteness, the just and comprehensive consideration of the most diverse interests not always making good the loss. And since such a philosophy, as we have already shown, engages the whole man, its disciple has neither impulse nor strength left for reforming labors; while, on the other hand, he perceives no external call to undertake them, since he views the world through the glasses of his system. Thus philosophy in Germany, pursued chiefly by specialists, remains a profes- sional affair, and has not exercised a direct transforming influence on life (for Fichte, who helped to philosophize the French out of Germany, was an exception); but its influence has been the greater in the special sciences, which in Germany more than any other land are handled in a philosophic spirit. PRELIMINARY SURVE Y., 85 The mental characteristics of these nations are reflected also, in their methods of presentation. The style of the English philosopher is sober, comprehensible, diffuse, and slightly wearisome. The French use a fluent, elegant, lücid style which entertains and dazzles by its epigram- matic phrases, in which not infrequently the epigram rules the thought. The German expresses his solid, thoughtful positions in a form which is at once ponderous and not easily understood ; each writer constructs his own termin- ology, with a liberal admixture of foreign expressions, and the length of his paragraphs is exceeded only by the thickness of his books. These national distinctions may be traced even in externals. The Englishman makes his divisions as they present themselves at first thought, and rather from a practical than from a logical point of view. The analytic Frenchman prefers dichotomy, while trich- Otomy corresponds to the synthetic, systematic character of German thinking; and Kant's naïve delight, because in each class the third category unites its two predecessors, has been often experienced by many of his countrymen at the sight of their own trichotomies. The division of labor in the pre-Kantian philosophy among these three nationalities entirely agrees with the account given of the peculiarities of their philosophical endowment. The beginning falls to the share of France; Locke receives that tangled skein, the problem of knowl- edge, from the hand of Descartes, and passes it on to Leibnitz; and while the Illumination in all three countries is converting the gold inherited from Locke and Leibnitz into small coin, the solution of the riddle rings out from Königsberg. - PART I. FROM DESCARTES TO KANT. CHAPTER II. DESCARTES. THE long conflict with Scholasticism, which had been carried on with ever increasing energy and ever sharper weapons, was brought by Descartes to a victorious close. The new movement, long desired, long sought, and prepared for from many directions, at length appears, ready and well- established. Descartes accomplishes everything hºº! with the sure simplicity of genius. He furnishes philosophy; with a settled point of departure in sºon coºl, offers her a method sure to succeed in deduction from clear and distinct conceptions, and assigns her the mechanical explanation of nature as her most imperative and fruitful mission. René Descartes was born at La Haye in Touraine, in 1596, and died at Stockholm in 1650. Of the studies taught in the Jesuit school at La Flèche, mathematics alone was able to satisfy his craving for clear and certain knowledge. The years 1613–17 he spent in Paris; then he enlisted in the military service of the Netherlands, and, in 1619, in that of Bavaria. While in winter quarters at Neuburg, he vowed a pilgrimage to Loretto if the Virgin would show him a way of escape from his tormenting doubts; and made the saving discovery of the “foundations of a wonderful science.” At the end of four years this vow was fulfilled. On his return to Paris (1625), he was besought by his learned friends to give to the world his epoch-mak- ing ideas. Though, to escape the distractions of society, he kept his residence secret, as he had done during his first stay 86 AXAE SCA Ae 7"A.S. 87 in Paris, and frequently changed it, he was still unable to Secure the complete privacy and leisure for scientific work which he desired. Therefore he went to Holland in 1629, and spent twenty years of quiet productivity in Amsterdam, Franecker, Utrecht, Leeuwarden, Egmond, Harderwijk, Leyden, the palace of Endegeest, and five other places. His work here was interrupted only by a few journeys, but much disturbed in its later years by annoying controversies with the theologian Gisbert Voëtius of Utrecht, with Regius, a pupil who had deserted him, and with professors from Leyden. His correspondence with his French friends was conducted through Père Mersenne. In 1649 he yielded to pressing invitations from Queen Christina of Sweden and removed to Stockholm. There his weak constitution was not adequate to the severity of the climate, and death overtook him within a few months. -- The two decades of retirement in the Netherlands were Descartes's productive period. His motive in developing and writing out his thoughts was, essentially, the desire not to disappoint the widely spread belief that he was in possession of a philosophy more certain than the common one. The work entitled Ze Monde, begun in 1630 and almost com- pleted, remained unprinted, as the condemnation of Galileo (1632) frightened our philosopher from publication ; frag- ments of it only, and a brief summary, appeared after the author's death. The chief works, the Discourse on Method, the Meditations on the First Philosophy, and the Principles of Philosophy, appeared between 1637 and 1644,-the Discours de la Methode in 1637, together with three dissertations (the “Dioptrics,” the “Meteors,” and the “Geometry”), under the common title, Æssais Philosophiques. To the (six) Medi. tationes de Prima Philosophia, published in 1641, and dedi- cated to the Paris Sorbonne, are appended the objections of various savants to whom the work had been communi- cated in manuscript, together with Descartes's rejoinders. He himself considered the criticisms of Arnauld, printed fourth in order, as the most important. The Third Objec- tions are from Hobbes, the Fifth from Gassendi, the First, which were also the first received, from the theologian Caterus of Antwerp, while the Second and Sixth, collected 38 AXAE,SCA/C 7'E.S. by Mersenne, are from various theologians and mathema- ticians. In the second edition there were added, further, the Seventh Objections, by the Jesuit Bourdin, and the Replies of the author thereto. The four books of the Principia Philosophiae, published in 1644 and dedicated to Elizabeth, Countess Palatine, give a systematic presentation of the . new philosophy. The Discourse on Method appeared, 1644, in a Latin translation, the Meditations and the Principles in French, in 1647. The Treatise on the Passions was pub- lished in 1650; the Letters, 1657–67, in French, 1668, in Latin. The Opera Postuma, 17OI, beside the Compendium of Music (written in 1618) and other portions of his post- humous writings, contain the “Rules for the Direction of the Mind,” supposed to have been written in 1629, and the “Search for Truth by the Light of Nature.” The complete works have been often published, both in Latin and in French. The eleven volume edition of Cousin appeared in), 1824–26.” z . . . . . . We begin our discussion with Descartes's noštical and metaphysical principles, and then take up in order his doctrine of nature and of man. I. The Principles. That which passes nowadays for Science, and is taught as such in the schools, is nothing but a mass of disconnected, uncertain, and often contradictory opinions. A principle of unity and certainty is entirely lacking. If anything pcrmancnt and irrefutable is to be accomplished in science, everything hitherto considered true must be thoroughly demolished and built up anew. For we come into the world as children and we form judgments of things, or re- * Of the many treatises on the philosophy of Descartes those of C. Shaar- chmidt (ZJescartes und Spinoza, I850) and J. H. Löwe, 1855, may be mentioned. Further, M. Heinze has discussed Die Sittenlehre des ZXescarles, I872 ; Ed. Grimm, ZXescartes’ Zehre von den angeboremen /deen, 1873; G. Glogau, ZXar- Megung und Kritik des Grundgedankens der Cartesianisch. Metaphysić (Zeit- schrift für Philosophie, vol. lxxiii. p. 209 seq.), 1878; Paul Natorp, Descartes’ Arkenntnisstheorie, 1882; and Kas. Twardowski, Zdee und Perception in Des- cartes, 1892. In French, Francisque Bouillier (Histoire de la Philosophie Cartesienne, 1854) and E. Saisset (Précurseurs et Disciples de Descartes, 1862) PRINCIPLES OF THE SYSTEM. 89 peat them after others, before we have come into the full possession of our intellectual powers; so that it is no wonder that we are filled with a multitude of prejudices, from which we can thoroughly escape only by considering everything doubtful which shows the least sign of uncer- tainty. Let us renounce, therefore, all our old views, in order later to accept better ones in their stead; or, perchance, to take the former up again after they shall have stood the test of rational criticism. The recognized precaution, never to put complete confidence in that which has once deceived us, holds of our relation to the senses as elsewhere. It is certain that they sometimes deceive us—perhaps they do So always. Again, we dream every day of things which nowhere exist, and there is no certain criterion by which to distinguish our dreams from our waking moments, what guarantee have we, then, that we are not always dreaming 2 Therefore, our doubt must first-of-all be directed to the ex- istence of sense-objects. Nay, even mathematics must be suspected in spite of the apparent certainty of its axioms' and demonstrations, since controversy and error are found in it also. - I doubt or deny, then, that the world is what it appears -É- to be, Phat there is a Godºhat external objects--exist, that. - 3) have a body, that twice two are four. One thing, how- ever, it is impossible for me to bring into question, namely, that I myself, who exercise—this doubting function, exist. There is one single point at which doubt is forced to halt —at the doubter, at the self-existence of the thinker. I_ Can doubt everything except that I doubt, and that, in Y! . doubting, I am. Even if a superior being sought to de- ceive me in all my thinking, he could not succeed unless I existed, he could not cause me not to exist so long as I thought. To be deceived means to think falsely; but that have written on Cartesianism. [The Method, Meditations, and Selections from the Principles have been translated into English by John Veitch, 5th ed., 1879, and others since ; and H. A. P. Torrey has published The Philosophy of Descartes in AExtracts from his Writings, 1892 (Sneath's Modern Philosophers. The English reader may be referred, also, to Mahaffy's Z)ascartes, 188o, in Black- wood's Philosophical Classics; to the article “Cartesianism,” Fncyclopædia Britannica, 9th ed., vol. v., by Edward Caird; and, for a complete discussion, to the English translation of Fischer's Descartes and his School by J. P. Gordy, 1887.-TR.]. 90 AXAE,SCAA’ Z.A.S. something is thought, no matter what it be, is no de- ception. It might be true, indeed, that nothing at all ex- isted ; but then there would be no one to conceive this non-existence. Granted that everything may be a mistake; yet the being mistaken, the thinking is not a mistake. Everything is denied, but the denier remains. The whole content of consciousness is destroyed; consciousness itself, the doubting activity, the being of the thinker, is inde- structible. Cogitatio sola a me dive//; neguit. Thus the Tsettled point of departure required for knowledge is found in the self-certitude of the thinking ego. From the fact that I doubt, i. e., think, it follows that I, the doubter, the thinker, am. Cogito, ergo sum is the first and most certain of all truths. "T The principle, “I think, therefore I am,” is not to be considered a deduction from the major premise, “Whatever thinks exists.” It is rather true that this general proposi- tion is derived from the particular and earlier one. I must first realize in my own experience that, as thinking, I exist, before I can reach the general conclusion that thought and existence are inseparable. This fundamental truth is thus not a syllogism, but a not further deducible, self-evident, immediate cognition, a pure intuition—suma cogitans. Now, if my existence is revealed by my activity of thought, if my thought is my being, and the converse, if in me thought and existence are identical, then I am a being whose essence consists in thinking. I am a spiri cgo, a rational soul. My existence follows only from my thinking, not from any chance action. Amöulo ergo sum would not be valid, but mihá videor or puto me ambulare, ergo sum. If I believe I am walking, I may undoubtedly be deceived concerning the outward action (as, for instance, in dreams), but never con- cerning my inward belief. Cogitatio includes all the conscious activities of the mind, volition, emotion, and sensation, as well as representation and cognition ; they are all mod: cogitand?. The existence of the mind is therefore the most certain of all things. We know the soul better than the body. It is for the present the only certainty, and every other is dependent on this, the highest of all. What, then, is the peculiarity of this first and most cer. PRINCIPLES OF THE SYSTEM. 9 I tain knowledge which renders itself-evident and independ- ent of all proof, which makes us absolutely unable to doubt it? Its entire clearness and distinctness. Accordingly, I may conclude that everything which I perceive as clearly and distinctly as the cogito ergo sum is also true, and I reach this general rule, omne est verum, quod clare et distincte per- cipio. So far, then, we have gained three things: a challenge to be inscribed over the portals of certified knowledge, de omnibus dubitandum ; a basal truth, sum cogitans, a cri- terion of truth, clara et distincta perceptio. The doubt of Descartes is not the expression of a resigned spirit which renounces the unattainable; it is precept, not doctrine, the starting point of philosophy, not its conclusion, a methodological instrument in the hand of a strong and confident longing for truth, which makes use of doubt to find the indubitable. It is not aimed at the possibility of attain- ing knowledge, but at the opinion that it has already been attained, at the credulity of the age, at its excessive ten- dency toward historical and poly-historical study, which confuses the acquisition and handing down of information with knowledge of the truth. That knowled certain which is self-attained and self-tested—and this cannot be learned or handed down ; it can onl se covered through examination and experience. Instead of ######### or the opinions of others as a guide, the secret of the search for truthli to become independent and of age, to think for one's self; and the only remeTyagainst the dangers of self-deception and the ease of repetition is to be found in doubting everything hitherto, considered true. This is the meaning of the Cartesian doubt, which is more comprehensive and more thorough than the Baconian. Descartes disputed only the certitude of the knowledge previously attained, not the possibility of knowledge—for of the latter no man is more" firmly convinced than he. He is a rationalist, not a skeptic. | The intellect is assured against error just as soon as, freed from hindrances, it remains true to itself, as it puts forth all its powers and lets nothing pass for truth which is not clearly and distinctly known. Descartes demands the same thing for the human understanding as Rousseau at a later ~, 92 - AXAE,SCAR 7"A.S. period for the heart: a return to uncorrupted nature. This faith in the unartificial, the original, the natural, this radical and naturalistic tendency is characteristically French. The purification of the mind, its deliverance from the rubbish of scholastic learning, from the pressure of authority, and from inert acceptance of the thinking of others—this is all. Descartes finds the clearest proof of the mind's ca- pacity for truth in mathematics, whose trustworthiness he never seriously questioned, but only hypothetically, in order to exhibit the still higher certainty of the “I think, there- fore I am.” He wants to give philosophy the stable char- acter which had so impressed him in mathematics when he was a boy, and recommends her, therefore, not merely the evidence of mathematics as a general example, but the mathematical method for definite imitation. Metaphysics, like mathematics, must derive its conclusions by deduction from self-evident principles. Thus the geometrical method begins its rule in philosophy, a rule not always attended with beneficial results. A. With this criterion of truth Descartes advances to the consideration of ideas. He distinguishes volition and judg- ment from ideas in the narrow sense (imagines), and divides the latter, according to their -ms ideae innatae, ºverstºo factae, considering the second class?-theºladvertitious '' ideas, the most numerous, but the firsé:the “innate ideas, the most important. No idea is higºr Kºzłººr-thans gas-idea of God or the most perfect being TWhence comes this idea? That every idea must have use, follows from the tº clear and dis. tinct” principle that nothing produces nothing. It follows from this same principle, ea nihilo nihil fit, however, that the cause must contain as much reality or perfection— zealizas and perfectio are synonymoust as the effect, for otherwise the overplus would have come from nothing. So much (“objective,” representative) reality contained in an idea, so much or more (“formal,” actual) reality must be contained in its cause. The idea of God as infinite, inde- pendent, Omnipotent, omniscient, and creative substance, has not come to me through the senses, nor have I formed + | it myself. The power to conceive a being more perfect AAEAVC/AZAZS OF THA. S. VSTAEM. 93 than myself, can have only come from someone who is more perfect in reality than I. Since I know that the infinite con- tains more reality than the finite, I may conclude that the idea of the infinite has not been derived from the idea of the finite by abstraction and negation ; it precedes the latter, and I become conscious of my defects and my fini- * tude only by comparison with the absolute perfection of God. This idea, then, must have been implanted in me by God himself. The idea of God is an original endow- F. ment; it is as innate as theºdea of myself. However incomplete it may be, it is still sufficient to give a knowl- edge of God's existence, although not a perfect compre- hension of his being, just as a man may skirt a mountain. without encircling it. % Descartes brings in the idea of God in order to escape 'solipsism. So long as the self-consciousness of the ego re- mained the only certainty, there was no conclusive basis for the assumption that anything exists beyond self, that the ideas which apparently come from without are really occasioned by external things and do not spring from the mind itself. For our natural instinct to refer them to objects without us might well be deceptive. It is only through the idea of God, and by help of the principle that the cause must contain at least as much reality as the effect, that I am taken beyond myself and assured that I am not the only thing in the world. For as this idea con- tains more of representative, than I of actual reality, I cannot have been its cause. º p To this empirical argument, which derives God's exist- .Qxº~. ence from ºur idea. Of God (from the fact that we have an {* - idea of him), Descartes joins the (modified) ontological āş ment of Anselm, which deduces the existence of God ; O sas-s-ºs-ºr .- In t ""-------- the concept of Göd.TVhiſe thé ideas of all other things include only the possibility of existence, necessary existence is inseparable from the concept of the most perfect * being. God cannot be thought-apart—from existence: he *~xº~ has the ground of his existence in himself; he is a se or causa sui. Finally, Descartes adds a third argument. The idea of perfections which I do not possess can only have been imparted to me by a more perfect being than I, which *º- ... …A * * 94 e DAESCAR TES. has bestowed on me all that I am and all that I am capa- ble of becoming. If I had created myself, I would have bestowed upon myself these absent perfections also. And the existence of a plurality of causes is negatived by the supreme perfection which I conceive in the idea of "God, the indivisible unity of his attributes. Among the attributes of God his veracity is of special importance. It is impossible that he should will to deceive us; that he should be the cause of our errors. God would be a deceiver, if he had endowed us with a reason to which error should appear true, even when it uses all its foresight in avoiding it and assents only to that which it clearly and distinctly per- ceives. Error is man's own fault; he falls into it only when he misuses the divine gift of knowledge, which in CTſaas its .*.*Hºn. finds new C.OTfirmation for his test of truth in the veracitas-dei. Erdmann has given a better defense of Descartes than the philosopher himself against the charge that this is arguing in a circle, inasmuch as the existence of God is proved by the criterion of truth, and hen the latter by the former: The criterion of certitude is —the razia-cagnoscend of God's existence; God is the natio essendi of the criterion of certitude. In the order of exist- ence God is first, he creates–the–reason together with its criterion; in the order of knowledge the criterion precedes, and God's existence follows from it. Descartes himself endeavors to avoid the circle by making intuitive knowl- edge self-evident, and by not bringing in the appeal to "God's veracity in demonstrative knowledge until, in reflect- ive thought, we no longer have each separatc link in the chain of proof present to our minds with full intuitive cer- tainty, but only remember that we have previously under- stood the matter with clearness and distinctness. Tour ideas represent in-pa º in part qualities. Substance is defined by the concept of independence as res. gua ita existić, ut mulla a/ia re indigeaf ad existendum, a pregnant definition with which the concept of substance gains the leadership in metaphysics, which it held till the time of Hume and Kant, sharing it then with the conception of cause or, rather, relinquishing it to the latter. The Spi- nozistic conclusion that, according to the strict meaning of PRINCIPLES OF THE SYSTEM. 95. this definition, there is but one substance, God, who, as causa sui, has absolutely no need of any other thing in order to his existence, was announced by Descartes himself. If Created substances are under discussion, the term does not apply to them in the same sense (not univoce) as when we speak of the infinite substance ; created beings require a different explanation, they are things which need for their existence only the co-operation of God, and have no need of one another. Substance is cognized through its qualities, among which one is pre-eminent from the fact that it expresses the essence or nature of the thing, and that it. is conceived through itself, without the aid of the others," while they presuppose it and cannot be thought without it. The former fundamental properties are termed attributes, and these secondary ones, modes or accidents. Position, figure, motion, are contingent properties of body; they pre- suppose that it is extended or spatial ; they are modi exten- sionis, as feeling, volition, desire, representation, and judg- ment are possible only in a conscious being, and hence are merely modifications of thought. Extension is the essen; , T- tial or constitutive attribute of body, and t indi. l= BodyTSTEVEFWIEHOUTEXTension, and mind never without || thought—mens semper cogitat. Guided by the self-evident principle that the non-existent has no properties, we argue from a perceived quality to a substance as its possessor or support. Substances are distinct from one another when we can clearly and distinctly cognize one without the other. Now, we can adequately conceive mind without a corporeal º attribute and body without a spiritual one; the former has nothing of extension in it, the latter nothing of thought: hence thinking substance–and–extended substance are entirely distinct and have nothing in common. Matter and mind are distinct realiter, matter and extension idea/iter merely. Thus we attain three clear and distinct ideas, thre eternal verities: substantia infinita sive deus, substantia finit Zogitans sive mens, substanția extensa sive coºls. | By this abrupt contraposition of body and mind—as re- W - |ciprocally independent substances. Descartes founded that |dualism, as whose typical representative FETs. STTTTonored | or opposed. This dealism between the material and spiritual * -* 96 - DESCARTES. worlds belongs to those standpoints which are valid with- out being ultimate truth ; on the pyramid of metaphysical knowledge it takes a high, but not the highest, place. We may not rest in it, yet it retains a permanent value in op- position to subordinate theories. It is in the right against a materialism which still lacks insight into the essen- tial distinction between mind and matter, thought and ex- tension, consciousness and motion; it loses its validity when, with a full consideration and conservation of the dis- tinction between these two spheres, we succeed in bridging over the gulf between them, whether this is accomplished through a philosophy of identity, like that of Spinoza and Schelling, * idealism, like that of Leibnitz or Fichte. In any case philosophy retains as an inalienable possession the negative conclusion, that, in view of the heterogeneity of consciousness and motion, the inner life is not reducible to material phenomena. This clear and simple distinction, which sets bounds to every confusion of spiritual and ma- terial existence, was an act of emancipation ; it worked on the sultry intellectual atmosphere of the time with the puri- fying and illuminating power of a lightning flash. We shall find the later development of philosophy starting from the Cartesian dualism. - Descartes himself looked upon the fundamental princi- ples which have now been discussed as merely the founda- tion for his life work, as the entrance portal to his cosmol- ogy. Posterity has judged otherwise; it finds his chief work in that which he considered-a-mere-preparātion for it. The start from doubt, the self-certitude of the thinking ego, the rational criterion of certitude, the question of the origin of ideas, the concept of substance, the essential dis- tinction between conscious activity and corporeal being, and, also, the principle of thoroughgoing mechanism in the material world (from his philosophy of nature)—these are the thoughts which assure his immortality. The vesti- bule has brought the builder more fame, and has proved more enduring, than the temple: of the latter only the ruins remain; the former has remained undestroyed through the centuries. AVA 7'UACAF. 97 2. Nature. What guarantee have we for the existence of material objects affecting our senses P. That the ideas of sense do not come from ourselves, is shown by the fact that it is not in our power to determine the objects which we perceive, or the character of our perception of them. The supposition that God has caused our perceptions directly, or by means of something which has no resemblance whatever to an ex- ternal object extended in three diffmensions and movable, is excluded by the fact that God is nºt a deceiver. In reliance on God's Veracity we may accept as true whatever the reason declares concerning body, though not all the reports Of the senses, which so often deceive us. At the instance of the senses we clearly and distinctly perceive matter distinct from our mind and from God, extended in three dimensions, length, breadth, and depth, with variously formed and vari- ously moving parts, which occasion in us sensations of many kinds. The belief that perception makes known things as they really are is a prejudice of sense to be dis- carded; on the contrary, it merely informs us concerning the utility or harmfulness of objects, concerning their rela- tion to man as a being composed of soul and body. (The body is that material thing which is very intimately joined with the mind, and occasions in the latter certain feelings, e.g., pain, which as merely cogitative it would not have.) Sense qualities, as color, sound, odor, cannot constitute the essence of matter, for their variation or loss changes nothing in it; I can abstract from them without the material thing. disappearing.”. There is one property, however, extensive magnitude (quantitas), whose removal would imply the de- struction of matter itself. Thus I perceive by pure thought that the essence of matter consists in extension, in that which constitutes the object of geometry, in that magnitude *:::::::::::: movable. This thesis (corpus = eartensiosive spatium) is next defended by Descartes against several objections. In reply to the objection drawn * They are merely subjective states in the perceiver, and entirely unlike the motions which give rise to them, although there is a certain agreement, as the differences and variations in sensation are paralleled by those in the object. | 98. AXAESCAA’.7 F.S. from the condensation and rarefaction of bodies, he urges that the apparent increase or decrease in extension is, in fact, a mere change of figure ; that the rarefaction of a body depends on the increase in size of the intervals between its parts, and the entrance into them of foreign bodies, just as a sponge swells up when its pores become filled with water and, therefore, enlarged. The demand that the pores, and the bodies which force their way into them, should always be perceptible to the senses, is groundless. He meets the second point, that we call extension by itself space, and not body, by maintaining that the distinction between exten- sion and corporeal substance is a distinction in thought, and not in reality; that attribute and substance, mathematical and physical bodies, are not distinct in fact but only in our thought of them. We apply the term space to extension in general, as an abstraction, and body to a given individual, determinate, limited extension. In reality, wherever ex- tenision is, theresubstance is also, ºth e non-existent hasTo extension,-and wherever space is, there matter is also. Empty space does not exist. When we say a vessel is empty, we mean that the bodies which fill it are impercep- tible; if it were absolutely empty its sides would touch. Descartes argues against the atomic theory and against the finitude of the world, as he argues against empty space: matter, as well as space, has no smallest, indivisible parts, and the extension of the world has no end. In the identi- fication of space and matter the former receives fullness from the latter, and the latter unlimitedness from the former, both internal unlimitedness (endless divisibility) and external (boundlessness). Hence there are not several matters but only one (homogeneous) matter, and only one (illimitable) world. - | Matter is divisible figurable—movable—quan - Natu- ral science needs no other principles than these indisputably true conceptions, by which all natural phenomena may be explained, and must employ no others. The most important is motion, on which all the diversity of forms depends. Cor- poreal being has been shown to be extension ; corporeal becoming is motion. Motion is defined as “the transport- ing of one part of matter, or of one body, from the vicinity. e. Cl AVA. Z'C/A2A2. 99. of those bodies that are in immediate contact with it, or which we regard as at rest, to the vicinity of other bodies.” This separation of bodies is reciprocal, hence it is a matter of choice which shall be considered at rest. Besides its own proper motion in reference to the bodies in its imme- diate vicinity, a body can participate in very many other motions: the traveler walking back and forth on the deck of a ship, for instance, in the motion of the vessel, of the waves, and of the earth. The common view of motion as an activity is erroneous; since it requires force not only to SEETTmotion bodies which are at rest, but also to stop Those which are in motion, it is clear that motion implies no more activity than rest.TBoth are simply different states of matter. Since there is no empty space, each mo- tion spreads to a whole circle of bodies: A forces B out of its place, B drives out C, and so on, until Z takes up the position which A has left. The ultimate cause of motion is God. He has created bodies with an original measure of motion and rest, and, in accordance with his immutable character, he preserves this quantity of motion unchanged: it remains constant in the world as a whole, though it varies in individual bodies. For with the power to create or destroy motion bodies lack, further, the power to alter their quantity of motion. By the side of God, the primary cause of motion, the laws of motion appear as secondary causes. The first of these is the one become familiar under the name, law of inertia: Everything continues of itself in the state (of motion or rest) in which it is, and changes its state only as a result of some extraneous cause. The second of these laws, which are so valuable in mechanics, runs: Every portion of matter tends to continue a motion which has been begun in the same direction, hence in a straight line, and changes its direction only under the influence of another body, as in the case of the circle above described. Descartes bases these laws on the unchangeableness of God and the sim- plicity of his world-conserving (i. e., constantly creative) activity. The third law relates to the communication of motion; but Descartes does not recognize the equality of action and reaction as universally as the fact demands. If a IOO A)A.SCAA’ 7TA.S. body in motion meets another body, and its power (to con- tinue its motion in a straight line) is less than the resistance of the other on which it has impinged, it retains its motion, but in a different direction : it rebounds in the opposite direction. If, on the contrary, its force is greater, it carries the other body along with it, and loses so much of its own motion as it imparts to the latter. The seven further rules added to these contain much that is erroneous. As actio in distans is rejected, all the phenomena of motion are traced back to pressure and impulse. The distinction between fluid and solid bodies is based on the greater or less mobility of their parts. The leading principle in the special part of the Cartesian physics, we can only briefly sketch it, which embraces, first, celestial, and, then, terrestial phenomena, is the axiom that we cannot estimate God's power and goodness too highly, nor ourselves too meanly. It is presumptuous to seek to comprehend the purposes of God in creation, to consider ourselves participants in his plans, to imagine that things. exist simply for our sake—there are many things which no * man sees and which are of advantage to none. Nothing is }to be interpreted teleologically, but all must be interpreted |from clearly known attributes, hence purely mechanically. "After treating of the distances of the various heavenly bodies, of the independent light of the sun and the fixed stars. and the reflected light of the planets, among which the earth belongs, Descartes discusses the motion of the heavenly bodies. In reference to the motion of the earth he seeks. a middle course between the theories of Copernicus and Tycho Brahé. He agrees with Copernicus in the main point, but, in reliance on his definition of motion, maintains. that the earth is at rest, viz., in respect to its immediate surroundings. It is clear that the harmony of his views. with those of the Church (though it was only a verbal agree- ment) was not unwelcome to him. According to his hypoth- esis, -as he suggests, perhaps an erroneous hypothesis, the fluid matter which fills the heavenly spaces, and which may be compared to a vortex or whirlpool, circles about the sun and carries the planets along with it. Thus the planets. move in relation to the sun, but are at rest in relation to A/A AV. 1 O I the adjacent portions of the matter of the heavens. In view of the biblical doctrine, according to which the world and all that therein is was created at a stroke, he apolo- getically describes his attempt to explain the origin of the world from chaos under the laws of motion as a scientific fiction, intended merely to make the process more compre- hensible. It is more easily conceivable, if we think of the things in the world as though they had been gradually formed from elements, as the plant develops from the seed. We now pass to the Cartesian anthropology, with its three chief objects: the body, the soul, and the union of the two. _--—-" 3. Man. The human body, like all organic bodies, is a machine. Artificial automata and natural bodies are distinguished only in degree. Machines fashioned by the hand of man perform their functions by means of visible and tangible instruments, while natural bodies employ organs which, for the most part, are too minute to be perceived. As the clock- maker constructs a clock from wheels and weights so that it is able to go of itself, so God has made man's body out of dust, only, being a far superior artist, he produces a work of art which is better constructed and capable of far more wonderful movements. The cause of death is the destruc- tion of some important part of the machine, which prevents it from running longer; a corpse is a broken clock, and the departure of the soul comes only as a result of death. The common opinion that the soul generates life in the body is erroneous. It is rather true that life must be present before the soul enters into union with the body, as it is also true that life must have ended before it dissolves the bond. The sole principles of physiology, are motion and heat. The heat (vital warmth, a fire without light), which God has put in the heart as the central organ of life, has for its function the promotion of the circulation of the blood, in the description of which Descartes mentions with praise the discoveries of Harvey (De Motu Cordis et Sanguinis in Ani- malibus, 1628). From the blood are separated its finest, most fiery, and most mobile parts, called by Descartes “animal | I O2 JO AE,SCA /ø 7"A.S. spirits” (spiritus animales sive corporales), and described as a “very subtle wind" or “pure and vivid flame,” which ascend into the cavities of the brain, reach the pineal gland sus- pended in its center (conarion, glans pinealis, glandula), pass into the nerves, and, by their action on the muscles connected with the nerves, effect the motions of the limbs. These views refer to the body alone, and so are as true of animals as of men. If automata existed similar to animals in all respects, both external and internal, it would be absolutely impossi- ble to distinguish them from real animals. If, however, f they were made to resemble human bodies, two signs would indicate their unreality—we would find no communication of ideas by means of language, and also an absence of those bodily movements which take their origin in the reason (and not merely in the constitution of the body). The only thing which raises man above the brute is his rational soul, which we are on no account to consider a product of mätter, Būf which is an express creation of God, superadded The union of the souTor the mind (anima sive mens) with the body is, it is true, not so loose that the mind merely dwells in the body, like a pilot in a ship, nor, on the other hand, in view of the essential contrariety of the two substances, is it so intimate as to be more than a unio composition is. Although the soul is united to the whole body, an especially active Intercourse between them is developed at a single point, the pineal gland, which is distinguished by its Centraſ, prº- tected position, above all, by the fact that it is the only cerebral organ that is not double. This gland, together with the animal spirits passing to and from it, mediates between mind and body; and as the point of union for the twofold impressions from the (right and left) eyes and ears, without which objects would be perceived double instead of single, is the seat of the soul. Here the soul exercises a | direct influence on the body and is directly affected by iſ There it dwells, and at will produces a slight, peculiar move. ment of the gland, through this a change in the course of the animal spirits (for it is not capable of generating motion, but only of changing its direction), and, finally, movements of the members; , just as, on the other hand, it remarks the slightest change in the course of the spiritus through a cor- MAAV. . . IO3 responding movement of the gland, whose motions vary ac- cording to the sensuous properties of the object to be per- ceived, and responds by sensations. Although Descartes thus limits the direct interaction of soul and body to a smalt-part-of-the-organism, he makes an exception in the case of memoria, which appears to him to be more of a physical than a psychical function, and which he conjec- tures to be diffused through the whole brain. • In spite of the comprehensive meaning which Descartes gives to the notion cogitatio, it is yet too narrow to leave room for an anima vegetativa and an anima sensitiva. Whoever makes mind and soul equivalent, holds that their essence consists in conscious activity alone, and interprets sensation as a mode of thought, cannot escape the paradox of denying to animals the possession of a soul. Descartes does not shrink from such a conclusion. Animals are mere machines; they are bodies animated, but soulless; they lack conscious perception and appetition, though Tot the ap- pearance of them. When a clock strikes seven it knows nothing of the fact ; it does not regret that it is so late nor long Soon to be able to strike eight ; it wills nothing, feels nothing, perceives nothing. The lot of the brute is the same. It sees and hears nothing, it does not hunger or thirst; it does not rejoice or fear, if by these anything more than mere corporeal phenomena is to be meant ; of all these it possesses merely the unconscious material basis; it moves and motion goes on in it—that is all. * The psychology of Descartes, which has had important results,” divides cogitationes into two classes: actiones and Alassiones. Action denotes everything which takes its ori- ſº gin in, and is in the power of the soul ; passion, everything which the soul receives from without, in which it can make no change, which is impressed upon it. The further de- velopment of this distinction is marred by the crossing of the most diverse lines of thought, resulting in obscurities and contradictions. Descartes's simple, naïve habits of thought and speech, which were those of a man of the world rather than of a scholar, were quite incompatible with the adop- tion and consistent use of a finely discriminated termi- * For details cf. the able monograph of Dr. Anton Koch, I881. IO4. AXAE.SCAA’ 7'A'.S. * nology; he is very free with sive, and not very careful with the expressions actio, passio, perceptio, affectio, vo/izzo. - First he equates activity and willing, for the will springs exclu- sively from the soul—it is only in willing that the latter is entirely independent; while, on the other hand, passivity is made equivalent to representation and cognition, for the soul does not create its ideas, but receives them,-sensuous impressions coming to her quite evidently from the body. These equations, “actio == the practical, passio = the theo- retical function,” are soon limited and modified, however. The natural appetites and affections are forms of volition, it is true, but not free products of the mind, for they take their origin in its connection with the body. Further, not all perceptions have a sensuous origin ; when the soul makes free use of its ideas in imagination, especially when in pure thought it dwells on itself, when without the inter- ference of the imagination it gazes on its rational nature, it is by no means passive merely. Every act of the will, again, is accompanied by the consciousness of volition. The vo/izio is an activity, the cogitazzo vo/??on is a passivity; the soul affects itself, is passively affected through its own activity, is at the same instant both active and passive. Thus not every volition, e. g., sensuous desire, is action nor all perception, e. g., that of the pure intellect, pas- sion. Finally, certain psychical phenomena fall indifferently under the head of perception or of volition, e.g., pain, which is both an indistinct idea of something and an impulse to shun it. In accordance with these emendations, and omit- ting certain disturbing points of secondary importance, the matter may be thus represented : COGITATIO. ACTIO. PASSIO. (Mens sola ; clarae et distinctae ideae.) (Mens unita cum corpore ; confusae ideae.) VoLITIo: 6. Voluntas. 33. Commotiones 3a. Affectus. 2. Appetitus naturales. intellectuales. * —Y- Af a * * Sensus interni. Judicium. PERCEPTIO : 4. Imaginatio. ~—--— gº 5. Intellectus. 43. Phantasia. 4a. Memoria. I. Sensus externi. MAAV. Io5 Accordingly six grades of mental function are to be. distinguished. GXThe external senses, (2) The natural appetites. (6) The passions (which, together with the natural appetites, constitute the internal senses, and from which the mental emotions produced by the intellect are quite distinct).T&The imagination with its two divisions, passive memory and active phantasy. (5) The intellect Gº - @ The will. These various stages or facul- ties are, however, not distinct parts of the soul, as in the old psychology, in opposition to which Descartes em- phatically defends the unity of Zºe soul. It is one—and the same psychical power that exercises the higher and the lower, the rational and the sensuous, the practical and the theoretical activities. Of the mental functions, whether representative images, perceptions, or volitions, a part are referred to body (to parts of our own body, often also to external objects), and produced by the body (by the animal spirits and, gener- ally, by the nerves as well), while the rest find both object and cause in the soul. Intermediate between the two classes stand those acts of the will which are caused by the soul, but which relate to the body, e. g., when I resolve to walk or leap ; and, what is more important, the passions, which relate to the soul itself, but which are called forth, sus- tained, and intensified by certain motions of the animal spirits. Since only those beings which consist of a body as well as a soul are capable of the passions, these are specifi- cally human phenomena. These affections, though very numerous, may be reduced to a few simple or primary ones, of which the rest are mere specializations or combinations. Descartes enumerates six primitive passions (which num- ber Spinoza afterward reduced one-half)—admiratio, amor et odium, cupiditas (desir), gaudium et tristiția. The first and the fourth have no opposites, the former being neither positive nor negative, and the latter both at once. Wonder, which includes under it esteem and contempt, signifies in- terest in an object which neither attracts us by its utility nor repels us by its hurtfulness, and yet does not leave us indifferent. It is aroused by the powerful or surprising impression made by the extraordinary, the rare, the unex- I off Z)ZSCAR 7'ES. pected. Love seeks to appropriate that which is profitable; hate, to ward off that which is harmful, to destroy that which is hostile. Desire or longing looks with hope or fear to the future. When that which is feared or hoped for has come to pass, joy and grief come in, which relate to exist- ing good and evil, as desire relates to those to come. The Cartesian theory of the passions forms the bridge over which its author passes from psychology to ethics. No soul is so weak as to be incapable of completely mastering its passions, and of so directing them that from them all there will result that joyous temper advantageous to the reason. The freedom of the will is unlimited. Although a direct influence on the passions is denied it, it can neither annul them merely at its bidding, nor at once reduce them to si- lence, at least, not the more violent ones, it still has an indi- rect power over them in two ways. During the continuance of the affection (e. g., fear) it is able to arrest the bodily movements to which the affection tends (flight), though not the emotion itself, and, in the intervals of quiet, it can take measures to render a new attack of the passion less dangerous. Instead of enlisting One passion against an- other, a plan which would mean only an appearance of free- dom, but in fact a continuance in bondage, the soul should fight with its own weapons, with fixed maxims (ſudicia), based on certain knowledge of good and evil. The will conquers the emotions by means of principles, by clear and distinct knowledge, which sees through and corrects the false values ascribed to things by the excitement of the passions. Besides this negative requirement, “subjec- tion of the passions,” Descartes' contributions to ethics— in the letters to Princess Elizabeth on human happiness, and to Queen Christina on love and the highest good— were inconsiderable. Wisdom is the carrying out of that which has been seen to be best, virtue is steadfastness, sin inconstancy therein. The goal of human endeavor is peace of conscience, which is attained only through the determination to be virtuous, i. e., to live in harmony with self. . . . . . * . . . . . . 3 Besides its ethical mission, the will has allotted to it the theoretical function of affirmation and negation, i.e., of || \3. \ \ MAAV. Io 7 judgment. If God in his veracity and goodness has be- stowed on man the power to know truth, how is misuse of this power, how is error possible P Single sensations and ideas cannot be false, but only judgments—the reference of ideas to objects. Judgment or assent is a matter of the will; so that when it makes erroneous affirmations or nega- tions, when it prefers the false judgment to the true, it alone is guilty. Our understanding is limited, our will unlimited ; the latter reaches further than the former, and can assent to a judgment even before its constituent parts have attained the requisite degree of clearness. False judgment is prejudgment, for which we can hold neither God nor our own nature responsible. The possibility of error, as well as the possibility of avoiding error, resides in the will. This has the power to postpone its assent or dissent, to hold back its decision until the ideas have be- come entirely clear and distinct. The supreme perfection is the libertas non errandi. Thus knowledge itself be- comes a moral function ; the true and the good are in. The Tast analysis identical. The contradiction with which TJESCâFFEST as been charged, that he makes volition and cognition reciprocally determinative, that he bases moral goodness on the clearness of ideas and vice versa, does not exist. We must distinguish between a theoretical and a practical stadium in the will; it is true of the latter that it depends on knowledge of the right, of the former that the knowledge of the right is dependent on it. In order to the possibility of moral action the will must conform to clear judgment; in order to the production of the latter the will must be moral. It is the unit-soul, which first, by freely avoiding overhasty judgment, cognizes the truth, to exemplify it later in moral conduct. CHAPTER III. THE DEVELOPMENT AND TRANSFORMATION OF CARTESIANISM IN THE NETHERLANDS AND IN FRANCE.* sº & e /* * -º ºr # --& * I. Occasionalism : Geulincx.{ { {z : *f Ç%) THE propagation and defense of a system of thought soon give occasion to its adherents to purify, complete, and transform it. Obscurities and contradictions are dis- covered, which the master has overlooked or allowed to remain, and the disciple exerts himself to remove them, while retaining the fundamental doctrines. In the system of Descartes there were two closely connected points which demanded clarification and correction, viz., his double dual- &N ism (1) between extended substance and thinking substance, (2) between created substance and the divine substance. In contrast with each other matter and mind are sub- stances or independent beings, for the clear conception of body contains naught of consciousness, thought, repres- entation, and that of mind nothing of extension, matter, motion. In comparison with God they are not so ; apart from the creator they can neither exist nor be conceived. In every case where the attempt is made to distinguish between intrinsic and general (as here, between substance in the stricter and wider senses), an indecision betrays itself which is not permanently endured. The substantiality of the material and spiritual worlds maintained by Descartes finds an excellent counterpart in his (entirely modern) tendency to push the concursus de; as far as possible into the background, to limit it to the pro- duction of the original condition of things, to give over mo- tion, once created, to its own laws, and ideas implanted in the mind to its own independent activity; but it is hard * Cf. G. Monchamp, Histoire du Cartesianisme en Belgique, Brussels, 1886. Io8 OCCA S/O MA L/S// ... GE U/C/AVCX. Io9 to reconcile with it the view, popular in the Middle Ages, that the preservation of the world is a perpetual crea- tion. In the former case the relation of God to the world is made an external relation ; in the latter, an internal one. In the one the world is thought of as a clock, which once wound up runs on mechanically, in the second it is likened to a piece of music which the composer himself recites. If God preserves created things by continually recreating them they are not substances at all; if they are substances, preser- vation becomes an empty word, which we repeat after the theologians without giving it any real meaning. Matter and spirit stand related in our thought only by way of exclusion ; is the same true of them in reality ? They can be conceived and can exist without each other; can they, further, without each other effect all that we per- ceive them to accomplish P There are some motions in the material world which we refer to a voluntary decision of the soul, and some among our ideas (e. g., perceptions of the senses) which we refer to corporeal phenomena as their causes. If body and soul are substances, how can they be dependent on each other in certain of their activities, if they are of opposite natures, how can they affect each other ? How can the incorporeal, unmoved spirit move the animal spirits and receive impulses from them P The substantial- ity (reciprocal independence) of body and mind, and their interaction (partial reciprocal dependence), are incompatible, one or the other is illusory and must be abandoned. The i $ materialists (Hobbes) sacrifice the independence of mind; the idealists (Berkeley, Leibnitz), the independence of mat: ter, the occasionalists, the interaction of the two. This forms the advance of the last beyond Descartes, who either naïvely maintains that, in spite of the contrariety of material and mental substances, an exchange of effects takes place be- tween them as an empirical fact, or, when he realizes the difficulty of the anthropological problem,-how is the union of the two substances in man possible, ascribes the inter- action of body and mind, together with the union of the two, to the power of God, and by this abandonment of the attempt at a natural explanation, opens up the occasionalistic way of escape. Further, in his more detailed description of T IO DEVELOPMEW7 of CARTESIAM/Su. the intercourse between body and mind. Descartes had been guilty of direct violations of his laws of natural philosophy. If the quantity of motion is declared to be invariable and a change in its direction is attributed to mechanical causes alone, we must not ascribe to the soul the power to move the pineal gland, even in the gentlest way, nor to control the direction of the animal spirits. These inconsistencies also are removed by the occasionalistic thesis. * * The question concerning the substantiality of mind and, matter in relation to God, is involved from the very begin- ning in this latter problem, “How is the appearance of inter-, action between the two to be explained without detriment to their substantiality in relation to each other?” The denial of the reciprocal dependence of matter and spirit leads to sharper accentuation of their common dependence, upon God. Thus occasionalism forms the transition to the pantheism of Spinoza, Geulincx emphasizing the non-sub-. stantiality of spirits, and Malebranche the non-substan- tiality of bodies, while Spinoza combines and intensifies' both. And yet history was not obliging enough to carry out this convenient and agreeable scheme of development with chronological accuracy, for she had Spinoza complete bis pantheism before Malebranche had prepared the way. The relation which was noted in the case of Bruno and Campanella is here repeated : the earlier thinker assumes the more advanced position, while the later one seems backward in comparison ; and that which, viewed from the standpoint of the question itself, may be considered a transition link, is historically to be taken as a reaction against the excessive prosecution of a line of thought which, up to a certain point, had been followed by the one who now shrinks back from its extreme consequences. The course of philosophy takes first a theological direction in the earlier occasionalists, then a metaphysical (naturalistic) trend in Spinoza, to renew finally, in Malebranche, the first of these movements in opposition to the second. The / Cartesian school, as a whole, however, exhibits a tendency t toward mysticism, which was concealed to a greater or less extent by the rationalistic need for clear concepts, but never entirely suppressed. h . . . . . OCCAS/OMAZZSM GA: UL/AWCX. . . III Although the real interaction of body and mind be denied, Some explanation must, at least, be given for the appear- ance of interaction, i. e., for the actual correspondence of bodily and mental phenomena. Occasionalism, denotes they theory of occasional causes. It is not the body. . that gives rise to perception, nor the mind that causes the motion of the limbs which it has determined upon—neither the one nor the other can receive influence from its fellow. or exercise influence upon it; but it is God who, “on the occasion " of the physical motion (of the air and nerves) produces the sensation (of sound), and, “at the instance” of the determination of the will, produces the movement of the arms. The systematic development and marked in- fluence of this theory, which had already been more or less clearly announced by the Cartesians Cordemoy and De la Forge,” was due to the talented Arnold Geulincx (1624– 69), who was born at Antwerp, taught in Lyons (1646–58) and Leyden, and became a convert to Calvinism. It ultimately gained over the majority of the numerous adherents of the Cartesian philosophy in the Dutch univer- sities, Renery (died 1639) and Regius (van Roy; Funda- menta Physica, 1646; Philosophia Mažuralis, 1661) in Utrecht; further, Balthasar Bekker (1634–98; The World Bewitched, 1690), the brave opponent of the belief in angels and devils, of magic, and of prosecution for witchcraft, in the clerical orders in France and, finally, in Germany. - - . . . - - - * Gerauld de Cordemoy, a Parisian advocate (died 1684, Disserlations Philoso- £%igues, 1666), communicated his occasionalistic views orally to his friends as early as 1658 (cf. L. Stein in the Archiz, fºr Geschichte der Philosophie, vol. i., 1888, p. 56). Louis de la Forge, a physician of Saumur, Tractatus de Mente Aſumama, 1666, previously published in French; cf. Seyfarth, Gotha, 1887. But the logician, Johann Clauberg, professor in Duisburg (1622–65; Opera, edited by Schalbruch, 1691), is, according to the investigations of Herm. Müller ( /. Clau- Öerg und seine, Stellung im Cartesianismus, Jena, 1891), to be stricken from the list of thinkers who prepared the way for occasionalism, since in his discus- sion of the anthropological problem (corporis et anima conjunctio) he merely develops the Cartesian position, and does not go beyond it. He employs the expression occasio, it is true, but not in the sense of the occasionalists. Accord- ing to Clauberg the bodily phenomenon becomes the stimulus or “occasion " (not för God, but) for the soul to produce from itself the corresponding mental phenomenon. . . . . . . . . . . • r ; ! t i II 2 AXAE V/EZOAA/AEAV 7" OA’ CAA’ Z'ESZAAW/SA/. Geulincx himself, besides two inaugural addresses at Ley- den (as Lector in 1662, Professor Extraordinary in 1665), published the following treatises : Quaestiones Quodlibetica (in the second edition, 1665, entitled Saturna/ia) with an im- portant introductory discourse; Logica Fundamentis Suis Res- tituta, 1662; Methodus /nveniend, Argumenta (new edition by Bontekoe, 1675); and the first part of his Ethics—De Virtute et Primzis ejus Proprietatibus, gua vulgo Virtuțes Cardinales Vocantur, Tractatus Ethicus Primus, 1665. This chief work was issued complete in all six parts with the title, TwóSt Geavtåvsive Ethica, 1675, by Bontekoe, under the pseudonym Philaretus. The Physics, 1688, the Metaphysics, 1691, and the Annotata Majora in Cartesii Principia Philosophiae, 1691, were also posthumous publications, from the notes of his pupils. In view of the rarity of these volumes, and the importance of the philosopher, it is welcome news that J. P. N. Land has undertaken an edition of the collected works, in three volumes, of which the first two have already appeared.* The Hague, 1891–92.4 Geulincx bases the occasionalistic position on the prin- ciple, quod nescis, quomodo fiat, id non facis. Unless I; know how an event happens, I am not its cause. Since I: have no consciousness how my decision to speak or to walk is followed by the movement of my tongue or limbs, I am not the one who effects these. Since I am just as ignorant how the sensation in my mind comes to pass as a sequel to the motion in the sense-organ ; since, further, the body as an unconscious and non-rational being can effect nothing, it is neither I nor the body that causes the sensation. Both the bodily movement and the sense-impression are, rather, the effects of a higher power, of the infinite spirit. The act of my will and the sense-stimulus are only causa occasionales for the divine will, in an incomprehensible way, to effect, in the one case, the execution of the movement of the limbs resolved upon, and, in the other, the origin of the percep- * On vol. i. cf. Eucken, Philosophische Momatshefte, vol. xxviii., 1892, p. 2OO seq. - + On Geulincx see V. van der Haeghen, Geulincx, Ætude sursa Vie, sa Philoso- phie, et ses Ouvrages, Ghent, 1886, including a complete bibliography; and Land in vol. iv. of the Archiv fºr Geschichte der Philosophie, 1890. [English translation, Mind, vol. xvi. p. 223 seq.] OCCA S/OA/A //S// ... GE U///WCX. II.3 tion; they are (unsuitable) instruments, effective only in the . hand of God; he brings it to pass that my will goes out beyond my soul, and that corporeal motion has results in it. The meaning of this doctrine is misapprehended when it is assumed,—an assumption to which the Leib- nitzian account of occasionalism may mislead one,—that in it the continuity of events, alike in the material and the psychical world, is interrupted by frequent scattered interfer- ences from without, and all becoming transformed into a Series of disconnected miracles. An order of nature such as would be destroyed by God’s action does not exist; God brings everything to pass; even the passage of motion from one body to another is his work. Further, Geulincx expressly: says that God has imposed such laws on motion that it harmonizes with the soul's free volition, of which, how- ever, it is entirely independent (similar statements occur. also in De la Forge). And with this our thinker appears— as Pfleiderer” emphasizes—closely to approach the pre- established harmony of Leibnitz. The occasionalistic theory certainly constitutes the preliminary step to the Leibnitzian ; but an essential difference separates the two. The advance does not consist in the substitution by Leib- nitz of one single miracle at creation for a number of isolated and continually recurring ones, but (as Leibnitz himself remarks, in reply to the objection expressed by Father Lami, that a perpetual miracle is no miracle) in the exchange of the immediate causality of God for natural causation. With Geulincx mind and body act on each other, but not by their own power; with Leibnitz the monads do not act on one another, but they act by their own power.t-When Geulincx in the same connection ad- vances to the statements that, in view of the limitedness and passivity of finite things, God is the only truly active, because the only independent, being in the world, that all * Edm. Pfleiderer, Geu/incx, aſs Haufftzertreter der occasionalistischen Meta- physić und AEthià, Tübingen, 1882; the same, Zeibniz und Geulincx mit beson- derer Beziehung auf iſ r Uhrengleichnis, Tübingen, 1884. # See Ed. Zeller, Sitzungsberichte der Berliner Akademie der Wissenschaftem, I884, p. 673 seq., Eucken, Philosophische Monatshefte, vol. xix., 1893, p. 525 seg., vol. xxiii., 1887, p. 587 seq. II.4. AXAE VAZZOAA)/A2AW 7" OA’ CAA’ ZTE,S/AAWA SAM. activity is his activity, that the human (finite) spirit is re- lated to the divine (infinite) spirit as the individual body to Space in general, viz., as a section of it, so that, by think- ing away all limitations from our mind, we find God in us and ourselves in him, it shows how nearly he verges on | pantheism. Geulincx's services to noëtics have been duly recognized by Ed. Grimm (Jena, 1875), although with an excessive approximation to Kant. In this field he advances many acute and suggestive thoughts, as the deduction which reappears in Lotze, that the actually existent world of figure and motion cognized by thought, though the real world, is poorer than the wonderful world of motley sen- Suous appearance conjured forth in our minds on the occa- sion of the former, that the latter is the more beautiful and more worthy of a divine author. Further, the conviction, also held by Lotze, that the fundamental activities of the mind cannot be defined, but only known through inner ex- perience or immediate consciousness (he who loves, knows what love is ; it is a per conscientiam et intimam ea perien- £iam notissima res); the praiseworthy attempt to give a systematic arrangement, according to their derivation from one another, to the innate mathematical concepts, which Descartes had simply co-ordinated (the concept of surface is gained from the concept of body by abstracting from the third dimension, thickness—the act of thus abstracting from certain parts of the content of thought, Geulincx terms consideratio in contrast to cogitatio, which includes the whole content); and, finally, the still more important inquiry, whether it is possible for us to reach a knowledge of things independently of the forms of the understanding, as in pure thought we strip off the fetters of sense. The possibility of this is denied ; there is no higher faculty of 1