CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.
INTRODUCTORY : THE PROBLEM ; THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE
LOGICAL CONSCIOUSN ESS IN CONNECTION WITH THE PRIN-
CIPLE OF SUFFICIENT REASON, . . . . . . . .
CHAPTER II.
PRE-LEIBN ITZI V N THINKING,
CHAPTER III.
ORIGIN of THE PROBLEM : THE LEIBNITZIANS; METAPHYSICAL
AND LOGICAL MOTIVES, . . . . . . . . . . . .
CHAPTER IV.
SUFFICIENT REASON As THE BASAL PRINCIPLE OF META-
PHYSICs: THE KANTIANS, . . . . . . . . . . .
CHAPTER V.
THE STRUGGLE BET weeN META PHYSICAL AND LOGICAL
MOTIVES: HERBART AND TRENDELEN BURG, . . . . .
CHAPTER VI.
SUFFICIENT REASON As THE BASAL LAW OF LOGIC: SIG WART,
ERDMANN AND WUNDT, . . . . . . . . . . . .
CONCLUSION.
GENERAL RESULTS, . . . . . . . . . . . . .
PAGES.
I–9
9–2 O
20–3 I
3 I-5 I
52–67
68–84
85–88
THE HISTORY OF THE PRINCIPLE OF SUFFICIENT
REASON: ITS METAPHYSICAL AND
LOGICAL FORMULATIONS.
. . . Af * } # yº *
wilBUR, URBAN, Ph.D., | . . ; 7
Reader in Philosophy, Princeton University.
CHAPTER I.
INTRODUCTORY..—THE PROBLEM.
The following essay may be looked upon as an attempt to
show, by means of a historical study of the development of
the principle of Sufficient Reason, the standpoint occupied
by the modern German logicians, as contrasted with the
Epistemologists of the metaphysical schools. As the title
indicates, the nature of the principle has completely changed
in the development of post-Leibnitzian thought. In its
origin, conceived of as extra-logical, as metaphysical and as
identified with the causal axiom, it has finally been accorded
the place of basal law of the logical consciousness and only
secondarily connected with the real relations of causality.
The extension of the bounds of the logical consciousness,
involved in this transformation, the critical determination of
the relation of metaphysical to logical principles resulting
from such a development are both phenomena characteristic
of the modern “Erkentniss-theoretische” logic.
It is the writer's notion that the achievement of these
characteristic standpoints is in great part the result of reflec-
tion upon the nature of this Law of Ground, variously form-
ulated as metaphysical and logical, and that a conscientious
study of the history of the principle would throw much light
upon the growth of our broader view of logic.
2
In addition to this the writer was much charmed with the
elements of clearness and unity which Schopenhauer, despite
his many metaphysical sins, was enabled to give to his
thinking by following the guiding thread of the specific yet
far-reaching problem of Sufficient Reason. And what is,
true of Schopenhauer in so great a degree, may be said
with more or less truth of all the great philosophers since
Leibnitz. How should we have so clear a notion of Kant's
chapter upon the “Grundsätze der reinen Verstandes begriffe”
if he had not gathered them all under the one principle of
ground P Without Herbart’s “Methodologie,” which has
the problem of ground and consequence as the main object
of his dialectical interest, the rest of the “Metaphysik '’
were scarcely understandable.
The connexio rerum is the great problem of metaphysics,
the commerío idearum the last question of logic in its broadest
sense, and in no way have the mutual relations of the two
been so subtly elucidated as in the critical study of this basal
principle of Sufficient Reason.
Starting then with these two ideas, on the one hand, if
possible, of showing the fundamental place of the principle
under consideration, in the philosophical systems of the
more important Post-Leibnitzians, and secondly of discovering
in the development of the law likewise the development of
the modern concept of logic and its problems, my study has
produced the following essay.
A short preliminary chapter upon the Pre-Leibnitzians,
attempts to show the conditions out of which Leibnitz's
quite original formulation of this entirely new principle
arose. Leibnitz is treated with considerable detail with the
desire of showing that his formulation discloses the presence
of two motives, one which tended to formulate the law as a
logical principle, the other, the one which finally predomin-
ated being metaphysical, reduced the problems of the grounds
of knowledge to a metaphysical determinism.
The succeeding history of the principle is then conceived
to exhibit three main stages:
3
I. The metaphysical formulation of Sufficient Reason,
from Leibnitz through Kant and Schopenhauer.
2. A struggle between metaphysical and logical atti-
tudes iu Herbart and Trendelenburg.
3. The logical formulation in the modern logicians, Sig-
wart, Wundt, &c.
Two questions which may arise, why, on the one hand,
the study is limited to German thinkers, and secondly, why
Fichte, Schelling and Hegel are omitted, are answered
simply:
By the consideration of the fact that the problem, as limit-
ed by our study, is exclusively German, the only extra Ger-
man thinker who has handled the technical problem of Suf-
ficient Reason being the Kantian, Sir Wm. Hamilton; and
secondly, the immediate Post-Kantians, especially Hegel,
represent no new phase of the problem, but rather a return
to the conditions against which Leibnitz's formulation arose
as a protest, the pre-critical, pan-logism of the Spinozistic
type.
The following study is then concerned with the interplay
of these two distinct motives, the logical and the metaphys-
ical, or rather perhaps with the two ways of defining the
principle of Sufficient Reason. This is the basal law of
all knowledge, this Law of Ground, and according as it is
conceived as extra-logical and metaphysical, or on the other
hand as the most general law of logic, is our whole theory
of knowledge affected.
The argument of the succeeding historical study is briefly
that the origination and first formulation of the principle
in Leibnitz's thinking, represents a stage of inconsistency
in which both motives, both attitudes stand in more or less
contradiction, and that the succeeding movement at first
manifests a decided trend toward the metaphysical side, to
be replaced in more modern thought by the reformation of
the logical point of view, broadened and changed.
I. Leibnitz's origination of the principle of Sufficient
Reason is found to have arisen out of a protest against the
4
general trend of previous thinking toward a reduction of
empirical causal relations to logical grounding, as typified in
the pan-logism of Spinoza." As a consequence S. R. is con-
ceived as purely empirical and extra-logical.” Since its
validity is not grounded in general logical considerations,
Leibnitz seeks to ground it in his peculiar metaphysical
system the Monadologie. The metaphysical causality of the
monadic development being the ground of empirical happen-
ing, Sufficient Reason is identified with the Causal Axiom,
thus rescuing the Causal Axiom from a purely logical treat-
ment, but setting the current in the direction of a metaphysi-
cal formulation of the new principle.” The logical consequence
of this identification of causation with S. R., that S. R. be
conceived as a principle of determination, just as the logical
norms, Leibnitz did not admit, but insisted that this law was
only one of sufficient reason instead of determining ground.”
At this point Crusius takes up the problem substituting
“ determinateness” for “sufficiency " and distinguishing
besides the ideal grounds, two distinct kinds of real meta-
physical grounding, the grounds of will acts and the causes
of empirical happening. The problem of “determinism,”
in the moral sphere, thus forces the metaphysical side of the
problem into the foreground.”
The advent of the critical philosophy of Kant, repre-
sents, strange as it may seem, on one side at least, a further
development of this metaphysical treatment of S. R. He
maintains the idea of Crusius that the law of ground is a
principle of determination and not of “sufficiency,” and
accepts the “determination ” element in the judgment of
ground and consequence as a necessity to be metaphysically
grounded." For the knowledge of this determining ground
outside of logic a transcendental principle of knowledge
other than logical is then necessary.” Though denying the
possibility of an ontology of the real, he proceeds to ontolo-
* cf. 33 18, 19. * cf. § 27.
* cf. § 19. * cf. § 32.
*322. * cf. 3 22. " cf. § 34.
5
gize this most fundamental of knowledge principles. It is
conceived of as extra-logical and tram-scendental." Finally
Schopenhauer defines it as meta-logical and as the transcen-
dental knot of the Subject-Object relation, which likewise
marks its most complete divorce from a logical point of view,
since an Intellectual Intuition of metaphysical relations is
substituted for the logical thinking of ground and conse-
quence.”
II. What we have been led to call the logical motive for
Leibnitz's formulation of the new law of knowledge, is ex-
pressed in this great thinker's attempt to formulate its place
in relation to logical laws. As we have seen, it was defined
as extra-logical, in view of the formal and yet metaphysical
theory of logical necessity against which the new law arose
as a protest.” And yet this very protest indicated a desire
to extend the narrow bounds of the logical consciousness
beyond its formal limits, so as to include all knowledge pro-
cesses. Leibnitz's most general definition of S. R. is at the
same time the most general definition of the logical con-
sciousness as conceived to-day.” And besides logical neces-
sity among ideas clear and distinct was conceived to be the
teleological goal of the confused ideas of which S. R. was
developed as the empirical law. This inherent possibility in
the Leibnitzian thinking of extending the concepts of logic
in such a manner as to include Sufficient Reason as a basal
principle we shall call the logical motive.
In the Leibnitzian school itself Wolff showed a tendency,
in contrast to that of Crusius, to include Sufficient Reason
as a distinct logical principle, side by side with Identity
and Contradiction. But his attempt to deduce S. R. from
the other two laws led back to the formalism and ontolog-
ical way of looking at things against which Leibnitz had
protested.” The critical philosophy of Kant, notwithstand-
ing the fact that on one side it is but a continuation of the
metaphysical tradition, nevertheless represents a stage in
* cf. § 40. * cf. § 21.
* cf. § 51. * cf. & 20, 21. * cf. § 26.
6
the development of the modern logical consciousness, and
the corresponding treatment of S. R. as the basal law of
that consciousness." Although S. R. is still identified with
the causal axiom, it is with the causal axiom as a knowledge
principle, rather than an ontological principle that Kant is
concerned. In fact the Law of Ground is found only by a
deduction from the logical categories” (causation being
derived from the hypothetical judgment.) It is because of
this critical balance of Kant, which sees that S. R. is essen-
tially a relation of logical ground and consequence, although
it is transcendental; in other words, because Kant remains
within his transcendental logic, that Schopenhauer finds
fault, and it is for this that he substitutes the doctrine of
Intellectual Intuition.*
From Herbart on, the logical motive makes itself strongly
felt. The idea of Sufficient Reason as having for its goal a
contradictionless whole of experience and thought,” gives it
the place of a universal logical principle to which the formal
laws of Identity and Contradiction are subordinated, although
Herbart is not able to formulate the law without a meta-
physical basis. But already in his concept of the “widen-
ed ground,” which should include the whole nexus out of
which the consequence springs lies the germ of a broader
view of logic.” Sufficient Reason, the most general term
for all necessary relations in knowledge, has as its main
problem the extent of its application to the real, therefore
its relation to causality, but it is not identified with causa-
tion."
Through the intermediate stages of Trendelenburg and
Drobisch, to the former of whom, the concept of logic
included the entire phenomenology of the judgment, formal
and material;" while the latter, though retaining the concept
of a purely formal logic, formulates Sufficient Reason as the
basal law of logic,” the modern logic, as represented by
*cf. 341. *$ 67.
*— & 38. • 371.
*— & 53. 7%. 78.
*3% 65, 69. 83 79.
7
Wundt, with its recognition of S. R. as basal principle, is
finally reached. Sufficient Reason is here the general law
of the interdependence of all acts of thought, to which the
normative laws of Identity and Contradiction are subordina-
ted." And the question of its relation to causality is now a
Critical one—that of the relation of the causal axiom to the
general logical postulate of Grounding. Sigwart, Lotze and
Wundt show the impossibility of the identification of causa-
tion and Sufficient Reason, distinguishing between the deter-
mining ground as logical and the empirical complex or cause
on the other hand as only sufficient.”
The rise of this broader view of logic on account of which
Sufficient Reason was again conceived of as purely a princi-
ple of knowledge—and not a metaphysical law of the real to
be identified with causality was much aided by a new motive
which entered into German thought with the advent of
the Kantian “Kritik.” This may be characterized as an
attempt to get at the phenomenology of the grounding pro-
cess. Thus, in addition to the “Objective Deduction ” of
the concepts of the Understanding, substance and causality,
from the logical categories, a “subjective ’ deduction is
added which shall show how, from the nature of our mental
processes, such objective judgments are possible.” It is,
as Kant himself says, something of the nature of an hypo-
thesis of causes for the given results in judgment. He
has in mind an immanental Sufficient Reason or logical
causality working in the processes themselves.” This
immanental logical causality includes psychological material
elements, and thus is paved the way for a study of the
phenomenology of the logical processes and for a broader
view of the logical consciousness. This genetic point of
view was already suggested by the Leibnitzian theory of a
teleological movement of consciousness from the obscure,
confused ideas, that is from psychological sufficiency to the
necessity of the logical clearness and distinctness of the
1 & 86. *% 41, 42.
* 33 80, 83, 88. *3 41 and 42.
8
eternal ideas, but could not come to complete expression,
owing to the metaphysical interpretations put upon it by
the Monadologie. Herbart, who represents a stage of con-
flict between the metaphysical and logical formulations of S.
R., in his conception of the logical ground so widened as to
include elements not in the conception as amenable to formal
logic, conceives this widening as brought about by chance
suggestions, by “Zufälligen Ansichten,” thus admitting a
psychological element into the process of grounding." Al-
though the logical causality thus suggested is reduced in his
system to metaphysical terms, yet it is important to recog-
nize that Sufficient Reason as a principle of knowledge is
conceived to be an immanental necessity broader than the
necessity of formal logic.
Trendelenburg's theory that logic should be extended to
include the material, psychological as well as the formal ele-
ments in the judgment, brings the problem of phenomenol-
ogy to the front. The modal categories of thought, possi-
bility, reality, and necessity are, after the manner of Kant's
“subjective deduction,” conceived as phenomenological mo-
ments in the grounding process, in which the formal and
material elements are united.” It is especially Trendelen-
burg, who, against the psychological doctrine of “Zufall ”
in the grounding processes develops his doctrine of the
teleological nature of all grounding processes.” They are a
‘‘ wahres Geschehen" under the law of teleological causality,
the goal of which causality is Knowledge, including Thought
and Being. The postulate of an immanental logic, function-
ing in all judgment processes, becomes a permanent element
in modern Logic, in Sigwart and Erdman.” In Wundt,
finally, the concept of a Logical Causality as the Law of
Ground in its primary form, governing the higher appercep-
tive processes, is set over against the empirical applications
of this law, the Causal Axiom, in its two expressions physi-
cal and psychological causality. The teleological necessity
13 68. *$ 78.
* $77. *$ 82.
9
of our thought processes is the Law of Ground seen in-
wardly."
In conclusion, we may make our object and method
clearer by comparing in a general way the present problem
with that which König sets himself to solve in his extensive
history of the “Causal Problem.” Here, by an exhaustive
study, covering two volumes, and comprising a detailed
exposition and criticism, the author seeks to secure valid
results for the causal concept of to-day. This involves not
only the complete metaphysics, but explains the psychologi-
cal and natural science standpoints of the authors under con-
sideration. The present essay, on the contrary, aims only
to show that there has been a continuity in reflection upon
this more general and more formal principle of Sufficient
Reason; that, in the changes of attitude toward it, now
constructing it logically and again metaphysically, and
Secondly in the way in which natural and psychological
causality have been conceived to be related to it, an instruc-
tive insight, not blurred by too much data, may be afforded
into that somewhat difficult province, the border-land
between Metaphysics and Logic. In view of this limitation
of the problem, the writer may then hope to be pardoned for
what may appear from another standpoint an insufficient
treatment of very deep and thorough thinkers.
CHAPTER II.
PRE-LEIBNITZIAN THOUGHT.
§ I. In order to understand the origin of Sufficient Reason
as a general unifying term, under which the more particular
problems of the Science of Knowledge might be put for-
ward, as well as to secure an insight into the reasons for its
dominance of German thought from Leibnitz to the present
day, it is necessary to sketch the general tendencies of pre-
Leibnitzian thought.
* 33 91, 92,
*König, Edward, “A)ie Entwickelung des Causal-Problems,” Leipzig, 1888.
IO
There are discoverable tendencies toward a unification of
the problems of knowledge, which, though general, are yet
so evident as to excuse the anachronism, of referring for the
sake of conciseness, to expressions of Sufficient Reason
before its actual formulation in Leibnitz.
Provisionally, then, it may be said that Greek thinking
tended to formulate Sufficient Reason in terms of a naïve
real logic of experience. Christian thought, as typified in
Augustine, sought it in an introspective determination of the
conditions of Belief. The Reason of the former was the
certainty of the external Intuition, corrected by a dialectical
removal of contradictions; that of the latter the satisfac-
tion and certainty of the subjective intuition of the self.
These general norms being once attained, the tendency was
to give them universal validity. Thus, Aristotle is found
studying the movements of knowledge and of psychological
processes in general under the same categories as external
happening. Augustine, on the contrary, can understand his-
torical happening only as the expression of the Divine Will,
constructed on the analogy of the experiences of his own
subjective willing self and its necessities.
§ 2. The Greek formulation of Sufficient Reason
reached its fullest expression in Aristotle,_his doctrine of
Causation, Lotze calls the first formulation of the Law of
Ground. But from this doctrine of causation should not be
separated Aristotle's applied logic and the realistic doctrine
of concepts which it involves. The two are closely bound
together and their unity alone affords the basis for a unitary
formulation. The distinction between formal and applied
logic, in the modern sense, according to which, as shall
appear later, Sufficient Reason is defined as logical, its appli-
cations being material, was not yet made. The real con-
cept, as participating in the idea, lends itself equally well to
logical forms and causal constructions—on its ideal side to
logical formal relations, on its real side to causal Construc-
tion. To formulate a general law, therefore, the whole
sphere of mediate knowledge, lying between the intuition of
I I
perception, “which is for us first” and the intuition of the
ideas, “which is in itself first” to use Aristotle's terms, all
lying between these two extremes of the immediately certain,
requires sufficient grounds for its certainty." These grounds
may be determined either by the laws of logic, as developed
by Aristotle, or by his fourfold doctrine of causation. The
important point is that in either case the concepts dealt
with are real, as well as rational, and the conclusions either
of the principles of logic or of the laws of causation are un-
questioned constructions of the real. No deep-rooted dis-
tinction is made between the logical and the causal side of
thought, because the deeper distinctions of the subjective
and objective had not arisen. The lack of this distinction
between formal logical thought and concrete real thought is
characteristic of a unitary metaphysical point of view.
It is the naive rationalism which, though it may distinguish
between ideal and real grounds, makes no essential break
between them.
§ 3. From the very beginning of Greek thought this naively
rationalistic attitude toward reality was marked. All
attempts to solve the problems of Being and, especially, of
Becoming, which arose to challenge this attitude, were charac-
terized by the use of concepts which contained already the
presupposition of their reality. The voijs of Anaxagoras, the
logical principles of Zeno, Identity and Contradiction, the
number system of the Pythagoreans were not handled as
principles of knowledge but as directly analysed out of reality.
And when Plato became convinced of the dualism between
the material and ideal world, the essential rationalism of
Greek thought prevented him from taking the step which
would to modern thought necessarily follow, of distinguish-
ing between real cause and ideal ground. The ideas are
made the causes of material things and are called causes,”
and even force is ascribed to them by means of which they
are able to work upon us and make themselves known.”
"Analyt. Post. 7, p. IOO, b. 13. * Phädo 95, E.
* In the Phaedrus, where Plato's doctrine of Ideas first appears, it is confined to
moral ideas.
:
:
I 2
This brings with it a complete confusion of ideal and real
grounds." The ideas are both causes and grounds for the
knowledge of the real of perception, of which, without the
mediation of the ideas, there is no knowledge but only belief.”
For the knowledge of this world of appearance the ideas
must be taken into service. But they in turn can only be
known in an intuition out of time.
§4. In Aristotle there is no material change in the general
conception of the essential sameness of logical ground and
real cause. As we have seen, the validity of the causal and
logical laws alike rests upon the reality of the general con-
cept. Thus Schopenhauer has gathered together in his his-
torical sketch numerous quotations in which a logical pre-
mise is called cause, attlov being used for every sort of
ground.” Logical thoughts as well as psychological phe-
nomena are looked upon as a real happening subject to the
same construction as other external movements. One dif-
ference may be distinguished however. The ideas as pure
form, in Plato's sense, are no longer looked upon as causes
either of perception or of natural phenomena, but Aristotle
has reached a critical standpoint from which he is able to see:
that only the general concept, as containing ideal and real
elements in union, may be conceived of causally.” Thus
instead of Plato's simple ideal causation arises Aristotle's
more complex doctrine of a fourfold causation, of which
moving and end causes are the more important. The idea
is cause only in so far as it is natural force and teleological
end. But although both moving and end cause, are Con-
sidered principles of Sufficient Reason of Becoming, the
stress is put upon the teleological side. The cause is poten-
* This confusion is characteristic of a stage where the postulate of ground is not
yet recognized, formulated as a basal principle of thought, but only acts unconscious of
itself. So all the formulations of Plato appear to us, as Schopenhauer says—“wie der
Stand der Unschuld gegen den der Erkentniss des Guten und Bösen.” Vierfache
Wurzel.—p. Ig—cf. also Philebus p. 240.
* Uphues—Psychologie des Erkemmens, Leipzig, 1893. Anhang, Par. 7.
* “ Vierfache Wurzel des Zureichenden Grundes.” # 56.
* Sigwart, Logik I, page 394.
I 3
tentiality of the effect, because the idea of the effect is con-
sidered to be already in the cause. In order, therefore,
that a present real might be seen to be the outcome of pre-
ceding real conditions, into these conditions was read an
idea which rationally could be seen to be the dunamis of the
present state."
§ 5. If for the sake of clearness we follow the use of a
biological analogy, we may call attention to the extremely
undifferentiated state of this life-principle of thought—this
fundamental motive of Sufficient Reason. In the absence of
a sense of the difference even between the necessities of
thought and reality, it is still less to be expected that we
shall find a strong sense of the difference between the
necessities in different spheres of reality—or between sub-
jective sufficiency and objective necessity. In fact, these
differentiations, in thought as in material development,
appear only as the result of tedious processes. To the
first of these differentiations, the source of the distinction
between subjective and objective necessity, our attention
must now be turned.
§6. In addition to the naïve rationalism of Greek thinking,
a second ingredient found its way into modern philosophy, a
force which, though less obtrusive, is perhaps equally to be
reckoned with—namely, the subjective psychological doc-
trine of belief of Mediaeval thought, as formulated in
Augustine. This, as has already been suggested, sought
the grounds of real judgments in an introspective determi-
nation of the subjective conditions of belief. And the norm,
according to which external realities are judged, is the
certainty of the subjective intuition of the self. Belief,
which according to Plato and Aristotle lay outside the
sphere of knowledge,” becomes the very presupposition of
knowledge. Credo ut intelligam is by no means merely a
theological axiom, but locates the problem of the grounds of
"Ueberweg und Heinze, Geschichte der Philosophie, 7th Edition, Vol. I, page 203.
Aristotle Anal. Post, 87, b, 3I.
2 Cf. § 3.
I4.
knowledge in the subjective assent which accompanies all
judgment."
§ 7. This subjective assent or belief, which is evidently in
the first place psychological, is, however, conceived by
Augustine to be grounded. It is with the nature of this
grounded sufficiency that we are alone concerned. That
something appears in consciousness is certain. Our doubt
can only extend to the nature of that something.”
Now, that which is given to us most certainly and really
is the consciousness of self, not as a metaphysical substance,
but as a willing, believing, doubting self—even the last ele-
ment of doubt making the certainty of the self presence more
absolute, as Descartes likewise argued. The self is the
source of all assent—and the certainty of the self the norm
of the certainty in our assent to other realities.” Thus he
argues; reality must be discovered within us to be after-
ward extended to the external world—for that to which we
give our subjective assent of the will is, as Augustine with
insight expresses it, “our life.” “That which later ripens
into knowledge must first be grasped by faith; who disdains
faith will never be able to raise himself to knowledge.”*
Self-certainty is then the norm according to which assent is
given to the reality of the elements that enter consciousness.
§8. But the important question arises how may this sub-
jective certainty, arising out of the assent of the will, which
Augustine believes to be prior to our extension of knowl-
edge to the external world, be conceived to be valid also for
external reality. At this point the Will Metaphysics of
Augustine enters, together with his Theism. The Will of
God, as ground of the world, made after the pattern of the
Eternal Ideas (a neoplatonic element in his system), is the
source of our will, as part of the world, and therefore works
* “Pe Praedestinatione”—sec. C, 2—“Ipsum credere nihil aliud ist quam cum
assensione cogitare. Non enim omnis qui cogitat, credit, cum ideo cogitent plerique;
ne credant; sed cogitat omnis, qui credit et credendo, cogitat et cogitando credit.”
* “Contra Academ,” III, c, II.
*“A)e beata Vita,” 7, II.
* “Tract.,”36 in Ev. Joh. n, 7.
I 5
upon the finite will, determining our subjective assent or
disbelief. Thus is our belief in the truths of the external
world a direct function of our subjective assent. And for
Augustine there is really no causality except that deducible,
theologically, from the nature of the Will of God, and no
knowledge except that vouchsafed to our subjective belief.
§ 9. The reason for our treatment of the Augustinian doc-
trine of assent, is that it is a typical expression of an important
element of subjective grounding, taken up into later philoso-
phy, especially the Cartesian. It expresses, too, the exactly
opposite standpoint from the Aristotelian, in that while the
reality of the general concept is in the former taken for
granted, here concrete subjective reality is the starting
point. They are alike in this, however, that as in the former
the grounds of logical knowledge and causes in reality are
not distinguished, because the reality of the general con-
cepts is the basis of both, so also in Augustine the grounds
of truth as discovered in assent, just as the grounds of ex-
ternal reality, are in both cases ultimately to be found in the
will of God.
Thus reconstructing Augustine's theory of Sufficient
Reason in modern terms, it might be said that to him, what-
ever satisfies the demands of the Will for the real, and is
taken up by the transcendental belief, without which the
inner life is impossible, is true. Whatsoever can be shown
to be grounded in the Will of God is real. In both cases
the grounds are ultimately the same.
§ Io. This Formulation of Ratio Sufficiens is, at bottom,
the expression of the whole mediaeval intuition of the world.
As Dilthey expresses it “Weiter als Augustinus hat kein
mittelalterlicher Mensch gesehen.” What followed was but
an impossible attempt to graft the Aristotelian rational-
ism of concepts upon this Will metaphysic—but it remained
always “fremdes Gut.”
The Realists sought to find concepts which by their very
definition would include their reality, concepts which thus
by the mere application of the Aristotelian syllogism,
I6
would build a whole system of objective truth; but these
very concepts of the religious consciousness were in reality
but products of the religious belief that Augustine had
grounded, and were capable of no more scientific proof.
This tendency reached its culmination in the famous Ansel-
mian proof of the existence of God. Against this movement
appeared, from time to time, the Nominalists, who by means
of the weapons of scepticism, sought to retain the doc-
trines of belief grounded on the old Augustinian Will meta-
physic. The final conflict was fought out between Duns
Scotus and St. Thomas, of whom the former was Augus-
tinian and the latter Aristotelian. But already in the 13th
century men had begun to speak of a “Two Fold Truth,” for
which there should be two entirely different instruments of
investigation, one for theology and another for secular
sciences. Thus began to arise among the scientists a mechan-
ical doctrine of causation, which later in modern philosophy
should supply the Ratio Sufficiens of Becoming, of existendi,
which, as we have already seen, failed entirely in the thinking
of Augustine.
§ 1 I. Descartes' theory of grounding represents, as has
already been suggested, a union of the Aristotelian and
Augustinian standpoints, a union which from the point of
view of clear critical thought, it must be admitted, brought
only confusion. Although to modern critical insight, they
both, Aristotle and Augustine, represent extremes of objective
and subjective treatment of the problems of knowledge, yet
each is thoroughly consistent. With the former logical
forms and causal relations are equally of the warp and woof
of objective reality, a premise is the cause of a conclusion
and from a given result the necessary cause is thought, not
discovered. Augustine, on the contrary, with a subjectivity
as naïve as Aristotle's objectivity, reduces knowledge to
belief or assent which is a function of the ethical will, but
not content with finding the grounds of knowledge in the
subjective will, finds it impossible to construe objective cau-
sation otherwise than as a function of the divine will. Conse-
17
quently all causes with Augustine are at bottom moral
causes, as witness his doctrine of history.
§12. The union of these two standpoints in the Car-
tesian thinking may be expressed as follows;
I. Objective Causation is reducible to logical grounding—
for causation is the term for the interaction of substances and
their attributes, and the relation of substance and attribute
is logical. This depends upon the Aristotelian and Scholas-
tic theory of the real nature of the general concepts called
metaphysical substances.
2. But the reality of these general concepts, upon which
logical grounding and, Consequently, objective causation
rests, is in turn subject to a psychological grounding, after
the Augustinian fashion.
For Descartes starts his reflection from the very same
point of certainty of the self-intuition, as the outcome of
doubt, which characterized Augustine's thought. From
the absolute doubt, with which the “Meditations” begin,
Descartes is led back to certainty of the self—but not by a
reference to higher logical criteria as in the process of
knowledge. “Cogito ergo sum,” if of the nature of a logical
syllogism is a petitio principii of a logical law not yet grounded,
but if of the nature of an intuition (which is undoubtedly the
right interpretation) has simply the character of subjective
belief. Descartes now makes use of the self-intuition in a
way entirely unwarranted, for this subjective belief is made
the criterion of logical clearness and distinctness. Every-
thing that comes to consciousness, si clairissement et si distincte-
ment, as the self-intuition is valid, says Descartes, ignoring
the difference between the clearness and distinctness of the
self-intuition and of logical and real relations, and failing to
see that the criteria of the latter can only be logical and real
relations themselves.
This mode of procedure, when put in practice by Des-
cartes, discloses a series of real ideas, which become the
last grounds of knowledge and of the real. In addition to
the idea of the self or res cogitans as the ground of all phe-
I 8
nomena of consciousness, we intuit the idea of a res extensa,
or objective substance with equal necessity, and as equally
real, and as the ground of both the “most real” idea of God.
Thus is developed Descartes' doctrine of a hierarchy of
real concepts, as far as a theory of objective grounding is con-
cerned, Aristotelian, but itself ultimately grounded in the
subjective belief of Augustine.
$13. The consequence of this for his doctrine of Causa-
tion is important. “The most perfect knowledge,” says
Descartes, “is the knowledge of results out of their causes.
The highest point of philosophy is therefore to explain things
on the ground of the knowledge of God as their creator.”
This last sentence is the logical consequence of a position
which he himself carefully defines in his argument against
Gassendi." In the cause all the reality of the result either
formally or immanently (i. e., either the same realities or
others that are more perfect) must be contained, for there
can be in the result no more reality than in the cause.” All
causal relations, then, are reducible to logical relations among
the modi of these most real substances. For because of the
substantiality of these most real ideas, their logical relations
must equal real relations. Thus both the Aristotelian and
Augustinian elements in Descartes lend themselves to a
theory which excludes empirical causality as such, and the
concept of causation is reduced to that of logical grounding.
$14. And since in the actual application of this logical
causal principle the last criterion must be the clearness and
distinctness of subjective certainty, the Sufficient Reason of
Knowledge is in the last analysis subjective. And now
enters the peculiar element of the system. As the meta-
physical ground of this subjective certainty, God the abso-
lutely real and veracious, is conceived to be the final war-
rant and Sufficient Reason of its truth. The concept of
God, however, was itself only discovered as most real
through this subjective certainty and belief. The ontologi-
cal proof of the divine existence is but the clothing of
* “Meditationes in Prima Philosophia,” III.
I9
a religious postulate in false logical forms. Between the
objective logical and causal world, the world of mediate
grounding, and the world of subjective assent or belief,
exists a chasm in the Cartesian thought which has not been
bridged, and which constitutes what has already been
described as an unassimilated union of the objectivity of
Aristotle with the subjectivity of Augustine. Not only is
real causal happening reduced to logical grounding, but the
latter in turn to subjective sufficiency. sº
$15. This break, then, in the very middle of the Car-
tesian Theory of Knowledge, shows the problem before
modern philosophy, to be that of the relation of the sub-
jective and objective sides of Sufficient Reason, of knowl-
edge and real ground. As we shall see, it had its first
definite answer in Kant, though by no means a final one.
We may, in the second place, see in this contradiction
between psychology and logic, the germs of the two dis-
tinctly opposite movements that followed : The rationalis-
tic doctrine of mediated ground is carried out into a com-
plete identification of causa and ratio by Spinoza, with an
absolute neglect of the subjective side.
§ 16. On the other hand, the intermediate sphere of logical
causation appears to Malebranche an unassimilated term, and
the subjective satisfaction is brought into immediate rela-
tion with the objective Will of God, to the exclusion of the
intermediate sphere of phenomenal ground and consequence.
The phenomena are simply occasional causes by means of
which God satisfies the desires of the subject. Thus, he says
poetically, “Every idea of the human consciousness is a
prayer of the will which God satisfies with its consequence.”
On the other hand, every idea in my consciousness is the
immediate product of the Will of God. We need only
remark that this, in its essence, is but the “Willens Ansch-
auung” of the Middle Ages, and that the possibility of such
a return (logically) from Descartes shows how imperfect was
his break from a purely religious intuition of the World.
2O
$17. The second movement of Spirioza is, however, an
absolute break, in that it is built upon the rationalistic germ
in Descartes, which was the Classical element in Christian
thinking, the one unassimilated element in its World-intu-
ition. With him the confusion of causa and ratio was com-
plete. Because the form of the ontological proof is logical
and, thus, of the nature of the principle of mediate grounding
as developed by Descartes, he extends the form of Sufficient
Reason between phenomena and the objective thing in it-
self without any question whatever, neglecting the sub-
jective postulate element in the Ontological Proof. Thus
Spinoza's Pantheism and determinism become, properly, only
the realization of Descartes' Ontological Proof, and that
which Descartes took, ideal and subjective as the ground of
#nowledge for the existence of God, (requiring a correspond-
ing real cause) was, for Spinoza, real. The concept of God
not only must have its real counterpart, but it is God him-
self. The whole of philosophy is thus a logical relation of
concepts—and neither the problem of a real object to which
they correspond or a subject to whom they are sufficient
truth, is at all in question.
Schopenhauer's study and criticism of Spinoza is a com-
plete exposition of this confusion, and in default of space for
further study, we must refer to him." For us only the main
outlines are of importance.
CHAPTER III.
ORIGIN OF THE PRINCIPLE–THE LEIBNITZIANS.
$18. The outcome of the entire preceding trend of thought
was, as we have seen, to reduce the problem of causation to
one of logical grounding. That grounding, being metaphysi-
cally conceived, involved an identification of the ideal ground
of knowledge with the material relations of cause and effect.
This essential lack of distinction between logical and real
grounds, arose from the Aristotelian doctrine that real con-
1 “Vierfache Wurzel,” Par. 8.
2 I
cepts are alike the data of logic and causal judgments; it
was strengthened by Augustine's theory of a hierarchy of
subjective certainties or reals, in which real and ideal terms
are contained without distinction and reached its fullest ex-
pression in Descartes and Spinoza in an absolute confusion
of the nature of logical and real relations.
§ 19. Leibnitz's thinking, then, in so far as the postulate of
Sufficient Reason and its origin, are concerned, arose as a
protest against this reduction of causalty to logical ground-
ing. But it is against logical grounding hypostatized to onto-
logical validity, rather than against the essentially logical
nature of the grounding process that he protests. As has
been pointed out in the introduction, there is still consider-
able discussion concerning the interpretation to be given to
this original principle of Leibnitz. He himself defined it as
applying distinctly to empirical truth, to vérités de fait, in
contrast to the vérités étermités, concerning which he believed
logical deduction gave complete and absolute truth. To
appreciate the place of Sufficient Reason in his theory of
knowledge, it is important to understand the full force of this
distinction. Without going fully into the metaphysics of
the Monad, it will suffice for our understanding of his theory
of knowledge to call attention to his doctrine of the Monad
as a self-determining developing real, in which the present
state is always the presupposition and ground of each suc-
ceeding state so that one knowing the entire present of the
Monad could tell its past and future. Since, however, the
inner happenings in the Monad form the basis of all external
empirical happenings whatsoever it follows that a dynamic
law of monadic development, must in some sense or under
some different aspect, become a law of empirical happening.
The determination of the first sphere must be ground of the
determination in the second. Now the self conscious Monad
is the one in which the principle of Sufficient Reason manifests
itself as a law of knowledge, and, as a matter of fact in the
form of a postulate or demand growing out of the very
nature of this determination. This demand, as expressed in
J !
22
the “Principia Philosophia,” that all acts of knowledge shall
have sufficient grounds, that is, in terms of the “Monado-
logie,” that every state of the self conscious Monad must
be determined, is further expanded to read, “no fact can
be considered true, no judgment held as true, if a satis-
factory ground can not be found, on account of which it is
thus and not otherwise, although these grounds are often
unknown to us.” (Also Fifth Letter to Clarke $125.)
$20. Thus worded, the principle is undoubtedly logical,
that is logical in the broad sense that it is a universal postu-
late or principle of all knowledge. As such it must be con-
ceived equally as the general law governing judgments
concerning the verites étérmités and judgments regarding the
verités de fait. And this seems to be the only possible Con-
clusion in regard to a principle stated so broadly and gen-
erally as the Leibnitzian Law. If Sufficient Reason de-
mands simply that every judgment should have a reason
sufficient to explain why it is so and not otherwise, this
should also include the judgments of formal logic, as well as
mere judgments of empirical fact. It was a logical motive
in the truest sense which led to the formulation of such a
general law of all knowledge. Why then did Leibnitz place
it side by side with the logical principles of Identity and
Contradiction—as far as validity is concerned, but confine it
as a material principle to matters of fact, to vérités de fait 2
§2 I. The answer to this question is simple. Side by side
with the logical motive which led to the formulation of such
a general principle of knowledge, psychological and meta-
physical motives equally strong arose which prevented a
complete and consistent expression of the logical principle.
I. The distinction between the eternal and empirical
truths, inherited from Descartes, rests upon a psychological
distinction between clear and confused ideas, which Leib-
nitz connects very closely with his doctrine of the Monad.
Now it is just with the sphere of the “confused ideas,” in-
* “Ce principe est celui du besoin d'une raison suffisante, pour qu'une chose
existe, qu'un évément arrive qu'une vérité ait lieu.”
23
cluding the cases (mentioned by Leibnitz in the formulation
already given) where the grounds are not known at all, that
the new law of Sufficient Reason is to be concerned. Here
the formal logical laws do not hold, because a ground cannot
be such logically if it is not known, or even not clear.
Leibnitz had in mind, then, a principle which shall supplant
the laws of Identity and Contradiction in a psychological
sphere where these do not hold. It is clear, then, why
Leibnitz places the law of Sufficient Reason side by side with
those of formal logic, without giving the former the place of
a logical principle. It is in his system of knowledge prin-
ciples, extra-logical, but merely because the concept of logic
is narrowed to its formal side. It is to include just those
unclear confused elements of our knowledge which are not
amenable to formal logical principles, but which are not-
withstanding, subject to law. A new light is thrown upon
the problem when we consider that the dynamic of the
Monad consists in the raising into clear apperceptive con-
sciousness of relation just the petites perceptions, the confused
ideas for which Sufficient Reason is the law. And the goal
of this development is logical clearness and distinctness, so
that a continuous movement from the psychological to the
logical consciousness is the ideal of knowledge. There is no
doubt that Leibnitz himself grasped the profound import of
this idea of a teleology in the very heart of knowledge pro-
cesses, but he failed to draw the necessary conclusion that the
whole process must be conceived as logical, and the concept
of logic extended to include it all. He came near to the idea of
teleological movement in the apperceptive processes, which
might be seen to be the very heart of Sufficient Reason—and
thus to the idea of a logical causality in apperception, later
developed by Wundt, but he remained bound to narrow views
of the logical consciousness, which excluded this profound
insight.
$22. II. Failing, thus, because of a metaphysical psy-
chology to extend Sufficient Reason to the whole knowledge
process, formal logical and sub-logical, and thus to achieve
24
an early definition of the logical consciousness, which has in
later times become so important, he falls back upon his meta-
physics of the Monad, and formulates Sufficient Reason as
a metaphysical extra-logical principle. It is identified with
causality. This metaphysical identification of Sufficient
Reason with the causal axiom marks an important point in
the development of thought. On the one hand, in that the
new law, and therefore the causal axiom, are conceived as
extra-logical, a bar is set to that logical ontologism of Spinoza
which reduced causal necessity to logical grounding. On
the other hand, this same interpretation of the law as extra-
logical demands a new metaphysical grounding of the causal
axiom, which should show Sufficient Reason to be a prin-
ciple of determination of the real, as formal logic is of mere
concepts. This demand Leibnitz did not fully recognize,
but conceived his principle as one of “sufficiency” rather
than ‘‘ determination.” With the criticism of Crusius and
Kant upon the term “sufficient reason,” and their substi-
tution therefore of the idea of “determining ground,” the
metaphysical motive in force in Leibnitz's thought found its
logical conclusion.
$23. But we have yet to consider the nature and extent
of the latter's metaphysical grounding of his new principle.
The secret of that lies in the doctrine of the Monad. For
the sphere of the confused and unclear ideas is not only psy-
chological but also metaphysical in its import; the movement
from the confused to the logically clear ideas, the basis of
his theory of knowledge, is only conceivable as necessary, on
the basis of the metaphysical necessity of the determination
of the Monad. And since the internal happening of the
Monad is the metaphysical ground of extenal phenomenal
relations, the identification of the basal law of that happen-
ing, causation, with the basal law of the inner movement of
the Monad, Sufficient Reason, is logically necessary.
$24. While at bottom a metaphysical principle, it is
easily conceivable from the foregoing how S. R. in Leib-
nitz may appear now as the outcome of a logical motive, and
25
again as the result of psychological considerations. It was
natural that the first formulation of a principle so general,
and yet so capable of exposing the last roots and problems
of knowledge, should be uncertain in its distinctions. But
the state in which the problem was left was perhaps one
most calculated to attract to it the attention of future thought.
If Sufficient Reason is a new principle of knowledge, of
validity for a sphere of ideas not amenable to the norms of
formal logic, what is the relation of formal logic to knowl-
edge in general? Must not the bounds of the logical con-
Sciousness—that is the consciousness concerned with neces-
sary relations among ideas—be extended beyond the sphere
of formal logic? This was the problem which lay inevitably
in the origin of Leibnitz's principle.
$25. But again the impetus to new metaphysical formula-
tions offered by Leibnitz's origination of his new law was
immense, and sufficient to obscure the preceding problem of
the possible extension of the concept of the logical conscious-
ness. For consider that in the place of the belief in the
ontological validity of the results of purely formal logic,
which had begun to wane, there was now offered the prob-
lem (and the apparent means of solving it) of a metaphysical
determinism other than logical. Thus was inaugurated the
great problem of the transcendental grounding of experience
and of its great postulate, the law of Sufficient Reason.
This involved the Idealistic position of the identification, not
of the logical ground with the real ground, but of the trans-
cendental knowledge grounds with real grounds, the identi-
fication of phenomenal reality with the knowledge of that re-
ality. This logical consequence, though not carried out to
the completeness attained by Kant and Schopenhauer, is yet
clearly enough implied in Leibnitz's thinking. Thus (in the
Letters to Clarke, $125) the metaphysical universality of the
law is clearly taught It is the principle alike of external
happening and of the inner life of the Monad, and again the
highest concept of the source of the principle is that of the
Creator, “in welchem die Macht die die wirkinden Ursachen
26
schafft und die Weisheit welche die Zweck-thätigen ordnet,
sich vereinigt finden.”
The difference between Leibnitz and his rationalistic pre-
decessors is this: He, too, postulates an intellectual world
ground, with the Christian coloring—believing that it must
be found eventually in the Will of God. He, too, believes
that the ideal of knowledge is logical necessity expressed in
the two positive norms, Identity and Contradiction. But
the problem of Knowledge he finds not so simple, and in
order to encompass all possible empirical knowledge a third
principle is necessary, which he formulates in the general
and negative way that we have seen. It is general in that it
is a postulate, that all things must have a reason and a cause.
It is negative in that in its empirical application the postulate
demands, not that our knowledge proceed by identities and
lack of contradictions in concepts, but by admitting to the body
of our knowledge only such facts and judgments of facts that
have a sufficient reason." The validity of that sufficiency
he further proceeds to gound metaphysically, as we have
already seen. That he should have confined the postulate
of Sufficient Reason to empirical truth is not surprising, nor
that he should have failed to distinguish the logical from the
metaphysical aspect; that he had insight enough into its
logical nature to make it coördinate with the long estab-
lished norms is what stamps him as the originator of a new
era in philosophical thinking.
$26. Wolff follows Leibnitz with the attempt at a com-
plete logical expression of Sufficient Reason although it still
lies in the sphere of “Ontologie” or metaphysics. In the
‘‘Vernunftige Gedanken von Gott, der Welt und der Seele,” “we
are told that while equally with the principles of Identity
and Contradiction, that of Sufficient Reason lies in the
nature of men, yet “Leibnitz war der erste seine Wichtigkeit
zu erkennen, dass nehmlich alle veritates contingentes Oder
alle zufällige Wahrheiten aus diesem Satz als ihren ersten
Quellen fliessen, ja vermöge desselben, die contingentia ihre
* cf. also a similar negative formulation by Kant, 3% 36, 39. *$30.
27
“veritatem determinatem' haben, vermöge dessen sie ein
unendlicher Verstand vorher wissen könnte.”
But to the rationalistic mind of Wolff it appeared that if
“ein unendlicher Verstand ” knew these verities beforehand,
they must be of the nature of logical relations. So that the
attempt is made to secure the place of Sufficient Reason as a
logical law, and this, by means of deduction from the law of
Contradiction. This occurs in “Ontologia” (§§66–70.) A
thing has either a Sufficient Reason or it has not. In the
last case it must be granted that there is something which
has nothing for its ground. But out of nothing can something
never be known. Baumgarten repeats the same proof in
Metaphysics $ 20. The petitio principii, as well as the confu-
sion of real and knowledge ground, is evident, and it is upon
the failure of this proof that Crusius (as we shall see) takes his
stand for his own point of view. The meaning of this attempt
to prove logically what Leibnitz had considered in the light
of a postulate is evidently nothing else than a falling back
into the rationalism against which the new law had risen as a
protest. What had been with Leibnitz a postulate of the
necessary Zusammenhang of the world in the broadest sense,
and of our ability to understand the same, becomes with
Wolff a claim for the logical determinism of the things which
make up the world of contingency.
To be sure Wolff had distinguished between four prin-
•ciples of Sufficient Reason'—cognoscendi, the logical deduc-
tion of conclusions from premises; fiendi, from which
grounds we discover the reality of a thing; essendi, from
which the possibility of a thing is seen (relation in space and
time); agendi, in the ground of which we see the necessity
of an act. But with all his important distinctions which
later figure so materially in the history of the principle, he
never left the rationalism which belonged to his intuition of
the world, for in the last analysis the grounds are always
determined logically,” and grow out of the Scholastic
definition of the “thing,” as made up of logical characteristics.
* Ontologia, $866. * Ontologia, § 951.
\
28
$27. The study of Sufficient Reason in the “Entwurf der
not wendigen Vernunſt-Wahrheiten,” 1753, by Crusius is of
the nature of a weak protest against the Wolffian point of
view." Wolff had defined philosophy as the science of the
possible, thus making its criteria purely logical, all that could
be thought without contradiction being of course possible.
This covered his whole view of Sufficient Reason. Crusius.
protested against this by defining Philosophy as the Science
of the Real.
A ground to be Sufficient Reason shall not suffice merely
if it involves no contradiction, but it must so show the rela-
tion as to make it evident that with the ground the conse-
quence is necessarily given. How does it affect reality, if the
opposite can be thought? The eatistence of the opposite cannot
be thought of, if the existence is once known to be a real
fact.” Thus the distinction made by Wolff between the abso-
lute necessity of thought and hypothetical necessity which is
found in the law of ground in contingent reals is false, and
arises out of the subjective relation thereto.” All necessity
is absolute, but not all logical and capable of being expressed
in terms of knowledge. This point is weighty, for his two
great contributions to the problem are:
a. His clear distinction between the different spheres of
the functioning of Sufficient Reason, especially between the
real and ideal grounds, and :
b. His especial study of the problem of the ground in the
sphere of the Will.
In regard to the first, he complains of the changeable
meaning applied to the term ground, and especially the fail-
ure to keep separate the ideal ground of knowledge and the
real ground, a distinction only suggested by Wolff and not
carefully adhered to. “Hierdurch (Vermischung) wird
nicht nur die Aufmerksamkeit auf das wahre Wesen dersel-
ben verhindert, sondern auch zu der Ubereilung Gelegen-
* Reimarius—“Die Vermunſtlehre $120—also stands for a separation of the meta-
physical application from its application as a logical principle.
* Dissertatio Philosophii de Usu et Limitibus Principii Rationis Determinantis
zulge Sufficientis. Lips. I743, § 6.
*Antwurf der AWot. Wahr.—VIII. Cf. also Kant #39.
29
heit gegeben, vermöge welcher man annint dass alle wahr-
haft zureichende Realgründe auch zugleich zureichende
Erkentniss-gründe apriori, sein müssten.”’’ This simply means
that as far as the Principle of Sufficient Reason is to be ap-
plied to the real, one can only say a necessary “Zusammen-
hang” exists, according to laws, but in no way does the
rationalist's postulate follow that their relations may be
known as logically expressed. It is not a problem of the
knowledge-ground of the rational possibility of a thing, but
a postulate of real and necessary relations among things.
$28. Having thus separated the knowledge or logical
problem from that of real grounds, he next divides the
sphere of the latter into two great main divisions, the moral
and physical real. This, it must be remembered, rose out
of his moral and religious problem of the freedom of the
will. In the physical sphere we have two aspects of the real
ground; first, the real ground as cause, to explain the prob-
lem of becoming ; and secondly, the real ground as possi-
bility, in which, like Wolff, he brings to light the space and
time conditions of empirical judgments, as the conditions of
the possibility of the real or the “law of ground” of being.
This was later developed into the Kantian modal category of
the Possible, the criteria of which are formal. His schemat-
ism is, so to speak, the setting of the great problem of
Sufficient Reason which later occupied the minds of Kant
and Schopenhauer. It may be expressed somewhat as fol-
lows (De usu, etc., §§35, 36):
Ground.
| |
Moral. Pºlai
|
Real. Knowledge.
Being-Cause. Possibility. Apriori. Aposteriori.
Space and Time. Experience.
Being.

* “Entwurf der Not. Wahr.” Chap. 3, § 38.
3O
$29. The problem of Sufficient Reason in the sphere of
Morals or of the Will, is his chief question, and is kept care-
fully distinct from the physical sphere. But here again
must be distinguished carefully between the ideal and real
ground, for we are tempted to consider the idea which we
call motive, (the idea which is the ground of our being con-
scious of a will act,) the real cause or ground of that act.
This is false, for it is foolish to ask for grounds of an act of
will, for it is simply the nature of will to act as it wills.
Thus he champions the doctrine of Augustine and Scotus
that the Will is independent of the “Vorstellungen,” not,
however, indeterminism, for the law of ground lies in the
Will itself. To ask for its ground in an idea is to confuse
knowledge and real grounds, for will is real and force. The
proof of this position we need not give, for it rests upon cer-
tain errors concerning the definition and relation of the ideas
of substance and force, and an application of the same to a
metaphysic of the will in an unjustifiable manner. Sufficient
for our historical study is it to notice that for the Will, as
well as for simple Being, is postulated a peculiar law of
ground which dare not be identified either with causality or
Ideal ground."
$30. In summing up the Leibnitz–Wolffian movement, we
may describe it as having three moments:
(a.) Leibnitz propounds the Principle of Sufficient Reason
as a postulate of empirical knowledge, extends it in some of
his formulations to a general logical principle—thus extend-
ing potentially the sphere of logic beyond the bounds of the
formal. Not being able to achieve the full formulation of his
logical motive, he finally secures universality for his new
principle by yielding to the metaphysical demand which
identified it with the universal causal determination, devel-
oped in his system, grounding it on his Monadologie.
(b.) Wolff attempts to restore the principle to the place of
a logical law, but through his limited notion of logic and the
attempt to deduce Sufficient Reason from the principles of
* cf. König-‘‘Die Entwickelung des Causal Problems,” Chap. on Crusius.
3 I
Identity and Contradiction, he falls back into Pre-Leibnitz–
ian Rationalism. (c.) Crusius, in protest against Wolff's
Rationalism, excludes the law entirely from logic, and de-
velops the metaphysical motive of Leibnitz still further.
CHAPTER IV.
THE KANTIANS. SUFFICIENT REASON AS THE BASAL LAW
OF METAPHYSICS.
§ 31. As has been already suggested in the introductory
chapter, the metaphysical motive in Leibnitz's formulation of
Sufficient Reason which sought to ground the validity of the
principle in extra-logical considerations and which was car-
ried out in Crusius' construction of the law as a principle of
metaphysical determination rather than of “sufficiency " for
knowledge, finds its continuation in Kant and Schopenhauer.
The characteristic of this entire metaphysical movement
was already prominent in Crusius. Besides the distinction
between ideal and real grounds, there is a further differentia-
tion of different classes of real grounds, namely, a) those of
the Sufficient Reason of Being as afforded by the relations
of space and time, b) of Sufficient Reason of Becoming, in the
relations of Causality, c) the grounds of Will acts. This meta-
physical differentiation of real grounds into three distinct
classes, becomes prominent, because the essentially unitary
and logical nature of the law sinks out of sight.
This unitary nature of the Law as a knowledge postu-
late both Kant and Schopenhauer seek to restore, the former
by what, following Schopenhauer, we may call Transcen-
dental Logic, the latter by his doctrine of the Intellectual
Intuition, both of which are in their essence metaphysical
principles.
§ 32. Kant. Kant may be said to have had as the problem
of his entire thinking, the nature of philosophical grounds.
For his starting point was given him by the Leibnitzian
school, and in the particular problems of Crusius. In the
32
“Mova Dilucidatio " (or fully given, “Principium primorum
cognitionis metaphysicae nova dilucidatio") ry55 (Kant's Habil-
itation's Schrift), beside the laws of Identity and Contradic-
tion is considered the “ Satz vom Grunde.”
With Crusius Kant agrees that the term sufficient
ground (“zureichender") is weak and chooses “ determin-
ing ” (“bestimmender”) instead. Moreover, he is unsatisfied
with the definition of Wolff, that the ground is that “ durch
das voraus mehr sei als nicht sei.” It explains nothing for
“voraus;” means simply “aus welchem grund.” Thus if
the only determining ground is that its opposite can not be
thought, this is only ideal or “machher best immenden Grund”
and not “vorher best immenden.” It answers the question of
the “quod" and not of the “warum.” On the basis of this
distinction between “vorher” or “antecedenter" ground and
‘‘ machher ’’ or “consequenter,” he insists upon an absolute
determinism for the former or real ground and justifies this
thorough-going determinism against the attacks of Crusius,
who complained that it made impossible the freedom of the
will. Upon the basis of distinction of real and ideal ground,
Crusius had maintained that to consider an idea, cause or
ground of an act of will is to confuse real and ideal grounds.
This “idea" (Vorstellung) is the Sufficient Reason, as far as
the knowledge of the act is concerned, but it cannot be said
that it is determining for the individual Will itself. Will
contains a law of ground, but a law of its own, for “durch
das blosse Setzen der Willens Thätigheit alle entgegen-
gesetzten Bestimmungen ausgeschlossen werden; folglich
ist ein vorher bestimmenden Grund nicht erforderlich.””
Kant answers with a keen psychological analysis of the
Will and its functions, showing that there is a distinction
between the impulse or desire which is the determining
ground of the will act and our idea of the same which we use
as an ideal term of the knowledge of will acts. Thus partic-
ular impulses and desires are the motives or grounds of the
decisions of the Will, although they are to be included in the
*$ 190. *$ 199-203.
33
Will itself, and so the postulate of the Law of Ground is ful-
filled, which demands that every event shall have its Suffi-
cient Reason or determining ground.
$33. Kant's next step is in the direction of a closer study
of the Law of Ground in things—the principle of causation.
In 1763 appeared the paper entitled “Versuch den Begriff
der negativen Grössen in die Welt–Weisheit himein zu figen,”
in which is to be seen the working of the second force
brought to bear upon Kant, namely, the Humian criticism.
Wolff had taken the empirical postulate of Leibnitz and
given it such a logical turn that all its applications were
made through the logical principles of Identity and Contra-
diction, to the latter of which he had tried to make it
subordinate. Kant sees that in the sphere of the real these
principles are not applicable. For in actual nature a nega-
tive force in relation to a positive (and in fact, positive and
negative functions in general) do not constitute a contradic-
tion. Though both positive in their nature, they do not
annul each other as in logic. Thus Wolff in the “Vernunſ.
tige Gedanken” had taken the figure of Archimedes' Scales as
an intuitive proof of contradiction and Sufficient Reason in
relation to each other. An exact balance is an intuitive
contradiction of positive and negative. Now, if one side
sinks, the contradiction is destroyed and there must be a
ground why that side has sunk rather than not. Taking
this same figure of the scales, Kant shows that no logical
analogy exists, and that one cannot speak of the two sides
being in contradiction, but rather are both to be considered
causes in producing an entirely different condition, namely,
the new state of the balance of the scales. Thus, likewise
in the sphere of morals, plus-crime and minus-crime do not
equal zero, nor do pain plus pleasure equal zero, but pro-
duce an entirely new mental state. He concludes, there-
fore, that the problem of causation or of real ground lies
entirely outside the sphere of formal logic.
§3.4. It is, however, in the “Grundsätze des reinen
Verstandes,” that most clearly written chapter of the entire
\
34
Rritik, that we have at the same time the full expression
of Kant's doctrine of Sufficient Reason and the source of
Schopenhauer's formulation, with which we shall later be con-
cerned. After considering the law of Contradiction as the
supreme principle of analytical judgments, Kant asks the
question: What is the supreme principle of synthetic judg-
I ments? To this the answer is: the Law of Ground." That
Kant thus identifies the Law of Ground, the principle of
empirical judgments, with a synthetic function of mind
rather than with the analytic procedure of logic, is in har-
mony with the metaphysical motive of Leibnitz, which
sought an extra-logical validity for the principle of Sufficient
Reason. In further asking the question, how synthetic
judgments a priori, without logical grounds, are possible
Kant is obeying the logic of the motive and seeking a meta-
physical source for the validity of the extra-logical law.
The ontologizing of this fundamental law is the Transcen-
dental Logic of the Kantian Kritié.
$35. The general Law of Ground Kant formulates as fol-
lows:” “Ein jeder Gegenstand steht unter den notwendi-
gen Bedingungen der synthetischen Manigfaltigkeit der
Anschauung in einer mêglichen Erfahrung.” That experi-
ence be possible, it is necessary that in the complexes which
make it up, necessary and universal conditions or laws of
ground exist, by which each element may be held in its
proper place in the whole. What then are the particular
principles in which the general law expresses itself P. They
are, according to Kant, four:
* Kritié der reinen Vernunft, (Reclam), p. 202, 1781 Edition. Kant closes the
chapter on the “Grundsätze” with these significant words : “In Ermangelung dieser
Methode" (which has just preceded—and which we shall give below) “und bei dem
Wahne, synthetische Sätze, welche der Erfahrungsgebrauch des Verstandes als seine
Principien empfiehlt, dogmatisch beweisen zu wollen, ist es denn geschehen, dass von
dem Satze des zureichenden Grundes, so oft, aber immer vergeblich ein Beweis ist
versucht worden. An die beiden übrigen Analogien hat niemand gedacht (Gemein-
schaft des Seins und Causalität des Werdens) . . . weil der Leitfaden der Categorien
fehlte, der allein jede Lücke des Verstandes, sowohl in Begriffen als Grundsätzen,
entaecken und merklich machen kann.”
* Reclam Edition (1781), p. 155.
35
I. Axiome der Anschauung,
II. Anticipationen der Wahrnehmung,
III. Analogien der Erfahrung, and
IV. Postulate des empirischen Denkenstüberhaupt. That
which Kant states in his general formulation—that the
condition of any experience whatsoever is a supersensuous
transcendental relativity of all the phenomena of experience,
a general law of ground and consequence throughout all
mental content, he proceeds to develop in the particular
spheres of phenomena. The axioms of the Intuition de-
mand that relations of space and time, transcendental and
extra-logical, be present, if we are to have empirical knowl-
edge or experience at all. The analogies of experience, of
which the principal cases are the Causal Axiom and the con-
cept of Substance, afford the transcendental grounds for
empirical judgments of relations. Causality is the typical
expression of the law of ground among phenomena and
changes the intuition of temporal succession into a synthetic
judgment of the Understanding because by reason of it we
are by analogy enabled to say a priori that if a certain rela-
tion of ground and consequence has appeared in experience,
when the cause again appears it will, under the same condi-
tions, produce the same effect.
§ 36. The law of ground, than, according to the Kantian
definition, embraces all principles of relativity, universal and
necessary, which underlie our empirical judgments, and make
them valid. This validity, which, as we have seen, like
Leibnitz, he conceives to be extra-logical, is established first
in a negative way, in that without these transcendental
principles of relativity, empirical knowledge is impossible.
It rests upon the postulate of the necessary unity of apper-
ception in consciousness, which presupposes unity of expe-
rience to all possible empirical consciousness at any time.
Thus we have the Law of Ground in causation as a sine qua
non of a unity of experience, or of the subject-object relation
in general." This is what Schopenhauer means when he says:
* Reclam, p. 172, Part II.
36
“experience is through and through causality." It (causation)
objectifies subjective ideas, renders possible the representa-
tion of objects, it assigns to each phenomenon, as a conse-
quence, a determined place according to the Law of Ground,
in what would otherwise be a merely psychological flow of
ideas. It renders unified experience possible. The apparent
petitio principii' involved in the claim of the universal validity
of causality for all experience, because it alone makes expe-
rience possible, disappears when we reflect that experience
in the two cases is different. It (causation) is universally
valid for all particular experiences. It is, however, the con-
dition of experience in general, transcendental experience.
§ 37. In addition to the negative argument, that without
these transcendental principles of necessary relativity empir-
ical knowledge is impossible, Kant seeks a more positive
grounding of the necessary relations of phenomenal reality.
The question, how are synthetic judgments a priori possible is
answered by the Objective Deduction of the categories,
which we have called the Transcendental Logic. Relations
of space and time, which Kant describes under the general
terms of Gemeinschaft des Seins, relations of causality, or
the Causalität des Werdens, are the true principles of Sufficient
Reason of reality. Upon these mathematical and causal
judgments rest. But these, Kant complains, had remained
undiscovered, because his predecessors had sought to prove
the validity of the Law of Ground by subsuming it under the
principles of formal analytical logic. This was especially
true in the case of Wolff. It did not occur to them to fol-
low the guiding thread of the categories which govern our
synthetic judgments, and which point to transcendental roots.
The manner in which Kant connects all the empirical
principles developed in the Grundsätze with the Aristotelian
categories of logical relation—the criticism which this forced
architectonic has brought upon him need not detain us here.
We need only consider the idea which dominated it and its
application to the two empirical expressions of the Law of
Ground developed above.
* “Satz vom Grunde,” $ 23.
37
§ 38. The principles of necessary relativity in space and
time which are expressed as community of Being (Gemein-
schaft des Seins) and causality, are deduced from the two im-
portant categories of reality and necessity, the categorical
and the hypothetical judgments. At first sight, it would
seem that the Law of Ground is recognized as a formal logical
principle, but in reality this cannot be said to be true. The
truer view is that these logical forms are the conceptual
expression of transcendental principles which govern the
empirical judgments of space, time, and causal relations.
By following them as a guiding thread we may reach the
transcendental conditions of knowledge; they themselves are
only conceptual signs. In other words it is in their meta-
physical significance that they constitute the Law of Ground.
This is Kant's Transcendental Logic. For the hypothetical
judgment, as a formal relation of concepts, is an analytical
procedure, says Kant, as a transcendental logic of experience,
it is synthetic. This distinction Kant brings out clearly in
a later essay “Ueber die Fortschritte in der Metaphysik
seit Leibnitz und Wolff.”" The one great advance he insists
lies in the fact that the Law of Ground has become entirely
metaphysical and has ceased to be subsumed under the logical
laws.
§ 39. Still more clearly is its relation to logic stated in
the reply to Eberhardt's criticism of his “Reine Vernunſt,”
where he maintains that the purely logical law, “Ein jeder
Satz muss einen Grund haben,” is clearly subordinate to
“Contradiction.” The Sufficient Reason whose principles
we have studied is entirely outside the norms of logic, is the
Sufficient Reason of empirical reality—and as such meta-
physical in its essence. In thus developing a transcenden-
tal Law of Ground for empirical reality, of the same validity
as the logical norms for the sphere of pure concepts, that
has been found for which Leibnitz in vain sought—an expla-
nation of the necessity of empirical knowledge.
* Complete Works, Hartenstein Edition, Vol. VIII., p. 538.
* Hartenstein, C. W. VI., p. Io, “Ueber eine neue Entdeckung mach der alle
Vernunft Kritik enthehrlich gemacht werden soll.”
A
38
|
The distinction between the logical postulate of Ground
and Consequence, and the metalogical principles of trans-
scendental validity which give necessity to phenomenal rela-
tions is the cardinal point of Kant's thinking from the stand-
point of the study in hand, and remains, as we shall see, an
unsolved dualism in his theory of knowledge.
Having confined the logical Law of Ground to the formu-
lation, “Ein jeder Satz muss einen Grund haben,” Kant
finds the corresponding postulate of the transcendental logic
expressed in what he calls the chief postulate of empirical
thought in general, “In mundo non datur hiatus, non datur
saltus, non datur casus, non datur fatum.” This postulate
is the underlying condition of all experience, and expresses
the necessity inherent in the forms of space, time and caust
ality already considered."
$ 40. The metaphysical tendency in Leibnitz's formulation
of the law is thus carried a step further. The impulse which
led Kant in his early essay to substitute, in agreement with
Crusius, “determining grounds” for “sufficient reason,”
and upon the study of Hume, to separate absolutely the
necessity of formal logic from that of empirical knowledge,
leads him to a metaphysical construction of all empirical
determination and to ground this determinism, not in an
ontology of the real, such as the Leibnitzian Monadism, but
in an ontology of our knowledge processes, which has been
called the Transcendental Logic.
We may therefore formulate Kant's doctrine of Sufficient
Reason as follows: The Law of Ground is the fundamental
postulate of empirical knowledge, “ das oberste Principium
aller synthetischen Urtheile,” in that it demands that every
phenomenal element shall have a necessary phenomenal
| ground. The empirical expressions of that law are the
necessary relations of space, time and causality. Since,
*As a result of the whole study we find these words of Kant, as the rule of
empirical investigation : “In der empirischen Synthesis nichts zuzulassen was, dem
Verstande und dem continuirlichen Zusammenhange aller Enscheinungen d. i. der
Einheit einen Eintrag thun könnte. Denn er ist es allein worin die Einheit der
Brfahrung in der alle Wahrnehmungen ihre stelle haben müssen, mēglich wird.”
39
however, the Law of Ground is merely a phenomenal prin-
ciple, necessity only a subjective postulate, empirical reality
and the knowledge of that reality fall together, and the law
of ground is likewise a principle of real necessity—in other
words, a metaphysical principle metaphysically grounded as
we have seen.
It is however, and this is an important proviso, only by
following the “Leitfaden " of the logical categories that the
necessary empirical relations are discovered. Thus, while
the Law of Ground is not confined to the formal logical
expression of the postulate “ein jeder Satz musseinen Gund
haben,” it is nevertheless logical in its essence, in that in all
the phenomenal manifestations of the principle, the axioms
of the spacial and causal world, logical dependence is the
transcendental concept which underlies them.
§ 4 I. From this two important results for historical con-
sideration follow :
I. A distinct movement toward a development of a
broader view of the logical consciousness is discernable.
Though Kant defined the Law of Ground or Sufficient
Reason as extra-logical and transcendental, it was only such
in so far as by logical the formal logic of concepts was meant.
That he recognized the logical kernel in the Causal axiom,
and even tried to find it in spatial and temporal relations
Of coexistence, indicates his appreciation of some of the
problems of logic in its broader sense. Thus by means of a
subjective deduction of the categories which should be of
the nature of a “psychologische Ergänzung” to the objec-
tive logical deduction, and which should show how “das
Vermögen zu denken selbst mêglich Sei was gleichsam die
Aufsuchung der Ursache zu einer gegebenen Wirkung sei,”
and “insofern etwas einer Hypothese áhnliches an sich
habe,” Kant sought to show, by means of the psychological
phenomenology of judgment, how the Law of Ground was
equally the basal law of the intuitional and conceptional ele-
* Aritik der R. V., introduction to first edition. Cf. also Natorp, Einleitung in
die Psychologie, nach Kritischer Methode, p. 128,
4O
ments in knowledge, holding them in a unity, which alone
made empirical knowledge possible. This meant, however,
the extension of logical validity and necessity to empirical
judgments as well.
It is, however, by virtue of the transcendental logic of
the catagories, that function in the Intuition and the Under-
standing, that this conditional necessity exists. The Tran-
scendental Logic without the content of the intuition could
not give necessary relations of the “Intelligible World,” nor
could necessary relations of the empirical world be found in
the content of the Intuition alone. “Concepts without
intuition are empty, intuition without concepts blind.”
Concepts and Intuition, “Begriffe und Anschauung” are
together the sphere of the functioning of the Law of Ground,
and its conditioned necessity. Separated, they are incap-
able of relations of ground and consequence. This principle,
which may be called the “Balance of Concept and Intu-
ition” in Kant's formulation of the “Law of Ground" repre-
sents his critical position strikingly and is a point of view
from which the preceding and following formulations may
be studied.
$42. Such a study would show that Kant stands as a crit-
ical mediator between two possible formulations of the Law
of Ground, that which confines it to the sphere of the format
logic of concepts, to the exclusion of the intuitional side, and
that theory which, excluding the conceptual element, makes
it a law of the Intuition, “Anschauung.” Both of these one-
sided developments are dogmatic, and in the historical
development which is the substance of the present study,
represented by Wolff in the one case and Schopenhauer in
the other. The nature of Wolff's (and before him Spinoza's)
dogmatism was seen to be the postulating of metaphysical
validity for merely formal logical relations of concepts.
That of Schopenhauer, we shall see, lies in postulating the
validity of the Law of Ground in the simple intuition, inde-
pendent of concepts. The Transcendental Logic of Kant is
beyond both these dogmatisms, and protests against both.
4. I
$43. This is the second historical point of importance, this:
critical balance of Kant between two possible extremes of
dogmatism. The Law of Ground is certainly a logical
postulate, but it is not a principle of merely formal logic.
Secondly, while the postulate of ground is not a law of
formal logic, it is not therefore unlogical, and non-concep-
tual, as Schopenhauer later maintained. Already in Kant's.
life-time an attempt was made to do away with this critical
balance of conceptual and intuitive knowledge, held to-
gether by the concept of a Transcendental Logic. Eberhardt.
sought to restore the uncritical philosophy by a doctrine of
“Intellectuelle Auschauung " according to which all knowl-
edge of relations is intuitional. It is of interest to us only
to see how Kant answers this heresy against the “Kritié.”
In his answer to Eberhardt," (Ueber eine neue Entdeckung"
nach der alle Vernunſt-Kritik entberhlich gemacht werden
soll,” Kant points out very clearly the conceptual logical
nature of all relations of ground and consequence, showing
that the simple elements in space and time, the point, and the
concepts of cause and effect are all abstractions and therefore
conceptual in nature. The whole problem is how we shall
define “ Intuition ”—but it is clear to Kant that it is not
intellectual in its nature, but expresses only the manner in
which we are affected by the unknown thing in itself.
SCHOPENHAUER.
§44. The classical formulation of the Principle of Sufficient
Reason is the “Vierfache Wurzel des Zureichenden Grundes.”
* Hartenstein, Kant's Complete Works, Vol. VI, p. 18. “Die einfachen Elemente
der Anschauung liegen völlig auserhalb der Sinnlichkeit,” are intellectual and con-
ceptual. It becomes certain therefore that “das Einfache, (der Punkt) als Grund zu
der Anschauung in Raum und Zeit, hinzu vernunftelt ist.” We have then this
dilemma before us—“Eins von Beiden, entweder die Anschauung ist der Anschau-
ung nach, ganz intellectuelle d. i. wir Schauen die Dinge an, als sie an sich sind und
die Sinnlichkeit besteht lediglich in der Verworrenheit; oder sié ist nicht intellectuelle,
wir verstehen darunter nur die Art wie wir von einem, an sich uns unbekannten Object
afficiert werden.” The concept “Intellectuelle Anschauung’’ is then a contradiction
in adjecto and arises alone from an attempt to extend Sufficient Reason where it does
not belong, i. e., by making it a law of Objective Reality itself, which we intuit.
42
|
|w
Historically, however, the differentiation of the four roots
or forms of the principle goes back to Crusius, while the
content poured into the moulds is entirely Kantian. The
points of striking dissimilarity between Kant and Schopen-
hauer are; a) the manner in which Schopenhauer gives a meta-
physical significance to the specialization of the four forms
of ground, while with Kant the distinctions were not funda-
mental. b) The fact that in Schopenhauer the logical nature
of the postulate of Sufficient Reason is entirely denied, and
consequently a constant war is waged against Kant's Trans-
cendental Logic. c) Schopenhauer's doctrine of Sufficient
Reason as a principle of intuitive knowledge instead of
logical thought. The tendency of his entire thinking may
therefore be summed up as entirely in the direction of a
metaphysical formulation.
§ 45. The crucial point in Schopenhauer's doctrine of
Sufficient Reason is his theory of the specific nature of the
four different kinds of necessities in the relations of space and
time, of causality, of logic or conceptual thought and of will
motives. It has been the mistake of past thinking, he insists,
that, in following the natural impulse to unification, it has
been taken for granted that there is only one Law of Ground,
and one order of necessity, while in reality, the principle of
S. R. is only “ein gemeinschaftlicher Ausdruck für vier
ganz verschiedene Verhältnisse,” each of which has its own
particular necessity. These four entirely different phenom-
enal expressions of the law of ground are determined by an
inductive study of the ideal content of consciousness. The
method of this specification, as he explains in the paragraph
on method,” follows the Kantian division of kinds of knowl-
edge (Erkentniss Kräfte) into Sinnlichkeit, Verstand, Wer-
nunft and Wollen. Kant had indeed followed such a divi-
sion, and had, as we have already seen,” developed in the
“Grundsätze '' the different forms, which the general prin-
* “ Vierfache Wurzel,” $52.
2 t ( Vierfache Wurzel,” §§ I, 2.
*Cf. paragraphs 35, 36.
‘43
ciple of ground assumes in its empirical use; and before him
‘Crusius had likewise, besides the fundamental distinction
between real and knowledge grounds, distinguished among
real grounds those of being, spatially and temporally deter-
mined, of becoming, causally determined, of will, or motive
grounds. But it cannot be denied that what, with Crusius
and Kant, especially the latter, was more a matter of
schematism and definition, Schopenhauer, in somewhat
scholastic fashion, makes fundamental and metaphysical.
$46. The development of this theory of the specific neces-
sities of different kinds of relations of ideas, leads to the dif-
ferentiation of four distinct classes: 1. The relations of space
and time, transcendental and a priori, are so given in the
intuition, that certain relations of points, given in space or
time, determine the place of others in the intuitional complex.
This is the Law of Ground of Being, and upon it is based the
whole of mathematics, geometry upon the spacial and arith-
metic upon the temporal necessity. Out of this position the
theory naturally follows, and it is one which Schopenhauer
maintains with especial interest, that geometrical reasoning
is not a logical process, but that its necessity is a matter of
intuition." The relation of this theory of the Law of Ground
of space and time relations, to Kant’s “Axiome der Anschau-
ung’’ is evident.”
2. Causality, or the Law of Ground of Becoming, is that
a priori relation among ideas, by means of which “ein un-
mittelbares, intuitives Auffassen der ursächlichen Verbind-
ung " is possible. Something more than the temporal
relations of succession is expressed in the causal judgment.
It is the specific necessity of the causal relation, but it is not
a conceptual logical postulate reflectively applied to the
phenomenal subjective succession, thus giving it empirical
* Schopenhauer himself admits, “Welt als Wille, &c.,” page 150, that only the
recognition, the “cognitio” of geometrical necessity, is intuitive. The proof or “con-
wictio” is logical. This theory of mathematics is of course now discredited. The best
discusssion of the problem is in the second volume of Wundt's Logic.
* Cf. § 35.
44
objectivity, as in the theory of Kant, which we have studied.
“Matter is through and through causality,” but this caus-
ality is already given in the intuition of matter, for matter
is defined as ideas in this necessary a priori “ togetherness.”
We have not the space to develop further this theory of
Causation, which comes so near to an identification of
Causality with mere temporal succession on the one hand,
and to a materialistic metaphysic on the other. For our
historical study the important thing is the exclusion of the
logical element from the causal concept, which is character-
istic of Schopenhauer's theory.
3. The third phenomenal manifestation of the Law of
Ground is that of the Will in motivation. This is the
“Causalität von innen gesehen ";" that is: the same necessary
binding together of ideas, which, from an objective stand-
point, we call causality, is from the point of view of sub-
jective worth, experience, sufficiency of motive. Causal
necessity expresses itself directly in the subjective grouping
of ideas only as motivation of the Will. Both the special
theory of the Will developed by Crusius” and the Kantian
distinction of the empirical from the transcendental Will
were important historical antecedents of Schopenhauer's
doctrine. The source of knowledge of the Will causality is,
as in the preceding two forms of the Law of Ground, direct
immediate intuition.
$47. The three kinds of real grounds thus described are,
according to Schopenhauer, known by us directly in an In-
tellectual Intuition and are not the result of an application of
a logical postulate to phenomena. There is, however, a class
of ideas in which a logical principle of ground is discovera-
ble. These are the abstract ideas or concepts. Schopen-
hauer's nominalistic doctrine of abstract concepts, and the
absolute distinction he makes between “Begriffe " and
“Vorstellungen" is the basis for the most fundamental dif-
ferentiation of ideal and real grounds. While knowledge of
* “Vierfache Wurzel,” p. 163, § 43.
* Cf. § 29.
45
the latter is immediate and intuitive, the former are dis-
coverable in the norms and laws of formal logic. But since
logical processes are confined to the formal manipulation of
concepts, out of which the intuitive element of reality is
abstracted, they can give no real knowledge. Beside the
categories of formal logic, Identity, Contradiction and Ex-
cluded Middle, there is another class of metalogical truths,
which constitute the conditions of the possibility of all
knowledge, in the broadest sense." These are the meta-
physical categories of dependence, which function both in
the intuition and in conceptual thought. Identity and Suf-
ficient Reason are the typical categories of this sphere.
$48. Sufficient Reason he speaks of as a metalogical truth
par excellence, which functions unlogically in space, time,
causality and motivation. It is not only transcendental, but
logically prior to all the empirical expressions of the Law of
Ground.” Its secret lies hid in that metaphysical knot, th
Subject-Object relation, and we can only come to it through
“ eine Selbst-Untersuchung der Vernunft,” which would
disclose this truth as the condition of the possibility of all
mental life.” Thus is the unitary nature of the law still
retained. Just how Schopenhauer conceives this unitary
metaphysical principle is a problem which, when answered,
will disclose both his relation to the Kantian formulation and
to the question of the logical nature of Sufficient Reason as
a universal postulate.
§ 49. Kant, likewise, had defined the Law of Ground,
which he calls “das oberste Principium aller synthetischen
Untheile,” as metalogical in contrast to the analytic nature
of formal logic. He defines the general principle as one coex-
1 “Vierfache Wurzel,” $ 29.
* Cf. “ Vierfache Wurzel,” $35, where he says: “Daher bin ich in dieser
Abhandlung bemüht, den Satz vom zureichenden Grunde als ein Urteil aufzustellen,
das einen vierfachen Grund hat, nicht etwa vier verschiedene Gründe die zufällig auf
dasselbe Urteil leiteten, sondern einen vierfach—darstellenden Grund den ich bildlich
Wurzel nenne.”
* But ‘‘Könnte das Subject sich selbst erkennen, so würden wir auch unmittelbar
und nicht erst durch Versuchean Vorstellungen jene Gesetze (metalogische) erkennen.”
46
tensive with the necessary “Zusammenhang” of all phenom-
enal reality, as was shown by his very broad formulation of
it." But, as we have seen, he contended that the law was in
essence a logical postulate, developing in the Deduction of
the Categories what was called the Transcendental Logic.
Schopenhauer, however, denies a logical character to this
unitary principle, logic being confined, according to his nar-
row formal view of it, to only one class of ideas, namely,
abstract notions, according to his nominalism, with no
relation to reality.
§ 50. The only unitary characteristic which is present in
all these specifications of the Law of Ground, these “vier ganz
verschiedene Verhältnisse,” is the universal form of time.
Temporal succession is the last term of all experience, the
ever present formal side of every particular expression of S.
R. This identification of the general metalogical principle
with temporal succession comes about in the following way:
Schopenhauer, following Kant, identifies the Law of
Ground with the general postulate of a necessary connection
among all elements of empirical reality, among all phenomena,
and makes it coextensive with phenomenal reality, defining the
relation of subject to object in the Kantian manner.” But
while with Kant the subjective flow of ideas becomes empir-
ical reality by virtue of the Transcendental Logic (which
includes the entire category-doctrine) with Schopenhauer the
unitary principle of objectification is temporal succession
conceived of as a metaphysical transcendental principle.
“Die Zeit ist das Einfache, nur das Wesentliche enhaltende
* Kritik der Reinen Vermunſt, Reclam, p. 155, § 4 : “Ein jeder Gegenstand steht
unter den notwendigen Bedingungen der synthetischen Einheit des Manigfaltigen in
einer mêglichen Erfahrung.”
* “ Vierfache Wurzel,” $ 16: “Unser Bewustsein soweit es als. Sinnlichkeit,
Verstand und Vernunft erscheint, zerfällt in Subject und Object und enthält (bis
dahin) nichts ausserdem ; Object für das Subject sein und unsere Vorstellungen sein
ist dasselbe. Alle unsere Vorstellungen sind Objecte des Subjects und alle Objecte des
Subjects sind unsere Vorstellungen. Aber (so missen wir fortahren) nichts für sich
Bestehendes und Unabhängiges, auch Nichts Einzelnes und Abgerissenes, kann Object
für uns werden, sondern nur in einer gesetzmássigen und, der Form nach, a priori
bestimmbarren Verbindung.”
47
Schema aller Gestaltungen des Satzes vom Grunde.”" For
the Law of Ground to be fulfilled something must always
precede, as cause, or warrant, or motive; and this preceding is
the formal condition for the finding of a Sufficient Reason for
what follows.
§ 51. In finding the universal principle of S. R. in tem-
poral succession, Schopenhauer does not of course mean mere
psychological succession. Kant's criticism of Hume had
shown that mere succession could not be raised to the neces-
sity of ground and consequence. The alternative therefore
is either to accept the logical element, as a postulate thought
into the mere temporal succession, or excluding the logical
element, to raise temporal succession to a metaphysical
principle, and with it the Law of Ground as identical with
succession. This Schopenhauer did, and in so doing made
Sufficient Reason a purely metaphysical law. Two doctrines
naturally follow from this theory:
I. Logical relations are reduced to one of the four
specific forms of succession, and made only one of the four
principles of ground.
2. Since the knowledge of these phenomenal manifesta-
tions of S. R. is not obtainable through logical reasoning,
that is in the application of logical postulates to empirical
reality, some new principle of knowledge other than logical
must be sought. This necessity Schopenhauer's theory was
able to meet by means of his doctrine of “Intellectuelle
Anschauung.” In intuiting ideas in their temporal succes-
sion we intuit likewise their necessary relations either as
cause and effect, as motive and will act, as ground and con-
sequence. In this doctrine of the intuition of grounds and
consequences, we have the necessary outcome of Schopen-
hauer's theory of Specification.
§ 52. All the elements of Schopenhauer's theory are now
* Vierfache Wurzel, §§ 46; 143. And again $52, he calls it : “Der immanente
Keim aller Dependenz, Relativität, Instabilität und Endlichkeit in unserem subject-
object befangenen Bewustsein . . . . welche das Christentum mit richtigem Sinn die
Zeitlichkeit mennt.”
ſ
|
48
before us. On the one hand, the empirical manifold of the Law
of Ground, in so far as it is entirely empirical is reduci-
ble to the one common term of temporal succession. This
common element, empirically considered, contains no princi-
ple of determination, however, other than psychological
necessity. The peculiar necessities of the three different
spheres of Causality, Space and Time and logical relations,
are only explainable as expressions of one metalogical or
ontological principle of determination, which is the Subject-
Object relation itself. This identification of the metalogical
Sufficient Reason with temporal succession is only explaina-
ble in the light of the general metaphysical system of which
Schopenhauer's peculiar doctrine of S. R. is an element.
The phenomenal objectification of the Ontological Will,
which is at the same time the origin of the world and of the
knowledge of the world, is in its first stage temporal succes-
sion, and this temporal succession is the logical prius of the
particular necessities of the different spheres of the mani-
festation of this primal law. The phenomenal objectifica-
tion is Sufficient Reason as a metalogical principle. This
much of Schopenhauer's Ontology is sufficient to make clear
the relative place of the logical Law of Ground and of the
causal axiom in his theory.
In that Sufficient Reason is at the same time the principle
of the phenomenal objectification and of the knowledge of
that objectified phenomena; knowledge and reality are the
same process. “Die Welt ist meine Vorstellung,” “Object
für das Subject sein und unsere Vorstellungen sein ist das-
selbe.” Causality is an a priori, not simply regulative, but
constitutive Sufficient Reason of the existence of objective
reality. “Materie ist durch und durch Causalität.”
§ 53. Now Kant had likewise found in the causal axiom,
the Sufficient Reason of phenomenal reality—the law of the
binding together of phenomena, but as an axiom of knowl-
edge the causal principle was conceived to be partly a logi-
cal postulate. The logical deduction of the categories aims
to show that though transcendental, they are yet logical in
49
their essence. This reflective theory of the movement of
Sufficient Reason in the temporal flow of phenomena, de-
scribed by Kant in the ‘‘Deduction,” was constructed,
Schopenhauer maintains, ‘‘um innerhalb der Transcendental
Logik zu bleiben.”’’ This logical standpoint Schopenhauer
abandons.” Since objective reality and the knowledge of that
reality are the same, a unitary movement of Sufficient Reason
in the causal principle, the reflective logical element in the
principle of ground is discarded as superfluous, and in its place
is substituted a unitary non-reflective function called the “ In-
tellectuelle Anschauung.” This Intellectual Intuition then,
as an immediate perception of the relation of ground and
consequence in reality, independent of reflection and logical
thought, is a necessary mysticism growing out of the identi-
fication of the reality of objective existence and its relations
with the necessity of the knowledge of that reality. As a
consequence, the whole Kantian attempt to show (in the
psychological Subjective Deduction) how the postulate of
logical thought necessity may combine with sensational
reality in a transcendental material judgment is vain. In
the Intuition we have reality and intellectual necessity at
the same moment.”
§ 54. This identification of the modal categories of reality
and necessity which Kant had distinguished so carefully, is
typical for the whole standpoint, and follows logically from
* Appendix, “Welt als Wille, &c.” Haendel, p. 36.
* König, (AEntwickelung des Causal-Problems,” Vol. II, page 32), makes the
criticism that the general principle of Ground is developed merely as a formula for the
whole sphere of ideas. Since a Deduction of the law fails both for the general law
itself and for the particular cases of the law, it can be looked upon only as an empty
formula for a number of incommensurable relations. This must necessarily follow if
the essence of the principle, its logical element, is discarded.
* “Pie Welt als Wille, &c.” Haendel, p, 17. “Daher auch erregt die anschau-
liche Welt, so lange mann bei ihr bleiben steht, im Betrachter weder Skrupel noch
Zweifel; es geibt hier weder Irrthum noch Wahrheit; Diese sind ins Gebiet des
Abstracten, der Reflexion gebannt. Hier aber liegt für Sinne und Verstand die Welt
offen dar, giebt sich mit naïver Wahrheit für das was sie ist, für anschauliche Vor-
stellung, welche gesetzmássig am Bande der Causalität sich entwickelt.”
5O
his metaphysics. It is the complete negation of the criti-
cal standpoint, which has as its chief problem the deter-
mination of the relation of the logical to the material elements
in the Law of Ground. The critical balance of Kant, is
overthrown in favor of a metaphysical dogmatism.
§ 55. Schopenhauer's doctrine of Sufficient Reason was
intended to make clear in a technical and scientific way, what
his entire philosophical attitude continually implied, namely
the insignificance of logical reflection in our knowledge pro-
cesses. Theoretical logical necessity, he is continually
announcing, is but the appearance, the shine of knowledge.
The direct intuition in which no contradictions appear is the
only real source of truth. Aside from the general weakness
of a position such as this, which invalidates the entire logical
concatenation of his own system, we are interested chiefly in
understanding what, from the standpoint of development,
results for our special problem of the Law of Ground, by
such a negation of the logical Consciousness.
§ 56. If we keep in mind the general trend of our study—
that Post Leibnitzian thinking displays an interaction and
often struggle between the logical and metaphysical motives,
both prominent in Leibnitz's formulation of Sufficient Reason,
and secondly that the Crusius-Kantian movement represents
a development of the metaphysical motive, it will be clear
that Schopenhauer's modification of the Kantian philosophy
is the extremest possible putting of the anti-logical tendency.
The logical consciousness is reduced to a minimum of range
and value. Logic is only formal and, in that it deals only
with nominalistic concepts, mere shadows of the real, it has
only symbolic value. Not only is the essential logical nature
of the Law of Ground denied—but logic ceases to be even an
essential side of the Law.
* Thus in his “Aritié der Kamtischen Philosophie,” “Alle diese Umstände (die
Begriffe Möglichkeit, Ummöglichkeit) daher stammen keineswegs aus einer Geistes
Kraft des Verstandes, sondern entstehen durch den Conflict des Abstracten Erkennens
mit dem Intuitiven wie man gleich sehen wird ”—and again on p. 161, “Demgemäss
ist alles Wirklich zugleich ein Notwendiges und in der Realität zwischen Wirklichkeit
und Notwendigkeit ist kein Unterschied und eben so keiner zwischen Wirklichkeit
und Möglichkeit.”
5 I
§ 57. This very radicalism of Schopenhauer's doctrine
makes it of particular value in the present study—as a crucial
and turning point—so to speak, in the development of the
principle under consideration. For what is the Law of
Ground, if not a knowledge principle—and what is a knowl-
edge principle if not in some way connected with the logical
consciousness, and its reflective processes. Again the notion
of Sufficient Reason is in contradiction with the idea of
knowledge in a unitary Intuition. The relation of ground
and consequence, implies the analytical severance of two
distinct elements, the ground and the consequence. This
analytical abstraction must necessarily result in thinking the
ground and consequence conceptually. As Kant says, “Die
einfachen Elemente der Anschauung liegen völlig ausserhalb
der Sinnlichkeit und sind conceptual.” The concept of
Intellectual Intuition and the relation of ground and con-
sequence are therefore absolutely contradictory ideas, for
the latter relation is analytical as succeeding thinking fully
demonstrated, while intuition describes a movement of con-
sciousness unitary and synthetic, in which no differentiation
of parts arise. Kant then did well in remaining “innerhalb
der Transcendental Logic”*—that is in extending his concept
of the logical consciousness to include Sufficient Reason—
and it cannot be a matter of wonder that he was almost
scornful in his condemnation of Eberhardt’s doctrine of “In-
tellectuelle Anschauung” as destructive of all critical think-
ing. Schopenhauer's negation of the logical consciousness,
and formulation of Sufficient Reason as a process of metalog-
ical Intuition is a mysticism which may be very properly
called the reductio ad absurdum of the anti-logical, metaphy-
sical tendency in the history of the Principle.
* Cf. Note, page 41.
*Appendix “Welt als Wille & Vorstellung,” p. 36.
52
CHAPTER V.
THE CONFLICT BETWEEN THE METAPHYSICAL AND LOGI-
CAL DOCTRINES OF SUFFICIENT REASON.
§ 58. Schopenhauer's formulation of Sufficient Reason
received the preceding full treatment in view of the fact that
in several important respects it stands as typical for the
whole movement from Leibnitz on, and secondly because it
contains the best expression of the contradiction out of
which the modern logical theory arose as necessary conse-
quence.
§ 59. Looking backward, it may not be too much to say
that this classical formulation stands as a reductio ad absur-
dum of the principle which characterized the preceding
movement. For Schopenhauer's doctrine is the most con-
sistent answer to the Leibnitzian demand that a Principle of
Sufficient Reason be found for empirical reality that should
lie outside the sphere of logic. Leibnitz had in mind a Law
of reality itself—and identified Sufficient Reason with
causation, but there was also implicit in the idea of Sufficient
Reason, a notion of a new principle of Knowledge of empirical
reality other than the logic of concepts. But if we assume
a causal law in reality independent of our knowledge,_our
knowledge of that causal relation can come about alone in
one of two ways, either through logical thought, or through
immediate intuition of these causal relations. This contra-
diction made itself felt immediately in the successors of
Leibnitz. Already Wolff champions the logical formulation
of the law, while Crusius leans toward a view, according
to which our knowledge of causal and will relations is of an
unlogical nature, although he does not come to a clear form-
ulation of the nature of that knowledge. Kant again made
a synthesis of the two sides, in that instead of the simple
“sufficiency" of Leibnitz he demanded a determinism for
53
A
our knowledge of empirical reality, but not the determinism
of formal logic. In its place enters a doctrine of a Transcen-
dental Logic in which the intuitional and conceptual elements
are critically balanced. This temporary balance was neces-
sarily disturbed by the succeeding movements, the Hegelian
movement falling back upon the formal side of Kant's Tran-
scendental Logic, Schopenhauer taking the intuitional side
to the exclusion of the logical conceptual element. In that
the Sufficient Reason of empirical reality is given directly
and immediately in the sense intuition, is the Leibnitzian
demand first consistently answered—the demand that the
principle of empirical knowledge lie outside the conceptual,
logical sphere.
§ 60. But in that this stage is reached, is the impossibility
of such an answer evident. For the doctrine of an imme-
diate intuition of the empirical Sufficient Reason, once
clearly formulated, proves itself to be in direct contradiction
to the idea of the relation of ground and Consequence—as
Kant already protested against Eberhardt, and as fully
pointed out in the case of Schopenhauer. This contradictio
an adjecto in the conception of the intellectual intuition of
the ground and consequence is the reductio ad absurdum,
which shows us the impossibility of a relation of ground and
consequence other than logical.
§ 61. After Schopenhauer a marked change is evident
in the attitude of thought to our principle, a change which
appears as a historically and logically necessary Consequence
of the failure of the first movement. This change is in the
direction of a logical formulation of Sufficient Reason, not
logical in the sense that it is subordinated to the Principles
of Identity and Contradiction, as with Wolf, but rather in
that it becomes the basal principle of logic to which the laws
of Identity and Contradiction are subordinated. In this
movement two stages may be distinguished : I. The struggle
between metaphysics and logic, as represented in Herbart
and Trendelenburg, and 2) the completed formulation of the
law as basal principle of logic in Sigwart and Wundt. The
\
54
most obvious motive to such a return to a logical view of
Sufficient Reason, is the recognition of the impossibility of
any other than a logical conception of the relation of ground
and consequence. An unusually strong motive is the appear-
ance of a distinct trend toward scientific method in Philoso-
phy. The logical possibility of the relation of cause and
effect, and the possibility of a unity of the “thing” among
its many attributes, these are the metaphysical problems
which most concern science.
HERBART.
§ 62. It becomes then the problem of a theory of knowl-
edge, in touch with the new scientific consciousness, to
subject the fundamental concepts of science to critical analy-
sis. We are led here with to a new attitude and a new
method in philosophy—which makes itself immediately felt
in the new turn given to the formulation of Sufficient
Reason in Herbart's thinking. This may be described
briefly as a conflict between a logical and metaphysical form-
ulation, in so far as the Law of Ground is concerned.
Protesting against a certain formalism and abstraction in
the Kantians, according to which general a priori laws of
empirical thought, a sort of mechanism, are set over against
the concrete activity of mind upon concrete problems of
scientific thought, Herbart sets himself immediately to the
solution of the problem of the relation of ground and conse-
quence as such. The Methodologie or the first part of his
Metaphysié, is concerned entirely with the Principle of
“Sufficient Reason,” the third chapter of which he begins
with this sentence: “Die erste aller Fragen für den welcher
durch Speculation sein Wissen erweitern wollte war unstrei-
tig die; wie folgt Eins aus dem Anderen P Was ist ein
Grund? Was heissteine Folge?”
§ 63. He finds, in answering these questions, that formal
logic has failed entirely to show how the relation of ground
and consequence is thinkable, since it contains the contra-
diction of assuming that its concepts are definitely determined
55
quantities, and yet demands in the Law of Ground that
the consequence be something new, else it does not consti-
tute a widening of knowledge. But if the consequence is
new, it was not contained in the definitely known concept,
called the ground. Thus the principle of ground must as a
method of widening our knowledge lie outside the formal
logic of definite concepts." This, however, is nothing more
than the Kantians had discovered, but their substitutions in
place of the failure of formal logic are equally unsatisfactory
to Herbart. First of all, the Law of Ground was sup-
posed to be explained when a certain number of a priori
subjective forms were shown to be the logical pre-supposi-
tions of all experience, but this is a subjectification of the
problem which Herbart will not allow, and likewise an un-
warranted generalization, for the problem of ground and
consequence is always the question of definite empirical rela-
tions, of the possibility of one element being thought the
ground of the other, and any attempt to deduce these formal
relations in experience from a priori knowledge forms leads
to blindness in regard to the problems of each particular
relation.” The problem of knowledge is not how according
to the nature of our knowledge functions, it is possible for
us ilberhaupt to know, but rather is the world of experience
given us in its complex of form and content, and this we
must so reconstruct as to make it rational.”
§ 64. Equally true is it that the “Intellectuelle Anschau-
ung’’ fails to answer the problem. Immediate intuition
cannot give the evidence which belongs to relations of
ground and consequence. To be sure it gives us ideas and
relations, which we must hold fast to, although logic
threatens to abandon them, but we cannot fall back upon the
sloth of “ diesen Schwärmern’’ who will not think the prob-
lem through but claim that the relation of ground and
consequence is given in the “Anschauung.” “ The contra-
* Herbart's Complete Works, edited by Kehrbach. Vol. VIII, 3166, p. 15.
* Complete Works, Vol. VIII, p. 22.
* Complete Works, Vol. VIII, p. 18. * Complete Works, Vol. VIII, #185, p. 38,
56
dictions which arise in the immediate intuition must be put
aside by logical thought." Historically, Herbart had in mind
in these introductory criticisms, besides Kant himself, the
logical rationalism of Hegel and the Intuition theory of
Schelling's Natural Philosophy, but if Schopenhauer had
been a ruling thinker of the time, his intuitional view of the
relation of ground and consequence would not have escaped.
§ 65. The failure of all these thinkers, he continues, has.
been that they have invariably assumed the possibility of the
relation of ground and consequence; and this has been the
root of so many profitless generalizations.” An analytical
study of the logical possibility of the relation itself is the
first step, and from this the conclusion is reached that the
principle of Sufficient Reason is first of all a subjective
postulate arising out of a contradiction between the intuition
and our concepts already developed—a postulate which de-
mands the removal of these contradictions and may be
expressed as a demand for a contradictionless whole of expe-
rience.” The possibility of the satisfaction of this impulse,
of the solution of these contradictions, lies in the possibility
of so extending the meaning of the general concept as to
make a new ground, a new complex of ideas in which the
contradictory element of experience may be seen to be con-
tained. This concept of the solution of the contradiction
between ground and consequence, by widening the ground,
is further developed in his so-called “Methode der Bezieh-
ungen” of which it is necessary for us to get some notion.
§ 66. While Herbart, recognizing the contradiction in-
volved in the subsumption of the Law of Ground under
the norms of formal logic, denies the sufficiency of the latter,
he yet recognizes in the demand of Sufficient Reason for
a contradictionless whole of experience, an essentially
*Complete Works, 3 192, p. 46.
* Complete Works, Vol. VIII, p. 414.—“Meine Untersuchung,” he says in his
reply to the criticism of Prof. Brandis, “stellt aber die ganze Moglichkeit dass es
ilberhaupt Gründe geben könne, von vorn herein in Zweifel ; und hier wenn irgendwo,.
ist, meines Erachtens, Zweifel der Weisheit Anfang.”
* Complete Works, Vol. VIII, p. 23.
57
logical nature. The problem of his analysis is so to investi-
gate the possibilities of logical relations, so to widen the
notion of logical ground, one might say, as to make the
relation of ground and consequence a logical possibility.
Since the contradiction arises out of the relation of the con-
crete particular to the abstract concept, the first problem is
that of the relation of the two. This is, according to his
theory, purely nominalistic. General concepts are but
short-hand registers for the real, by means of which the
“manifold " of the given may be grasped in a unity." Formal
logic can, therefore, of necessity give only schematic rela-
tions, in which the manifold of the real cannot be contained
without contradictions. But in that these concepts are only
symbols they may be changed to suit the requirements of
the particulars with which they are in contradiction. The
laws of formal logic remain their only governing principles,
under the more primal postulate which includes all of expe-
rience, for the material side has as its problem the continu-
ous widening of the general concepts to meet the require-
ments of particular experiences, in order that a logic of
concepts may be a logic of reality.
§ 67. Instead of the principle of Subalternation which
determines this relation in formal logic, in the broader view
of logical necessity which this doctrine of Sufficient Reason
compels, a new principle must be sought. This, the “Meth-
ode der Beziehungen,” consists in so widening the concept
by adding elements, that the consequence may be seen to be
necessarily contained in it.” This proceeds by chance sug-
gestions, “Zufällige Ansichten,” that is of new possibilities
which lie hidden in space and number relations which serve
* Complete Works, Vol. VIII, p. 15.
* Complete Works, Vol. VIII, §§ 174, 175. Especially the example of the solu-
tion of the Pythagorean problem of the right-angled triangle (by dropping a perpendic-
ular upon the hypotheneuse, by means of which the concept of the right-angled
triangle together with the added concepts developed by the dropping of the perpendic-
ular, form the zwhole ground of the consequence that all the angles equal two right
angles) shows the nature of the process, and is in itself proof against the Schopen-
hauerean theory that ground and consequence are here found by means of Anschauung.
58
as a means of helping on the deduction. “ Diese Kunst-
griffe enweitern den Grund aus welchem die Folge hervor-
gehen soll." The conclusion, which is the matter of great
importance for an historical study, is simply this: that the
ground is never one definite concept but a changing com-
plex of concepts, a system, the dependence of one concept
from another being the necessity out of which the norms of
formal logic get their material. The Law of Ground is there-
fore an immanental law of all conceptual interdependence,
and as such the presupposition of the analytical laws of Iden-
tity and Contradiction.
§ 68. When this theory of Sufficient Reason is con-
trasted with the Kantian point of view the most striking dif-
ference is found to lie in the fact that while the latter, to
escape the contradictions and insufficiencies of formal logic,
is driven to a metaphysical formulation, in which the logical
nature of the law is recognized only as a transcendental ele-
ment, with Herbart these same difficulties of formal logic
are overcome without deserting for a moment the logical
point of view, but merely by broadening the notion of logical
dependence and by the introduction of the concept of a
“widened ground.” This difference is likewise reflected in
Herbart's energetic protest against the point of view which
assigns to the judgment of ground and consequence a Syn-
thetic rather than analytic nature. The analytic of formal
logic is continued in the analytic by means of which the
immanental relations in the larger ground are discovered,
and by means of which the contradiction is solved, for this
analytical process must occur as often as our attempt to
fasten a relation in thought develops contradictions. In his
second letter in reply to Brandis' criticisms” he points out
that it is not the judgment of relations of ground and con-
sequence that is synthetic, but only the immanental depen-
dence or Zusammenhang which underlies this judgment. The
judgment of ground and consequence is itself analytical.
* Complete Works, Vol. VIII, p. 25.
* Complete Works, Vol. VIII, p. 36.
* Complete Works, Vol. VII, Appendix; also p. 45, § 191.
59
§ 69. The second division of our exposition is the applica-
tion of this theory of Sufficient Reason to reality itself, or a
consideration of the third “Forderung einer Methodologie,”
that it shall be able to return from its reflexions again to the
Given." That is, the “Methode der Beziehungen” must be
applied in general to a consideration of those chief forms in
which phenomena manifest their “togetherness,” to the
typical complexes of the “Schein,” to see by the abolishing
of contradictions “vie viel Hindeutung auf Sein’” there is.”
Now the source of these particular contradictions, according
to the basal metaphysical principle of Herbart's system, is
the necessary contradiction between the unity and indepen-
dence of real being, and the relativity of empirical phe-
nomena. The fundamental concepts of this latter phenomenal
sphere are necessarily full of intuitional sense elements, or
better expressed, psychological in their immediate origin.
It is the working over of these concepts, in order to free
them from the contradictions that arise out of these con-
ditions of their origin, that constitutes the main problem of
philosophy. It is therefore not in immediate real relations
but in the possible to thought that final reality is to be found.
§ 70. We are not so much interested in the “working
over” of the particular concepts of Causality, Substance,
and Inherence, as in the rôle which the Law of Ground plays
in this connection. The characteristic feature of Herbart's
concept of logical thinking, and of the function of Sufficient
Reason is that these are not confined to particular logical
schemata such as the syllogism or the hypothetical form, but
the consequence is conceived as springing rather from an
indefinite and complex system of concepts, the “widened
ground.” This complex and phenomenalistic relation of
ground and consequence, corresponds then to the complex
relativity of empirical phenomena, as we have it expressed
in the empirical concepts of Causation, Inherence, &c. The
analytical working over of these latter concepts, until they
* Complete Works, Vol. VIII, p. 14.
* Complete Works, Hartenstein, Vol. III, p. 44.
6O
express the logical relation of ground and consequence with-
out contradictions, is therefore the goal of Sufficient Rea-
Son. The relation of ground and consequence shall like-
wise make the relations in the real understandable that all
real Connections may be seen to depend upon the logical
relations of ground and consequence.
§ 7 I. In the working out of this new and modified ration-
alism it is seen that the concepts of Inherence and Causation
inevitably carry thought from the appearance to the meta-
physical ground of the appearance." Especially the causal
concept, as the result of this analytical determination by the
“Methode der Beziehungen,” loses the empirical signifi-
cance which distinguishes it from the logical law of ground.
Causation as a phenomenon of succession belongs entirely to
the sphere of appearance. Real happening and the neces-
sity involved in it are conceivable only as metaphysically de-
termined.” The application of the logical law of ground and
consequence to experience led Herbart to the belief that all
thinking concerning phenomenal relations, according to its
principle, must consist in metaphysical constructions. The
“Sufficient” Reason of the real is again identified with
causality. The idea that the empirical as well as the meta-
physical concept of causality might be an expression of the
law of ground did not find a place in his thinking. The ideal
of a contradictionless whole of thought as his ideal of Suf-
ficient Reason led him into ontology.
$72. Professor Brandis in his critique properly asks, can
we consider that, after this method of Relations has done
away with all contradictions, we have actually come “iiber
die ratio cognoscendi hinaus?” Can it be said that by reliev-
ing the concept of causality of its contradictions we have
gotten to the real inner nature of a particular causal relation?
Is it not rather a “Machtspruch des Denkens” that changes
the logical result into a knowledge of the real as it is? As a
matter of fact, Herbart anticipates this criticism when he
* Complete Works, Vol. VIII, p. 243.
*Cf. König, Æntwickelung des Causal Problems, Vol. II, p. II8.
6 I
says “unsere ganze Abweichung von der Erfahrung besteht
in notwendigen Ergänzungen dessen was sie uns nicht voll-
ständig zeigt.” And indeed it does seem that if a contra-
dictionless whole of experience be the ideal of Sufficient Rea-
son—that if the nature of the principle is that of a logical
postulate, then starting with experience as a basis, whatever
the exigencies of the logical working over of the contradic-
tions involved in that experience develops, must represent
the real. But this involves a tremendous assumption which
no theory of knowledge has a right to make, viz.: that the
logical consciousness can penetrate to the essence of reality.
Although Herbart had clearly before him the two distinct
problems of the logical nature of the postulate of ground
and consequence on the one hand, and on the other the ques-
tion of the application of that logical postulate to reality as
given in experience, yet he did not rise to the point of dis-
tinguishing between an empirical and a metaphysical appli-
cation of the Law of Ground, nor did he appreciate fully
the critical nature of the problem of the limits of these two
extensions. This remained for a later and more developed
stage of logical reflection—as represented by the logicians
Sigwart and Wundt.
$73. It is at this point that the struggle between a logi-
cal and a metaphysical view of the Law of Ground, which
characterizes the Herbartian thinking, becomes prominent,
namely, in the two problems, on the one hand of the nature
of the law and secondly the extent of its application to re-
ality. Arisen as a problem of methodology, defined as a sub-
jective postulate demanding a contradictionless whole of ex-
perience, it is further developed into a complete logical and
analytic method which, without deserting the logical stand-
point, extends in a critical fashion the concepts cf logic to
meet the demands of the material elements, for which formal
logic is not sufficient. In the application of this principle
to the problems of reality Herbart fell back into the ration-
alistic and ontological point of view, to which his theory was
* Complete Works, Vol. VIII, p. 399.
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62
near akin. For in following out this postulate of a con-
tradictionless whole of thought, he was led in the way of
Wolff, that is into the world of the “possible” and not of the
real, for the former alone can be disclosed by the principle
of Contradiction unaided by the limitation of the definite
laws of experience. It remained for a follower of Herbart,
Drobisch, to develop more definitely the logical nature of
the Law of Ground, and for later thinkers, also influ-
enced by him, Sigwart and Wundt, to determine more
critically the application of the law to reality. It should
not be overlooked, however, that Herbart grasped the one
historically important idea, namely, that the Law of
Ground is essentially a logical principle, with applications to
the real, and not a metaphysical law of real relations. Per-
fectly consistently then he distinguishes in the last chapter
of his Encyclopädia, an indefinite number of grounds, in Sig-
nificant contrast to the fourfold division of which Schopen-
hauer made so much.
§74. With the Herbartian School properly closes the
history of Ratio Sufficiens as a metaphysical principle in the
strict sense of the term. Now begins a process of disinte-
gration which makes it somewhat difficult to follow the fate
of our principle. It would be almost impossible, in the
midst of this eclecticism that follows, to give a satisfactory
account of it were it not for a phenomenon which is char-
acteristic of this eclecticism, but of immense importance to
the progress of modern thought—namely, the rise of the
modern “Erkentniss-theoretische Logić.” In this movement
Logic comes to a consciousness of itself and its problems—
of its close relations to psychology, on the one side, and to
metaphysics on the other. And what is still more important
to us, this change arises in close connection with the prin-
ciple of Ground. The Law of Ground as a metaphysical
principle in the hands of Leibnitz, resisted the logical form-
ulations attempted by Wolff and his school, which made it
subordinate to the principle of Contradiction, and passed
over into the metaphysical formulations of Kant and the
63
post-Kantians. But it will be remembered that in the formu-
lations of both Schopenhauer and Herbart there was a
psychological element as well. In Schopenhauer's ideal-
ism this was the principle of dependence among ideas
in the purely temporal association flow of ideas. Herbart's
realism, on the other hand, has its psychological side in the
struggle among ideas to preserve their individuality in their
mutual interference or “Hemmung.” The psychological repro-
duction in these ideas is simply a picture in consciousness of
a like condition among metaphysical reals. But the ques-
tion, how logic shall be related to this principle, has re-
mained in the back-ground. Wolff had looked upon Suf-
ficient Reason as equally ontological and logical, but its
subordination to the Law of Contradiction hid the problem
contained in it. Besides, according to his thinking, the
foundations of logic lie in Ontology as well as Psychology."
With the absolute distinction between form and content in
Kant's critical philosophy, logic became a purely formal
discipline; consequently Sufficient Reason as the supreme
law of synthetical material judgments found no place in his
formal logic. So also Schopenhauer recognizes logic as
only formal, and only as one of the four forms of grounding
—which involves him, as we have already seen, in a puzzling
contradiction. Krug and Kiesewetter continue the formal
tradition of Kant, and, influenced by them, Sir William
Hamilton developed a formal logic upon the same lines.
Under the special influence of Krug, the Law of Ground
and Causation are both subordinated to the more general
terms of “Conditioning” and “Conditioned.” In his
“Discussions,” however, a later work, the Law of Ground
is treated merely as a corollary of the three-fold normatiye
law of logic, Identity, Contradiction, Excluded Middle.”
And again (page 603 of the same work) he demands that:
“The Principle of Sufficient Reason should be excluded from
logic. For, inasmuch as the principle is not material, it is
” “Logica Discursus Praeliminaris,” $88.
*Zogic, p. 62, 63. * Discussions, pp. 160—603.
64
tiſ
only a derivative of the three formal laws, and inasmuch as
it is material, it coincides with the principle of causation and
is extra logical.” In its essence it is not normative but ma-
terial. Likewise Herbart' and his school aim at a complete
diremption of formal logic from metaphysics and psy-
chology, especially Moritz Wilhelm Drobisch.”
$75. Against this formal tendency in Logic, as well as
against the subordination of logic to metaphysics arises the
“Erkentniss-theoretische Logik” with the problem of
following logical forms into their psychological and meta-
physical sources. As especial originator of this movement
we may consider Trendelenburg, whose “Logische Unter-
suchungen” appeared in the first edition in 1840. But
although this work arose as a distinct protest against the
formal logic, (whose neglect of the problems of “content,”
he claims would only be be allowable “wenn die Formen des
menschlichen Denkens iiber die Wechsel—Beziehung in der
sonstalle Dinge gefangen sind, erhoben wären’’”); yet it is
equally in opposition to the existent forms of the metaphysics
of the day as represented in Hegel, Herbart and Schopen-
hauer." As might be expected from the nature of its ante-
cedents, this work does actually have as its main problem a
satisfactory formulation of Sufficient Reason. For it is in
this principle that the boundary line between logic, psy-
chology and metaphysics lies. Formal logic cannot deal
with it alone, because of its material element. If, on the
other hand, the material element be taken cognisance of, it
leads us directly into psychology and metaphysics.
$76. It is at this point that Trendelenburg's critique of
preceding systems aims to show wherein these metaphysi-
cal formulations of Sufficient Reason are untenable. His
own formulations will include, then, only such material ele-
ments—metaphysics and psychology—as the proper under-
* Einleitung in die Philos., $34.
*Introduction to Third Edition of his Zogić.
* Logische Untersuchungen, 3d Edition (1870), p. 17.
*Introduction to Second Edition, 61, 4.
65
standing of the process of knowledge itself demands.
Whether his metaphysical doctrine of ground be tenable is
another question. The problem itself is a new one, and an
important step in modern thinking : Sufficient Reason is the
basal problem of knowledge—therefore of logic; it cannot
be treated alone formally, for it contains material elements;
just these material elements, therefore, must be included in
Our logic.
$76. The problem of the relation of ground and conse-
quence becomes the central point in the Logische Untersuch-
ungen. Critically antagonistic to Hegel's identification of
logic with ontology which, though at first sight it seems to
offer what formal logic fails to give, really implies that
thinking is without real presuppositions and of its own
necessity develops," he is equally critical toward Herbart's
nominalism, seeing no means by which the “Method of Re-
lations” can be more than a formal principle, since there is
no reason why on the basis of this theory the number of ele-
ments in the “widened ” ground should correspond to the
plurality of metaphysical reals, how the solution of a logical
contradiction can be the solution of a real discrepancy.”
Likewise, in opposition to Schopenhauer, he attempts to
find a fundamental place for the teleological element in
Sufficient Reason, as a constitutive element in each of its
mechanical categories, space, time and causation.”
§ 77. Although Trendelenburg's entire work is in a sense
an exposition of the Law of Ground, the requirements of our
historical study, as well as the limitations of space, allow of
but merely a passing glance. His view of logic as a material
as well as formal science leads to a doctrine of Sufficient
Reason which assigns to it likewise a material character.
The real necessity of the ratio essendi and the merely formal
necessity of logical ground and consequence have been either
-absolutely separated or fully identified. Neither of these
*Logische Untersuchungen, Vol. I., p. 38.
*Logische Untersuchungen, Vol. II., p. 397, 399.
*Logische Untersuchungen, Introduction to II. and III. Editions,
66
extremes of Schopenhauer or Hegel is necessary. As
} knowledge includes both thought and being, so this basal
principle of knowledge is equally a real and a thought
principle. The solution of this contradiction between the
Law of Ground as a logical principle, and as real necessity,
is accomplished by a reduction of both to a common lower
metaphysical term which is yet higher than either." This
third metaphysical term rejuvenates the Aristotelean theory
of one primal activity or movement, of which thought and being
are elements. Applied to the concept of ground, the theory
seeks to show that in the complete ground elements of
thought and reality unite to produce the consequence.
§78. While such a metaphysical hypothesis of a “Grund-
thätigkeit,” including both thought and being, is an impos-
sible solution from a logical standpoint, we must carefully
distinguish this hypothesis from the historical motive which
brought it into being, and from the logical working over of
the formal categories which followed as its proof." First of
all the motive which led to this metaphysical theory was
that of finding a basis for a theory of logic which would
include material elements. It was essentially a protest
against a narrow formal view of logical categories, and
claiming material necessity for the Law of Ground, it
sought a widening of the concept of logic. It is not to be
wondered at that a metaphysical theory was close at hand.
And, secondly, the working out of the logical categories,
especially those of modality, developed a phenomenology of
the logical consciousness" which enriched and deepened our
logical insight, a debt which Sigwart fully recognizes. In
the development of this phenomenology two striking charac-
teristics of the logical consciousness and of its fundamental
principle, Sufficient Reason, are brought to light. First,
in that the processes of judgment, of knowledge, are con-
ceived as a wahres Geschehem,” a happening in which real and
* Zogische Untersuchungen, Vol. I., p. 135.
* Logische Untersuchungen, Vol. II., p. 140.
*Logische Untersuchungen, Vol. II., p. 178 and p. 312.
67
knowledge elements are united, the causal interdependence
of these processes becomes a fundamental concept. The
concept of an immanental logical causality of our knowledge
processes, as the last term of S. R., becomes prominent. And,
secondly, this wahres Geschehen, this immanental logic, is
conceived to be teleological in its nature. This is particu-
larly marked in Trendelenburg's theory of geometrical
reasoning."
The necessity which emerges then from this teleological
movement of the Immanental Logic—is itself not a category
of merely formal logic—not merely thought necessity in the
one-sided use of that term, but a necessity both formal and
material,” as the later logicians formulate it, both logical and
psychological.
* Logische Untersuchungen, Vol. II., p. 190, 191.
* Logische Untersuchungen, Vol. II., p. 183.
fy
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68
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CHAPTER VI.
SUFFICIENT REASON AS THE BASAL PRINCIPLE OF
MODERN LOGIC.
$79. Before passing to Sigwart we must notice the con-
tributions of several other men, to the modern logical move-
ment, but only in so far as they have contributed elements,
afterward taken up into the modern doctrines of “Sufficient
Reason,”—for we have to do with the history of modern
logic only in so far as it affects the fate of our problem.
I. First of all—Drobisch'—between whom and Tren-
delenburg, in the different editions of their works, a battle
raged concerning the province of logic, the former always
maintaining the formal side, according to Herbartian prin-
ciples. Though logic is formal in its nature, Drobisch also
maintains that the Law of Ground is the basal principle of
all logical relations, in striking contrast to the preceding
formal logic which excluded it as a material principle. Her-
bart, he says, was the first to recognize the true nature of
logical ground and consequence, for he showed that ground
could never be unitary and simple and thus the full nature
of the relation of ground and consequence exhausted in the
syllogism. Formal logic is as little satisfied with the syl-
logism as an expression of grounding as is material thinking.”
For the relation between ground and consequence in logic
is not that which the syllogism at first sight shows: that
from a simple, already distinct unitary concept a new con-
cept is deduced. That involves a contradiction, as Herbart
showed. The ground is equally in formal logic the entire
interdependence of all the concepts expressed in the syllogism
upon each other. Thus the relation of ground and con-
sequence is synthetical and analytical at the same time,
analytical in so far as subject to the norms of Identity and
Contradiction. But being simply the law of the dependence
* Logić–3rd Edition. Introduction. * Zogić.-3rd Edition. $39.
69
of all concepts upon each other, it excludes the metaphysical
axiom of causation from consideration as an expression of the
Law of Ground in the logical sense." The Law of Ground
is then the fundamental principle of logic to which the prin-
ciples of Identity and Contradiction are subordinate. It ex-
presses itself in all relations among ideas, either immediately
in the logical relations of concepts, or mediately in the
formal relation of ground and consequence in the syllogism,
especially in the hypothetical judgment.
Implied or expressed Sufficient Reason is the basal law
of all logical relations.”
2. Thus is finally reached a clear statement of what Her-
bart had implied and what Trendelenburg had meant by the
idea of the co-existence of the conceptual and material ele-
ments in the ground. That is the concept of an immanental
logic as over against the clearly expressed formal relations
Nº. of identity, is fully attained. A wider extension of the prin-
’7 later in Wundt.
$80. Another principle of importance, not fully attained
S- ciple, as well as a more definite formulation is to be found
in Herbart and Trendelenburg, is finally clearly determined
by Lotze. The problem of the nature of the causal concept as
an aspect of the general Law of Ground was throughout the
history of the principle the most important and yet the most
difficult to determine. All those who answered it in the meta-
physical spirit looked upon the causal judgment as synthetic
and material, without reference to the logical relation of
ground and consequence. Herbart and Trendelenburg, in
bringing the whole principle of ground again into the logical
sphere, are yet not able to determine the proper relation of
the logical element of ground in the causal concept.
A distinction between the logical postulate, and the
empirical elements, both equally present in the causal judg-
ment in germ, exists, however, as a necessary consequence of
the consideration of the causal relation as an application of
the logical postulate of Sufficient Reason. This distinc-
* Logik.-3rd Edition. $39, p. 44. * Logik.-3rd Edition. $57.
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70
tion is first clearly set forth by Lotze, who goes out from the
difficulties in the Herbartian doctrine of this relation; for he
considered that between reals with no quality other than that
of simple “position,” no relation of cause and effect can be
thought. With Herbart and Trendelenburg he is in accord,
in the view that the Ratio Sufficiens consists in the whole
complex of data, and their relations from which the character
of the supervening effect is deducible and in this sense he
defines the Aristotelian doctrine of Štívapus and évépyeta as the
first expression of Sufficient Reason. But he maintains
further, that in the Postulate of Sufficient Reason with which
we come to phenomena we must distinguish between the
general logical postulate of a necessary relation of ground and
consequence in the causal concept, and the empirical suffi-
ciency of a given cause, in bringing about a given effect. This
distinction, one of the most weighty points of his thinking, is
treated fully in his metaphysics and logic, but for a concise
expression, the following quotation from the “Grundzüge der
Metaphysik” will suffice:—“An die Stelle des falschen Be-
griffs der schaffenden muss der der wirkenden Ursache
gesetzt werden. Und dieser richtige Begriff des Causal—
Nexus enthält zwei verschmolzene Principien, das der Ratio
Sufficiens und das der Causa Efficiens.”
The latter expresses the logical postulate of necessity,
the former the empirical sufficiency included in the causal
concept. Here at last is reached a clear doctrine of the
relation of Sufficient Reason to causation, from the lack of
which the whole history of the problem since Leibnitz had
suffered. A more complete development of the distinction
is to be found in Wundt's doctrine which follows in a later
chapter.
SIGW ART.
$8 I. With Sigwart is the place of our Principle in Modern
Logic definitely secured. Following upon the earlier work of
Trendelenburg and Uberweg, as he himself remarks in the
* Lotze, “Grundzüge der Metaphysié,” p. 39.
71
introduction to his Logik," he is enabled to formulate Suffi-
cient Reason critically, to show its place in logic and its
relations on the one hand to psychology and on the other to
metaphysik. I. As a positive result of Trendelenburg's work
Sufficient Reason receives an important place in his logic
together with all its unlogical implications, and as a negative
result of the same work, the line between the psychological
and metaphysical is closely drawn. As the basal law of logic
its formulation is as follows: “Jedes Urtheil behauptet
einen logischen Grund zu haben, der es für jeden Denkenden
notwendig macht. . . . Mit dem Grunde ist die Folge
gesetzt mit der Folge ist der Grund aufgehoben.”
This however is a law which, though universal in logic,
is comparatively limited in its application, for it can apply
only to judgments whose grounds are known, that is concept-
ually determined:—“denn streng genommen ein logischer
grund den wir nicht kennen ist ein Widerspruch, denn er
wird erstein logischer Grund dadurch dass wirihn erkennen.”
2. This primal logical law extends then in two directions into
spheres where the grounds are not all logically, conceptually
determined—in the form of two postulates, closely connected
but yet at bottom different. a. The first is the psycholog-
ical postulate: that no judgment is given without psychological
Aground for its certainty—(not necessity). b. The second is the
causal axiom : that nothing happens in the objective world
without a sufficient cause. It is important to determine the
relation of logical Sufficient Reason to these two postulates
and of each to the other.
$82. a. Evidently the psychological postulate is much
more general than the logical for it applies equally to judg-
ments whose grounds are not known, and to those whose
grounds are known; while the logical, strictly speaking,
governs only the lattter. Subjective certainty, ºº::
Bewustsein,” is the most general term for Sufficient Reason,
* Cf. Logik, 1873. Introduction.
* Logiæ, 1873. §32.
* Cf. also Leibnitz, $21.
72
in that all logical necessity is also subjectively certain, but
there is much more subjectively certain that is not logically
necessary. (Thus the confusion of “Sufficient Reason”
with psychological necessity as we have seen it exemplified
in Augustine, Hume, and to an extent in Schopenhauer.)"
But to the phenomenology of this psychological “Geltung's
Bewustsein’” Sigwart denies metaphysical worth—its phen-
omena must be studied as throwing light upon the logical
consciousness, by developing the psychological laws with
which logical judgments are related. In this phenomenology
of grounding the marks of Trendelenburg are plainly to be
seen—especially in the chapter on the Modal Categories that
follows. But into the detail of this movement of grounding
we cannot enter. While the phenomenology of Grounding
cannot be taken as of metaphysical value, in Trendelenburg's
sense, it allows us to postulate back of logical relations of
ground and consequence, as brought to consciousness in the
formal judgment, an immanental logic of ideas which encom-
passes the whole psychological complex which lies back of the
judgment. So that Sufficient Reason is extended beyond
formal logic to the place of a general principle of thinking.
This is well expressed by Beno Erdmann, who, in general,
repeats the same view as Sigwart, when he says: “Sofern
das Geltung's Bewustsein aus der Gewissheit und Denknot-
wendigkeit besteht ist es durch beide bedingt, durch beide
zureichend begründet.”
$83. b. The second problem is that of the extension of Suffi-
cient Reason outward/y, as a principle of causal fudgments.
This is expressed in the statement that causation is not a
peculiar form of Sufficient Reason, but only a postulate of the
validity of the Principle in an external metaphysical sphere.
Only in so far, therefore, as a relation of cause and effect
allows itself to be expressed in the form of a hypothetical
judgment, can it be said to stand under the logical Law of
Ground. (Here also Erdmann takes practically the same
* Erdmann, Zogić. 346.
73'
position,”) Causation is not an independent manifestation of
Sufficient Reason for the sphere of objective truth, in
the Schopenhauerian sense, for that includes in it the pre-
supposition that causation is the Sufficient Reason of exist-
ence of that objective Reality, which leads to a further meta-
physical construction of Sufficient Reason in an idealistic
direction, as the principle which necessitates the objectifica-
tion of subjective ideas.” It is psychologically certain that
an individual is necessitated to assign his sense affections to
an Outer cause, but it does not follow, that this cause actually
exists either in space or in thought. Besides, that I am not
conscious of producing these causal relations does not pre-
clude the possibility of their being of purely subjective
origin, therefore does not prove that causation is an objective
form of “Sufficient Reason.” The consequence is that we
can not consider causality an axiom of reality but only a
postulate of knowledge. As such a postulate, its relation to
logical ground and Consequence is that of any other a priori
axiom, in the sense that the existence of this principle or of
some particular fact based upon it is used as a ground for
some logical expression of thought. Thus the necessity ex-
pressed by the hypothetical judgment, which is really the
only formal expression of the Law of Ground in logic, is
based upon this axiom which is in every hypothetical judg-
ment either expressed or implied.” In so far as the relation.
of cause and effect is expressed in the hypothetical form of
judgment, it is taken up into the sphere of the necessity of
formal logic.
$84. We are now in a position to distinguish between the
three kinds of grounds developed by Sigwart. There is first,
—the logical ground in the strict sense of the word in the
hypothetical relation of two concepts which says that if one
is true, the other is; if the consequence is proven to be false,
the ground is false also. Only in this sense is the law of
* Erdmann, Logik, 3409.
* Vol. Z. 348. p. 367.
* Sigwart, Logik. Vol. I. p. 211.
74
y
ground an independent law of pure logic, and as such it is
more of the nature of a postulate than of a normative law.
In the second place, that is gound of a judgment which
psychologically brings it about; therefore the entire complex
of consciousness out of which a Judgment grows. This
includes partly, merely psychological association of ideas,
partly conscious comparison according to the logical laws of
Identity and Contradiction; partly the a priori postulates,
especially causation, which is both logical and psychological
in its necessity.
The third source of ground is that to which reality is
attached and which, according to the principle of Sufficient
Reason, is considered the condition of the existence of another
element of external reality, called the effect. A considera-
tion of the mutual relations of these three grounds to each
other would show that the only direct logical expression of
Sufficient Reason is the hypothetical form of judgment, in
that it stands under the law of ground analytically—the
consequence is expressly contained in the ground." All other
forms of judgment are under the law of ground in logical
immanence. That is, the predicate is contained in the sub-
ject. This immanence of the predicate in the subject leads
back, however, to a sphere where the logical necessity is not
clearly expressed, where the full ground is not known, and
the grounds thus become partly psychological. Here the
Law of Ground can only be expressed as a postulate of the
universality of this logical immanence among our ideas. On
the other hand, pushing out from the formal relation of
ground and consequence into external reality we postulate
the existence of what we merely logically express as ground

and consequence. In so doing we have fallen back upon the
causal axiom.” Thus equally in both the inner and outer
direction in consciousness and in what is out of conscious-
ness, is extended, through postulates, the force of the Law of
Ground.
* Sigwart, “Beiträge zur Lehre vom hypothetische Urtheile. (Tübingen, 1871).
* Erdmann, Logiæ, pp. 3OI and 419.
75
WUNDT.
$85. By far the most important modern statement of Suf-
ficient Reason is to be found in Professor Wundt's Logik,
from the second edition of which (1893), the following resumé
is taken. This is true not only because of the extraordinary
fulness with which the problem is treated, but equally because
of the definiteness of the place assigned it in logic, and the
critical acuteness with which the relations of the logical to
its psychological and metaphysical applications are deter-
mined.
It was the failure of Leibnitz, according to Professor
Wundt, that in his conception of the principle, it was con-
fined to empirical truth, to the psychological sphere of con-
fused ideas, thus obscuring at the very beginning of the
history the essentially logical nature of the term ground—and
thus making it identical with the causal axiom, with which
it has only a distant relation." Kant, despite his severing of
the Law of Ground from formal logic, fell into a certain
rationalism, in that identifying the principle with causation,
he deduces both from the hypothetical judgment.” Schop-
enhauer makes the mistake of putting the weight upon the
empirical application of the law not upon its original logical
nature. His method is of the same order as that which
would seek to make Identity in the intuition and Identity
in concepts two distinct roots.” His four fold principle with
its “Intellectuelle Anschauung” must be looked upon as a
metaphysical rationalism; nothing more than a remainder of
the Wolffian logic of reality. Finally any attempt, such as /
that of Hamilton, and later of Riehl,” to bring Sufficient
Reason into logic by subordinating it to the law of tººl
must fail, for Sufficient Reason expresses just those relations
in thought which do not come under the rubric of Identity,
relations of dependence, equivalence, by reason of which the
*Wundt, Logiæ, 2nd Edition, 1693, Vol. I, p. 569.
*Wundt, Logik, 2nd Edition, 1893, Vol. I, p. 590.
*(The same), p. 571.
* Philosoph. Criticismus, Vol. 2, p. 230.
76
worth of the consequence depends upon the worth of
the ground." Thus, “if the angles of a right angled
triangle are equal, so are the sides equal,” expresses, in no
sense, a relation of identity between the ground and the con-
sequence, but a relation purely of dependence based upon
the nature of the reality about which the relation of depend-
ence is expressed. Besides, if the law were equal to identity,
it must read equally “with the consequence is given the
ground as well as with the ground is given the consequence ’’
—a manifest asburdity.
$86. Thus the Lazy of Ground is the most general law of all log-
ical thought, a postulate underlying all thinking as “Satz der
Abhängigkeit unseren Denkacte von einander.” As such it
extends through the entire “Schlusslehre" and is manifested
in all relations of concepts whether syllogistically expressed
or not. This formulation striven for by Herbart and ex-
pressed by Drobisch,” is now recognized by Wundt, but
with the addition that its consequences are further carried
out.” As the general law of the dependence of all logical
thought, Sufficient Reason is not a normative principle, to
be applied in carrying out actual judgments. “Denn es
giebt lediglich dem Postulat, dass der Inhalt unsers Denkens
nach Gründen und Folgen sich ordnen làsse, einen Ausdruck
und es weist daraufhin dass der Schluss eine solche Ordnung
herstelle. Aber die Kriterien bleiben unbestimmt. Sehen
wir uns nun an den einzelnen Beispielen des Schliessens um,
so zeigt es sich dass bald Identität, bald Subsumption den
*Wundt, Logik, 2nd Edition, 1893, Vol. I, p. 570.
* Vol I, p 573.
* Cf. Par. 79 (above).
*(This is a step further than Sigwart, who still somewhat under the influence of
the formal analytical nature of the Law of Ground, confined it formally to the hypo-
thetical assigning the affirmative and negative judgments to Identity and Contradiction.
In the syllogism, the first and second figures were shown to be subject to the principle
of Sufficient Reason. For a complete and detailed carrying out of this principle, that
the “Abhängigkeit's Verhältniss” expressed in Sufficient Reason is the basal law of
all logical forms—compare the work of Dr. Franz Erhardt, Der Satz vom Grunde als
Princip des Schliessens,” Halle, 1891.
77
Grund darstellt.” Because of its not being a normative
law, it will be remembered, Hamilton demands that Sufficient
Reason be excluded from logic, for as a material principle,
it coincides with Causation.” On the contrary, it is just
because it is not a definite normative law, that with Wundt,
it becomes the basal principle of logic, with the normative
laws as presuppositions. As such a general law of concepts,
the Wundtian formulation is as follows: Wenn verschie-
denen Urtheile durch Begriffe die Ihnen gemeinsam ange-
horén in Verhäktniss zu einander gesetzt sind, so stehen
auch die nicht gemeinsamen Begriffe solohen Urtheilen in
einem Verhältniss welches in einem neuen Urtheil Seinen
Ausdruck findet.” "
Here then is a strictly formal expression of Sufficient
Reason which fills the demand of Herbart, which was that
the law of ground be formulated so as to show how new
judgments can arise. It is a more precise expression of what
Herbart meant by widening the concept of the ground, that
a new consequence might arise. It expresses simply the
relation of dependence of concepts upon each other, dependent
not upon the normative laws, but upon the relative worth of
the concepts for each other. Thus the formula y = a + + 6
stands under the law of ground, for the numerical value of y
depends upon the numerical value of ar.
$87. But such a general law of ground of the dependence
of concepts logically upon each other, according to their
logical worth for each other, in that it is a material principle,
depends for its value upon its application to experience. To
what extent then may there be different applications of this
general law according to the material constitution of the
ideas which it shall hold in its grasp P Schopenhauer had
made the mistake of so putting the weight upon the applica-
tion, that he developed absolute metaphysical distinctions
between its four roots, thus reducing the logical form to the
sphere of a phenomenal application; for the universal logical
character, he was thus compelled to substitute an ontological
*p. 317. *Cf. & 74 above. *Vol. I, p. 317.
78
{
which he called metalogical." In contradiction to this Wundt
maintains: “Der Satz braucht die Anschauung zu seiner
Anwendung, aber er ist selbst nicht Gegenstand der An-
schauung. Daher kann man ihn nicht durch Hinweiss auf
den Zusammenhang der Erfahrung erklären; viel mehr isteres,
erst, durch den unser Denken Zusammenhang hervorbringt.”
§ 88. What then are the particular applications of this.
logical law to phenomena P. They are of two kinds. I. The
formal in Mathematics. 2. The Material as expressed in
the different forms of the causal axioms. The more general
law which governs all its applications is that in order to find
expression in the data of the “Anschauung,” it submits.
itself to the material nature of the “Anschauung,” upon
this depends the extent and validity of the application.”
I. The Mathematical Application. Just as this Law of
Ground is the undeducible a priori axiom of all thought in
general, so are the special axioms of mathematics the applica-
tion of the Law of Ground to the concepts of space and time.
The further application of these axioms to a hypothetical
substratum of the natural phenomena gives the physical
axioms.” “Alle Mathematische Operationen gründen sich
also auf Axiome welche Anwendungen des Satzes vom Grunde
auf mathematische Fundamental-Begriffe darstellen.” This
championing of the logical character of mathematical knowl-
edge against the Schopenhauerian doctrine of the “An-
schauung,” rests upon Wundt’s doctrine of the mathematical
relations as the most abstract of concepts (which is fully
developed in the second volume of his Logic, chapter II,
when he abandons the Kantian theory of a transcendental
pure intuition) as so abstract that they are, one might say,
transparent and therefore allow of an application of the logi-
cal axioms, more especially of Ground, without any indeter-
minable remainder. Schopenhauer's doctrine rests upon a
false distinction between “Anschauung” and “Begriff’’
growing out of the Kantian doctrine of the pure “Anschau-
* Cf. 351. * Logik, p. 561.
* Logiæ, p. 571. * * Logiæ, p. 571. * Logiæ, p. 577.
79
9 y
ung.” The only difference between the logic of mathemati-
cal, and non-mathematical concepts, is that in the former the
“Anschauung " is used in a special symbolical way for the
proof of the theories; that is empirical constructions are
called in, in geometry, for the purpose of enabling us to
deduce particular laws from general axioms, (in the sense of
the “Zufallige Ansichten’’ of Herbart and the teleological
geometry of Trendelenburg.) But these constructions can be
said to be a part of the ground only in the particular case
when they are called in as a means to an end. What really
stands under the law of ground in the strict sense is the
deduction according to logical principles.
$89. Over against the complete application of Sufficient
Reason to Mathematics, its application to experience in the
Causal Axiom is such that causation fails to fall together
with the Law of Ground. This failure arises from the fact
that in the particular empirical causal relation “der Hinweis
auf das begründende Denken nicht dargethan ist”—for the
particular causal relations must be found empirically for
themselves. The element of the logical Law of Ground
which is to be found in causation lies in the postulate that
for every real a sufficient cause must be found. This ration-
alistic side of causation alone is related to the Law of Ground.
The arguments of Kant and Schopenhauer both fail to show
causation to be an a priori principle as source of the par-
ticular causal judgments." The complete identification of
causality with Sufficient Reason would only then be allow-
able ‘‘wenn die Ursachen als Prämissen benutzt werden
könnten aus denen ohne Rücksicht auf bestätigenden Beobac-
tungen die Wirkungen zu erschliessen wären.” Causality,
then, has a dual nature—“Darum trăgt das Causal Gesetz
den doppelten character eines Gesetzes und eines Postulates
an sich. Als das Letzte ist causalität Satz vom Grunde.” “ To
this extent then can the logical law of ground be said to
penetrate phenomenal experience—in so far that in conse-
quence of its postulate, phenomena must be looked upon as
"Cf. Sigwart, par. 83. *p. 610. * Cf. par. 80 (above).
e
:
*
8O
|
under definite laws. “Die unverbrüchliche Gesetzmássig-
keit die das wissenschaftliche Causal Gesetz einschliest, ist
eine notwendige Folge jener Beziehung zum Satz des Grundes
die ihm innewohnt.”" This imperfect relation of the Causal
Law to the Law of Ground, manifests itself according to the
material to which causality is applied. For we saw that
Sufficient Reason in general depended upon the Intuition for
its application, so here in its application as causality it depends
upon the nature of the intuition for the character and extent
of its application. a. “In Seiner an wendung auf die Erfah-
rung richtet sich dieser Grundsatz nach den besonderen
Bedingungen welche die Erscheinungen unserem, nach Grund
und Folge verkünftenden Denken entgegen bringen.” Fur-
ther:-b. “Es entspringen so aus ihm die einzelnen Erfah-
rungs Gesetze die sich sámmtlich wieder auf zwei allgemeine
Principien zurückführen lassen, auf das Causal Gesetz und
das Zweck Princip.” Now the application of the Causal
Axiom, with its twofold nature, partly the Law of Ground,
partly that which will not be contained in this primal law of
logic, results in antinomies which show the extent to which
the Law of Ground may force itself into phenomena. These
antinomies are two in number, different according as causa-
tion is applied to the objective world or to the psychological
sphere.
$90. I. The antinomy of mechanical causation in Natural
Science.—This antithesis arises between logical causation, or
causation as the Law of Ground and phenomenal causal
criteria, from the empirical side. The kernel of the causal
thought is the idea of determination or more metaphysically
—of efficiency.” But for this efficiency to be conceivable
naive thought, and ultimately rationalistic reflection, trans-
lates the logical necessity over into the sphere of reality by
demanding that the cause and the effect be in immediate con-
tact, “so that the force of the cause may pass over into the
effect.” Thus, temporally speaking, the postulate demands
that cause and effect be simultaneous. This is the nearest
*Cf. Lotze's distinction, 3 80 (above). *Vol. I, p. 574. "Cf. Lotze, 380 (above.)
81
approach to an expression of this logical element in causation.
On the other hand the study of phenomena shows us that
invariably the cause and effect appear only as successive.
Thus in an early edition of his Logik we find the antinomy
formulated as follows:
Thesis: Antithesis:
(Rational) (Empirical)
Ursache und Wirkung sind | Die Ursache geht der Wirk-
Zugleich. ung VOran.
equally also
Mit dem Aufhören der Ur- | Nach dem Aufhören der Ur-
sache erlischt die Wirkung. sache verharrt die Wirkung.
This antinomy shows how far the Law of Ground pene-
trates reality as the causal axiom. In its pure logical form
it cannot enter but is met by a refusal on the part of
phenomena to conform to its demands. In the modified form
of a partly empirical law it can attain “sufficiency”—that is
sufficient causes may be found, but the absolute determin-
ation of the logical postulate, reality resists. Such a deter-
mination is only possible on the basis of a metaphysical theory
of the phenomenal causal relations being transparent con-
cepts for the application of the logical Principle of Ground
—the postulate of a logic of the Universe. So long as we
abstain from a metaphysic, these antinomies do not trouble
ll.S.
§91. But still more complicated becomes the antinomy
when the Law of Ground is applied to the sphere of psycho-
logical phenomena. Here it is the antithesis between caus-
ality “als Erzeugniss unseres Denkens und unser Denken als
Erzeugniss der natur.” Here we have turned the Law of
Ground upon the phenomena of consciousness, and as upon
any other phenomena, here also it makes the demand that
the relation of the phenomena of consciousness, of the ideas
which make it up be logically necessary. Now if we look at
the ideal content of consciousness, from one side, it will be
* Logik, 1880–83, p. 536.
82
seen that from the standpoint of the theory of knowledge
these ideas in their relations, concept to concept, stand
under this general logical law of Sufficient Reason or of the
dependence of concepts upon each other, for it was in this
sphere that we saw the law in its original form expressed.
Here it will be seen, we have gone out from the results of
the activity of consciousness. But if on the contrary we
look upon psychological life, in its entirety aside from its
value for knowledge, the application of the Law of Ground
must be two-fold, of the nature of an antinomy as in the case
of the application to external reality. For on the one hand
the mere association of ideas, by reason of its connection
with the external world, is subject to mechanical causation ;
to will acts however must be assigned an inner causality, for
they are governed by the teleological principles of purpose
and worth. How then does the general logical principle of
Sufficient Reason relate to these two different sides of the
content of consciousness? Of course, in so far as the assoc-
iation of ideas is governed by mechanical laws, the Law of
Ground is applied according to the principle expressed in
the preceding paragraph, but on the other hand the relation
between the logical Law of Ground and the inner teleolog-
ical causality is of another sort. For this problem Wundt
has a simple, and yet far reaching answer. The primal
Law of Ground and the inner causality are identified. In
other words the inner causality as represented in the higher
apperceptive processes of judgment and will is an immediate
manifestation of the primal Law of Ground. “Für die
Wirkung innerer Kraft giebt nicht eine gewaltige Umform-
ung der natur-causalität, wie in Psycho-physik, Sondern
hier greift die logische Causalität in ihrer ursprünglichen Gestalt
Platz, der Sat3 vom Grunde selbst.” "
With this striking cutting of the Gordian-Knot, two of
the most difficult problems of the whole history of the Prin-
ciple of Sufficient Reason seem to be solved. a. The first
problem of the relation of the logical Law of Ground to the
* Logik, Vol. I, p. 627.
83
causality of the will, which was variously solved, either by
making the latter independent of the logical laws as in
Crusius, or identifying it with mechanical causation as in
Schopenhauer, is now solved by so extending the logical
Law of Ground as to include the logical causality of con-
sciousness which works under the laws of “ends and worths.”
b. The second, more especially epistemological, problem
concerns the relation of this primal logical law and its neces-
sity to the “sufficiency” of the psychological processes which
produce the logical results. Here again the concept of logi-
cal causality is extended to include all these psychological
processes out of which the logical “resultants” arise. Here
again “der Satz vom Grunde greift in ihrer ursprünglichen
Gestalt Platz.” Logical necessity lies alone in the “Resul-
tanten” of these apperceptive processes,” but in that these
results act as the immanental ends of the processes that
precede them, is the whole movement under logical causal-
ity, or in other words the whole apperceptive side of con-
--~~~~~rrºw------ºr 2
-- ********r-rºe,
sciousness is under the Law of Ground. The relations of
cause and effect between “resultant” and the process which
has brought it about, are decided not by equivalence of forces
as in mechanical causation, but by equivalence of values”
Thetween the process which is considered ground and the
judgment which results.
$92. This doctrine of Logical Causality as governing the
whole apperceptive side of consciousness, brings the element
of teleology in the Law of Ground, again strikingly to the
front. The Law of Ground as applied to consciousness and its
content (except in so far as that content is under association
laws) must be applied as a teleological principle, for the
Sufficient Reason that in applying the Law of Ground to
conscious content we go backward from the “resultants” to
the sources, and these “resultants” are judged alone by
* “Zwecke und Werthe.”
* Logić, Vol. I, p. 81. Cf. also the Psychological Law of “Resultanten”—
“Grundriss der Psychologie” (1896), 323.
* Logić, Vol. I, p. 612. Note.
84
their purpose or value for consciousness, exactly the opposite
of the application to mechanical causation. “Zweck und
Causalität springen aus verschiedenen Betrachtungsweisen
derselben Vorgänge"—und “seit die Causalität von dem
Grunde zu Folge fortschreitet, der zweck aber von der
Folge zum Grunde zurück, so sind beide die einzeln mêgliche
Gestaltungen des Satzes vom Grunde.”" The important
point however is, that, although not shut out from the sphere
of causal observation of nature, teleology yet finds the chief
application as a principle of grounding in the sphere of con-
scious processes, either judgments or will acts. One need
only compare this treatment of the teleological element with
that of Leibnitz to see the full meaning of the development.
With Leibnitz teleology is identified with causation, as the
Law of Ground ruling outside of logic; here it is the Law of
Ground ruling as logical causality in Our conscious apper-
ceptive processes.
$93. To the final metaphysical question whether there is
any common term for the solution of this antinomy between
the two sides of the Law of Ground, the mechanical causa-
tion and logical causality as they stand over against each
other in the sphere of conscious processes, Wundt answers
with the hypothesis of a transcendental thinking Will, mani-
fested in this logical causality or apperception,” but as far as
the empirical problem is concerned there remains a perma-
nent antinomy of attitude, for to give one or the other a
ruling place, is to attempt the solution of a metaphysical
problem with empirical means.”
* Logić, Vol. I, p. 612. Note: * Logik, Vol. I, p. 630. * Logik, Vol. I, p. 628.
85
CONCLUSION.
$99. This résumé of Wundt's doctrine of Sufficient
Reason shows the main weight to lie upon its definition as
the basal principle of logic; and then, secondly, in the
critical determination of the extent and nature of its applica-
cation to phenomena—I) to external phenomena in the causal
axiom, and 2) to the actuality of the processes of conscious-
ness; in other words, to the metaphysical and psychological
problems. Here then is a concise and critical determination
of the mutual relation of the three elements most prominent
in the history of the law. These critical results must be
compared with the points of view attained at the different
stages of the development of the principle, if the importance
of its outcome for modern thought is to be appreciated.
Such a comparison, in brief, the introductory chapter
aimed to facilitate. And the succeeding detailed treatment
of the struggle between the metaphysical and logical motives,
out of which the first formulation of Sufficient Reason
arose, and of the final victory of the logical standpoint has, it
is to be hoped, only served to impress upon the reader the
inherent necessity of the movement.
The concomitant development of what has been called
the modern logical consciousness and the corresponding dis-
integration, or at least loss of importance of the metaphysi-
cal motive, it has been constantly maintained, lies deeply
rooted in the necessity of this movement. Only, in such
light, is it possible to understand the meaning of the develop-
ment of this fundamental postulate from an extra-logical to
a fundamentally logical formulation, according to which it is
first of all a logical postulate, with only secondary applica-
tions to the metaphysical real. This logical consciousness
knows no higher -law than the postulate that empirical
knowledge is alone possible by means of conceptual logical
relations, although the bonds of the logical consciousness
have been extended.
86
The satisfaction of the desire for unification can go no
further than the postulate that all phenomena which come to
our knowledge must be under the universal principles of
logic in order to be known. Whether these principles ex-
haust the nature of the reality of these phenomena is another
question. Thus Dilthey, in closing the first volume of the
Einleitung in die Geistes Wissenschaftem, which is concerned
with the history of the disintegration of metaphysics and the
rise of the modern mental sciences, calls attention to the fact
that, by looking backward, we may see that the attempt at a
unitary metaphysical formulation of Sufficient Reason has
been the problem of the whole modern metaphysical move-
ment. The failure to accomplish it has been the failure of
metaphysics in general." This, then, is the meaning of the
giving up of a metaphysical for a merely logical theory of
Sufficient Reason. Only so far as the ground is logically
conceived is it necessary. As material principle it can only
be “sufficient” not metaphysically determining, as Crusius
and Kant would have. The only possible way of grasping
reality, then, is by seeking relations of logical thought neces-
sity in the relativity of experience. Into this relativity
Science, whose ideal is a contradictionless whole of experi-
ence, brings logical method, constitutes an objective sphere
of space, time and causality. The mathematics of space and
time; the various sciences, mental and physical, with their
various causalities, reducible, however, to physical and
psychical, constitute the limits of the function of the
postulate of Sufficient Reason as applied to phenomenal real-
ity. But the element of necessity, common to all these
forms, is just the logical postulate which forms the skeleton
of thought. Those elements, which are peculiar to the par-
ticular applications of the postulate to definite particular
material, are only of the nature of subjective sufficiency, and
not determining necessity. This is evidently the opposite,
in every particular, of Schopenhauer's position, which
* Dilthey, “Einleitung in die Geistes Wissenschaften,” p. 497–519.
87
ascribes to them, not to the logical kernel, the source of
necessity.
With the limits of the validity of this logical postulate in
trans-phenomenal usage, this paper has, of course, nothing to
do. There may be a logic of reality, which is independent
of the laws of empirical knowledge, but in so far as the Law
of Ground is concerned with phenomena, we are constrained
to say, from the results of the foregoing study, that the ex-
tension of the postulate is limited, by the very nature of the
material to which it is applied, to the surface of things. The
postulate of a contradictionless whole of experience, which
since Herbart has been a characteristic definition of Suf-
ficient Reason, cannot be pressed so far as to lead us to seek
the real beyond experience, but can only be extended as far
as the logical element in the experiential laws demands.
The impulse to metaphysical unification, often falsely
identified with the technical Law of Ground, though it
demands rightly a fundamental place in thought must in so
far be subordinated to the critically determined limits of the
material applications of Sufficient Reason, that in the
interests of unity, distinctions so vital, as for instance that
between physical and psychical causality, are not obscured.
This critical standpoint reflection has attained by a long
process of struggle, which it has been the aim of the preced-
ing pages to portray; and such a standpoint is not likely to
be lost. It has been a struggle simply because, in attaining
a standpoint from which the bold logical nature of this pos-
tulate is clearly seen, of necessity, the more subjective postu-
lates, ethical and religious, as well as the metaphysical
demand for unity, have been forced one by one to fall away.
Historically, even until Leibnitz's time, through the Greeks,
Augustine, Descartes and Spinoza, Sufficient Reason had
religious or ethical coloring, as well as metaphysical. The
Leibnitzians, the Kantians, and even the Herbartians, failed to
separate it entirely from metaphysical demands, and to give
it a purely logical self-sufficiency. This the modern logical
consciousness, which is only another aspect of what is called
88
the modern scientific consciousness, has partially attained.
A certain formalism and abstraction cannot be denied to the
process, and the religious, ontological postulates remain just
as strong though separated by the development of our
thought from the logical Law of Ground. Perhaps all these
worth categories might be found to have a “sufficiency”
of their own, and the abstraction by means of which we come
to a critical understanding of the logical Law of Ground,
may only serve to bring the antithesis more plainly to our
consciousness. At all events the critical results cannot be
undone.
THE END.