THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES SCHWEGLER'S HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. HAIiDBOOK HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY BY DR. ALBERT SCHWEGLER. TRANSLATED AND ANNOTATED BY JAMES HUTCHISON STIRLING, LL.D. AUTHOa OF 'TUF. SECRET OF 3IEGEI.,' ETC. My highest wish is to find witliin, The God whom I tiud everywhere without.' Kepler. ELEVENTH EDITION. EDINBURGH: OLIVER AND BOYD, TWEEDDALE COURT. LONDON : SIMPKIN, M.\RSH.\LI-, HAMILTON, KENT, AND CO., I.l.M PKliNTED BY OLIVER AND BOYD, EDINBUKGtt 3^^ CONTENTS. TRANSLATOR S PREFACE, .... PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION, . SKETCH OF THE LIFE OF SCHWEGLKB, I. — GENERAL IDEA OF THE HISTORY OF PUILO SOPHT, .... II.— DIVISION OF THE SUBJECT, . III. — A PRELIMINARY VIEW OF PRE-SOCRATIC PHILOSOPHY, IV.— THE EARLIER IONIC PHILOSOPHERS, V. — THE PYTHAGOREANS, VI. — THE ELEATICS, VIL — HERACLITUS, VIII.— EMPEDOCLES, IX. — THE ATOMISTS, X. — ANAXAGORAS, XI.— THE SOPHISTS, Xn.— SOCRATES, .... XIII.— THE INCOMPLETE SOCRATICS, XIV.— PLATO, .... XV.— THE OLDER ACADEMY, XVI.— ARISTOTLE, .... XVII. — STOICISM, .... XVIII. — EPICUREANISM, XIX.— SCEPTICISM AND THE LATER ACADEMY, XX. — THE ROMANS, XXI. — NEO-PLATONISM, XXII.— CHRISTIANITY AND SCHOLASTICISM, XXIII.— TRANSITION TO MODERN PHILOSOPHY, XXIV.— DESCARTES, .... 11 14 19 22 25 27 30 39 53 58 93 94 123 131 134 137 138 143 146 156 ii?8352 CONTESTS. XXV.— GEULTNX AND MALEBRAXCHE, XXVr.— SPINOZA, XXVII. — IDEALISJI AND REALISM, . XXVIII.- LOCKE, "^XXIX. — HUME, XXX.— CONDILLAC, XXXI. — HELVETIUS, XXXIL— FRENCH ILLUMINATION AND MATERIALISM XXXIII.— LEIBNITZ, . XXXIV. — BERKELEY, XXXV.— WOLFF, XXXVI. — THE GERMAN ILLUMINATION, XXXVIL— TRANSITION TO KANT, XXXVIII.— KANT, XXXIX.— TRANSITION TO THE POST-KANTIAN PHILO SOPHY, XL. — JACOBI, XLL — FICHTE, XLII. — HERBART, . XLIII.— SCHELLING, XLIV.— TRANSITION TO HEGEL, XLV. — HEGEL, ANNOTATIONS, .... I.— GENERAL IDEA OF THE HISTORY OF PHILO SOPHY, .... ir. AND III. — DIVISION AND PRELIMINARY VIEW, IV.— THE EARLIER IONIC PHILOSOPHERS V. — THE PYTHA.GOREANS. VI. — THE ELE.VTICS, VII.— HERACLITUS, VIII.— EMPEDOCLES, IX.— THE ATOMISTS, X. — ANAXAGORAS, XI.— THE SOPHISTS, XIL— OOCRAl'ilH, . Xm.— PLATO, XIV. — ARISTOTLE, XV.— THE rOST-lRISTOTELTAN PniLOSOniY CONTENTS. XVI.- TRANSITION TO MODERN PHILOBOfUY, XVil. — DESCARTES, . XVin. — MALEBRANCHE, XIX.— SPINOZA, XX.— HOBBES, XXI. — JOHN LOCKE, -«. XXn.— DAVID HUME, XXni.— LEIBNITZ, XXIV. —BERKELEY, XXV.— KANT, XXVI. — JACOBI, XXVIL— FICHTE, SXVIII.— HERBART, XXrX.— SCHELLING, XXX. — HEGEL, PAGE 403 404 407 408 411 413 415 416 417 422 426 427 428 428 429 SaPPLEMENTABY NOTES — I. — WHY THE HISTORY OP PHILOSOPHY ENDS WITH HEGEL, AND NOT WITH COMTE, . 446 n.— MR. LEWES'S ACCUSATION OF ATHEISM AGAINST HEGEL, .... 468 III. — PANTHEISM AND PAGANISM, . . 473 IKDEX, ....... 477 TEANSLATOR'S PEEFACE. THE reader will readily understand that this transla- tion is a work of gratitude. The assistance of this little book to the student of Philosophy I have elsewhere pronounced 'indispensable;' and this is the result of a genuine experience. The resolution being once taken, again, to introduce the work to an English public, it appeared right that this should be effected by a new and native translation, rather than by the mere reproduction of a foreign one. Of the merits of this latter, Mr. Seelye's American translation, I cannot say a word : my transla- tion has been executed without my seeing it, and in absolute independence generally. Perhaps I may be allowed to say this, however, that I am informed by the German publisher that the American translation follows the frst German edition, ' whilst the jiresent fifth edition contains a variety of improvements and additions.' From the same authority, writing some months ago, I learn that ' of the German issue 20,000 copies have been already sold, certainly a rare event in the case of a rigorously scientific book, and the best proof of its excellence.' How this ' excellence ' has originated will be understood at once, when we consider that Schwegler, a remarkably ripe, full man, and possessed of the gift of style, wrote this History, so to speak, at a single stroke of the pen, as, in the first instance, an article for an Encyclopaedia. A first, almost extemporized, draught of this nature usually X TRANSLATORS PREFACE. constitutes the happiest core for a larger and separate work. But originate as it may, the fact of this excellence is certain. The work has been already translated both in America and Denmark ; its sale in its own coimtry has, for such works (as we have seen), been unexampled ; and we learn from Professor Erdmanu (Preface to his Orundriss of the History of Philosophy) that its extraor- dinary success with students has given rise to various imitations. What I have found it myself, I have in- dicated in the opening of the Annotations at page 345. As regards either the translation or the annotation, I know not that there remains anything to be said here. The reader will perhaps dislike the coinage heiint; but he cannot dislike it more than I do myself, and if existent could have served the turn, it would never have happened. This I beheve to be the only coinage, however, and it will be found fully explained in the note on the Eleatics at page 359. Edisburhh, Sepiemler 1867. In this, the second edition, the annotation will be found completed, and an Index added. Prefixed also there is a sketch of the Life of Schwegler, epitomized from the bio- graphical notice of him which, written by his friend Zeller, the illustrious historian of Greek Philosophj', is inserted in the third volume of Schwegler's Roman History. EniNBDRGH, Ftlruary ISes. PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION. ADVANTAGE has been taken of the present oppor. tunity for the introduction into the body of the work of a considerable number of corrections which were found necessary. Some of these it has been planned to signalize here, and one or two others may be at the same time referred to. The phrase ' Gothic dome,' page 154, has been objected to, as itself Gothic, seeing that, in English, dome means cupola, and there is no such thing in Gothic archi- tecture. My reply is simple : In using the phrase, the translator had really not a cupola but a cathedral-interior in his eye, and he sees no reason against extending tlie English dome into the German Dom, — damns, to say nothing of Suifxa, being, presumably, the warrant in the one case as in the other. At page 218, line 18 from top, the two words notions and without will be found hitherto to have accidentally exchanged places. The occurrence and its rectification are very simple matters ; still the former made such con- fusion of the sense that it went far to lead one of our most distinguished metaphysicians almost up to an accu- sation 01 misunderstanding, on the part of the translator, of one of Kant's most common and salient dicta. The Greek phrase translated at pnge 362 by ' the more is the thought,'' perhaps scarcely bears the addition of the article (' (he ') to the noun ' thought,^ v6r)jia in the original xii PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION. being without a to, and Zcller having translated it by Gedanke alone without the so usual der. The 'the,' nevertheless, seems to let in quite a satisfactory light, if at all admissible. I have hazarded the expression, at page 399, that *in Germany the discussion of the order, dates, and authen- ticity of the Platonic dialogues,' will probably settle in the end into Schwegler's ' relative ruling,' ' though not original to him.' I have been requested to explain that such a settlement gets, in the progress of the discussion, less and less likely ; Ueberweg, Schaarschmidt, and others, reasoning cogently against the legitimacy of ascribing to Plato several most important dialogues usually so ascribed. I may remark, in this connexion, that I was lately struck with the strong things said in advance (though not, probably, of Socher in 1820) by the illustrious WheweU, specially of the Parmenides. It is necessary, by a word here on Schwegler's ' His- tory of Greek Philosophy,' to supply an omission in the sketch of the life of Schwegler abridged from Zeller. This work has been printed, since the lamented death of its author, under the able editorship of Dr. K. Kostlin, whose various additions are so felicitously conceived and conveyed ia the very spirit of his deceased friend that it would be difficult or impossible to recognise and distinguish them. This, too, has proved a success, and has been so much relished by Schwegler's fellow-coimtrymen, as to have passed into another (and by Kostlin much improved) edition. I am disposed to consider it an unexcelled work. Schwegler knows and can accomplish the exact to perfection, and the exact is at once full to the fullest, and short to the shortest. Schwegler's exact, indeed, can also be characterized as clear to the clearest. Now, of such exactitude the history in question may be regarded as a perfect specimen. Ueberweg, in reference to the book the translation of which is now before the reader (and since which translation it [1873] counts three more PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION, xiii editions in Germany), may be found speaking of 'the introduction, generally acknowledged to be excellent in its kind, by which Schwegler, too early lost to us by a premature death, rendered an inestimable service to the study of the history of philosophy ; ' and we have already seen in what terms Zeller refevs to his ' gift of style,' and the other perhaps unrivalled excel- lences of Schwegler. Well, in no work ever written by Schwegler can these excellences be found in greater perfection than in this 'History of Greek Philosoi^hy.' It is the story of a man who has long digested all, and gives easy emission to all without the neces- sity of either changing or repeating a word. There is not a word too much, indeed, in the whole book, and not a line that is not intelligible at sight : it is the last triumph of the plainness of ripe knowledge. Plato and Aristotle are here reduced into that easy every-day bulk of common-sense that any hand can grasp. It is this luminous succinctness of Schwegler that extends to him a ready triumph, so far, over all his brother historians. Erdmann possesses a harnessed dialectic of expression that is peculiarly masterly and all his own, but it often escapes the reader by the very attention which for inter- pretation it demands, and his work is at least three times the size of this present book of Schwegler' s. Much the same thing, so far as magnitude is concerned, may be said of Ueberweg's Ground-plan of the history of philosophy, while, as regards style, however excellent, however faith- ful, however careful, be the writing of Ueberweg, it is not the brilliantly transparent, and yet perfectly fuU expression of Schwegler. Nor, on the whole, despite the brevity, can either Erdmann or Ueberweg be said to excel Schwegler in point of matter — discounting the fact, that is, that both the former treat of, what Schwegler does not, the middle-age philosophy, the subordinate followers of the greater moderns, and the post-Hegelian German contributions. The middle-age philosophy cer- xiv PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION. tainly deserves to be known, and the history of schools is at least ciu'ious, but I am not sure, great though some of the names be, that there is much profit to be drawn from what has yet followed Hegel anywhere. For this middle-age philosophy, and for their own merits other- wise, both the work of Erdmann and that of Ueberweg ought to be translated into English, and I am glad that we may soon expect this service, at least as regards one of them, Ueberweg, at the hands of a distinguished American. For myself, I should have been glad to have translated the middle age part of Ueberweg's introduction (as a quite excellent and, indeed, indispensable work), and after that (and what I have already done) I know no German books, on the history of philosophy, which I should be at all tempted to translate, unless the history of Greek philosophy by Schwegler, and, perhaps above all, the his- tory of philosophy by the master himself, RegoL EuiNBUEOH, May 1871. SKETCH OF THE IJFE OF SCHWEGLER ALBERT SCHWEGLER, a Suabian, like Hegel and so many other deeper Germans of late, was born February 10, 1819. His father, a country clergyman, who, with scanty means, did his best for his family, began himself the education of the boy, and subjected him, in general, to a discipline so severe that it left its marks on his character, and was borne in his memory for life. In his seventeenth year, Schwegler, as a student of theology, entered the University of Tubingen. Here he greatly distinguished himself. His intellect was unusually quick, ready, and retentive ; his industry constant, his perseverance iron : he took many prizes, and, where certain essays were concerned, not without the higher compliment of express thanks. His univer- sity career accomplished, though amid many hardships, for his father's death in 1839 left a family, always straitened, in the most pressing difficulties, Schwegler — passing by Munich, Prague, and Vienna — went to Berlin, in the hope not only of scientific but of pecu- niary profit. In this he was disappointed, and, visiting HoUand, Belgium, and the Rhine, he returned home in a few months, to be presently found in Tubingen again, supporting himself as he could by services in a village church, by correcting the press, and by literature. One success in the last capacity enabled him (having qualified himself as a privatlm docens in 1843) to spend some months in Italy, principally at Rome. On his return in 1847, he received the appointment of a Libra- XV xvi SKETCH OF THE rian, and, in 1848, that of Extraordinary Professor of Roman Literature and Archaeology, in the Evangelical Seminary of Tubingen. The literary works of Schwegler are as follows : — His first appearance in print was with an essay in memory of Hegel, in the Journal for the Elegant World (1839). In 1841, he published his prize essay, Montanism and the Christian Church of the Second Century, an excellent work, which had immediate success. In 1842, he criti- cised Neander's work on the ' Apostolic Era ' in the Oer- man, and the 'latest Johannine Literature' in the Theological Year-books. In this last periodical he also wrote several valuable papers after his return to Tubingen. Here, too, he became, in 1843, the editor of the Annals of the Present, and in this capacity wrote many admirable political papers. In 1845, his Post-Apostolic Age was published, and that work was followed by the Clementine Homilies in 1847, and tbo EuseUan Church History in 1852. In 1847 and 1848 we have his Metaphysic of Aristotle, and in the former year the first issue of his Handbook of the History of Philosophy, in the Stuttgart Encyclopaedia. His latest work was the Roman History, which at his death was left incomplete. Of these works, the most important are Montanism, the Post-Apostolic Age, the History of Philosophy, the Aristotle, and the Roman History ; but the tact and judgment, the courage and considerate- ness, the consistent adhesion to principles, the manly ripeness, the truth, penetration, and largeness of poli- tical perception, the clearness, power, and brilliancy of style, the irresistible polemic, which he dis- played as editor of the Annals of the Present, demon- strated that Schwegler had the capacity likewise of becoming a master among Pubhcists. The work on Montanism showed acute intellect and much penetrative power of erudite research ; it gave to think to the most accomplished judges. The Post-Apostolic Age was writ- ten in six months, and this fact, in view of the excel- LIFE OF SGHWEGLER. xvii lence of the work itself (a work not final in its sphere, however), bespeaks that ' ii-on industry, that ease of ex- pression, and that complete mastery of the material, of which, and in an extraordinary degree, Schwegler might justly boast.' The Aristotle is characterized by accuracy and acuteness in selection and correction of the text, by successful interpretation of difficult passages, and by penetrating exposition of philosophical ideas. Beside the commentary of Bonitz it will always retain its own value. Of the ' short history of philosophy' ZeUer tells lis that by its ' spirited, luminous, and easy treatment of the subject it won for itself such approbation, that in the course of ten years three large editions, amounting to no less than 7000 copies, were found necessary,' — a success which, as we know, the next ten years have only increased. It is the Boman History, however, that has most attracted the admiration of experts — an admiration aU the keener for the background of regret over the in- completeness left by the untimely death. Schwegler, it would seem, possessed, and in an extraordinary degree, all the leading qualifications that are requisite in an historian. ' His clear understanding,' says Zeller, ' to which distinct ideas were a necessity, could as little dispense with the terra fiiina of facts, as his vivid ima- gination with the visible shapes of the actual. The collecting of masses of materials was a delightful em- ployment for his learned industry, as their analj-sis for his penetration and sagacity. His power of comprehen- sive siirvey was most specially attracted by the con- sideration, his architectonic talent by the scientific arrangement, his gift of style by the description, of historical situations and combinations.' Accordingly, the Roman History, in its kind, is a work of the greatest ex- cellence. Zeller, in its reference, speaks of such trans- parency, of such complete control of the materials, of such assured insight, of such power of narrative, as must make every one regret to see ' so grandly-planned, so masterly- executed a work, left there a fragment only.' B xviii LIFE OF SCHWEGLER. At school, Schwegler was a quick, lively, kindly boy, docile, attentive, and industrious. As a youth, he was impetuous, generous, and high-spirited, proud, indignant at successful baseness, and eager for the truth. His, however, was a precocious nature, and in manhood he was already old. The disappointments of the world had soon set in, and he was withdrawn into silence and reserve. Still, within that cold and hard exterior, beat one of the warmest and softest of hearts. We have the evidence for this in his early friendships, in his filial and brotherly affection, and in his love for children. The first look of Schwegler gave what was harsh in him ; thickset, and above the middle height, there was a gloomy expression over his eyes ; he was strongly jawed also, and his mouth was severely closed. The yellowish hue of the smooth-shaven face contributed to the same effect. Otherwise, however, Schwegler's fea- tures were good. There were blue eyes and a fair- arched forehead under his light-brown locks. His nose was fine and regular ; his mouth had eloquence on its curves, and his chin was classically rounded. When the ice was thawed, one saw in him good-nature, — one saw in him humour. Beneath all the apparent pride and bitterness lay love and the necessity for love, the longing for sympathy, for disclosute. In life he was long un- fortunate, and he died so young. On the morning of the 5th of January 1857, he had lectured from eight to nine as usual ; half-an-hoiir later he was found insensible on the floor of his study, and next day he died. On the 9th, the empty hull was laid in the ground. How fast we flit I HANDBOOK OF THE HTSTOEY OF PHILOSOPHY. HANDBOOK OF THE HISTORY OF FHILOSOrHY. [. — General Idea of the History of PhUosophy. PHILOSOPHY is reflection, the thinking consideration of things. This definition exhausts not the idea of philosophy, however. Man thinks in his practical activi- ties as well, where he calculates the means to the attain- ment of ends ; and all the other sciences — those even which belong not to philosophy in the stricter sense — are of the nature of thought. By what, then, does phi- losophy distinguish itself from these sciences ? By what does it distinguish itself, for example, from the science of astronomy, or from that of medicine, or of jurisprudence ? Not, certainly, by the difference of its matter. Its mat- ter is quite the same as that of the various empirical sciences. Plan and order of the universe, structure and function of the human body, property, law, politics, — all these belong to philosophy quite as much as to their respective special sciences. What is given in experience — actual fact — that, their material, is the material of philosophy also. It is not, then, by its matter that phi- losophy distinguishes itself from the empirical sciences, but by its form, by its method, — so to speak by its mode of knowing. The various empirical sciences take their matter directly from experience ; they find it ready to hand ; and as they find it, they accept it. Philosophy, on the contrary, accepts not what is given in experience as it is given, but follows it up into its ultimate grounds, regarding each particular fact only in relation to a final principle, and as a determinate link in the system of knowledge. But just so it strips from such particular fact — wliioh to our senses seems but a something given— 2 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. this its character of independency, individualuess, and contingency. In the sea of empirical particulars, in the confused infinitude of the contingent, it establishes the universal, the necessary, the all-pervading law. In short, philosophy considers the entire empirical finite in the form of an intelligently articulated system. From this it follows that philosophy (as the thought totality of the empirical finite) stands to the empirical sciences in a relation of reciprocity, alternately condition- ing, and conditioned by them. It is as idle, therefore, to expect at any time the completion of philosophy, as the completion of em])irical science. Philosophy exists rather in the form of a series of various historical philo- sophies, which, exhibiting thought in its various stages of development, present themselves hand in hand with the general scientific, social, and political progress. It is the subject-matter, the succession, and the internal con- nexion of these philosophies which it is the business of the history of philosophy to discuss. The relation in which the various systems stand to one another is thus already indicated. As man's historical life in general, even considered from the point of view of a calculation of probabilities, is made coherent by an idea of intellectual progress, and exhibits, if with interrup- tions, still a sufficiently continuous series of successive stages ; so the various historical systems (each being but the philosophical expression of the entire life of its time), constitute together but a single organic movement, a rational, inwardly-articulated whole, a series of evolu- tions, founded in the tenrlency of mind to raise its natu- ral more and more into conscious being, into knowledge, and to recognise the entire spiritual and natural universe more and more as its life and outward existence, as its actuality and reality, as the mirror of itself. Hegel was the first to enimciate these views, and to regard the history of philosophy in the unity of a single process ; but the fundamental idea, though true in prin- ciple, has been perhaps overstrained by him, and in a manner that threatens to destroy, as well the freedom of the human wiU, as the notion of contingency, or of a cer- tain existent unreason. Hegel holds the succession of the systems in historj' to be the same as that of the cate- gories in logic. Let us but free, he says, the fundamental thoughts of the various systems from all that attaches to their mere externality of form or particularity of applica- ■GENERAL IDEA. 3 tion, aud we obtain the various steps of the logical no- tion (being, becoming, particular being, individual being, quantity, etc.) ; while, conversely, if we but take the logi- cal progress by itself, we have in it the essential process of the results of history. But this conception can neither be justified in prin- ciple nor established by history. It fails in principle ; for history is a combination of liberty and necessity, and exhibits, therefore, only on the whole, any connexion of reason, while in its particulars, again, it presents but a play of endless contingency. It is thus, too, that nature, as a whole, displays rationality and system, but mocks all attempts at a priori schemata in detail. Further, in history it is individuals who have the initiative, free sub- jectivities, — what consequently, therefore, is directly incommensurable. For, reduce as we may the indi- vidual under the influence of the universal, in the form of his time, his circumstances, his nationality, etc., — to the value of a mere cipher, no free-will can be reduced. History, generally, is no school-sum to be exactly cast up ; there must be no talk, therefore, of any a priori construc- tion in the history of philosophy either. The facts of experience will not adapt themselves as mere examples to any ready-made logical schema. If at all to stand a critical investigation, what is given in experience must be taken as given, as handed to us ; and then the rational connexion of this that is so given must be referred to analysis. The speculative idea can be expected at best — and only for the scientific arrangement of the given material — to afford but a regulative. Another point of view which contradicts Hegel's con- ception is this : the historical development is almost always different from the logical. Historically, for ex- \ ample, the origin of the state was the desire of protec- ^ tion from violence and frauil ; while logically, on the other hand, we are to find it, not in natural anarchy, but in the idea of justice. So it is here also : whilst the logi- cal progress is an ascent from the abstract to the con- crete, that of the history of philosophy is almost always a descent from the concrete to the alostract, from sense to thought, — a freeing of the abstract inner from the concrete outer of the general forms of civilisation, and^ of the traditional religious and social conditions in which he who would philosophize finds himself placed. The eystem of philosophy proceeds synthetically ; it J history 4 niSTURY UF I'lULOSUFin. — the liistory of ttought — analj^tically. With greater justice ■n'e may maintain the exact contrary of the Hegelian thesis, and assert that what is first in itself is precisely last for us. We find the Ionic philosophy, for example, beginning, not with being as an abstract notion, but with what is most sensuous and concrete, with the material notion of water, air, etc. Even the being of the Eleatics, and the becoming of Heraclitus, are not pure forms of thought, but impure notions, materially coloured conceptions. On the whole, the demand is futile, to refer each philosophy, according as it historic- ally appears, to a logical category as its central principle, and simjily for this reason, that the majority of these philosophies have for object the idea, not in its abstrac- tion, but in its realization in nature and man, and for the most part, consequently, rest not on logical but on physical, psj^chological, and ethical questions. Hegel ought not, therefore, to have limited the comparison of the historical, with the systematic evolution to logic, but to have extended it to the whole system of philoso- phical science. The Eleatics, Heraclitus, the Atomists — and so far, certainly, the Hegelian logic corresponds to the Hegelian history of philosophy — display such logical category on their front ; but then, Anaxagoras, the Sophists, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle ? Should we force, nevertheless, on these philosophies a central i^rinciple, and reduce, for example, that of Anaxagoras to the notion of design, that of the Sophists to the notion of show (Schein), and that of Socrates to the notion of the good, which in part is impossible ^vithout violence, there arises the new difficulty that then the historical order of these categories no longer corresponds to that which they pos- sess in logic. In point of fact, indeed, Hegel attemj'ts not any complete realization of his main idea, but even on the threshold of Greek philosophy has already aban- doned it. Being, becoming, individual being, — the Eleatics, Heraclitus, the Atomists, — thus far the parallel, as said, extends, but not farther. Not only there follows now Anaxagoras with the notion of a designing mind, but even from the first the two series agree not. Hegel woiUd have been more consistent, had he entirely re- jected the Ionic philosophy (for matter is no logical cate- gory), and had he assigned to Pythagoras a place — seeing that the categories of quantity follow those of quality — o/tpr the Eleatics and the Atomists. In short, he would DI VISION OF THE SUBJECT. 5 have been more consistent logically, had he put chrono- logy entirely to the rout. Resigning this pretension, then, we must content ourselves if, in reproducing to thought the course which reflection has taken as a whole, there exhibit itself, on the main historical stations, a rational progress, and if the historian of philosophy, sur- veying the serial development, find really in it a philoso- phical acquisition, the acquisition of a new idea ; but we shall be cautious of applying to each transition and the whole detail the postulate of immanent law and logical nexus. History marches often in serpentine lines, often apparently in retreat. Philosophy, especially, has not unfrequeutly resigned some wide and fruitful territory, in order to turn back on some narrow strip of land, if only all the more to turn this latter to account. Sometimes thousands of years have expended themselves in vain attempts, and brought to light only a negative result. Sometimes a profusion of philosophical ideas is compressed into the space of a single generation. Here reign no imalterable, regularly recurrent laws of nature ; history, as the domain of free-wiU, will only in the last of days reveal itself as a work of reason. II. — Division of the Subject. ON the limits and division of the subject a few words may suflSce. "Where and when does philosophy begin? After what has been said, manifestly there where an ultimate principle, an ultimate ground of exist- ence, is first philosoiAically sought. Consequently with the philosophy of the Greeks. The Oriental (Chinese and Indian) so-called philosophy (rather theology or mytho- logy), and the mythical cosmogonies of Greece itself at first, fall thus outside of our (more limited) undertaking. With us, as with Aristotle, the history of philosophy begins with Thales. For similar reasons we exclude also Scholasticism, or the philosophy of the Christian middle ages; which belongs (being not so mucb philosophy as rather a reflecting or a philosophizing within the presup- positions of a positive religion, and therefore essentially theology) to the historical science of the Christian dogmas. What remains separates naturally into two parts : ancient (Grceco-Eoman) and modern philosophy. The inner relations of both epochs wiU (a preliminary com- C HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. paiative characterization being impossible without giving rise to repetitions) be noticed later, on occasion of the transition from the one to the other. The first epoch separates again into three periods : I. The Pre-Socratic philosophy (Thales to the Sojihists inclusive) ; 2. So&rates, Plato, Aristotle ; 3. The Post- Aristotelian philosophy (to Neo-Platonism inclusive). III. — A Prelimmar]] View of Pre-Socratic Philosophy. THE general tendency of Pre-Socratic philosophy is this, to find a principle of the explanation of nature. Nature it was — that which is most immediately pre- sent to us, that which lies nearest the eye, that which is palpablest — that first attracted the spirit of inquiry. Under its changeful forms, its multiplex phenomena, there must lie, it was thought, a first and permanent fundamental principle. What is this principle ? What, it was asked, is the primitive ground of things ? Or, more precisely, what natural element is the basal element? An answer to this question constituted the problem of tlie earlier Ionic natural 2)hilosophers or Hylicists. One suggested water, another air, and a third a chaotic prim- eval matter. 2. A higher solution of the problem was attempted by the Pythagoreans. Not matter in its sensuous concre- tion, but matter in its formal relations and dimensions, appeared to them to contain the explanatory ground of existence. As their principle, accordingly, they adopted numbers, the signs of relation. ' Number is the essence of all things,' this was their thesis. Number is a middle term between pure thought and the immediate things of sense. Number and proportion, indeed, have to do with matter only so far as it is extended and divided in time and space ; but still without matter, without something to be seen, there is no counting, no measuring. This advance beyond, or elevation over, matter, which is yet at the same time a cleaving to matter, constitutes the nature and the position of the Pythagorean principle. 3. Absolutely transcending the given and factual, en- tirely abstracting from everything material, the Eleatics enunciated as principle this very abstraction, the nega- tion of any material dividedness in space and time, that is, pure being. Instead of the sensuous i)riuciple of the PRE-SOCBA TIG PHIL OSOPH Y. 7 Tonics, or of the quantitative principle of the Pytha- goreans, they proposed, consequently, an intelligible prin- ciple. 4. And thus there was completed the first or analytic period of Greek philosophical development, in order to give place to the second or synthetic period. The Eleatics had sacrificed to their principle of pure being this mundane existence with all its separate existences. But denial of nature and the world could not possibly be carried out. The reality of both pressed, against their wills, in on them, and they had themselves, though only hypothetically and under protest, been necessitated to speak of them. But from their abstract being they had no bridge, no longer any return to the concrete being of sense. Their principle was to have been an explanatory ground of existence, of the vicissitude of existence, and it was none. The problem, to find a principle that shoiild explain the becoming, the vicissitude of existence, was left but the more urgent. Ileraditus, then, ap- peared now with his solution, and asserted for absolute principle the unity of being and non-being, — becoming. According to him, it belonged to the very nature of things that they should be in incessant change, in infi- nite flux. 'All fleets.' We have here, at the same time, in place of a primitive matter, as with the Ionics, the idea of a primitive living force, the first attempt to explain existence and the movement of existence by a principle that had been analytically acquired. After Heraclitus the question of the cause of becoming re- mained the chief interest and the motive of philosophical progress. 5. Becoming is unity of being and non-being. Into these two moments the Heraclitic principle was by the Atomists consciously sundered. Heraclitus, namelj'', had without doubt enunciated the principle of becoming, bict only as fact of experience ; he had only named, but not explained, the law of becoming : the jjoint now was to demonstrate the necessity of that universal law. Why is the all in constant flux, in eternal movement ? It was evidently necessary to advance from the indefinite unity of matter and motive force to a conscious and de- finite distinction, to the mechanical separation of both. Thus it was that to Empedocles matter became the principle of being, fixed and permanent being, while force became the principle of movement. We have herer'a" 8 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. combination of Heraclitus and Parmenides. But with Empedocles the moving forces were as yet but mythical powers, love and hate ; while, with the Atomists again, they became a pure un-understood and unintelligible ne- cessity of nature. And so, therefore, by the method of a mechanical explanation of nature, becoming was rather periphrased than explained. 6. Despairing of any mere materialistic explanation of becoming, or the mimdane process, Anaxagoras placed by the side of matter a world-forming intelligence ; he con- ceived mind as the ultimate causality of the world and of the order and design that appeared in it. A great prin- ciple was thus won for philosophj^, — an ideal principle. But Anaxagoras failed to give his principle any complete realization. Instead of an intellectual conception of the universe, instead of an ideal derivation of existence, he is found to offer again, at last, only mechanical theories ; his ' world-forming reason ' amounts really only to the first impact, to the motive force ; it is but a detis ex ma- china. Despite his surmise, then, of a higher principle, Anaxagoras, like his predecessors, is still a physicist. Mind did not manifest itself to him as a veritably supra- natural power, as the free organizing soul of the universe. 7. Further progress now is characterized thus. The distinction between mind and nature becomes definitely understood ; and the former, as contrasted with the latter, is recognised as the relatively higher. This was the work of the Sophists. Their action was to entangle in contradictions such thought as had not yet emancipated itself from the objects of sense, from the datum of tradi- tion, or from the datum of authority. In the first, and indeed somewhat boyish, consciousness of the superiority of subjective thought to the objectivity (in sense, tradi- tion, and authority) by which it had been hitherto over- mastered, they flung both elements wildly together. In other Avords, the Sophists introduced, in the form of a general religious and political A ufkldrung (illumination), the principle of subjectivity, though at first only nega- tively, or as destroyer of all that was established in the opinions of existing societj\ And this continued till Socrates opposed to this principle of empirical subjectivity that of absolute subjectivity, or intelligence in the form of a free moral will, and asserted, as against the world of sense, thought to be the positively higher principle, and the truth of all reahty. With the Sophists, as character- EATUAER IONIC PHILOSOPHERS. 9 Istic of the dissolution of the earliest philosopliy, our first period is closed. IV. — The Earlier Ionic Philosoplicrs. T HALES. — At the head of the Ionic physicists, and at the head, therefore, of philosophy in general, the an- cients, with tolerable unanimity, place Thales of Miletus (640-550, B.C.), a contemporary of Croesus and Solon. The proposition to which he owes his place in the history of philosophy is this : ' The principle {the frsi, the primitive ground) of all things is water ; all comes from water, and to water all returns.' This assumption, however, in regard to the original of things, is no advance in itself beyond the position of the earlier mythical cosmogonies. Aristotle, in noticing Thales, speaks of several ancient ' theologians ' (meaning, no doubt, Homer and Hesiod), who had ascribed to Oceanus and Tethys the origin of all things. The attempt, then, to establish his principle in freedom from the mythic element, and so to introduce scientific procedure, — it is this, and not the principle itself, which procures for Thales the character of initiator of philosophy. He is the first that trod the ground of the interpretation of nature on principles of the under- standing. How he made good his proposition cannot now be exactly determined. He was probably led to his hj^po- thesis, however, by the observation that moisture con- stituted the germ and nourishment of things, that it developed heat, that it was in general the formative, life-giving, and life-possessing element. Then, from the condensation and rarefaction of his primitive element, he derived further, as it seems, the changes of things. The process itself he has certainly not determined with any greater precision. Such, then, is the philosophical import of Thales. A speculative philosopher in the more modern manner he assuredly was not, and philosophical literature being yet alien to the time, he does not appear, for preservation of his opinions, to have resorted to writing. In consequence of his reputation for ethico-political wisdom, he is included among the seven sages, and the characteristics which the ancients relate of him certainly testify specially to his practical understanding. It is reported of him, for instance, that he was the first to calculate an eclipse of 10 HISTORY OF PHlLOSOPnV. the sun, that, in order to enable Croesus to cross the Halys, he effected a diversion of that river, and that he performed other similar feats. In regard to the state- ments of later authorities, that he had asserted the unity of the world, advanced the idea of a world-soul or of a world-forming spirit, taught the immortality of the soul, etc., these are to be regarded as beyond doubt but un- historical transpositions of later ideas to a much less de- veloped stand-jjoint. 2. ANAXiMA>rDER. — Anaximauder of Miletus, who is described by the ancients sometimes as a disciple and sometimes as a contemporary of Thales, but who, under every supposition, was somewhere about a generation younger than he, endeavoured still further to develop the principle of the latter. He defined his primitive matter, in connexion with which he is supposed to be the first who used the term principle {dpxri), as the 'eternal, infinite, indefinite ground, from which, in order of time, all arises, and into which all returns,' as that which comprehends and rules all the spheres of the universe, but which, underlying every individual form of the finite and mutable, is itself infinite and indefinite. How we are to think this principle of Anaximander is a question in dispute. It was certainl}'^ not one of the four usual elements. As certainly, again, it was not something immaterial, but was probably conceived by Anaximander as primal matter not yet simdered into its individual elements, the 2j?7'!ith or importance in this arithmetical mystic is the leading thought that law, order, and agree- ment obtain in the affairs of nature, and that these rela- tions are capable of being expressed in number and measure. But this truth the Pythagoreans have hidden away among the phantasies of a fanaticism at once un- bridled and cold. If we except tho movements assigned to the earth and stars, there is but little of scientific merit in the physics of tlie PythaLi;oreans. Their ethics, too, are deficient. What has been transmitted to us in that resjiect is characteristic rather of the life and discipline of their peculiar socictj'', than of their philosophy. The whole tendency of the Pythagoreans, in a practical aspect, was ascetic, and aimed only at a rigid castigation of the moral principle. Tlieir conception of the body as a prison of the soul, which latter, for its part, belonged to loftier regions, their tenet of the transmigration of souls into the bodies of animals, from which only a pure and pious life delivered, their representations of the severe penalties of the other -world, their prescript that man should reganl himself as property of God, that he should obey God in all things, that he should strive after likeness with God, — ideas which Plato has considered and further developed, especially in the Phcedo, — are all capable of being alleged in proof. yj. -The EkaUc^. REL.4TI0N OF THE Eleatic Prixciple to the Pythagorean. — If the Pythagoreans made mate- rial substance, so far as it is quantitative, multiplex and consistent of paris, the basis of their philosophj THE EL MA TICS. 15 and abstracted consequently only from its definite ele- mentary quality, the Eleatics now went a step farther, and, drawing the last consequence of this abstracting process, took for jjrincijile a total abstraction from every finite particular, from all change, from all vicissitude of existence. If the Pythagoreans still held fast by the form of si)ace and time, the negation of this, the nega- tion, that is, of all dividedness in space and successive- ness in time, has now become the fundamental thought of the Eleatics. 'Only being is, and non-being (becom- ing) is not at all.' This being is the pure characterless, changeless, general ground, not being that is contained in becoming, but being with exclusion of all becoming, being that is pure being and only to be comi)reheuded in thought. Eleaticism is consequently monism, so far as it endea- vours to reduce the manifold of existence to a single ultimate principle ; but it falls into dualism so far as it can neither carry out the denial of the phenomenal world of finite existence, nor deduce this world from the pre- supposed general grouml of ]iure being. The phenomena] world, though explained to be only inessential null show, still is ; tliere must be left to it (sensuous perception refusing to lie got out of the "vvay), the right of existence at least hypotheticallj- ; there must be procured for it, if even under protest and i>roviso, a genetic exi)lanation. This contradiction of an unreconciled dualism between pure and phenomenal being is the point where the Eleatic I)hilosophy discloses its own insufficiency ; though not seen at first in the beginning of the school, under Xeno- phanes. The principle, together with its consequences, developed itself only in course of time ; running through three successive periods, which distribntc themselves to three successive generations. The foundation of the Eleatic school l>elongs to Xenophanes, its systematic development to Parmenides, its completion, and in part its resolution, to Zeno and Melissus (which latter we here omit). 2, Xenophanes. — Xenophanes, a native of Colophon in Asia Minoi-, but who had emigrated to the Phoca?an colony of Elea (in Lucania), a younger contemporary of Pythagoras, is the originator of the Eleatic tendency. He seems the first to have enunciated the proposition, ' all is one,' without specifying further, however, whether this unity be intellectual or material. Directing liLs [6 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. regards to the world as a whole, says Aristotle, he called God the one. The Eleatic 'One and All' {^i* Kal irav) had still with him a theological, or a religious character. The idea of the unity of God, and the polemic against the anthropomorphism of the popular religion, this is his starting-point. He is indignant at the delusion that the gods were born, had human voices, shape, etc., and he inveighs against Homer and Hesiod for that they have imputed to the gods robbery, adultery, fraud, etc. God with him is all eye, understanding, ear; unmoved, un- divided, undisturbed ; ruling all through thought ; and like to men neither in form nor understanding. In this manner, mainly intent on diverting from God all terms and predicates of finitude, and establishing his unity and immutableness, he enunciated at the same time this his true nature as the highest philosopldcal principle without however negatively carrying it out, by polemically turn- ing it against finite being. 3. Parmenides. — The special head of the Eleatic school is Parmenides of Elea, a disciple, or at all events an adherent, of Xenophanes. However little has beeu transmitted to us for certain of the circumstances of his life, yet aU antiquity is unanimous in the expression of its veneration for the Eleatic sage, and in admiration of the depth of his intellect, and of the earnestness and sublimity of his character, and the phrase, ' a Parmeni- dean life ' became later, amongst the Greeks, pro- verbial. Parmenides, like Xenojjhanes before him, gave hia philosophy to the world in the shape of an epic poem, of which some consideiable fragments are still preserved to us. It is divided into two parts. In the first part Parmenides discusses the notion of being. Kaising hiiii- self far above the unreasoned conception of Xenophanes, he directly opposes this notion, pure simple being, to all that is multijilex and mutable, as to what is uon-beiint and consequently unthinkable ; and excludes from lieing not only all origination and decease, but also all elements of time and space, and all divisibility, divei'sity, and movement. This being lie declares to be unbecome and imperishable, whole and sole, immutable and illimitable, iudivisibly and timelessly present, perfectly and univer- sally self-identical ; and he appropriates to it, as singlo positive character (for previous characters had only been negative) — thousht : ' being and thought are' to him THE ELEA TICS. 17 'one and the same.' In contrast to the deceptive and illusory ideas of multiplicity and change in tlie ])heno- mena of sense, he designates the pure thought that is directed to this being as alone the true and infallil)le knowledge. Nor does he hesitate to regard as non-beent and as illusion what mortals consider truth, namely origin and decease, perishable existence, multiplicity and diver- sity, change of place, and alteration of quality. We must be on our guard, then, against taking the one of Parmenides for the collective unity of all that is. Thus far the first part of the Parmenidean poem. After the proposition, that only being is, has been deve- loped in its negative and positive relations, we naturally believe the system at its end. But thei-e follows now a second part which occupies itself hypothetically with the explanation and physical derivation of the non-beent, that is, of the phenomenal world. Though firmly con- vinced that, in truth and reason, only the one is, Par- menides is unable to escape the recognition of a pheno- menal and mutable complex. He prefaces, therefore, — as, compelled by sensuous perception, he passes to the dis- cussion of the phenomenal world,— this second part, with the remark, that truth's discourse and thought are now ended, and henceforth it is only mortal opinion that is to be considered. Unfortunately this second part has come down to us very incomplete. This much may be gathered : he explains the phenomena of nature by the mixture of two immutable elements, designated by Aristotle as heat and cold, fire and earth. Of these Aristotle remarks further, he collocates the hot with the beent, the other with the non-beent. All things are made up of these antitheses : the more fire, so much the more being, life, consciousness ; the more cold and immobility, so much the more lifelessness. The principle of the unity of all being is only preserved in this way, that in man the sensitive and intellective substance, body and soul, are, according to Parmenides, one and the same. It need scarcely be remarked, that between the two parts of this philosophy, the doctrine of being and the doctrine of seeming, no scientific inward connexion has place. What in the first part Parmenides directly denies, and even declares incapable of being spoken, the non- beent, the multiplex and mutable, this he grants in the second part as at least existent in human conception. Rut it is clear that the non-beent could not exist even 18 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. in conception, if it existed not altogether and tlirnngli. out ; and that the attempt to explain a non-beeut of conception completely contradicts any exclusive acknow- ledgment of the becnt. This contradiction, the undenion- strated collocation of the beiint and the non-beent, of the one and the many, was attempted to be surmounted by the disciple of Parmenidea, Zeno, who sought, supported by the notion of being, dialectically to eliminate sensuous knowledge and the world consequently of the non-beeut. 4. Zkno. — The Eleatic Zeno, born about 500 B.C., a disciple of Parmenides, dialectically developed the doc- trine of his master, and carried out, the most rigorously of all, the abstraction of the Eleatic one as in contrast to the multiplicity and natural qualitative individuality of the finite. He justified the doctrine of the one, sole, simple, and immutable being by indirect methorl, through demonstration of the contradictions in which the ordinary beliefs of tlie phenomenal world became entangled. If Parmenides maintained that only the one is, Zeno, for his part, polemically showed that there is possible neither (1.) multiplicity, nor (2.) movement, because these notions lead to contradictory consequences, (1.) The many is an aggregate of units, of which it is made up ; but an actual unit (a unit that is not again multiple) ia necessarily indivisible ; but what is indivisible has no longer any magnitude (else, of course, it might be divid- ed) ; consequently the many cannot have any magni- tude, and must be infinitely little. Would we evade this conclusion (on the ground that what has no magni- tude is the same as nothing) then we must grant the manies (the units of the many) to be self-dependent qtianta. But a self-dependent quantum is oidy what has itself magnitude, and is separated from other quanta by something again that has also magnitude (as otherwise it woidd coalesce with them). These separating quanta again must (for the same reason) be separated, from those which they separate, by yet others, and so on ; all, tlierefore, is sei)arated from all by infinitely numerous quanta; all limited, definite magnitude disappears, there is nothing in existence but infinite magnitude. Further, if there is a many (a multi]ile of parts) it must be in respect of number, limited ; for it is just as much as it is, no more, and no less. But the many must be equally unlimited in respect of number ; for between that which is (any one part viewed as independent quantum), there UBNACLITUS, li) is always, apaiii, a third (a tert'ium quid, mcauing the necessarily inferred separating quantum), and so on ad infinitum. (2.) A moving body ninst before reaching term, aecomiilish one half of the distance to it, but of this half again it must previously accomplish the half, and so on ; in short it must pass through infinite spaces, which is impossible ; cousecpiently there is no getting from one spot to another, no movement ; motion can never get a start, for every space-part required to be de- scribed, sunders again into infinite space-parts. Further, at rest means to be in one and the same place. If we divide the time, then, during which an arrow flies into moments (each a noio), then the arrow in each of these moments (that is, now), is only in one place ; therefore, it is always at rest, and the motion is merely appai-ent. On account of these arguments, which first directed attention — and at least in part justly — to certain diffi- ciUties and antinomies involved in the infinite divisibi- lity of matter, space, and time, Zeno is named by Aris- totle the originator of dialectic. By Zeno, Plato too has been essentially influenced. Zeno's philosophy, however, as it is the completion of the Eleatic principle, so also is it the beginning of its end. Zeno took up the antithesis of being and non- being so abstractly, and overstrained it so, that the inner contradiction of the principle became much more glaringly prominent with him than even with Parmenides. For the more consequent he is in the denial of an exist- ence of sense, so much the more striking must the con- tradiction seem, on one side to apply his whole philoso- phic faculty to the refutation of sensuous belief, and on the other side to oppose to it a doctrine Avliich destroys the possibility of the false existence itself. VII. — Ileraditus. RELATION OF THE Heraclitic to the Elkatio Principle. — Pure being and phenomenal being, the one and the many, fall, in the Eleatic jmnciple, apart from each other : the attempted monism results in an ill-concealed dualism. Heraclitus reconciles tlii.-i contradiction by enunciating as the truth of being and non-being, of the one and the many, the at once of botli, beoomino-. If the Eleatics i)ersist in the dilemma, the 20 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. world is either Leent or iion-beeut, Heraclitns answers, It is neither of them, because it is both of them. 2. Historical Characteristics. — Heraclitns of Ephe- eus, by his successors surnamed the Dark, flourished al)out the year 500 B.C., or later than Xeuophaues, and nearly contemporaneously with Parmenides. He was the deepest of the pre-Socratic philosophers. His philo- sophical thoughts are contained in a work, ' On Nature,' of which a few fragments still remain. This work, made difficult by the abrupt transitions, the intensely pregnant expression, and the philosophical originality of Heracli- tns himself, perhaps also by the antiquatedness of the earliest prose, became, for its unintelligibleness, very soon proverbial. Socrates said of it, ' that what he iinderstood was excellent, what not he believed to be equally so ; but that the book required a tough swim- mer.' Later writers, particularly Stoics, have commen- tated it. 3. The Principle of Becomixg. — As principle of Heraclitns, the idea is unanimously assigned by the an- cients, that the totality of things is in eternal flux, in uninterrupted motion and mutation, and that their per- manence is only illusion. ' Into the same river,' a saying of his ran, ' we go down, and we do not go down. For, into the same river no man can enter twice ; ever it dis- perses itself and collects itself again, or rather, at once it flows-in and flows-ont.' Nothing, he said, remains the same, all comes and goes, resolves itself and passes into other forms ; out of all comes all, from life death, from the dead, life ; there is everywhere and eternally only this one process of the alternation of birth and decay. It is maintained, not without reason, then, that Heraclitus banished peace and permanence out of the world of things, and when he accuses ears and eyes of deception, he doubtless means in a like reference, tliat they delude men with a show of permanence where there is only uninterrupted change. It is in further development of the principle that Heraclitus intimates that all becoming is to be conceived as the result of opposing adversatives, as the harmonious conjunction of hostile principles. If what is did not con- tinually sunder into contrarieties, which are di.stinguished from each other, which oppose each other, partly driving off and supplanting one another, partly attracting and supplementing, and flowing over into one another, all — IlERACLITUS. 21 all actuality and life — would cease and decease. Hence the two familial- dicta — ' Strife is the father of things,' and ' The one, sundering from itself, coalesces with itself, like the harmony of the bow and the lyre.' That is, there is unity in the world only so far as the life of the world parts into antitheses, in the conjunction and con- ciliation of which, indeed, this very unity consists. Unity presupposes duality, harmony discord, attraction\ repulsion, and only by the one is the other realized, i 'Join together,' runs another of his dicta, 'whole and unwhole, congruous and incongruous, accordant and dis- cordant, then comes from all one, from one all.' 4. Fire. — In what relation to this princijjle of becom- ing stands now the principle of fire, which is likewise ascribed to Heraclitus? Ileraclitus, says Aristotle, made fire the princiide, as Tliales water, and Anaximenes air. But obviously we must not understand this statement as if Heraclitus, like the Hylicists, had made fire the pri- mitive matter or element. He who ascribes reality only to becoming itself, cannot possibly collocate with this becoming an additional elementary matter as funda- mental substance. When, therefore, Heraclitus names the world an ever-living fire that, in due measure and degree, extinguishes itself and again kindles itself, when he says, all is exchanged for fire and fire for all, as things for gold and gold for things, he can only understand by this that fire, this restless, all-consuming, all-transmut- ing, and equally (in heat) all-vivifying element, represents the constant force of this eternal alteration and transfor- mation, the notion of life, in the most vivid and energetic manner. We might name fire in the Heraclitic sense as a symbol or manifestation of the becoming, if it were not also with him at the same time substrate of the move- ment, that is to say, the means of which the power of motion, that is precedent to all matter, avails itself for the production of the living process of things. Heracli- tus then explains the multiplicity of things by the arrest- ment and partial extinction of this fire, in consequence of which it condenses itself into material elements, first air, then water, then earth. But this fire acquires equally again the jneponderance over these obstructions, and rekindles itself afresh. These two processes of extinc- tion and ignition in this fire-power, alternate, according to Heraclitus, in perpetual rotation with each other ; and he taught, therefore, that in stated periods the world 22 HISTORY OF nilLOSOni T. resolves itself into the primal fire, in order to re-creata itself out of it again. Moreover, also, fire is to him, even in individual things, the principle of movement, of physical as of spiritual vitality ; the soul itself is a fiery vapour ; its power and perfection depend on its being piire from all grosser and duller elements. The practical philosophy of Heraclitus requires that Ave should not follow the deceitful delusions of sense which fetter us to the changing and the perishable, but reason ; it teaches us to know the true, the abiding in the mutable, and especially leads us tranquilly to acquiesce in the neces- sary order of the universe, and to perceive, even in that which seems to us evil, an element that co-operates to the harmony of the whole. 5. Transition to the Atomists. — The Eleatic and the Heraclitic principles constitute the completest antithesi? to each other. If Heraclitus resolves all permanent existence into an absolutely fluent becoming, Parmenides resolves all becoming into an absolutely permanent being, and even the senses, eye and ear, to which the former imputes the error of transmuting the fleeting be- coming into a settled being, are charged by the latter with the false opinion which drags immovable being into the process of becoming. We may say, accordingly, th at being and becoming are the equally justified antitheses which demand for themselves mutual equalization and conciliation. Heraclitus conceives the phenomenal world as existent contradiction, and persists in this contradic- tion as ultimate. That which the Eleatics believed themselves obliged to deny, becoming, was not explained by being simply maintained. The question ever recurs again, Why is all being a becoming ? Why is the one perpetually sundered into the many ? The answer to this question, that is to say, the explanation of the becoming from the preconceived princi[)le of the being, is the posi- tion and the problem of the philosophy of Empedoclua and of the Atomists. VII I. — Empedodes. GENERAL Survey. — Empedocles of Agrigentum, ex- tolled by antiquity as statesman and orator, as physicist, physician, and poet, even as prophet and worker of miracles, flourished about the year 444 B.C.. was conse tWPJiDOULfS. '23 qiiently later tlian Parmenides and Heraclitus, and wrote a poem on nature, whieh is preserved to lis in pretty large fragments. His philosophical system may be briefly characterized as an attempt at a combination be- tween Eleatic being and Heraclitic becoming. Proceed- ing from tlie Eleatic thought, that neither what had previously uot been could become, nor what was perish, he assumed, as imperishable being, four eternal, self- subsistent, mutually inderivative, but divisible primal matters (our own four elements). But, at the same time, combining herewith the Heraclitic principle of process in nature, he conceives his four elements to be mingled and moulded by two moving forces, the uniting one of friend- ship, and the disunitmg one of strife. At first the foui elements existed together, absolutely one with each other, and immovable in the Sphairos, tliat is, in the pure and perfect globe-shaped divine primitive world, where friendship maintained them in unity, till gradually tstrife, penetrating from the periphery into the inner of the Sphairos, that is, attaining to a disintegrating power, broke up the unity, whereby the world of contrarieties in whicii we live began to form itself. 2. The four Elements. — With his doctrine of the foui elements, Emjjedocles unites himself, on the one hand, to the series of Ionic physicists, and on the other hand, he separates himself from these by his elementary /our, as originator of which he is pointedly designated by the ancients. He distinguishes himself from the old Hylicists more definitely in this way, that he attributes to his four ' radical elements ' an immutable being, by virtue of which they arise not out of each other, nor pass over into each other, and in general are capable not of any change in themselves, but only in their mutual composition. All that is called origination and decease, all mutation, rest., therefore only on the mingling and unmingling of these eternal primitive elements ; all the inexhaustible multi- plicity of being on their various relations of intermixture. All becoming is thus now thought only as change of place. (Mechanical as opposed to dynamical explanation of natiu'e.) 3. TiiE TWO FoKtiES. — Whence becoming now, if in matter itself there lie no principle and no ground ex- planatory of change ? As Empedocles neither denied change, like the Eleatics, nor placed it, like Heraclitus, as an immanent principle in matter, there remained 24 HI ST on Y OF PHIL OSO PTI Y. nothing for liiiii but to set beside mutter a moving force. Bnt, again, the antithesis of one ami many attaching to his predecessors (and which called for an exjilanation) laid him under an obligation also to attribute to this moving force two originally different directions, — on one side a separating or repulsive tendency, and on the other an attractive one. The sundering of the one into many and the conjoining of the many into one, alone pointed to an opposition of forces which already Heraclitus had recognised. If I'armenides, now, with his princi])le of unity, so to speak, had adopted love for princi2)le, and if Heraclitus, with his principle of the many, had selected strife, Empedocles makes here also, as principle of his own philosojihy, the combination of both. He has not, it is true, exactly determined for his two forces their spheres of action as in mutual relation. Although, in propriety, friendship is the attractive, strife the repulsive force, nevertheless we find Emi)edocles at another time treat- ing strife as the tendency of union and creation, and love as that of separation. And, in effect, the truth is that, m such a movement as becoming, any thorough disunion of a separating and a uniting force, is an impossible abs- traction. 4. Relation of the Philosophy of Empedocles to THOSE OF THE Eleatics AND OF Heraclitds. — In placing by the side of matter, as element of being, a moving force, as element of becoming, the philosophy of Empe- docles is evidently a conciliation, or more properly a collocation, of the Eleatic and the Heraclitic principles. The systems of these two classes of predecessors he has woven into his own philosophy in equal shares. With the Eleatics, he denies origination and decease, that is, transition of what is, mto what is not, and of what is not, into what is ; with Heraclitus he has an erpial interest in the explanation of change. From the former source he takea the permanent immutable being of his primitive matters ; from the latter, the princii)le of a moving force. With the Eleatics, finally, he i:)]aces true being in origi- nal undistinguished unity as Sphairos ; with Heraclitus, again, he conceives the Avorld we possess as the continual product of conflicting forces. It is with justice, then, that he has been described as an eclectic, who united, but not quite consequently, the fundamental ideas of his two immediate predecessors. THE ATOMISTS. 25 IX. — The Atoinists. THE Founders. — Like Empedocles, the Atoinists, Leitcippiis and Democritus, endeavoured to effect a combination of the Eleatic and Heraclitic principles, but in another way. Democritus, the younger and better known of the two, born of wealthy parents, in the Ionian colony of Abdera, about 4G0 B.C., travelled extensively (he was the greatest polymath before Aristotle), and gave to the world the riches of his gathered knowledge in a series of writings, of which, however, only a very few fragments have come down to us. For splendour and music of eloquence Cicero compares Democritus to Plato. He lived to a great age. 2. The Atoms. — Instead of assuming, like Empedocles, an aggregate of qualitatively determinate and distinct primitive matters as original source, the Atomists derived all phenomenal specific quality from a primeval infinitude of original constituents, which, alike in (piality, were un- like in quantity. Their atoms are immutable material particles, extended but indivisible, and differing from each other only in size, shape, and weight. As existent, but without quality, they are absolutely incapable of any metamorphosis or qualitative alteration, so that, as with Empedocles, all becoming is but local alteration ; plurality in the phenomenal world is only to be explained by the various figures, order, and positions of the atoms, which present themselves, too, united in various complexions. 3. TuE Plenum and the Vacvum. — The atoms, to be atoms, that is, simple and impenetrable units, must be reciprocally bounded oft" and separated. There must exist something of an opposite nature to themselves, that re- ceives them as atoms, and renders possible their separa- tion and mutual independence. This is empty sj)ace, or, more particularly, the spaces existent between the atoms, and by which they are kept asunder. The atoms, as something beent and filled ; empty space, as what is void or non-beent, — these two characters represent only in a real, objective manner, what the moments of the Hera- clitic becoming, being and non-being, are as logical notions. Objective reality accrues thus to empty space as a form of the beent not less than to the atoms, and Democritus expressly maintained, as against the Elea- tics, ' being is by nothing more real than nothing.' 26 HISTOR Y OF PIIILOSOPII Y. 4. Necessity. — Witli Democritus, aswitli Empeflocles, and even more, there occurs the question as to the vihence of mutation and movement. "What is the reason that the atoms take on these multiform combinations, and liroduce the wealth of the inorganic and organic worhls ? Democritus finds this in the nature of the atoms them- selves, to which the vacuum affords room for their alter- uato conjunctions and disjunctions. The atoms, vari- ously heavy, and afloat in em[)ty space, impinge on each other. There arises thus a wider and wider expanding movement throughout the general mass ; and, in conse- quence of this movement, there take place the various complexions, like-shaped atoms grouping themselves with like-shaped. These com]ilexions, however, by very nature, always resolve themselves again ; and hence the transitoriness of worldly things. But this explanation of the formation of the world explains in effect nothing . it exhibits only the quite abstract idea of an infinite causal scries, but no sufficient ground of all the pheno- mena of becoming and mutation. As such last ground there remained, therefore (Democritus expressly oppos- ing the vovi, reason, of Anaxagoras), only absolute pre- destination or necessity [avdyK-r]), which, as in contrast to the final causes of Anaxagoras, he is said to have named tvxv, chance. The resultant polemic against the popular gods, the idea of whom Democritus derived from the fear occasioned by atmospheric and stellar phenomena, and an ever more openly declared atheism and naturalism, constituted the prominent peculiarity of the later Atomistic school, which, in Diagoras of Melos, the so-called atheist, culminated in a complete sophistic. 5. Position of the Atomists. — Hegel characterizes this position thus : ' In the Eleatic phrlosojihy, being and non- being are as in mutual contradiction, — only being is, non- being is not. In the Heraclitic idea being and non-being are the same, both are together, or becoming is predicate of the beent. Being and non-being, again, conceived as objects for the perception of sense, constitute the anti- thesis of the i>lenum and the vacuum. As the abstract imiversal, Parmenides assumes being, Heraclitus pro- cess, the Atomists individual being (individuality as in an atom).' So much is correct here, that the predicate of individual being is certainly pertinent to the atoms ; but then the thought of the Atomists, and perhaps, of Empe- docles, is rather tliis, that, under presupposition of these AXAXAGORAS. 27 individual unqualified substances, there be explained the possibility of mutation. To that end, the side which is averse from the Eleatic princijile, that of non-being or the void, is formed and perfected with no loss care than the side which is related to it, the primitive independence of the atoms, namely, and their want of quality. The Ato- mists in this way constitute a conciliation between Hera- clitus and the Eleatics. Their atoms, fur exanqile, are, on the one hand, in their indivisible oneness, Eleatic, but, on the other, in their composite plurality, Heraclitic. Their absolute fiUedness, again, is Eleatic, while a real non-being, the vacuum, is Heraclitic. Lastly, the denial of becoming, or of origination and decease, is Eleatic, whereas the assertion of motion and of infinite power of combination is Heraclitic. Than Empedocles, at all events, Democritus has much more consequently worked out his thought ; nay, we may say that he has completed the mechanical explanation of nature : his are the ideas that constitute the main ideas of every Atomistic theory up even to the present day. The radical defect, for the rest, of all such theories, was already signalized by Aris- totle, when he pointed out that it is a contradiction to assume the indivisibility of what is corporeal and spatial, and so derive what is extended from what is not ex- tended, as well as that the unconscious, motiveless neces- sity of Democritus banishes from nature any notion of a final cause. It is this latter fault, common as yet to all tl)e systems, which the next system, that of Anaxagoras, begins, by its doctrine of a designing intelligence, to re- move. X. — A n axago^'as. PERSONAL. — Anaxagoras, born in Clazomena) about the year 500, scion of a rich and noble house, again one of those who, in the exclusive investigation of nature and its laws, recognise the purpose of their life, took up, soon after the Persian war, his abode in Athens, and lived a considerable time tliere, till, being accused of blasphemy, he was forced to flee to Lampsacus, where he died, much respected and highly honoured, at the age of seventy-two. It was he who transplanted philosophy to Athens, which thenceforward became the centre of Grecian cultui-e. By his personal relations also, espe- cially with Pericles, Euripides, and other men of mark, he 28 // IS TOE Y OF PHIL OSOPJI V. exei'ciseil a decided influence on the progress of the time. The accusation of blasphemy was itself a proof of this ; for it was raised, doubtless, by the political opponents of Pericles. Anaxagoras wrote a work ' On Nature,' which was widely current in the time of Socrates. 2. His relation to Predecessors. — The system of Anaxagoras rests wholly on the presujipositiona of his predecessors, and is simply another attempt to solve the I)roblem which they had set up. Like Empedocles and the Atomists, Anaxagoras, too, denies becoming in the I^roper sense. ' The Greeks,' runs one of his phrases, ' erroneously assume origination and destruction, for nothing originates and nothing is destroyed ; all is only mixed or unmixed out of pre-existent things ; and it were more correct to name the one process composition, and the other decomposition.' From this view, separation of matter and of moving force follows, for him as well as for his predecessors. But it is here that Anaxagoras strikes off in the direction peculiar to himself. Hitherto the moving force plainly had been imperfectly conceived. The mythical powers of love and hate, the blind neces- sity of the mechanical theory, explained nothing; or at least, whatever they explained, tliey certainly explained not the existence of design in the process of nature. It was consequently seen to be necessary that this notion of design should be identified with that of the moving power. This Anaxagoras accomplished by his idea of a world-forming intelligence (vovs) that was abso- lutelj' separated and free from matter, and that acted on design, 3. The principle of povs. — Anaxagoras describes this intelligence as spontaneously operative, unmixed with anything, the ground of all motion, but itself unmoved, everywhere actively present, and of all things the finest and purest. If these predicates, in part, rest still on physical analogies, and disclose not yet the notion of im- materiality in its purity, the attribute, on the other hand, of thought and conscious action on design, which Anaxa- goras ascribed to the fovs, leaves no doubt of the dis- tinctly ideaUstic character of his principle otherwise. He remained standing by the mere statement of his main thought, nevertheless, and procured not for it any fulness of completion. The explanation of this lies in the origin and genetic presup])Ositions of his principle. It was only the necessity of a moving cause, possessed at the same ANAXAGOBAS. 29 time of designing activity, tliat Lad brought him to the idea of an immaterial principle. His voCs is in strictness, therefore, only a mover of matter : in this function its entire virtue is almost quite exhausted. Hence the unanimous complaints of the ancients (especially of Plato and Aristotle), of the mechanical cluiracter of his doctrine. Socrates i-elates in Plato's Phcedo that, in the hope of being brought beyond merely occasional or secondaiy causes and up to final causes, he had applied himself to the work of Anaxagoras, but, instead of any truly teleo- logical explanation of existence, had found everywhere only a mechanical one. And, like Plato, Aristotle also complains that Anaxagoras named indeed mind as ulti- mate princi])le of things, but, in exjilauation of existent phenomena, sought its aid only as dens ex machina, — there, that is, where he was unable to deduce their ueces- sitj' from any natural causes. Anaxagoras thus, then, has rather })ostidated than demonstrated mind as the power in nature, as the truth and reality of material existence. Side by side with the vouz, and equally original with it, there stands, according to Anaxagoras, the mass of the primitive constituents of things : ' all things were to- gether, infinitel}' numerous, infinitely little ; then came the vovs and set them in order.' Tliese primitive con- stituents are not general elements, like those of Empe- docles, fire, air, water, earth (which to Anaxagoras are already com]iound and not simple materials) ; but they are the identical, infinitely com])lex materials, constitu- tive of the individual existent things (stone, gold, Ijone- stuff, etc., and hence, by succeeding writers, called ofioLO/jLeprj or o/xoLo/J-ipeiai, like parts, parts, that is, like to their wholes), ' the germs of all things,' pre-existent tliere, infinitely small, infinitely simple, and in perfectly chaotic intermixture. The vovs brought movement into this inert mass in the form of a vortex that perpetuates itself for ever This vortex separates the like parts and brings them togethei", not however, to the com}>lete exclusion of all intermixtui-e of like with unlike ; rather, ' in all there is something of all,' or each thing consists for the most part of its own likes so to speak, but contains within it representatives of all the other primitive constituents as well. In the case of organized beings, more especially, we have the presence of the matter-mov-iug foOs, which, as animating soul, is immanent in all living beings (plants, smimals, men), but in different degrees of amount and D 30 HISTORY OF PNILOSOPffY. power. lu this way we see tliat it is the business of the fous to dispose all things, each in accordance with its own nature, into a universe, that shall comprehend within it the most manifold forms of existence, and to enter into, and identify itself with this universe as the power of in- dividual vitality. 4. Anaxagoras as the termination and close of the Pre-Socratic Realism. — With the vods, with the acqui- sition of an immaterial principle, the realistic period of early Greek philosophy concludes. Anaxagoras brings all l)receding principles into unity and totality. His chaos of primitively intermingled things represents the infinite matter of the Hylicists ; the pure being of the Eleatics is to be found in his vovs, as both the becoming of Hera- clitus and the moving forces of Empedocles in his shaping and regulating power of an eternal mind ; and in his like parts or homceomeries we have the atoms. Anaxagoras is the last of an old and the first of a new series of deve- lopment ; the one by the proposition, the other by the incompleteness and persistently physical nature, of his ideal principle. X].— The Sophists. RELATION Of the Sophists to the earlier Philo- sophers. — The preceding philosophers all tacitly assume that our subjective consciousness is in subordi- nation and subjection to objective actuality, or that the objectivity of tilings is the source of our knowledge. In the Sophists a new princijile appears, the principle of sub- jectivity ; the view, namely, that things ai-e as they seem to us, and that any universal truth exists not. The way was prepared for this position, however, by the philosophy that preceded it. The Heraclitic doctrine of the flux of all things, Zeno's dialectic against the phenomenal world, offered weapons enough for the sceptical questioning of all stable and objective truth, and even in the vovs of Anaxagoras, thought was virtually opposed to objectivity as the liigher principle. On this new-won field now the Sophists disported, enjoying with boyish exuberance the exercise of the power of subjectivity, and destroying, by means of a subjective dialectic, all that had been ever objectively established. The individual subject recognises himself now as the higher existence and vali- THE SOPHISTS. 31 dity when opposed to the objective world, when opposed, particularly, to the laM's of the state, to inherited cus- tom, to religious tradition, to popular belief ; he seeks to prescribe his laws to the objective world, and, instead of seeing in the given inherited objectivity, the historical realization of reason, he perceives in it only an unspiri- tualized dead material on which to exercise his own freedom. What characterizes the Sophists, then, is illu- minated reflection. They have no philosophical system ; for their doctrines and dicta display often so very popular and trivial a character, that they would on that account deserve no place whatever in the history of philosophj-. Neither can they be said to compose, in any usual sense, a school ; for Plato mentions, for example, under the common appellation of 'Sophists,' a very great many difTerent individuals. What distinguishes them, then, is a spiritual movement of the time, M-ith many ramifica- tions, and with its roots in the entire social, political, and religious character of Hellenic life then — in short, it is the Greek Aiifkldrung, the Greek illumhiation. 2. Relation of the Sophists to the general life of THE TIME. — The Sophists are theoretically what, daring the Peloponnesiau war, Greek political life was practically. Plato justly remarks in the Republic that the doctrines of the Sophists express properly only the same principles Avhich guided the practice of the multitude in their civil and social relations, and that the hate with which they were persecuted by actual statesmen, precisely proves the jealousy with Avhich the latter saw in them as it were the rivals and mar-plots of their own policy. If, in fact, the alisoluteness of the empirical subject (that is, the opinion that the single ego may determine quite at its own discretion Avhat shall be true, just, good) is the principle of the Sophists theoretically, then in the bound- less egotism that existed at that time in all the depart- ments of life, both public and private, we have but the same principle practically appHed. Public life was become an arena of passion and self-seeking ; the party-strifes, which agitated Athens during the Peloponnesiau war, had blunted and stifled the moral sentiment ; every one accustomed himself to set his own private interest above that of the state and of the common good, and to seek in his own self-will and his own advantage the standard of his action and the principle of his guidance. The axiom of Protagoras, man is the measure of all things, was in .T2 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. practice ouly all too truly followed, while the iufliience of rhetoric in public assemblies and decisions, the corrup- tion of the masses and their leaders, the weak points which cupidity, vanity, and party-spirit betrayed to the crafty, offered ouly all too much occasion for its exercise. What was established, and had come down so, had lost its authority, political regulation appeared as arbitrary restriction, moral principle as a result of calculated ]iolitical training, faitli in the gods as human invention for the intimidation of free activity, j)iety as a statute of human origin which every man had a right to alter by the ai-t of persuasion. This redaction of the necessity and universality of nature and reason to the contingency of mere human appointment, is mainly the point where the Sophists are in contact with the general consciousness of the cultivated classes of the time ; and it is impossible to decide w^hat share theory had here, and what practice ; whether the Sophists oidy found practical life in a theo- retical formula, or whether the social corruption was rather a consequence of the destructive influence which the Sophists exercised over the entii-e circle of the opinions of their contemporaries. Nevertheless it would be to mistake the spirit of his- tory, did we ouly condemn the ei)och of the Sophists, and not allow it a relative justification. The peculiarities described were in part necessary results of tlie whole historical development. That belief in the popular reli- gion so precipitate!}' collapsed, this was only because the religion itself possessed no longer any inner moral vali- dity. Wj'thological example might be alleged in justifi- cation or excuse of the greatest vices and the vilest actions ; and even Plato, however much a friend to ancestral piety and faith, accuses the poets of having corrupted the moral sentiments of the people by the un- worthy representations they had spread abroad in regard to the world of gods and heroes. It was inevitable too that advancing science should disturb tradition. The Hylicists from of old lived in open hostility to the popu- lar religion, and the more convincingly they demonstrated in analogies and laws the natural causes of many things in -which the direct action of divine power had been hitherto recognised, the more readily would the educated classes come to doubt of all their previous convictions. It was no -wonder, then, if this altered spirit of the time penetrated into every pro-vince of art and poetry, if in THE SOPHISTS. 3S sculpture, (|iiite in analorry with the rhetorical arts of the Sophists, the sentimental took the place of the high style, and if Euripides, the Sophist of tragic poets, brought upon the stage the entire philosophy of the day with all its mannerism of moral reflection, and made his charac- ters, not the supporters of an idea like his predecessors, but only excitants of momentary emotion or other stage efifect. 3. Tendencies of the Sophists. — The Greek Sophists, like the French illuminati of the last century, displayed an encyclopaedic universality of knowledge, and any dis- tinct classification of them in accordance with the single idea of the historical movement, becomes on this account very difficult. The Sophists rendered general culture universal. Thus Protagoras was celebrated as a teacher of morals, Gorgias as a rhetorician and politician, Prodicus as a grammarian and etymologist, and Hippias as a poly- math. This last, besides his astronomical and mathe- matical studies, occupied himself even with a theory of mnemonics. Some set themselves for task the art of education, others the exposition of the ancient poets. The brothers Euthydemus and Dionysodorus made war and military exercises the object of instruction. Several of them, Gorgias, Prodicus, Hippias, fulfilled ambassa- dorial functions. In short, the Sophists were to be found, each according to his individuality, in all the pro- fessions, in all the spheres of knowledge ; what alone was common to them all was method. Then tbeir rela- tion to the cultivated public, their striving after popu- larity, notoriety, and pecuniary emolument suggests the inference that their studies and activities were, for the most i)art, directed and determined, not by any objective scientific interest, but by external considerations. Wan- dering from town to town with that migratory tic so characteristic of the later, more special Sophists, announc- ing themselves as thinkers by profession, and looking in all their oi)erations mainly to good pay and the favour of the rich, they naturally chose questions of general interest and public advantage, though at times also the private fancies of particular rich men, as the objects of their discourse. Their special strength, therefore, lay much raoi-e in formal quickness, in subjective displays of readi- ness of wit, in the art of being able to rhetorize, than in positive knowledge. Their only instruction in morals consisted either in disputatious word-catching, or in 34 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. hollow rhetorical show ; and even when their infoi-mation rose to polymathy, mere phrasinrj on the suljjects re- mained the main point. It is thus we find Hippias in Xeuophon boasting of being able to say always some- thing new on any matter. Of others we are expressly told that they did not consider it necessary to have any knowledge of the facts in order to speak in any required manner on any subject, or answer any question on the spur of the moment. JNlany of them, again, made it a point to hold measured discourse on the most insignificant objects possible — salt, for instance. In all of them, in- deed, we seethatthe thing considered was but the means, while it was the w'ord was the end ; and we cannot wonder that they descended in this respect to that empty external trickery which Plato in the Phcedrus subjects to so keen a criticism, and specially because of its want of seriousness and priuciiile. 4. The historical significance of the Sophists as REGARDS Culture. — The scientific and moral defects of the Sophists call attention of themselves, and require not, therefore — especially now that certain later historians have, with overstrained zeal, painted their dark side in the blackest colours, and brought forward a very serious chai'ge of frivolitj^, immorality, love of pleasure, vanity, selfishness, empty disjiutatiousness, and the false show of learning — any further exposition at our hands ; but what has been generally overlooked here is the merit of the Sophists historically as regards culture. If they possessed, as has been said, only the negative merit of having called forth the opposition of Socrates and Plato, then the im- mense influence and the lofty reputation of so many of them, as well as the revolution they produced in the thought of an entire nation, were phenomena inexplicable. It were inexplicable, for example, how Socrates could attend the discourses of Prodicus, and advise others to the same, if he did not acknowledge his grammatical contributions, and his merits in the interests of a healthy logic. In his rhetorical attempts, Protagoras also made many successful hits, and felicitously determined particu- lar grammatical categories. On the whole, the Sophists introduced a profusion of general knowledge among the people, scattered a mass of fruitful and suggestive germs, called forth investigations into language, logic, and the theory of cognition, laid a foundation for the methodic treatment of many branches of human inquiry, and THE SOPHISTS. 35 partly originated, partly advaueed, that admirable intel- lectual life of Athens then. Their linguistic service is their greatest. Of Attic prose we may regard them as the creators and improvers. They are the first who made style, as such, the object of attention and study, and instituted more special inquiry into measure and I'hythm, as into the art of rhetorical expression. Only with them, and excited by them, is the commencement of Attic eloquence ; and Anti})hou and Isocrates, the latter the founder of the most flourishing school of rhe- toric, are outshoots of the Sophists. There are grounds cnoiigh, then, surely, for not regarding the entire product of the time as a mere symptom of corruption. 5. The individual Sophists. — The first who is said to have been named Sojjhist in the given sense is Protagoras of Abdera, who flourished about the year 440 B.C. He taught — and was the first jjerson Avho demanded payment for doing so — in Sicily and Athens. From this latter town he was banished as a blasj^hemer ; and his book on the gods was burned in open market by the iniblic crier. It began with the words : — ' As for the gods, I am unable to know whether they are or whether they are not : for there is much that prevents us from knowing these things, as well the obscurity of the subject as the shortness of the life of man.' In another work he developed his theory of cognition or incognition. Proceeding from the Heraclitic hypothesis of perpetual flux, and specially applj'ing it to the individual subject, he taught that man is the measure of all things, of those things that exist, that they are, and of those things that do not exist, that they are not. That, namely, is true for the percipient subject, what- ever, in the perpetual flux of things and himself, he at any moment perceives and feels. For theory, then, there exists no other relation to the external world than sensation of sense, and for practice, no other than the gratification of sense. But now, as percejition and sensation are with countless people countlessly diverse, and excessively various even in one and the same per- son, there resulted from this the further consequence, that there are in general no such things as any objective attirmations or determinations whatever; that opposed assertions in regard to the same object are to be received as equally true ; that we may dispute fro and contra on all things and everything with equal authority ; and that neither error nor refutation of error can possibly 3G Ills TOR Y OF PHIL OSOPIJ Y. take place. This proposition, tliat there is nothing al)sohite, that all is an affair of subjective conception, opinion, arbitrary v.nW, found its application, at the hands of the Sophists, chieflj^ to justice and morality. Nothing is by nature ((pvaei) good or bad, but only by positive statute or agreement (fo/^y) ; and therefore we may make law, or regard as law whatever we please, whatever the advantage of the moment brings with it, whatever we have the strength and skill to reaUze. Protagoras himself appears not to have attemjtted any logically consequent completion of these propositions in practice ; for, according to the testimony of the ancients, an estimable personal character cannot be denied him, and even Plato (in the dialogue under his name) contents himself with imputing to him complete ignorance of the nature of morality, whereas the later Sophists are (in the Gorgias and Phile.hns) accused by him of immorahty in principle. After Protagoras, Gon/'tas was the most celebrated Sophist. He came (427) during the Peloponnesian war from Leontium in Sicily to Athens, in order to represent there the cause of his native town, then oppressed by Syracuse. In Athens, after having brought his affairs to a successful issue, he dwelt some time, and later in Thessaly, where he died about the same time as Socrates. The swashbuckler ostentation of his external appearance is more than once mockingly mentioned by Plato. A like character marked his occasional speeches, which sought to dazzle by poetical ornaments, flowery metaphors, umisu:d phraseology, and a multitude of previously un- known figures of rhetoric. As a philosopher he at- tached himself to the Eleatics, especially to Zeno, in order that, with their dialectical schematism as basis, he might demonstrate that nothing exists, or if some- thing exists, that it cannot be known, or if it can be known, that it cannot be communicated. His work then bore, characteristically enough, the title, — ' Of the Non-existent, or of Nature.' The proof of the first proposi- tion — namely, that nothing exists, since whatever were assumed to exist can neither be something existent nor something non-existent, because something existent must have either originated or not originated, neither of which alternatives is possible to thought — rests principally on the assumption that everything that actually is holds of space, or is corporeal and local, and is therefore the ulti- THE SOPHISTS. 37 mate, self-negating consequence, the self-resolution of the preceding phj'sical philosophy. The later Sophists, in the consequences they drew, advanced with unhesitating audacity far beyond Gorgias and Protagoras. They were for the most part free- thinkers, whose views could only tend to destroy the national religion, laws, and observances. In this con- nexion, Critias the tyrant, Polus, and Thrasi/machus are specially to be named. The two latter openly charac- terized might as the law of nature, the unrespecting gratification of desire as the natural right of the stronger, and the institution of restrictive laws as the cunning invention of the weaker ; and Critias, the aldest but the cruellest of the thirty tyrants, described, in a poem, faith in the gods as the invention of crafty politicians. Hippias of Elis, the polymath, bears a better character, although, perhaps, not behind the others in vain-glory and the mania of ostentation. But of them all the best was Prodicus of Ceos, from whom conies the i)roverb, 'wiser than Prodicus,' and of whom Plato, nay even Aristophanes, speaks not Avithont respect. Particularly well known among the ancients were his parenetic com- positions on the choice of the road in life (Hercules at the parting of the ways, ado}>ted by Socrates in Xenophon's Memorabilia, ii. 1), on worldly goods and the use of them, on life and death, etc., discourses in which he displays a chastened moral feeling and tine ob- servation of life, although, in consequence of the want of a higher ethical and scientific princii)le, he must be placed inferior to Socrates, as whose predecessor he has been sometimes designated. The still later generations of Sophists, as they appear in Plato's Euthi/demus, had sunk to common buffoonery and a disgraceful greed of money ; their dialectical arts they expressed in certain for- midas for syllogisms of a captious and sophistical nature. 6. Teansitiox to Socrates, and Character of the FOLLOWING Period. — The right of the Sophists is the right of subjectivity, of self-consciousness (that is to say, the demand that all that is to be acknowledged by me shall establish itself as reasonable to my consciousness) ; its unright is the regarding of this subjectivity as only finite, empirical, egoistic subjectivity (that is to say, the demand that my contingent will and personal opinion shall have the decision of what is reasonaljle) ; its right is to ha.e established the principle of free-will, of self -conviction. O 38 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. its unrigbt is to have set upon the throne the contingent will and judgment of the individuah To complete tlie }»rinciple of free-will and self-consciousness into its truth, and by the same means of reflection, with which the Soi^hiats had been able only to destroy, to win a veri- table world of objective thought, an absolute import, to set in the place of empirical subjectivity absolute or ideal subjectivity, objective will, and rational thought, — this now was the task which Socrates undertook, and achieved. Instead of empirical subjectivity, that abso- lute or ideal subjectivity should be made the principle, this means, that it is announced as known and acknow- ledged fact, tliat the true standard of all things is not my, this single person's, opinion, jileasure, and will ; that it does not depend on my or any other empirical subject's good-will and election what is to be true, right, and good, but that what is to decide here is certainly my thought, but also my tliougld, or that which is rational in me. My thought, my reason, however, is not some- thing specially appertaining to mo, but something com- mon to all rational beings, something universal ; and so far as I comi)ort myself as a rational, thinking being, my subjectivity is a universal subjectivity. But every thinking being has the consciousness that what he holds for right, duty, good, is not merely so to him, but that it is so also for everj' rational being, and that conse- (juently his thought has the character of universality, a universal validity, in a word, objectivity. This, there- fore, is, as op])osed to that of the Sophi.sts, the stand- point of Socrates, and on this account there begins with him the pidlofiopliy of objective tJiovgJit. What Socrates could do in contradistinction to the Sophists was this, to bring it aboiit that reflection should lead to the same results as had been previouslj' realized in unreflecting faith and submission, and that the thinking man should, of free consciousness and his own conviction, judge and act in the same manner as life and established custom had hitlierto unconsciously dictated to ordinary persons. That undoubtedly man is the measure of all tilings, but man as a universal, thinking, rational man— this is the fundamental thought of Socrates, and the philosophy of Socrates is by virtue of this thought the positive comple- ment of the Sophistic princijile. With Socrates begins the second period of Greek philo- sophy. Tt realizes itself in three great philosophical SOCEA TES. 89 systems, tlie originators of which, connected personally also in the relation of teachers and taught, represent three successive generations — Socrates, I'lato, Aristotle XII. — Socrates. HIS I'ERSONALi'iY. — In Socratcs, the new philoso- phical principle appears as a personal character. His philosophy is wholly individual practice ; life and doctrine cannot in his case be separated. A full exposi- tion of his philosophy is therefore essentially biography ; and what Xenophon records as the particular doctrine of Socrates, is for this reason only an abstraction of the Socratic character, as expressed in casual conversation. As such archetypal personality, I'lato in especial has con- ceived his master. The glorifying of the historical Socrates is the motive ])articularly of his later and riper dialogues, and of these the Banquet is the noblest apo- theosis of the personal Socrates, as the incarnated Eros, of love to philosophy realized in a chai-acter. Socrates was born in the year 4G9 B.C. ; he was the son of Sophrouiscus, a statuary, and of Phajnarete, a midwife. He -was brought up in his youth to his father's calling, and not without success. As late as the time of Pausauias, who saw them, there existed on the Acro- polis three statues of draped Graces, which were desig- nated as works of Socrates. For the rest, there is little known historically of the formation of his character, lie availed himself, indeed, of the lessons of Prodicus and the musician Damon, but he stands in no relation to any philosopher proper, either before or at the same time as himself. All that he became was due to himself, and for that very reason he constitutes a chief crisis of ancient philosophy. He has been named by some a disciple of Auaxagoras, and by others of the Hylicist Archelaus ; bnt the one statement is demonstrably false, and the other at least improbable. Other means of cul- ture than those offered by the place of his birth he seems never to have sought. With the exception of a holiday trip, and the expeditions to Potidaea, Delium, and Amphi- jiolis, in which he served, he was never out of Athens. How early Socrates may have begun to devote him- self to the teaching of youth, can — the date of the Del- phic oracle which pronounced him the wisest of men 40 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. being unknown, — be only approximately inferred from the time of the first representation of the Clouds of Aristophanes, which took place in the year 423. In the productions of his disciples, he appears almost invariably as already elderly, or even old. His manner of instruct- ing was quite free and easy, conversational, popular, taking its occasions from what was nearest and plainest, borrowing examples and illustrations from things of every day (his contemporaries reproached him with al- ways speaking of pack-asses, smiths, cobblers, and cur- riers), quite the opposite of the pretentious ostentation of the Sophists. It is thus we find him on the market- place, in the gymnasia, and workshops, occupied early and late, in discoursing on life and the purpose of life with yoaths, with younger men and older men, in convicting them of tlieir own ignorance, and in rousing within them the slumbering seeds of knowledge. In every human endeavour, were it directed to the affairs of the state or to the affairs of the house, to business, to knowledge, or to art, he knew always, magister as he was of spii-itnal obstetrics, how to find points of connexion for the quickening of true knowledge and moral self-reflection, now frequently soever his attempts miscarried, or were rejected with bitter contempt, and requited with hatred and ingratitude. But inspired by a clear conviction that a thorough amendment of the state must proceed from a sound instructing of youth, he remained, to the vocation he had chosen, true to the last. Wholly Greek in these relations to the rising generation, he loves to call himself the most zealous eroticist, Greek also in this that in comparison with those free relations of friendship, domestic life was with him quite in the background. Nowhere does he bestow any great attention on his wife and children ; the notorious, if even much exaggerated shrewishness of Xantippe allows us a glimpse of no un- interrupted domestic felicity. As man, as a practically wise man, Socrates is depicted by all the authxirities in the brightest colours. ' He was,' says Xenophon, ' so pious, that he did nothing without the sanction of the gods ; so just that he never wronged any one even in the least degree ; so much master of himself that he never preferred the agreeable to the good ; so wise that in deciding on the lietter and the worse he never failed,' in short, he was " the best and happiest man that could possibly exist,>tXenoph. Mem. SOCRATES. 41 r. 1. 11 ; IV. 8. 11). What, however, invests his jierson with so attractive a peculiarity, is the happy combination aad harmonious blending of his characteristic qualities as a whole, the perfection of an equally universal and thoroughly original nature. In this many-sided tact, this skill to reconcile in one harmonious wliole the most contradictory and incompatil:)le qualities, in hi.s triumphant superiority to human weakness, in a word, in his consummate originality, he is best represented in the brilliant panegyric of Alcibiades, in the Banquet of Plato. But even in the more sober description of Xenophon we find him everywhere a classic shape, a man replete with the finest social qiialities, full of Attic urbanity, infinitely removed from all gloomy, anxious asceticism, a man as doughty in battle as in the drinking-bout, with all his self-reflection and all his self- control moving in the most unconstrained freedom, a consummate type of the happiest Athenian era, without the sourness, the uusociableness, the morbid self-seclusion of later men, a pious and iieaceful exemplar of genuinely human excellence. A particulai'ly characteristic feature is the 'demonic ' element which he attributed to himself. He believed himself to receive from an inner divine Voice, premonitions in regard to the success and unsuc- cess of men's undertakings, warnings of this and of that. It was the fine, deep, divining tact and instinct of a pure soul, that saw clearly into life, and involuntarily pre- saged the good and the consequent everjnvhere, even in the most individual emergency, that announced itself in these warnings, and nothing could have been more erro- neous than the endeavour of his accusers to construe this demonic reference into a denial of the national gods, and an attempt at the introduction of new divinities. There certainly lay in this, that with Socrates this orncle of inner projihecy assumed the place of the established means of j)rediction and augury, which was already an advance to an inwardness of individual judgment alien as yet to the Grecian mind. But this advance was an involuntary one ; Socrates himself still held by the an- cient form of faith in a transcendent revelation ; he M-as without ojiposition to the prevailing ideas, and conformed therefore perfectly to the national religion in general, al- though it had taken on with him the more philosophical form of a belief in a supreme intelligence of the universe, that ordered all things with desicrn. 42 HISTOR Y OF PITILOSOPH Y. 2. Socrates and Aristophanes. — Through the entire mode and manner of his personality, Socrates appears to have early acquired a universal notoriety. Nature had already furnished him with a striking exterior. His In-oad, bent, upturned nose, his great prominent eyes, his bald pate, his thick stomach, gave him a striking re- semblance to Silenus, a comparison which is wrought out in Xenophon's Banquet with lively fun, in Plato's, with eqiial ingenuity and penetration of thought. This singular figm-e was made still more remarkable by his shabby clothes, his want of shoes, his peculiar gait, his trick of standing still frequently and of throwing his eyes about. With all this it cannot seem strange to us that the Athenian comedy should have seized for itself so striking a personality. In the case of Aristophanes there was present yet another and a pecuhar element. Aristophanes, namely, was the most devoted admirer of the good old times, the enthusiastic panegyrist of ances- tral institutions and polity. As his chief effort is always to awaken and quicken again in the people the desire for these good old times, so his passionate hatred is directed against all the modern tendencies in politics, art, and philosophy, against that growing illumination {Avf- kldrerel), that advances hand in hand with a degenerat- ing democracy. Hence his envenomed ridicule of Cleon the demagogue (in the Kniglds), of EurijDides the melo- dramatic poet (in the Frogs), of Socrates the Sophist (in the Clouds). The last, as representative of a quibbling pernicious philosophy, must appear equally destructive to him as in politics the party of the movement that un- scnipulously trampled under foot all the inheritance of antiquity. And thus, theu, it is the leading thought of the Clouds to expose Socrates to public contempt as representative of the teaching of the Sophists, of a use- less, idle, youth-corrupting, manners-and-morals-under- mining, sham wisdom. The motives of Aristoi^hanes in this may, from a politico-ethical point of view, be found excusable, but they are not justifiable. It is certainly true that Socrates had much formal likeness to the Sophists, but no such circumstance is sufficient to justify Aristophanes' picture of him, a picture into which all the characteristic features of the Sophists, even the vilest and hatefuUest, are introduced, but without interfering with the success of the resemblance. The Clouds can be regarded only as a lamentable misunderstanding, as a SOCBA TES 43 wroug prompted by the Lliudness of passion ; and Hegei, when he attempts a defence of the proceedings of Aristo- phanes, forgets that the comic poet may caricature, but without having recourse to manifest calumny. The whole politico-social tendency of Aristophanes, in general, rests on a gieat misunderstanding of historical progress. The good old times, as he pictures them, are a fiction. As little as an adult can ever again become a child by coiirse of nature, so little does it lie in the power of pos- sibility to bring back by main force the unreflecting obedience and simple naivete of the infancy of a people, into an age in which reflection has eaten into and licked up all spontaneous instinct, all unconscious pious inno- cence. Aristophanes himself jironounces the impossibi- lity of such return, when in mad humour, with cynical mockery, he abandons to ridicule all authorities, human and divine, and so gives proof that, however worthy the patriotic background of his comic extravagance may be, even he stands no longer on the level of ancestral virtue, that even he is the son of his time. 3. The Condemnation OF Socrates. — Four-and-twenty j'ears later, Socrates fell a sacrifice to the same confound- ing of his objects with those of the Sophists, and to the same tendency to restore by violent means the political faith and pious trust of the jiast. After he had lived many j'ear.'^, occuj)ying himself in his wonted way at Athens, after the storms of the Peloponuesian war and the despotism of the thirty tyrants had passed over this state, after democracy had been restored in it, he was summoned, in the seveiitieth year of his age, into court, and accused of denying the national divinities, introduc- ing new gods, and seducing the j^oung. His accusers wex-e, Melitus, a young poet, Anytus, a demagogue, and Lycou, an orator, three men insignificant in every lespect, but, as it appears, not i)rompted, nevertheless, by an}'- motive of personal enmity. The result of the accusation was the condemnation of Socrates. Reject- ing all op])ortunities of flight, but allowed by a fortunate accident thirty days of the society of hi", friends in prison, he drank the poison appointed by the State, and died in the year 399 B.C. Tlie first motive of his accusation was, as said, his identification with the Soi)hists, the actual l)elief that his teaching and influence were characterized by the same dangerous principles, in a political aajiect, by which the 44 IT 1ST on Y OF PHILOSOPHY. Sophists bad already given rise to so much evil. To this all the three articles in the accusatiou point, though manifestly resting on misunderstandings : they are exactly the same as those by which Aristophanes sought to expose the Sophist in the person of Socrates. Seduc- tion of the young, introduction of new principles of morality, of new modes of education and discipline, — these charges were precisely those which had been brought against the Sophists, and it brings light to find that one of the three accusers, Anytus, appears in Plato's Meno as a bitter foe to the Sophists and their methods of instruction. Denial of the national gods is quite simi- larly situated ; it was as accused of this that already Trotagoras had had to flee from Athens. Even five years after the death of Socrates, Xenophon, who had not been present at the trial, thought it necessary to write his I^IemorahlUa in defence of his master, so uni- versal and inveterate was the prejudice against him. There was present also another, and perhaps more decisive element, a political one. Socrates was no aristo- crat, but he was too firm of character ever to lend him- self to an accommodation with the humours of the sovereign masses, and too truly convinced of the neces- sity of a lawful and intelligent control of political affairs, to "be able to make friends with the Athenian denuocracy as it was. Nay, to this latter, from his whole mode of life, he could only seem a bad citizen. He had never employed himself in State affairs ; only once, as chief Xiresident of the Prytanes, had he filled a public office, and then only to fall into ojiposition to the will of the people and of those who held power (Plat. Apol. p. 32 ; Xenoph. Mem. i. 1. 18) ; for the first time in his life he ascended the tribune in his seventieth year, on the occa- sion of his own accusal (Plat. A-pol. p. 17). There was added to this, that he allowed only men of knowledge and discrimination to be entitled to administer State affairs ; that on every occasion he spoke against democratic institutions, especially election by ballot ; that he gave the Spartan State the decided preference over the Athe- nian ; and that by his intimate relations with the former heads of the oligarchical party, he excited the mistrust of the democrats (Xenoph. Mem. i. 2. 9). Amongst other men of oligarchical. Spartan -favouring tendencies, Critias, one of the tnirty, had been his disciple, and A.loibiades no less — two men who had wi ought the SOCI^A TES. 45 Athenian people so imich woe. When we see it per- fectly autheuticated that two of his accusers were consi- derable men of the democratic party, and further that his judges were men who had taken flight at the time of the thirty, and who had subsequently overthrown the sway of the oligarchy, we find it more intelligible how they, in pronouncing sentence against the accused, be- lieved themselves to be acting in the interest of the democratic priucijile, especially besides as appearances enough could be brought against him. That they pro- ceeded with such rapidity and haste cannot surprise us in the case of a generation which had grown up during the Peloponnesiau war, and a people that rushed as quickly to violent resolutions as they again repented them. Nay, when we consider, that Socrates scorned to have recourse to the usual forms and expedients of the capitally accused, and to win the compassion of the people by lamentation and flattery, that, in the proud confidence of his innocence, he bade defiance to his judges, we shall rather on the contrary be inclined to wonder that his condemnation was carried only by a majority of from three to six. And even then he had it in his power to avoid the sentence of death, had he, in the appraising of his punishment, but consented to bow himself before the award of the sovereign people ; but as he scorned to seek to mitigate the penalty by the exchange (to a fine, perhaps) allowed him by custom, because this would have been to acknowledge himself guilty, this defiance of the condemned so exasperated, as was to be expected, the excitable Athenians, that it is quite intelligible how eighty of the judges who had previously voted for his acquittal, now voted for his death. And thus an accusa- tion, in the first instance perhaps, only intended to humble the aristocratic philosopher, and compel his ac- knowledgment of the competence and majesty of the people, had a result the most deplorable, and afterwards bitterly repented by the Athenians themselves. Hegel's view of the fate of Socrates, when he sees in it a tragical collision of equally legitimate forces, the tragedy of Athens, and apportions blame and blameless- ness to each side equally, is not borne out historically, as neither Socrates can be exclusively regarded as only representative of the modern spirit, of the principle of free-will, of subjectivity, of inwardness, nor his judges as champions of the ancient Attic obedience to established £ 40 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. observance. This is not so in the former case, for So- crates, although his principle was incompatible with that of old Greek observance, stood yet so much on the basis of the traditional that the accusations brought against him were in this shape groundless and false. Nor is this any more so in the latter case, for at that time, subsecu- tive to the Peloponnesian war, the ancient principle and piety had long shown themselves in the entire people canker eaten, and had given place to the new ideas ; and the prosecution of Socrates is rather to be regarded as an attempt to restore by force, at the same time with the an- cient constitution, the dead-letter as well of ancient custom and inherited mode of thought. The blame consequently is not to be equally distributed to the two sides, and the conclusion must remain this, that Socrates fell a sacrifice to a misunderstanding, to an unwarranted reaction, 4. The Sources of the Socratic Philosophy. — It is an old and well-known controversy as to whether Xeno- })hon or Plato is to be regarded as having drawn histori- cally the truer and completer image of Socrates, and as being thesoiu-ce of the Socratic philosophy. This question comes more and more to be decided in favour of Xenophoii. It has been frequently attempted, indeed, as well in more ancient as in more modern times, to disparage Xenophon'a Memorabilia as a shallow and incompetent authority, be- cause their homely and nothing less than speculative mat- ter appeared to afford no satisfactory motives for such a revolution in the realm of spirit as is attributed to So- crates, for the lustre which invests his name in history, or for the role which Plato assigns to him ; further, this opinion has been maintained, because the Memora- bilia bear on their face an apologetic purpose, and the defence they contain concerns not so much the philoso- pher as the man ; finally because they were supposed to give the impression that they had degraded philosophical statement into the imphUosophical style of the common understanding. There were distinguished thus an exoteric and an esoteric Socrates, the former drawn from Xeno- phon, the latter from Plato. But the giving of precedence to Plato over Xenophon has, in the first jjlace, no his- torical right on its side, so far as Xenophon presents himself as an historian and asserts a claim to historical authenticity, while Plato, on the contrary, only in a few passages expressly gives himself out as an historical narrator, but by no means wishes all the rest that is put SOCHA TES. 47 into the mouth of Socrates to be regarded as autheutic speech and utterance of this latter ; and we possess no historical right, therefore, to view at will what belongs to Plato as belonging also to Socrates ; secondly, the subordination of Xeaophon rests for the most part on the false conception that Socrates had a philosophy, that is a speculative philosophy, on an uuhistorical mistaking of the limits by which the philosophical character of So- crates was necessarily conditioned and opposed. There was not even a Socratic doctrine, but only a Socratic life ; and just in this we have the explanation of the disparate plulosoi^hical directions of his followers. 5. General Character of the Socratic Phtloso- PHiziNG. — The philosophizing of Socrates is conditioned and determined by its antithesis partly to the jireceding l^hilosophy, partly to the teaching of the Sophists. The pre-Socratic philosophy was in essential character an investigation of nature. With Socrates, mind for the first time turns on its OM'n self, on its own essential nature, but it does this in the directest fashion, in that it regards itself as active, or as endowed with morality. The posi- tive philosophizing of Socrates is exclusively of an ethical nature, exclusively an inquiry into virtue, and so exclu- sively and one-sidedly this, that, as is always the way on the appearance of a new principle, it even announced itself as a despising of the preceding endeavour, of natural philosophy and mathematics. Placing all under the point of view of direct moral furtherance, Socrates found in 'irrational' nature so little worth study, that he could conceive it rather in a common teleological manner only as external means to external ends. Nay, as he says in Plato's Phcpclrus, he never goes out into the country for a walk as there is nothing to be learned from fields and trees. Knowledge of one's-self, the DeljAic 'yvQidi ceavrdv^ this appeared to him as the single problem worthy of a man, as the starting-point of all i>hilosophizing. All other knowledge he called so insignificant and worthless, that he purposely boasted of his ignorance, and conceived that his pronounced superiority in wisdom to other men must lie in the fact that he, for his part, knew his ignorance (Plat. Apol. p. 21, 23). The other side of the Socratic philosophizing is its op- position to the philosophy of the time. He understood his task here, and saw that it consisted in placing him> s If on the same gro'.'nd as the Sophists themselves, 48 HISTOR Y OF PHILOSOPH Y. aacl in conquering them through themselves, through their own principle. That he shared their position has been already observed. Many of his opinions, particu- larly the propositions that no one intentionally does wrong, and that whoever intentionally lies, or otherwise does wrong, is better than he who should do the same unknowingly, — bear at the fii'st glance a quite Sophistic stamp. The higher tenet of the Sophists, that all moral action must be a conscious action, is not less his. But, whilst the Sophists made it their business, by means of subjective reflection, to confound and subvert all estab- lished prescripts, and render impossible all objective standards, Socrates recognised thought as the act of the universal, the free objective idea as the measure of all things, and so brought back duty and all moral action in general, from the opinion and caprice of the indi- vidual, to the true principle, the principle of universaj objective spirit. It was under guidance of this idea of an absolutely true cognition, that he endeavoured to establish by thought unconditioned universal moral as- signments, and to acquire possession of a rational objec- tivity that should be absolutely fixed, absolutely certain in itself, and perfectly independent of the self-will of the individual. Hegel's expression for this is, that Socrates set Moralitdt in the place of SittUchkeit (the subjective morality of individual conscience in place of the objective morahty of societary observance). Hegel, that is, distin- guishes Moralitiit as the conscious, reflecting right-doing that rests on internal principles, from SittUchkeit as the spontaneous, natural, half unconscious (almost instinctive) virtue that rests on obedience to established custom (use and wont, natural objective law, that is at bottom, according to Hegel, rational, though not yet subjectively cleared, perhaps, into its rational principles). This ethi- cal endeavour of Socrates had for logical presupposition, the method of definition, that is, the ascertainment and establishment in any matter of the notions involved. Xenophon relates (Mem. iv. 6. 1), that Socrates was uninterruptedly employed in trying to find the ' what ' of everything ; and Aristotle says expressly (Meta. Xll. 4), that two merits must be conceded to Socrates, the method of induction, and logical definitions (definitions of the implied notions, the universal), two things which constitute the foundation of science. How both cohere with the principle of Socrates, we shall presently see. 6VCSA TES. 49 6. The Socratic Method. — Of the Socratic method we must understaud that, in contrast to what is now called method, it rose not in the consciousness of Socrates for- mally as method, and in abstraction, therefore, from every concrete case, but that it had spontaneously grown up with the very mode and manner of his philosophizing, which last aimed not at the communication of a system, but at the schoohng of the individual himself into philo- sophical thought and life. Ills method was only the subjective art he ai)plied in his pedagogical procedure, only the manner that was peculiar to him in his philo- sophical intercoiirse in actual life. The Socratic method has two sides, the one negative and the other positive. The negative one is what is known as the Socratic irony. Making believe to be ignorant, namely, and seeming to solicit information from those with whom he conversed, the philosopher would unexpectedly turn the tables on his seeming instructors, and confoimd their supposed knowledge, as well by the unlooked-for consequences which he educed by his inces- sant questions, as by the glaring contradictions in which they were in the end by their own admissions landed. In the perplexity in which one is placed when one finds one's- self not to know what one supposed one's-self to know, this supposed knowledge itself executes, Ave may say, on its own self, its own process of destruction. By way of gain, however, the representative of the supposed know- ledge becomes mistrustfid of his own presupjjositions, of his accustomed fixed ideas ; ' what we knew has refuted itself,' — this is the refrain of the most of these dialogues. But, were this all, the outcome of the Socratic method would be only to know that we do not know; and, in- deed, both in Xenophon and in Plato, a great part of the dialogues ostensibly does stop with only this negative re- sult. There is, in eflfect, another moment, however, by means of which the irony loses its merely negative look. This positive side of the Socratic method is the maieu- tic (that is, maieutic or obstetric art). Socrates likened himself, namely, to his mother Phsenarete, who was a mid^wife, because, if no longer able to bear thoughts him- self, he was stUl quite able to help others to bear them, as well as to distinguish those that were soiind from those that were unsound (Plat. Tliecet. p. 149). The nature of this spuntual midwifery will be more distinctly Been, if we consider that the philosoxiher, by means of 50 HISTORY OF PIIILOSOPin. his incessant questioning and the resultant disentangle- ment of ideas, possessed the art of eliciting from him with whom he conversed a new and previously unknown thought, and so of helping to a birth his intellectual throes. A chief means here was his method of induction, or the transformation of the conception ( Vorstellung) into the notion {Berjr'iff). Proceeding, for example, from some cei'tain concrete case, and, at the same time, assisting himself by connexion with the most usual conceptions, the most trivial and commonplace facts of sense, the philosopher contrived, ever comparing particular with particular, and so gradually separating and casting out what was contingent and accidental, to bring to con- sciousness a universal truth, a universal discernment, that is, to form notions (universals) . To find the notion of justice, of fortitude, for instance, departure was taken from several particiUar examples of justice, of fortitude, and from them the universal nature, the notion of these virtues, abstracted. From this we see what the Socratie induction aimed at, — logical definition. I define a notion when I tell its what, its nature, its tenor, import, or con- tained meaning. I define the notion of justice, when I exhibit the logical unity of its various forms in actual experience, what is common to all of them. And this was the object of Socrates. ' To investigate the nature of virtue,' says Aristotle (Eud. Eih. i. 5), 'appeared to Socrates the problem of philosophy, and for this end he inquired what is justice, what fortitude (that is, he demanded the essence, nature, the notion of justice), for all virtue was to him knowledge.' In what connexion this his method of definition, or of the formation of notions, stood with his practical objects, is from this easily to be inferred. He sought the notion of each separate virtue, justice for instance, only because he was convinced, namely, that the knowledge of this notion, that a clear perception of it, was the surest guide for every particular case, for every particular moral relation. All moral action, he believed, must proceed from the notion as something consciously known and understood. In accordance with this, the Socratie method may be described as the art of finding, by means of induction, in a certain sum of given particular cases, their under- Ij'ing and supporting, or fundamental universal, their logical unity. This method has for its presupposition the acknowledgment that the true nature of the objects SOCUA TES. 51 in the world lies in tlioiight, and can be discovered by tlionght ; that the notion is the true being of things. We see from this how the Platonic theory of ideas was but an objectivizing of this method, which method, in the case of Socrates, is as yet but a subjective knack or skill. Plato's ideas are but Socrates' imiversals (generalized notions), conceived as real definite exist- ences. Aristotle, then {Mcta. xiii. 4), precisely hits the relation of the method of Socrates to the ideas of Plato, when he says : ' Socrates did not consider the universals as particular substances separately existent ; this was Plato's work, who forthwith named them ideas.' 7. The Socratic Doctrine of Virtue. — The only posi- tive tenet which has come down from Socrates is, that vir- tue is knowledge, wisdom, intellectual discernment. In other words, virtue is an act that proceeds from a clearly understood recognition of the notion of whatever any particular action contemplates, of the ends, means, and conditions that belong to this action, and not, therefore, any merely innate or mechanically acquired power and ability. Action without perception is a contradiction, and destroys itself ; action with percei^tion carries straight to the mark. Consequently, there can be nothing bad that happens with perception, and nothing good that happens without perception. Defect of perception it is that leads men into vicious acts. There follows from this the further proposition, nobody is willingly wicked ; the wicked are wicked against their own wills. Nay more, whoever knowingly does wrong is better than he who does so unknowingly ; for in the latter case, as knowledge is wanting, virtue in general must also be wanting, while in the former case, were it supposed pos- sible, virtue would be only temporarily injm-ed. Socrates would not admit that anybody could know the gooil without immediately doing it. The good was n-ot to him, as it was to the Sojjhists, an arbitrary law, but that on which imconditionally depended the well-being of the individual as well as of the race, and this, because it was alone an intellectual act. Thus, too, that he who desired his own happiness, should at the same time knowingly neglect it, amounted to him to a logical contradiction ; for to his mind, the good doing followed as necessarily from the good knowing, as the logical conclusion from the logi- cal premises. The proposition that virtue is knowledge, has for logical consequence the unity and identity of all 52 HISTOBY OF PHILOSOPHY. virtues, so far as the intellectual perception that condi- tions the right act is universally one and the same, let it be directed to what objects it may. The same proposi- tion again has for jwactical consequence the teachable- ness of virtue ; and it is because of this teachableness that virtue is something universally human, something through instruction and practice to be attained to by every one. With these three propositions, which comprise all that can be called Socratic philosophy, Socrates laid the first stone of a scientific theory of morals, which accordingly dates only from him. No more than the first stone, how- ever ; and partly because he attempted no completion of his principle in all its details, no realization of a concrete moral theory, but often, in good old fashion, referred only to the laws of the state, or to the unwritten laws of universal usage ; partly also because he not unfrequently supported his ethical principles on external, utilitarian, eudsemonistic motives, that is, on the particular advan- tages and profitable results of virtue ; a manner, how- ever, in which we do not the less miss the more strictly scientific treatment. Although the obligation to morahty lay for him in the fact that man, as a thinking reasonable being, must, unless indeed he would fall below himself , act with rational judgment and purpose, stiU he stood withal completely on the platform of his day, and conceived virtue at the same time as the road to the realization of the specific objects of well-being, happiness, content- ment, power, and honour. These objects he received as experience gave them to him, without comprehending them again in a higher collective object ; he summoned to one and the same virtue in all the spheres of action, but he left these spheres themselves still lying in that empirical contingency which they possess for our ordinary consciousness and conviction in the practice of life. An exaltation over sensuous greeds and cravings, a freedom from desire such as lifts man nearest to God, a calm of mind whose equilibrium is never to be ruffled, a glad consciousness of undiminished strength and integrity of soul — these, in his own person, no doubt, he exhibited as the highest happiness, and thus already identified the notions of virtue and felicity. But he expressed this, not as a universal, but as an individual principle ; he lived too much in the old way of looking at things to be able to deny the authority of actual concrete ends, and to sacrifice them to his personal ideal of happiness. THE INCOMPLETE SOCBATICS. 53 XIII. — The Incomplete Socratics. rnHEIE Relation to the Socratic Doctrine. — The I death of Socrates was the transfiguration of the life of Socrates iato an archetypal universal or universal arche- tj^pe, which, as inspiring principle, acted henceforth in many directions. This conception of Socrates as general exemplar, we find, indeed, to be the common character of the first Socratic schools. That a universal, absolutely true end must guide mankind, this was the necessary cou- sequence of the Socratic principle, which declares it the business of man to give his action unity and law through thought. But as there appeared in answer to the ques- tion. In what does this end consist ? no complete, scien- tific Socratic system, but only a life, the life of Socrates, so many-sided, and now but closed, all came necessarily to the mode of regarding this life, to the subjective con- ception of the personality of Socrates, which, as is natu- ral to anticipate, woiild in various be variously reflected. Socrates had many scholars, but no school. There are three of these reflexes or types which have specially be- come historical. These are the Cynic, Cyrenaic, and Megaric schools, founded on the conceptions of Anti- sthenes, Aristippus, and Euclid respectively. Each of these three conceptions possesses a true moment of the Socratic character, but, separated from each other, they break asunder what in the master lay blended together in harmonious unity, and enunciate isolated elements of the Socratic character as the true nature of the whole. They are thus, all of them, one-sided, and give a false jiicture of Socrates, the blame of which, however, is not, in fact, specially theirs. They too are proofs — Aristipjjus being obliged to return to Protagoras, and Euclid to the Eleatics, the one for a theory of knowledge, and the other for a metaphysic — of the uufinished, immethodic, subjective character of the Socratic philosophizing ; and in their own defects and one-sidednesses, they disclose in part only the original defects and weak points which clung to the teaching of their master. 2. AjfTiSTHENES AND THE Cynics. — As strict literal ad- herent of the doctrine, and as zealous, nay coarse and often caricaturing, imitator of the manner, Antisthenes stands nearest his master. He was at one time a disciple of Gorgias, and himself a Sophistic teacher ; but he attached 54 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. himself, apparently in advanced life, to Socrates, becom- ing liis most inseparable attendant ; and, after Ms death, founded a school in the Cynosarges, a gymnasium in- tended for those who, like him, were not full-blooded Athenian citizens, whence (or, according to others, from their mode of life) his disciples and adherents received later the name of Cynics. The teaching of Antisthenea is only an abstract expression for the Socratic moral ideal. Like Socrates, he regarded a moral life as the ultimate end of mankind, as necessary, nay as alone suf- ficient for happiness ; and, like Socrates too, he held virtue to be knowable, teachable, and one. But the ideal of virtue, as it is before him in the person of So- crates, consists for him only in freedom from desires (in his very exterior he imitated the beggar, carrying staff and wallet), and consequently in the neglect of all other sj)iritual interests. Virtue to him is only directed to the avoidance of evil, that is to say, of those desires and greeds which bind us to enjoyments, and it stands not in need, therefore, of any dialectical argumentation, but only of Socratic strength. The wise man is to him suf- ficient for himself, independent of all, indifferent to mar- riage, family, and State (a quite unancient characteristic), as also to riches, honour, and enjoyment. In this rather negative than positive ideal of Antistheues, we com- pletely miss the fine humanity and universal openness of the mastei', and still more any turning to advantage of the fertile dialectical elements which lay in the Socratic philosophizing. Cynicism, as was natural, took on later a more decided disregard of all knowledge, a yet greater contempt for public propriety, and became often a dis- gusting and shameless caricature of the spirit of Socrates. Such, particularly, was Diocjenci of Sinope, the only disciple that persisted in remaining by his master, when Antistheues dj-ove all the others away from him. These Cynics, who have been hapi)ily called the Capuchins of the Greek world, retained, in their high estimation of virtue and philosophy, let us say, a memory of their original ; but they sought virtue, according to their own expression, ' by the shortest way,' in a life according to nature, that is, in seclusion to self, in complete indepen- dency and freedom from desire, in renunciation of art and science, and of every definite end in general. The wise man, they said, is master over all his wants and de- lires. without weakness, free from the fetters of societary THE INCOMPLETE SOCRA TICS. 55 law and societaiy custom, — the peer of the gods. An easy life, Diogenes averred, is assigned by the gods to him who restricts himself to what is necessary, and this true philosophy is attainable by every one through endurance and the power of renunciation. Philosophy and philoso- phical interest alike vanish in the case of such beggar- philosophy ; what we have from Diogenes are but anec- dotes and sarcasms. We see, then, that the ethics of the Cynic school be- came lost in thoroughly negative and preventative pre- scripts, a legitimate result of the original defect of a concrete positive context and systematic completion on the part of the Socratic theory of morals. Cynicism is the negative side of Socraticism. 3. Aristippus and the Cyrenaics. — Aristippus of Gyrene, up to the death of Socrates considered one of his adherents, but styled a Sophist by Aristotle — this probably because he took money for his lessons — appears in Xeno- phon as a man devoted to pleasure. The practical address with which he could adapt himself to circumstances, and the knowledge of mankind, by which he was enabled to procure himself under all relations the enjoyments of good living and luxury, were well known to the ancients. In his intercourse with courtesans and coiu'tiers, at a dis- tance from political cares in order not to be dependent, and mostly in foreign countries in order to be able to withdraw himself from all clogs of connexion, he endea- voured to realize his maxim of conforming circumstances to self, not self to circumstances. However little such a man appears to merit the name of a Socratic, he pos- sesses nevertheless two points of contact with his master which are not to be overlooked. Socrates had pro- nounced virtue and felicity as co-ordinately the highest human end. That is to say, he had given the highest authority to the idea of moral action ; but, stating it only in an undeveloped abstract form, he had been un- able to find any other foundation for the obligatoriness of the moral law in any concrete case, than a eudajmo- nisfcic one, through reflection on the advantages of moi'a- lity. This side now it was that Aristipinis held fast and raised into a principle 'per se ; pronouncing pleasure to be the ultimate aim of life, the supreme good. But now, this pleasure, as Aristippus understands it, is onlj^ the special, present, bodily sensation of pleasure, not happi- ness as a condition that comprehends the entire life ; and 56 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. consequently, according to liim, all moral limitationa and obligations are, as against this pleasure, of no account. Nothing is wicked, shameful, godless, if it procures plea- sure ; what denies this is mere opinion and prejudice (as with the Sophists). But when Aristippus, as means for the attainment and preservation of enjoyment, recom- mends judgment, self-control, and moderation, the power to resist the mastery of any special desire, and in general the cultivation of the mind, he demonstrates that the spirit of Socrates is not wholly extinct in him, and that he deserves the name of a ^seucio-Socratic, which Schleiermacher gives him, not without further consi- dei'ation. The remaining members of the Cyrenaic school, Theo- dorus, Heges'uis, Anniceris, we can only briefly notice. The further development of the school hinges wholly on the more particular definition of the pleasure to be aimed at ; that is to say, on the question, whether it is to be understood as sensation of the moment or condi- tion to last, as spiritual or bodily, as positive or negative (that is, mere absence of pain). Theodorus declared for the supremacy of that mental joy which arises from judgment, and from the ability, in all relations of life, to direct one's-self in perception of a rational purpose, and in freedom from all the bonds of prejudice and superstition. Hegesias found a pure Hfe of pleasure unattainable, and, therefore, not to be sought. Pre- vention of pain, with exertion of every faculty, was, according to him, the aim of the sage, and the only one that was left us, for life was full of evils. Lastly, Anniceris taught that withdrawal from family and so- ciety is incapable of being realized, that the true aim rather is to get from life as much enjoyment as can be got, and as for the occasional bitter that arises in the course of our efforts for friends and country, to take it too into the bargain ; that is, he endeavoured to recon- cile again the principle of pleasure with those demands of life and circumstances, to which it stood in such ir- reconcilable antagonism. 4. EacLiD AND THE Megaeics. — Combination of dia- lectical with ethical elements is the character of all the imperfect Socratic schools : the distinction is only this, that here ethics subserve dialectics, there dialectics ethics. The former is particularly the case with the Megaric school, whose special peculiarity was designated THE INCOMPLETE SOC'RA TICS. 5? by the ancients as a combination of the Socratic and Eleatic principles. The idea of the good is the same thing ethically as that of being physically. It was only a Socratic transformation of the Eleatic doctrine, then, when Euclid of Megara maintained that only that which is beent, self- identical, and one with itself, is good (true in itself), and that only this good is, while all change, plurality, dividedness, that is opposed to this good, is only apparent. This self-identical good, however, is not sensuous but intellectual being, truth, reason, which for man also is the only good. The only end, as Stilpo of the same school taught later, is reason and knowledge, with perfectly apathetic indifference to all that has no- thing in common with knowledge of the good. This plainly is but a one-sided exaggeration of the tendency of Socrates towai'ds a thinking consideration of things, with concomitant peace of mind, and is only a finer, more in- tellectual Cynicism. Any further information about Euclid is meagre, and cannot be more particularly prosecuted here. The Me- garic school, under various leaders, continued to propa- gate itself for some time, but without living force, and without any independent principle of organic develop- ment. The later Megaric Eristic, indeed, constitutes the ti-ansition to Scepticism, as Cynicism led to Stoicism, and the Hedonism of the Cyrenaics to the Creed of Epi- curus. Their sophisms and paralogisms, for the most part polemically directed in the manner of Zeno against sensuous oijinion and experience, were familiar to the ancients, and much spoken of. 5. Plato as the completed Socratic. — The attempts which we have seen hitherto to build further on the the main pillars of the Socratic doctrine, being from the very beginning without any thriving germ of life, ended fruitless, resultless. The com[jlete Socrates was under- stood and represented by only one of his disciples, Plato. Proceeding from the Socratic idea of knowledge, he col- lected into a single focus all the elements and rays of truth which lay scattered, not only in his master, but in the philosophers before him, and made of philosophy a whole, a system. That thought is the true being, and alone real, this proposition was understood by the Me- gai'ic school only abstractly, and by Socrates only as prin- ciple. The latter, indeed, proposed cognition by means of universal notions only as a postulate, and gave it no 58 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. f urtlier developmeut. His philosophizing is not a system, but only seed and germ of logical analysis and pliiloso- ])hical method. Systematic exposition and analysis of the absolutely valid notions, of the world of ideas, this M-as left for Plato. The Platonic system is the objectivized Socrates, the conciliation and fusion of all previous philosophy. XIY.— Plato. PLATO'S Life.— (a.) Ills youth.— FMo, the son oi Ariston, and descendant of a noble Attic family, was born in the year 429 B.C., the year in which Pericles died, the second year of the Pelojmnnesian war, a year so unfor- tunate for the Athenians. Born thus in the centre of Gre- cian culture, and son of an ancient and noble house, he received an education befitting his circumstances, although with the exception of the useless names of his teachers, we possess no information on the history of his earliest instruc- tion. That the growing youth preferred the seclusion of philosophy to the career of politics may seem strange, see- ing that he must have had, we should think, manj' induce- ments to the latter. Critias, for example, one of the Thirty, was the cousin of his motlier, while his uncle was Charmides who subsequently met his death on the same day with Critias, fighting on the side of the oligarchical tyrants of Athens against Thrasybulus. Nevertheless, he never once publicly appeared as a speaker in the assembly of the peojile. In view of the commencing de- generation and extending corruption of his country, too proud to court the favour of the manj^-headed rabble, more inclined, upon the whole, to Dorism than to De- mocracy and Athenian political life as it was, he pre- ferred to make science his occupation, rather than fall, vainly fighting as a patriot with inevitable misfortune, a martyr to his convictions. The Athenian State he con- sidered lost ; and he thought it useless to bring another sacrifice to its unavoidable ruin, (b.) His spiritual ap- jn-enticeship. — Plato was twenty years of age when he first attended Socrates, and he passed eight years in his society. Except some anecdotes unworthy of credence, we possess no particulars in regard to this period. There is only a passing mention of Plato in the Memorabilia of Xenophon (ni. 6) ; it is sufficient to indicate, however, a PLATO. 59 greater than usual intimacy between the disciple and Lis master. Plato himself, in the dialogues, reveals nothing of his personal relations to Socrates, only once (Phced. p. 59) does he even name himself among the more par- ticular friends of Socrates. But what influence he re- ceived from Socrates, how he recognised in him the perfected portrait of a wise man, how he found not only in his teaching but in his life and actions the fruitfidlest philosophical germs and hints, what significance in gene- ral the personality of his master in its authority as exemplar had for him — this he has sufficiently demon- strated in his writings, by putting his own far more de- veloped philosoj)hical system into the mouth of his teacher as the centre of the dialogues, and the arbiter of the conversation, (c.) His travels. — After the deatli of Socrates (399 B.C.), fearing to be involved in the reaction that had now set in against philosophy, Plato, in the thirtieth year of his age, quitted, with other friends of Socrates, his native city, and took up his abode at Me- gara, with his former fellow-cUsciple, Euclid, the founder of the Megaric school (compare xiii. 4). Hitherto a pure disciple of Socrates, he became now, in conseqiience of intercourse with the Alegarics, among whom a peculiar philosophical direction, a modification of the teaching of Socrates, liad already declared itself, infinitely stimu- lated and enriched. We shall see again how far this sojourn at Megara was of influence in the formation of his philosophy, especially in the dialectic founding and completing of his ideas. An entire period of his literary activity, an entire group of his dialogues, finds satisfactorj^ explanation only in the spiritual impulses he had received here. From Megara Plato travelled to Cyrene, Egypt, ]\lagna GrBecia,and Sicily. In Magna Greecia he was intro- duced into the Pytliagorean philosophy, which was then at its perfection. His stay among the Pythagoreans was very important for him : as man he gained in practical discernment, in interest in life, and in a regard for public concerns, and the aff'airs of society ; as pliilosopher, in scientific stimulus and literary motive. Traces of Pytha- gorean philosophy run throiighout the entire series of his latest literary productions. In especial, his dislike to public and political life seems to have been much modi- fied by his intercourse with the Pythagoreans. Whilst the ThecEtehis still signalizes in the directest manner the incompatibility of philosophy with public life, GO HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. the later dialogues, especially the RepuhJic, and even the Statesman in which the Pythagorean influence appears already begun, return by preference to reality again ; and the faniUiar proposition. Rulers ought to be philo- sophers, is a very characteristic expression for this later modification in the philosophical mood of Plato. His visit to Sicily led to his acquaintance as well with the elder Dionysias, as with Dion, his brother-in-law. The ways of the philosopher, it is true, agreed ill with those of the tyrant. Plato is said to have attracted his displeasure to such a degree that his hfe was in danger. After nearly ten years of travelling, Plato, in his fortieth year (388 or .389), returned to Athens, {d.) Plato as head of the academy: the period of mastership (that is, after his Lehrjahre and Wanderjahre, we have now his Meis- terjahre). — After his return, Plato soon drew around him a circle of disciples. The place in which he taught was the Academy, a gymnasium outside Athens, where he possessed a garden belonging to his inheritance from his father. Of information in regard to the external history of his school and later life, we have scarcely any. His life passed smoothly, interrupted only by two other voyages to Sicily, where meanwhile the younger Dionysius had attained sovereignty. This second and third sojourn at the Syracusan court are pregnant with events and vicissi- tudes ; they show us the philosopher in the most multi- form positions and circumstances, as described by Plutarch in the life of Dion. For his philosophical character, however, these voyages are only so far important, as, according to all probability, Plato availed himself of the opportunities they offered for putting his political theory into practice. To that end he endeavoured to realize in Sicily his ideal of the State, and, by a philosophical education of the new ruler, to unite philosophy and government in one and the same hand, or at least, in some manner or other, by means of philosophy, to effect a wholesome reform of the Sicilian constitution in an aristocratic direction. His efforts were fruitless ; cir- cumstances were unfavourable, and the character of the young Dionysius, ' one of those mediocre natures which in their halfness aspire to fame and distinction, but are incapable of any depth or of any earnestness,' disap- pointed the expectations which Plato, on the report of Dion, had believed himself warranted to entertain of him. As concerns Plato's philosophical activity in the academy PLA TO. 61 we are struck at once by tlie cliange it manifests in the position of jihilosophy to public life. Instead of making philosophy, like Socrates, an object of social conversation and of ordinary intercourse, instead of entering into philosophical discourse in the streets and other public places wnth every one who was that way inclined, he lived and worked in retirement from the business of the outside world, confined to the circle of his disciples. In jiroportion as philosophj^ grows now into a sj^stem, and systematic form comes to be considered essential, philo- sophy itself ceases to be popiJar, begins to demand a scientific preparatory knowledge, and to become an affair of the school, a something esoteric. The reverence of the name of philosopher, and especiallj'^ of Plato's, was still so great, however, that, as is related, the proposal was made to him by various States to frame for them a code of laws ; and he is said to have actuallj' done this in several instances. Surrounded by a crowd of true disciples, even women among them in the attire of men, the object of unbounded homage, up to the last moment in possession of undiminished mental power, he reached the advanced age of eighty-one years. The latest period of his life appears to have been troubled l)y certain dif- ferences and divisions in the school, for which Aristotle is particularly named as responsible. While engaged writing, or, according to others, at a marriage-feast, he was overtaken by death as by a gentle slumber in the year 347 B.C. His remains were laid in the Ceramicus, not far from the Academy. 2. History of theInserDe^telopmext of theWrit- IXGS AXB PmLOSOPHY OF Plato. — That the Platonic philosoiihy is essentially an historical development, that it is not to be conceived as completed at once in the form of an individual system, to which a variety of writings are as supplementary fragments, but that the several writings are rather stages of evolution, as it were stations passed and left behind in the intellectual progress of the philo- sopher — this is an extremely important point of view for the correct understanding of the Platonic -wTitings. The philosophical and literar}' activity of Plato falls into three periods, which may be vai-iously designated. In reference to chronology or biographj', they are the periods of apprenticeship, travel, and mastership (or of Lehrjahre, Wanderjahre, and Meisterjahre as already named), in reference again to the dominant outer intiu- F 62 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. ence and points of junction respectively preaent in each, these periods are the Socratic, the Heraclitico-Eiaatic, and the Pythagorean. In reference lastly to their subject- matter, they are respectively the antisophistico-ethical, the dialectical or conciliative, and the systematic or con- structive periods. The first period, the Socratic, is characterized exter- nally by the predominance of a certain imitative dramatic element, and internally in relation to the philosophical stand-point, by the adoption of the method and chief matter of Socrates. Not yet acquainted with the results of the older inquiries, and, from the Socratic point of view, rather repelled than attracted by the study of the history of philosophy, Plato restricts himself as yet to analytic treatment of the notions, especially the ethical ones, and to such an imitation of his master as is still philosophically incomplete, though certainly beyond any mere repetition of what had been got verbally by rote. His Socrates betrays not any other view of life or philo- sophical attainment than the historical Socrates of Xeno- phon has possessed. His eflforts too, like those of his contemporary fellow-disciples, are directed principally to practical wisdom, while his polemic, like that of Socrates, concerns the want of scientific knowledge prevalent in life, the Sophistical superficiality and defect of principle, infinitely more than the antagonistic tendencies of philo- sophy. The whole period displays still an eclectic and protreptic character. The highest point in which the dialogues of this group culminate, is the desire, still thoroughly Socratic indeed, to establish the certainty of absolute principles, the existence in and for itself (the objective reality) of the good. Plato's historical development, certainly, would take on quite another character, were the views of some later inquii'ei's in reference to the place of the Phoedrus to he considered right. If the Phcedrus, namely, were Plato's first work, this circumstance would from the beginning bespeak for Plato quite another course of culture than could possibly be anticipated on the part of a simple dis- ciple of Socrates. The allusions in this dialogue to the pre-existence of the soul and its periodical migrations, to the afiinity of earthly to heavenly truth, to di\'ine inspi- ration as in contrast to human reflection, the erotic notion, the Pythagorean ingredients, — all this is so dis- crepant from the original considerations of Socrates, that PL A TO. 63 it would requii-e us to place in the very beginning of his philosopliical development the greatest part of what Plato had creatively struck out only in the course of his entire career. This improbability itself, and, still more, numerous other objections, pronounce for a much later composition of this dialogue. The Phcedrm being set aside, the history of Plato's development runs pretty well thus : — The short dialogiies, which treat in a Socratic manner Socratic theories and questions are (those of them that are genuine) the earliest. The Charmides, for example, discusses temperance, the Lysis friendship, the Laches fortitude, Hippias ??i»ior voluntary and intentional wi'ong- doing, the Jirst Alcibtades the moral and intellectual requisites of a statesman, etc. The youthfulness and im- maturity of these dialogues, the disproportionate expen- diture of scenic display as compared with the matter in them, the scantiness and feebleness of this matter, the indirect manner of the inquiry, that ends not in any posi- tive result, the formal analytic handling of the discussed notions, — all this vouches for the early or maiden character of these lesser dialogxies. As special tj^pe of the Socratic period, the Protagoras may be taken. In this dialogue, when Plato directs his entire polemic against the Sophists, and concerns himself more especially Avith their external procedure, their con- temporary influence, and their peculiar method as op- posed to that of Socrates, without entering more deeply into the grounds and character of their philosophy itself, when further, occupied now with what is philosophical in the stricter sense, he exclusively discusses, and in the manner of indirect inquiry, the Socratic idea of virtue in its various aspects, as knowledge, as one, and as teach- able (compare xii. 7), — there are exhibited to us, and in the clearest fashion, the tendency, character, and defects of the first period. The third and highest stage of this period (the ProtO' goras standing for the second), is represented by the Oorgias, written shortly after the death of Socrates. Directed against the Sophistical identification of virtue and pleasure, of the good and the agreeable, or, what is the same thing, against the afl&rmation of an absolute moral relativity, this dialogue proves that the good, far from owing its origin only to the right of the stronger, and so only to the caprice of the subject, is somethmg 64 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. existent in and for itself, objectivel}'- valid, and conse- quently alone veritably iiseful, and that, therefore, the standard of pleasure must give place to the higher standard of the good. It is in this direct thetical ])0- lemic against the Sophistic principle of pleasure, this tendency towards something fixed, permanent, and secure against subjective self-will, that the superiority of the Gorrjlas to the Protagoras principall}'^ consists. In the first or Socratic period, the Platonic philoso- phizing became ripe and ready for the reception of Eleatic and Pythagorean categories. With help of these catego- ries, to struggle up to the higher questions of philosophy, and so to free the philosophy of Socrates from its involu- tion with practical life, — this was the task of the second period. The spcond period, the dialectic or Megaric, is characterized externally by a retrocession of the form and poetic animation, not unfrequently by obscurity and stylistic difficulties ; while inwardly it is characterized by the dialectical formation of the ideal theoiy, in concilia* tion and amalgamation with the thought of the Eleatics. Plato was brought into relation, through his journey to Megara, with opponents, through his voyage to Italy, v.'ith other philosophical tendencies, with whom and wath which he was bound to come to an understanding before being able to raise the principle of Socrates into its true significance. It was thus he was led to acquire the philo- sophical theories of the older thinkers, for the study of whio-h, in ^^ew of the absence at that time of any literary publicity, the requisite appliances were not yet in exist- ence at Athens. By means of a settlement with these different positions, such as had already been attempted by his elder fellow-disciples, he sought, transcending the narrow limits of mere ethical inquiry, to penetrate into the ultimate grounds of knowledge, and perfect the So- cratic art of universalization into a science of it, into the theory of the ideas. That all human action depended on knowledge, and that aU knowledge depended on its iini- versal or notion, to these results Plato was already able to advance by a scientific generalization of the Socratic doctrine. But to introduce now this Socratic cognition through notions into the circle of speculative thought, to establish the notional unities dialectically as the element of permanence in the vicissitude of the phenomenal, to discover the foundations of knowledge, wlui;h, so to speak, PL A TO. fiS had on]}' been turned by Socrates, to grasp the theories of opponents direct in their scientific gi'ounds, and follow them up into their ultimate roots, — this is the problem which the Megaric dialogues set themselves to resolve. At the head of this group stands the Theatetus. Its main contents are a polemic against the Protagorean theory of cognition, against the identification of thought and sensuous perception, or against the assumption of an absolute relativity of all knowledge. As the Gorgias, before it, sought to ascertain and estabhsh the absolute principle of ethical ideas, so now the Thecetetus, ascend- ing from practice to theory, seeks to ascertain and estab- lish the absolute principle of logical ideas, of those ideas which underlie aU perception and all thought, — in a word, it seeks to ascertain and establish the objecti\'ity of truth, a realm of knowledge that is independent of sensuous perception, that is immanent to thought. Such ideas are to him the universal notions, likeness, unlike- ness, identity, difference, etc. The Thecetetus is followed by the trilogy of the So- pliist, the Statesman, and the Philosopher, with which the Megaric group is completed. The object of the first of these dialogues is to investigate the notion of show (Schein, appearance), that is to say, of non-being ; that of the last, — represented by the Parmenides, — the notion of being ; and both are explanations come to with the views of the Eleatics. Plato, indeed, after having come to recognise the universal notions and the logical categories as what is permanent in the outward mutability, coidd not fail to have his attention awakened to the Eleatics, who by an opposite path had reached the same result, — that in unity, namely, lies all true substantiality, and that to plurality, as such, there can attach no true being. De- veloping this leading thought of the Eleatics into its con- sequences, in which the Megarics had ah'eady preceded him, it woidd necessarily be all the easier for him to advance to the elevation of his abstract universal notions (ideas), into metaphj-sical substances. On the other hand, it woidd be impossible for him, unless he were prepared entirely to surrender the plm-ality of existence, to be satisfied with the immobility and exclnsiveness of the Eleatic one, and he would be obliged rather, by means of a dialectical development of the Eleatic principle, to attempt to show that the one must at the same time be an organ- ized and co-artic\ilated whole that included the plurality 66 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. vnHnxi its own unity. The Sophist, in demonstrating the existence of show or of non-being (that is to say, the l)lurality of the ideas, and their nature to possess specific quality each only in a mutual contrast of pairs that are counterparts, results due to the presence of negation), dis- cusses this double relation to the Eleatic principle polemi- cally as against the latter. ITie Parmenides again — in demonstrating the Eleatic one, by virtue of its own logical consequence, to strike round into its reverse, and undergo diremptiou into plurality — effects the same ob- ject irenically. The internal progress of the ideal theory in the Megaric group is therefore this, that the Theoete- tus makes good, as against the Heraclitico-Protagorean doctrine of an absolute becoming, the permanent, objec- tive reality of the ideas ; the Sophist again their recipro- cal relation and susceptibility of combination ; and the Parmenides finally their entire dialectic complex, their relation to the phenomenal world, and their self-concUia- tion (fusion) with the latter. The third period begins with the return of the philoso- pher to his native country. It unites the perfection of form of the first with the deeper philosophical substance of the second. The memories of his young years appear at that time to have arisen anew before the soul of Plato, and to have again imparted to his literary faculty its long- unwonted freshness and fulness, whilst at the same time his experience of foreign countries, and his acquaintance in particular with the Pythagorean philosophy, had enriched his mind with a wealth of images and ideals. This re- vival of old memories announces itseK specially in this, that the writings of this group return with preference and love to the personahty of Socrates, and manifest the entire Platonic philosophy to be in a measure, but a glorifying of the Socratic theory, but an exaltation of the historical Socrates into the idea. In contrast to the two former periods, the third is characterized externally, hand in hand with the growing influence of Pythagorean- ism, by an increasing predominance of the mythic form, and internally, in speculative reference, by the application of the ideas to the concrete spheres of psychology, ethics, and natural science. That the ideas are objective reali- ties, the seat of all substantiality and truth, as conversely that the phenomena of sense are copies of these, — thia theory is now no longer argued, but is assumed as proved, tnd is made principle or dialectical basis of the discuss- PL A TO. 67 eion of the real disciplines. Combined with this is the tendency to conjoin into the totality of a system the sejiarate disciplines hitherto divided, as well as inwardly to fuse together all the previous principles of philosophy, that is, the ethical of Socrates, the dialectical of the Eleatics, and the physical of the Pythagoreans. Thus the Phcedrus, which is Plato's inaugural pro- gramme on opening of his Academic career, and the Banquet, which is connected with it, attempt — both starting from the erotic notion as the veritable philoso- phical gei'm — to subject the rhetorical theory and prac- tice of the time to a critique on pi'iuciples, in order to show, in contrast to both, that only exclusive devotion to the idea, the true Eros, affords that understood and settled stability of a scientific principle which is alone in a condition to secure us from subjectivitj', absence of principle, and crudeness. Thus, too, the remaining greater works are but similar attempts, as the Phcedo, to found the immortality of the soul on the ideal theory, the Philebus to apply the highest categories of the system to the notions of pleasure and the supreme good, and finally the closing and consummating works of the Republic and the Timceus to determine the true character of the state and of nature, of the physical and the spiritual universe. Having thus delineated the history of the inner deve- lopment of the Platonic philosophy, we turn now to its systematic exposition. 3. Division of the Platonic System. — Plato himself having given us no systematic exposition of his philosophy, no classifying principle realized in actual application, but only the history of his thought, or only the exposi- tion of his philosophical development, we find ourselves reduced here to mere hints. From these, various pro- posals have resulted, as now a division of the Platonic system into theoretical and practical sciences, and again into philosophies of the beautiful, the good, and the true. Better than these, perhaps, is another division, which has some support in certain ancient intimations. Some of the ancients say, namely, that Plato first collected the various parts of philosophy from their dispersion among the eai'liei philosophers, and so obtained three parts of philosophy, — logic, physics, ethics. The exacter statement is certainly that of Sextus Empiricus, that Plato virtually emploj^ed this classification, but had not definitely expressed it; it is only his disciples Xenocratea 68 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. and Aristotle who shall have expressly recognised this distribution. The Platonic system is at least suscep- tible of being, without violence, arranged into the three parts named. Several dialogues there are, it is true, which combine together, some more and some less, all three at once, — logic, ethics, and physics. Nay, even in those in which Plato is occupied with special disci- pUnes, we find always the one flowing into the other, physics issuing in ethics, ethics returning to physics, and dialectic finally pervading the whole. Still, particular dialogues there undoubtedly are, in which this ground- plaji can be distinctly recognised. That the Timceus is predominatingly physical, as the Eepuhlic is predominat- ingly ethical, admits not of a doubt. And if dialectic is exclusively represented in no single dialogue, the Megaric group at least, which closes in the Parmenides, and which constitutes, even according to the external in- timation of Plato, a connected tetralogy, jmrsues the common purpose of an exposition as well of science as of its object (being), and is in its matter, therefore, de- cidedly dialectical. Seeing, then, that Plato must, by the veiy course of pi'evious philosophy, have been naturally led to this tripartite division, that Xenocrates is not likely to have invented it, and that Aristotle assumes it as universally known, we cannot hesitate to adopt it as ground-plan in an exposition of the Platonic system. We have no clearer declaration in Plato in regard to the order of the parts either. The first j)Iace belongs evidently, however, to dialectic, as the foundation of all jjhilosophy ; and Plato himself, while he gives the general prescript (Pliced. p. 99, and Phadr. p. 237), to begin in every philosophical investigation with the de- termination of the idea, does afterwards actually discuss all the concrete spheres of science from the point of view of the ideal theory. The position of the other two parts would seem still more doubtful. As, however, physics cidminate in ethics, while, conversely, ethics, in the in- quiry into the animating i>rmciple (soul) of nature, have physics for foundation, the latter will necessarily precede the former. From philosophy the mathematical sciences have been expressly excluded by Plato. He considers them, in- deed, as educational means for philoso}>hical thought {Pep. VII. 526), as a necessaiy step in knowledge, with- out which no one can ever attain to philosophy PLATO. 09 {Rnd. VI. 510) ; but still to him mathematics is not pliilo- sophy, for the foi'mer presupposes the principles of the latter, as if they were already known to all, and without giving any account of them, — a mode of procedure which, in pure science, is inadmissible ; mathematics, too, has recourse in its proofs to visible pictures, although it is not of these that it treats, but of what is seen by the under- standing alone (Ibid.) It stands then to him in the middle between correct opinion and pure science, clearer than the one, obscurer than the other (Ibid. vii. 533). 4. The Platonic Dialectic. — (a.) Idea of dialectic. — Dialectic or logic has been used by the ancients mostly in a very wide sense, by Plato frequently as interchangeable with philosophy. Nevertheless he treats it at other times as only a branch of philosophy. He separates it as science of the eternal and immutable from physics as science of the mutable, of what never is, but always only becomes. He separates it also from ethics, so far as the latter con- sider not the good in and for itself, but only in its con- crete application in morals and the state. Dialectic is still thus, in a measure, philosophy in the more eminent sense of the word, whilst physics and ethics add themselves to it as two less exact sciences, as it were as not yet of the nature of completed philosophy. Plato expressly defines dialectic in the usual sense of the word, as the art of developing knowledge conversationally by question and answer (Bep. vil. 53i). But the art of correct commu- nication in conversation being at the same time to Plato the art also of correct thought, as indeed the ancients generally could not separate thought and speech, and every process of thoiight was for them a living discourse, Ave find him also defining dialectic as the science of duly conducting discourse, and duly joining or disjoining the genera of things, the universal notions (Soph. p. 253 ; P/uedr. p. 2G6). Dialectic is for him twofold then, to know what can be joined, what not ; and to know how to di-'ade, how to combine. If along with this latter de- finition we consider that, for Plato, the universal notions, the ideas, are alone what is veritably actual, veritably beent, we shall find a third definition, which also not un- frequently appears in Plato (particularly Phileh. p. 57), and is not by any means discrepant, this, namely, that dialectic is the science of the beent, of the veritable, of the ever- lasting self-identical, — in a word, that it is the science of aU the other sciences. So conceived, it may be briefly 70 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. designated as the science of wliat absolutely is, or of the ideas. (h.) What is science? (aa.) In contradistinction to sen- satio7i and sensuous concej^tion. — The discussion of this question, as against the sensualism of Protagoras, is the biisiness of the Thecetetus. Protagoras said, namely, that aU knowledge is perception, and that both are one and the same. From this it followed — consequences which Protagoras himself drew — that the things are as they appear to me to be, that perception or sensation is infallible. But as again perception and sensation are with countless people countlessly diverse, as even in the case of one and the same individual they are extremely variable, it follows fiirther, that there are no objective assignments or predicates whatever, that we can never say what anything is in itself, that all notions, big, little, light, heavy, more, less, have only a relative signification, and that consequently the universals likewise, as them- selves but reductions of the changeful many, are devoid of all permanence and consistence. In opposition to this Protagorean thesis, Plato calls attention to the following contradictions and counter-instances : — Firstly, The Pro- tagorean jiro^^osition leads to the most startling conse- quences. Being and seeming, knowledge and perception namely, being one and the same, then any irrational brute that is capable of percei^tion is equally the measure of all things ; and instinctive sentiment, as the expression of my subjective experience, of my condition for the moment, being infallible, then there is no longer possible any instruction, any scientific discussion, any debate, or any refutation. Secondly, The Protagorean proposition is a logical contradiction. For according to it Protagoras must call right whoever calls him wrong ; since indeed, as is maintained by himself, nobody perceives or feels incorrectly, but, on the contrary, everybody quite correctly. The pretended truth of Protagoras, therefore, is true for nobody, not even for himself. Thirdly, Protagoras anni- hilates all knowledge of the future. What / hold to be useful, namely, does not on that account necessarily prove itself such in result. For, as what is useful always refers to the future, and as men, taken individuallj'^, do not pos- sess in themselves any necessary standard for estimating the future, but one man more, another less, the infer- ence is clear, that it is not man simpliciter, but only the wise man that can be regarded as a criterion. Fourthly, PLATO. 71 The tlieoiy of Protagoras demolishes perception itself. Percei)tiou accordiug to him dejiends on a, for one another (a reciprocity, a synthesis) of perceived object and per- ceiving subject, and is the common product of both. But the objects, in his view also, are iu such uninterrupted flux and motion, that it is impossible to fix them whether in seeing or in hearing. This absolute mutability ren- ders all knowledge of sense, and, consequently, all know- ledge in general — both being identical to Protagoras — impossible. Fifthly, Protagoras knows not the a jx'iorl element of knowledge. It results from an analysis of sensuous perception, that not the whole sum involved in any one act of perception is produced or introduced by the action of the senses, but rather that, besides this sensuous action, there are implied as well certain intel- lectual functions, and, cousequentlj^ an independent sphere of extra-sensuous knowledge. We see with the eyes and hear with the ears ; but, to conjoin these per- ceptions, thus acquired by means of different organs, and to embrace them in the unity of self-consciousness, — neither is this an affair of the senses. But further : we compare the vai-ious perceptions of sense with one an- other, and this is a function also which cannot be per- formed by the senses themselves, for it is impossible for us to receive through sight the perceptions of the ear, or conversely. Of the perceptions themselves finally, we affirm qualities, such as being and non-being, likeness and unlikeness, identity and difference, etc., which plainly cannot be derived by means of sense itself. These quali- ties, to which belong also the good and the bad, beauty and the reverse, etc., constitute a pecidiar sphere of knowledge, which the soul itself creates in independency of all perception of sense, and through its own spontaneous action. In other dialogues Plato introduces, in his polemic against sensualism, the ethical moment as well. Wc niust, he says (in the Soph. ), make better men of those who materialize all things, and who maintain what is tangible to be alone true, before they can become susceptible of knowledge. Then, however, they will see the truth of the soul, acknowledge justice and reason in it, and admit that these are real things, albeit neither tangible nor visible. [hh). Knowledge in relation to opinion. — Opinion (crude conception, feeling, instinctive conviction) is just as little identical with knowledge as perception of sense. Incor- rect opinion falls of itself to the ground ; but even cor 72 HISTORY OF rTTILOSOPIIY. reot opinion cannot be maintained as truth in-oper, for (Thecetet.) it may be produced by the art of the orator without being legitimately describable as on that account true knowledge. Correct opinion, if materially true, is formally inadequate, and stands therefore in the middle be- tween knowledge and non-knowledge, participant of both. {cc.) Science hi relation to thought. — Aa against the Protagorean sensualism, there has been already proved, on the part of the soul, and in independence of sensuous perception and sensation itself, a power of investigating the universal abstractedly, and of grasping in thought that which truly is. There are thus two sources of knowledge, on one side external sensation with inner in- stinctive opinion, and on the other rational thought. The former of these is employed on what is in constant process, in constant change, on what, as purely moment- ary, is in perpetual transition from the was through the now into the will he (Parm. p. 152) ; and is, consequently, a source of troubled, impure, and uncertain knowledge. Thought, on the contrary, is emi^loyed on the pennanent, on that which neither begins nor ends, but always in like manner is [Tim. p. 51). There are two sorts of things, says the Tiinceus (p. 27, seq.), one ' that always is, and be- comes not, and one that always becomes, and never is. The former, that, namely, which is always in the same state, is apprehended through reHection by means of reason ; the other, again, which comes to be and ceases to be, but properly never is, is apprehended through opinion by means of sensuous perception, and Avithout reason.' True knowledge, therefore, comes only from the pure and wholly inner activity of the mind, freed from the body and all sensuous troublings and disturbances {Phced. p. 65). The soul in this state perceives things in their purity, as they are (Phced. p. 66) in their eternal essence, in their own immutable nature. Hence it is that the desire of death, the lonuing to escape from the body as an obstacle to true knowledge, and to become pure spirit, is portrayed in the Phcedo (p. 64) as the true mood of a philosopher. Science, after all this, then, is the thought of the veritably beent, or of the ideas. Dia- lectic, as the art of joining and disjoining ideas, is the organ of their apprehension, the means of their discovery and recognition ; and, conversely, the ideas are the true object of dialectic. (c.) The ideal theory in its genesis. — The Platonic ideal ^ PLATO. 73 Llieory is the common product of the Socratic method of notional formation (nniversaUzation), of the Heraclitic jirinciple of an absohite becoming, and of the Eleatic doctrine of an alisolute being. Plato owes to the first the idea of notional knowledge, to the second the con- ceiition of the sensuous world as mere becoming, to the third the assumption of a sphere of absolute reality, riato connects the ideal theory elsewhere (in the Ph'dehus), with tlie Pythagorean thought that all consists of unity and plurality, of the limited and the unlimited. To come to an understanding with the principles of Heraclitus and the Eleatics is the oljject of the Thecetetus, the Sophist, and the Parmenides. This is accomplished in the Them- fetus polemically against the principle of an absolute be- coming ; in the Sophist polemically against the principle of abstract being ; and in the Parmenides irenically in re- lation to the Eleatic one. Of the Thecetefus we have just spoken; in the Sophist and Parmenides the progress of the ideal theory is constituted as follows : — The purpose of the dialogue so-named is ostensibly to demonstrate the Sophist as a caricature of the philo sopher ; in truth, however, to establish the reality of mere show or of the non-beent ; and si)eculatively to discuss, therefore, the relation of being and of non-being. The teaching of the Eleatics had ended in the rejection of all sensuous knowledge, and in the declaration of what we believe ourselves to perceive as regards a plurality of things, or a becoming, to be mere show. Here the contra- diction was plain, of directly denying non-being, and yet admitting its existence in human conception. Plato de- monstrates this contradiction at once, by explaining that any apparent knowledge which should furnish us with a false object or a false conception were impossible, if thought in general of the false, the untnie, the non- existent, were impossible. This, Plato continues, is pre- cisely the greatest difficulty in thinking non-being, that he who denies it is obliged quite as much as he who affirms it, to contradict himself. For although it is incapable of being expressed, or of being tli ought whether as one or as many, yet he who speaks of it is comjielled to concede to it both characters. If we grant a false opinion to exist, we at least presuppose the conception of non-being ; for only that opinion can be named false that either declares the non-existent existent, or the existent non-existent. In short, if a false conception actually 74 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. exists, a non-existent, in truth and actuality, also cxista. Having establislied in this way the reality of non-being, Plato proceeds to discuss the relation of being and non- being, or the relation of notions in general, their capacity of combination, and their antithesis. If, namely, non- being has no less reality than being, and bemg no more than non-being, — if, for example, the not-large be as real as the large, then every notion may in the same way be expressed as the side of an antithesis, and recognised as at once beent and non-beent. It is beent in reference to itself, as what is identical with it- self ; it is non-beent in reference to each of the innu- merable other notions which may be referred to it, and with which it cannot enter into communion, as being different from them. The notions of the identical [ravrbv) and the other [ddTepov], express the form of the antithe- sis in general : they are the universal formulas of com- bination for all notions. This reciprocal relation of notions, as at once beent and non-beent, by means of which they become arranged together, is the foundation of the art of dialectic, the business of which is to decide what notions shall be combined together, and what not. Plato shows by example of the notions being, motion ( = Ijecomiug), and rest (= quasi-Hxedi being, mortal state), what results from the combination of notions and their reciprocal exchision of one another. Of the notions named, for instance, those of motion and of rest cannot be combined together, but, with the notion of being, either may. The notion of rest is, therefore, in refer- ence to itself, beent ; in reference to motion non-beent, or other. Thus, the ideal theory, its general establish- ment having been attempted ia the Thecetefus, through demonstration of the objective reality of the ideas, is now, in the Sojih'ist, developed into the doctrine of the community of notions, that is of their reciprocal subordi- nation and co-ordination. The category that conditions these reciprocal relations is the category of non-being, or the other. The fundamental thought of the Sophist, then, that neither is being without non-being, nor non- being without being, may, in modern phraseology, be expressed thus : negation is not non-being, but determi- nateness, and, conversely, all determinateness, and con- creteness of notions, all aflSrmativeness, is only thi'ough negation, through exclusion, contrariety ; the notion of antithesis is the soul of the i^hilosophical method. PLATO. 76 As positive consequence, and as a furtlier clevelopment of the Eleatic principle, we have now the ideal theory in tlie Parmenriles. The burden of this dialogue being put into tbe mouth of Parmenides himself, the Platonic doc- trine is thus, even in its external form, presented as the special view of the Eleatic philosopher. No doubt, the leading thought here, namely, that the one is not think- able without the many, nor the many without the one, but that both necessarily presuppose and mutually con- dition each other, stands in direct contradiction to the Eleatic doctrine. Still, Parmenides, in attempting to discuss and explain, in the first part of his poem, the one, and in the second (though according to his own protesta- tion only in deference to erroneous opinion), the world of the many, had himself, in a certain way, postulated an inner conciliation between these seemingly incoherent parts of his system ; and to that extent, therefore, the Platonic ideal theory is justified in giving itself out as a further development, and as the true sense of the Parmenidean philosophy. This dialectical concilia- tion between the one and the many, Plato attempts in four antinomies, which ostensibly have only a negative result, so far as they demonstrate, that on assumption as well as on rejection of the one, contradictions follow. The positive sense of these antinomies, which, however, can only be got by means of inferences that are not made by Plato himself, but left by him to the reader's activity, is as follows : — The first of the antinomies shows tliat the one, if conceived in abstract contradiction to the many, is not even one, that is, that it is unthink- able. The second shows, that in this case the reality of the many is also unthinkable. The third shows that the one, or the idea, cannot be thought, as not being, since of the absolutely non-existent there can neither be notion nor predicate, and since, if non-being be excluded from all community with being, all coming to be and ceasing to be, all likeness and iiulikeness, all conception and eX' j)lanation of it are also denied. The fourth, lastly, shows, that the not-one cannot be thought without the one, the many not without the idea. What now is Plato's object in this discussion of the dialectical relation between the notions of the one and the many ? Does he intend by the notion of the one only to render clear, as it wei'e by an example, the method of the dialectical manipulation of the notions ; or is the discussion of this notion itself the 76 HISTORY OF PHILOSOriTY. special object of the exposition ? Plainly the latter must be the case, if the dialogue is not to end resiUtless, and its two parts are not to rest without inner connexion. But how comes precisely this notion of the one to be treated by Plato in a special inqnirj' ? If we will remind our- selves that the Eleatics had, in the antithesis of the one and the many, contemplated the antithesis of the true and the phenomenal, that Plato likewise regards his ideas as unities of the multiplex, as what in the many is one and identical, using indiscriminately, indeed, ' idea ' and ' the one,' as synonymous, and defining dialectic the art of combining the many into unity [Rep. vii. 537), we shall perceive that the one which is the object of inquiry in the Parmenides is the idea in general, that is, in its logical form, and that in the dialectic of the one and the many, Plato consequently seeks to exhibit the dialectic of the idea and the phenomenal world, or to determine and establish dialectically the correct view of the idea as the ixnity in this phenomenal world. Proof being led in the Par- menides, on the one hand, that the many cannot be thought without the one, and, on the other hand, that the one must be such as comprehends within itself the many, there results, on the one hand, that the being of the phenomenal world, or of the many, has only so far truth as the one, the notion, is in it, and, on the other hand, that the notion, in order to be capable of existence in the phenomenal world, actually is of such a nature aa not to be an abstract one, but multiplicity in unity. Matter — this is the indirect result of the Parmenides — has, as the indeterminate, infinitely divisible mass, no actuality ; it is in relation to the world of ideas non- beent : and, if indeed the ideas, as what truly is, obtain in it their manifestation, still all that is real in the mani- festation is the idea itself : the world of manifestation holds from the world of ideas that shines into it its en- tire existence in fee, and being comes to it only so far as its import is the notion. (d.) Positive exposition of the ideal theory. — The ideas may, according to the various sides of their historical connexion, be defined as the common element in the manifold, the universal in the indi\'idual, the one in the many, the fixed and permanent in the mutable. In a subjective reference, they are principles of cognition, certain in themselves and inderivative from experience, the ia-bora regulatives of all our knowledge. In an ob- PLA TO. 77 jective reference, they are tlie immutable principles of existence and the world without, incorporeal, indivisible, simple unities, that are present in whatever may in any way prove itself self-subsisteut. The ideal theory origi- nates in the desire to express the essence of tilings, what each thing veritably is, to state in notions what of being is identical with thought, to comprehend the real world as an intellectual world organised within itself. Aristotle expressly assigns this desire of scientific cognition as mo- tive of the Platonic theory of ideas. 'Plato,' he says (Meta. XIII. 4), ' came upon his ideal theory, because he was convinced of the truth of the Heraclitic view of the things of sense, and regarded them as an eternal flux. But if, Plato reasoned, there is to be a science or scientific knowledge of anything, there must, together with the things of sense, exist other entities possessed of stability ; for there can be no science of the fleeting.' It is for the idea of science, then, that the reality of the ideas is de- manded ; but this can only be possible if the notion is the ground of all being. This is the opinion of Plato. Neither a true knowing nor a true being is for him pos- sible without the absolute notions, the ideas. What now does Plato understand by idea ? That not only the ideal notions of the beautiful and the good are for him ideas, appears from what has been said. An idea, as the name alone (eZSos) intimates, has always place wherever a general notion of species and genus has place. Thus Plato speaks of the idea of a bed, of a table, of strength, of health, of the voice, of colour, of ideas of mere relation and quality, of ideas of mathe- matical figures, nay, even of ideas of the non-beiint, ami of what is in its nature only a contradiction to the idea, as depravity and vice. In a word, there is always an idea to be assiuned whenever a many is designated by the same appellative, by a common name {Rep. x. 596) ; or, as Aristotle has it {Meta. xii. 3), Plato assumed for every class of existence an idea. Plato expresses himseK in this sense in the opening of the Parmenides. The young Socrates is there asked by Parmenides what he takes for an idea? Socrates then enumerates the moral ideas, those of the just, the beautiful, the good, without condi- tion; he also admits, but with hesitation, the jihysical ideas, as of man, fire, water. As for ideas of what is only formless mass, or only part in something else, such as hair, filth, and dirt, these he will not admit, but is "iS HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. advised by Parmenides, that when philosophy shall have taken full possession of him, he will no longer despise such things, that is, he will jierceive how even they, though in a remoter manner, participate in the idea. Here, at least, the demand is expressed, to assume no sphere of being as abandoned of the idea, to vindicate for rational cognition even what is apparently the most irrational and contingent, and to comjirehend all that exists as an existence of reason. (e.) The relation of the ideas to the loorld of sense. — In analogy with the various definitions of the idea are the various designations which Plato uses for the things of sense and the world without. The latter he names the many, the divisible, \inlimited, indeterminate, and mea- sureless, that which becomes, the relative, the big and little, the non-beent. The question, however, in what relation the two worlds of sense and of the ideas stand to each other, Plato has answered neither satisfactorily nor in agreement with himself. When he characterizes, as is most usual, the relation of things to the notions as one of participation, or when he speaks of things as copies or adumbrations of the ideas which are then as archetypes, the main difficulty of the ideal theory is, by such figurative expressions, not removed, but only concealed. The difficulty lies in the contradiction, that Plato now gi'ants the reality of becoming and of its sphere, and again declares the ideas, these stable and ever self-identical substances to be alone what is actual. Formally, indeed, Plato is so far consistent with himself that he designates crass matter not as positive substrate, but as the non-beent, and expressly protests that the sensuous is not for him beent, but only like to what is beent [Rej). x. 597). Consistent with this also is the demand of Parmenides that a completed philosophy should find, even in the smallest particular, the idea as that which is knowable in the material world, and that in the latter there should be left behind no remnant of an existence incommensurable with thought, but that all dualism should be got rid of. Finally Plato, in many of his expressions, would seem to regard the phenomenal world as only subjective appearance, as product of sub- jective conception, of a confused mode of conceiving the ideas. In this view the phenomena as opposed to the ideas are quite deprived of self-subsistency ; beside these they are no longer anything but the idea itself iu PLATO. 79 the form of non-being ; the phenomenal world holds from that of the ideas which shines into it, its whole existence in fee. But when again Plato names the sen- suous element a mixture of the element of self with that of the other or non-being [Tim. p. 35) ; when he calls the ideas vowels which, ehainlike, pervade all things {Soph. p. 253) ; when he thinks to himself the possibility of matter exhibiting resistance to the creative power of the ideas (Tim. j). 56) ; when he gives intimations of a malevolent world-soul (Laws, X. 896), and of an undivine natural principle in the world (States, p. 268) ; when he conceives in the Phcedo the relation between body and soul as quite heterogeneous and antagonistic, — there re- mains, even after withdrawal of the mythical form, as in the Timceus, and of the rhetorical, as in the Phcedo, enonch to substantiate the contradiction which was pointed out above. It is most observable in the Timceus. Here Plato, in figuring the world of sense to be formed by the Creator on the model of the ideas, assumes for this world-forming power of Demiurgns, something at bottom that is adapted to receive into itself the image of the ideas. This something is compared by Plato himself to the material which artisans work up (whence the later name Hyle) ; he describes it as completely indefinite and formless, but as capable of copying in itself all kinds of forms, as invisible and shapeless, a something that is hard to be defined ; and indeed it actually refuses to be exactly defined at any time by Plato. The actuality of matter is thus denied ; and even when Plato compares it to space, he considers it only as place of the sensuous world, as its nega- tive condition ; it participates in being only as receiving into itself the ideal form. But it is stiU the objective manifestation of the idea ; the visible world arises through the mixture of the ideas with this substrate, and when matter is, according to its metaphysical term, designated the ' other,' it is, as result of the dialectical discussions, with logical necessity, quite as much beent as non-beent. As Plato concealed not this difiiculty from himself, he was contented to speak in similes and metaphors of a pre- supposition which he was as little able to dispense with as intelligibly conceive. He was unable to dispense with it, without either raising himself to the notion of an ab- solute creation, or considering matter as latest emanation of the absolute spirit, as basis of his self-conciliation with himself, or directly declaring it to be subjective 80 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. appearance. The Platonic system is thus a futile struggle against dualism. (/.) The idea of the good, and the Divine Being. — Tf the truth of existence is expressed in the notions, aud these again are so related that a higher notion comjjrehenda and combines within it several lower ones, and in such a manner that, proceeding from one, we may find all the rest (Meno, p. 81), the ideas must constitute as a whole an articulate organism, a graduated series, in which a lower term must always present itself as basis and pre- supposition for the next higher. This series now must terminate in an idea which shall require for its siipport no higher idea or presiipposition. This highest idea, the ' ultimate in cognition,' the presupposition of the rest, itself without presupposition, is for Plato the idea of the good, that is, of the metaphysical, not the moral good {Bep. VII. 517). What, however, this absolute good is, Plato undertakes to show, as he says himself, only in copy. ' As the sun is the cause of sight, and cause not only of the visibility of things, but of their generation and growth, so the good is of such power and beauty that it is not only cause of science for the soul, but source of being and of truth for everything that is an object of science ; and as the sun is not itself either seeing, or what is seen, but stands above them, so likewise the good is not itself science and truth, but is over both, and both are not the good, but only the goodly ' (Bep. vi. 506). The idea of the good excludes all presupposition, so far as it has unconditional worth, and to all else gives worth. It is the ultimate ground at once of knowledge and of being, of reason and of what is reasoned, of subjective and objective, of ideal and real, but it is itself raised above this disjunction (Bep. VI. 508-517). Actual derivation, however, of the various other ideas from the single idea of the good, Plato has not attempted ; he proceeds here quite empi- rically ; a class of existence is assumed as given, is re- ferred to its common quality, and the latter is then expressed as idea. Nay, in having hypostasized the individual ideas, and thereby declared them each fixed and complete in itself, he has prescinded any reciprocal derivation of them, and rendered directly impossible any immanent progress from the one to the other. In what way, now, this idea of the good, and the ideas in general, are, in Plato's view, relaterl to God, is a dif- PLATO. 81 ficiilt question. All things considered, it must be held probable that Plato conceived both (God and the idea of the good) as identical ; but whether he understood again the supreme cause more specifically as a personal being or not, is a question that hardly admits of any quite definite answer. The system itself excludes, in consist- ency, any personality of God, For if only the universal (the ideas) is what veritably is, the absolute idea, or God, must also be absolutely universal. But that Plato himself consciously drew this consequence, can as little be maintained as the contrary proposition, that he was with definite philosophical consciousness a theist. For if, on the one hand, mythical!}'- or popularly, he makes mention, in innumerable places, of God, or the gods, this very plurality of gods proves that he is speak- ing then in the sense of the traditional rehgion ; while, on the other hand, whenever his discourse is rigorously philosophical, he assigns to the personality of God a very insecure place beside the ideas. The probabihty is, then, that he never definitely put to himself the entire question of the personality of God ; that he allowed himself to en- tertain the religious idea of God as his own natural con- viction ; that, in an ethical interest, he even vindicated it as against the anthropomorphism of the mythological poets (Bepubllc, Laws) ; that he attempted to estabhsh it from the facts of design in nature and of a universally diffused belief in God {Laws) ; but that philosophically he made no use of it. 5. The Platonic Physics. — {a.) Nature. — Through the notion of veritable being, which, conceived as the good, is the presupposition of all teleological explanation of nature, and through the notion of becoming, which is the fundamental quality of nature, dialectics pass into physics. As belonging to the sphere of reasonless, sen- suous perception, nature cannot claim, however, the same minuteness of consideration as dialectics. Plato would seem, then, to have applied himself to physical inquiries with less afi"ection than to those of ethics and dialectics, and that too only in his later years ; he has devoted to them, indeed, only a single dialogue, the TimcEus, and has gone to work there much less inde- pendently than anywhere else, that is to say, almost whoUy in the manner of the Pythagoreans. The diffi- culty of the Timceus is augmented by its mythical form, v/hich provoked, indeed, the ancient commentators them- 82 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. telves. Tf we take the description it gives simply as it oflfers itself, however, we find it to assume, first, before the creation of anything, a world-former (Demiurgus), as moving dehberating principle ; and then, beside him, on the one hand the ideal world (which, ever self -identi- cal, remains immovable as the eternal archetype), and on the other, a chaotic, formless, lawless, fluctuating mass, which holds within it the germs of the material world, but vdthout yet possessing any definite form or sub- stance. With these two elements, the Creator composes, next, the soul of the world, that is, the invisible dyna- mical principle of order and motion in the world (which is conceived, however, as extended in space). Demiurgus spreads out now this world-soiU like a colossal net or frame, throughout the whole extent which the world is afterwards to occupy ; dividing it into the two spheres of the fixed stars and the planets, and the latter again into the seven special circles. Then the material world, — first realized through development of the chaotic mass into the four elements, — is built into this frame ; and, finally, by formation of the organic world its inner completion is accomplished. In this cosmogony of the TimoBus, it is hard to discriminate between what is mythical and what philosophical ; it is particularly difficult to decide, for instance, how far the succession of the creative acts in time, or what is historical in the con- struction, is to be considered as mere form. The mean- ing of the world-soul is clearer. In the Platonic system generally, the soul is the middle tei-m between the ideas and what is corporeal, the medium by virtue of which the material element is formed and individualized, ani- mated and ruled ; in short, the medium by which it is raised from confused plurality into organic unity, and so retained. Quite in the same way, numbers are to Plato a middle term between the ideas and the world, so far as through them the sum of material existence is brought into definite, quantitative relations of multitude, magnitude, figure, parts, position, distance, etc., — in other words, is arithmetically and geometrically disposed, — instead of ex- isting as a limitless and distinctionless mass. Both of these functions are united in the world-soul : it is the uni- versal medium between the ideas and matter ; the grand world-schema to which the latter on the great scale owes its formation and articulation ; the mighty cosmical power by which it (in the heavenly bodies, for example) in PL A TO. 83 retained in tlie given arrangemect, moved (made to re- volve), and raised by such movement in law into a real copy of the ideas. Plato's explanation of natnre, in contrast to the earlier mechanical ones, is thoroughly teleological ; it is constructed according to the idea of the good. Plato conceives the world as the work of unenvious divine goodness, which wills to create what shall be like itself. Demiurgus, by model of the eternal ideas, has fashioned it in perfection. Endowed with life and reason through the soul that is immanent in it, destined to en- dure throughout all time and never to become old, it is withal the infinitely beautiful, the infinitely divine copy of the good. Made in the image of perfection, it corresponds to the sole, all-embracing, and essential one, and is itself one ; for an infinite number of worlds cannot be thought as conceivable and actual. For the same cause it has the form of a globe, the most perfect and uniform of shapes, and which comprehends all others ; its motion also is that of a circle, because, as return into itself, that movement is the likest of all to the movement of reason. The de- tails of the Timceus, the derivation of the four elements, the distribution of the seven planets in conformity to the musical octave, the conception of the stars as immortal superior beings, the representation of the earth as at rest in the middle of the world — an idea which was subse- quently developed through subsidiary hy3)otheses into the Ptolemaic system, — the reduction of all the forms of matter to those of geometry, the classification of animated beings in accordance with the four elements into beings of fire or light (gods and demons), of air, of water, and of earth, the discussions on organic nature, and especi- ally on the structure of the human body, can here only be mentioned. These matters possess philosophical in- terest, not so much in consequence of their substantial value — for they only expose the entire insufficiency of the natural philosophy of the period — as of the main conception that the world is the product and copy of reason, that it is an organism of order, harmony, and beauty, that it is the self-realization of the good. (6.) The Soul. — The theory of the soul, so far as it enters not into the discussion of apphed morality, but only considers the foundations of the moral act, is the completion, the cope-stone of the Platonic physics. The individual soul possesses the same nature and character as the universal soul ; and it belonged to the perfection 84 niSTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. of the world, that there should be a plurality of souls, through which the principle of reason and of life might be individualized in a plenitude of particular beings. The soul in itself is indestructible, and, through reason, in which it participates, of a divine nature ; it is by its veiy principle destined for the cognition of the divine and eternal, for a pure blissful life in the contemplation of the ideal world. But its union with a material body is no less essential ; the race of perishable beings was, for completion of the genera of things, necessarily also repre- sented in the universe, and through that life in the body which devolves on the individual soul. The soul, as united with the body, participates in its motions and changes, and is in this reference akin to the perishable, being subject to the fluctuation of the conditions of sen- suous life, and to the influence of sensuous feelings and greeds. It cannot consequently maintain itself in its pure divinity, but sinks from the celestial to the earthly, from the divine to the mortal. The conflict between the higher and the lower principle has its seat in the indivi- dual soul ; intelligence succumbs to the power of sense ; the absolute dualism of idea and reality, which in the great whole of the world disappears into unity, comes here into full actuality. The soul, on the one hand, sways and controls the body ; but, on the other hand, the body no less sways and controls the soul, which is then debased into the lower life of sense, into forgetful- ness of its higher origin, into mere fiuitude of perception and will. This interaction of soul and body is brought about by a lower, sensuous faculty, and Plato distin- guishes, therefore, two constituents of the soul, one divine and rational, the other mortal and irrational. It is between these two that courage (6vij.6% courage, coiur, heart), as intermediating link, appears. Courage is nobler, indeed, than sensuous appetite, but because it manifests itseK also in children, and even in brutes, and frequently allows itself to be blindly hurried on without reflection, it belongs, Uke sense, to the natural side in man, and must not therefore be confounded with reaaon. The soul, consequently, is to Plato, during its connexion with the body and the world of sense, placed in a con- dition utterly inadequate to its proper being. In itself divine, possessed of true knowledge, independent, free, it is in life the reverse, weak, sensuous, passive to the influences of the bodily nature, betrayed into evil and PLATO. 85 into sin by all the disquietudes, lusts, passions, contests, which arise to it from the preponderance of the sensuous principle, from the necessity of physical self-preservation, and from the struggle for possession and enjoyment. A dim sense of its higher origin, a longing for its home, the world of ideas — this, indeed, remains to it, and announces itself in love to knowledge, in enthusiasm for beauty (Eros), in the battle of the spirit to become lord of the body. But this very longing proclaims that the soul's true life is not this present sensuous existence, but lies rather in the future, in the future that follows its separation from the body. The soid which had given itself up to sense incurs the penalty of migration into new bodies, it may be even into lower forms of existence from which it is only delivered, when, in the course of time, it has recovered its purity. The pure soul, which has stood the proof of association with the corporeal world untainted, returns at death into the state of bUssful repose, but only, after once more tasting it, to resume afresh the life of the body. The Platonic descriptions of these future Btates of the soul do not always agree, indeed ; the Phcedrus and the Phcedo, t\iQ Republic axid the Tiviceus, dif- fer from each other in many respects ; but Plato, Hke the Pythagoreans, is in earnest with them. It is really his opinion that the process of the world, the history of the universe, has no other import than this perpetual transi- tion of Psyche between the higher and the lower, the divine and the human world. Psyche is of too noble a nature only to begin with this life and then vanish ; she is divine and immortal ; but she is not pure being as the idea is, she has in her something of the character of the ' other ; ' she is at once spiritual and unspiritual, free and unfree ; these two contradictory elements of her being attain to manifestation in that alternation of higher and lower states, in the form of a succession in time. The soul exhibits the enigma of an equal inclination to the ideal and the sensuous ; and this enigma, according to Plato, finds its answer in this theory of the nature and destiny of the soul itself. All this seems very alien to Socrates ; the Socratic postidate that man shall act not from sense but from intellect, appears transformed here into a speculative philosopheme that purports to explain whence there is in man the union of both, scLst and reason. But precisely in this closing concentration of his entire philosophy into the single point of the ethical 8G HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. nature aud. destiny of the soul, doe3 Plato manifest him- self as a true disciple of his master, whose veritable vocation it had been to kindle in his pupil this lofty ideal of the sublimity of the soul in comparison with sense. 6. The Platonic Ethics. — The question in Plato's ethics (which ethics are nothing else than the ideal theory practically applied) is — with him as well as with the other Socratics — to ascertain and establish the summum bonum, the end or aim, which it shall be the object of all will and of all action to realize. It is in accordance with this principle (the summum bonum) that the theory of virtue is determined, whioh again forms the founda- tion of the theory of the state as the objective actualiza- tion of the good in human society. (a.) The supreme good. — What is the ultimate end is the simple result of the entire idea of tne Platonic system. Not life in the non-being, the perishableness, the changefulness of sensuous existence, but exaltation into true, into ideal being, is, whether in its own nature or in its relation to the soul, that which is the good absolutely. The task and destiny of the soul is flight from the inward and outward evils of sense, purification and emancipation from corporeal influence, the striving to become pure, just, and like withal to God (Thecet, Phcedo) ; and the path to this is withdrawal from sensuous imaginations and appetites, retirement into thought, into the cognition of truth, in a word, philosophy. Philosophy, for Plato as for Socrates, is not something merely theoretical, but the return of the soul into its true being, the spiritual new birth, in which it regains its lost knowledge of the ideal world and a consciousness of its own loftier origin, of its pristine exaltation over the world of sense. In philosophy, spirit purifies itself from all sensuous admixture, it comes to its own self, it regains the freedom and peace of which it had been de- prived by its immersion in matter. It was natural that, with this view, Plato should offer the most determined opposition to the Sophistico-Cyrenaic hedonism ; to the refutation of which the Gorgias and the Philebus are especially dedicated. It is demonstrated in these that pleasure is something insubstantial and indefinite, from wtich no order or harmony can result to life, that it is something exceedingly relative, transforming itself readily into pain, and all the more pain the more boundlessly it is worshipped ; and that it is a contradiction to seek to PLATO. 87 pxit pleasure, this tlicit is inwardly worthless, above the power and virtue of the soul, Ou the other side, Plato nowise approves, nevertheless, any more in his practical than in his theoretical philosophy, of the Cjoiico-Megaric abstraction, which, besides cognition, will recognise nothing positive, — no concrete spiritual activity, no special science or art, as well as no refinement of life by means of a lawful pleasure. The concrete sciences and arts, and those kinds of enjoyment which interfere not with the harmony of spiritual life, those pure, innocent, passion- less, unsophisticated delights that arise from intellectual and natural beauty, — these have their rights as well as pure philosophy. The good is not a life consisting merely of knowledge or merely of pleasure, but one commingled of both, though still such that knowledge presides in it as that element which introduces measiire, order, and rationa- lity of will and action. A certain vacillation, however, is not to be denied in Plato's views with respect to the highest good. As sensuous existence is for him, at one time, only pure non-being, the mere disturbance and distortion of ideal being, and at another time the fair copy of its ideal archetyx^e, so there appear in the ethics at one time an inclination to a quite ascetic conception of sense as the single fountain of evil and sin (Phcedo), and at another time a more positive view {Banquet, Phi- lehus), which designates a life without enjoyment as too abstract, monotonous, spiritless, and therefore allows its own right to the beautiful equally with the good. (6.) Virtue. — In his theory of virtue, Plato is at first quite Socratic. That virtue depends on knowledge (Pi'o- tagoras), acd is, therefore, capable of being tanght (Me7io), this with him is established ; and as for its unity, though it must have resulted to him from his later dia- lectical investigations, that the one is at the same time many and the many at the same time one, and that consequently virtue may be regarded not more as one than as many, he still, by predilection, accentuates, nevertheless, the unity and natural connexion of all the vvrtues. Particularly in the preliminary dialogues is it li>.s object to depict each of the individual virtues as com- prehending in it the sum of all virtue. In classifying the virtues, Plato assumes, for the most part, the popular quadruplicity which he found current ; only for the first time in the Republic (rv. 441) does he attempt their Bcientific derivation through reduction to his psycho- 88 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. logical tri])licity. Tlie virtue of reason is wisdom, the guiding and tempering virtue ; for in the soul it is reason that must rule. The virtue of the heart is courage, reason's auxiliary ; or it is the heart that, imbued with true knowledge, approves itself in the struggle against pleasure and pain, as the correct judge of what is fear- ful or not fearful. The virtue of sensuous appetite, by which the latter is reduced to its proper measure, is temperance. Finally, that virtue, to which falls the due ranging and ranking of the single faculties reciprocally, the regulatrix of the soul, and, therefore, the bond and the unity of the other three virtues, is justice. The virtue of justice it is also which, as it conjoins in itself aU the other threads of virtue, loads beyond the sphere of individual life, and founds the totality of a moral world. Justice ' in large letters,' morality as actu- alized in the life of society, — this is the state. Only here does the demand for a perfected harmony of human life become real. In and through the state it is that there takes place for reason the complete working-up of its own material. (c.) The State. — The Platonic state is usually regarded as a so-caUed ideal, as a chimera, the product indeed of a brain of genius, but amongst men, as in this sublimary world they once for all are, entirely impracticable. Plato himself, it is supposed, shall have viewed the matter not otherwise, and — his Bepublic being but the sketch of thepureideal of a poUtical constitution — shall, in theLaivs, as this work itself expressly declares, have intended to prefigure that which is actually practicable, and to fur- nish, from the point of view of ordinary consciousness, an applied philosophy of the state. But this, firstly, was not Plato's own opinion. Although he does himself undoubtedly declare that the state which he has described is not likely to be found on earth, and is only an arche- type in heaven for the instruction of the philosopher (ix. 592), yet he requires that its realization be asymptotically approached ; nay, he investigates the conditions and means under and through which such a state may be possibly accomplished ; and so it is, also, that his parti- cular institiitions are largely directed against the various vices which must inevitably arise from the various characters and temperaments of men. To a philosopher like Plato, who only in the idea sees the actual and true, a constitution alien to the idea could only appear as tha PLATO. 89 untrue ; aud tlie usual theory that makes him compose his Republic with a consciousness of its impracticability, entirely mistakes the position of the Platonic philosophy. Further, the question whether such a state as that of Plato is jjossible and the best, is, in itself, inapposite and irrelevant. The Platonic state is the Greek idea of a state in general, presented in the form of a narrative. But the idea, as the rational import at every moment of the world's history, is, — just because it is an absolute actuality, the essential and the necessary in the existent, — no idle and imjiotent ideal. The true ideal is not to he actual, but is actual, and alone actual ; that an idea should be too good for existence, or em- pirical reality too bad for an idea, this were a fault of the ideal itself. Plato, then, did not deal in the manu- facture of abstract theories ; the philosopher cannot over- leap his time, but must recognise and comprehend it only according to its own genuine significance. This did Plato ; he stands quite on the level of his day ; it is Greek political life raised into the idea that constitutes the genuine burthen of the Platonic Republic. In it Plato has exhibited Grecian morality on its substantia] side (side of instinctive observance). If the Platonio republic appeared mainly as an ideal irreconcilable with empirical reality, it is not the ideality, but rather a de- fectiveness in ancient poUtical life that is to blame for this. It is the restrictedness of personal subjective freedom that, before the Greek states began to break up in license, constituted the characteristic of the Hellenic political view. Thus in Plato, too, poli- tical morality has the character of suhstantiality (cus- tomary observance, not conscious action on subjective discernment and conviction). The institutions of his state, whatever ridicule and censure they may have pro- voked even from the ancients, are only consequences, which, drawn with inexorable necessity, result from the idea of the Grecian state, so far as that state, in its differences from the states of modern times, granted, neither to the corporations nor to the citizens individu' aUy, any legal sphere of action independent of itself. The principle of subjective freedom failed. This non- recognition of the subject, Plato, as against the destruc- tive tendencies of the time, and in a rigorously logical manner, has certainly made the principle of his own ideal 8t.1.t8. 90 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. The general cliaracter of the Platonic state is, as said, bhe sacrifice, the exclusive abandonment of the individual to the universal, to the political element, — the reduction of moral to political virtue. Political observance shall, so Plato wills it, become universal, and attain to an immut- able existence ; the principle of sense shall everywhere be checked, and subjugated to that of intelligence. But if this is to be so, then a universal, a political authority must undertake the training of all to virtue, or the con- servation of public morals ; and all subjective self-will, every egotistic end, must disappear in the collective will and in the collective end. So powerful is the prin- ciple of sense in men, that only by the might of common institutions, only by the suppression of all subjective acti- vity for private interests, only by the disappearance of the individual in the universal, can it be neutralized. Virtue is possible — and consequently true well-being — only by these means. Virtue must be real in the state, only so will it become real in the individual citizen. Hence the severity and rigour of the Platonic jjolitical idea. In a perfect state all should be in common to all, — joy and sorrow, even eyes and ears and hands. All men shall have scope only as universal men. For the realization of this perfect unity and universality, there must be the disappearance of all individuality and particularity. Private property and domestic life (in place of which a community of goods and women appears), education and instruction, the choice of professional and other avoca- tions, even all the remaining activities of the individual in art and scieuce-r-all this must be sacrificed to the end of the state, and intrusted to the guidance and control of the presiding authorities. The individual must be contented to claim only that good which belongs to him as a component particle of the state. The Platonic construction of the ideal state descends, therefore, even to the minutest details. The two formative means of the higher ranks, gymnastics and music, the study of mathematics and philosophy, the selection of musical in- struments and metre of verse, the bodily exercises and the military service of the female sex, the arrangement of marriages, the age at which any one may study dialectics, or contract wedlock, or beget or bear children — on all these matters Plato has given the exactest prescripts and instructions. The state is for him only a huge educa- tional establishment, a single family on the great PLATO, 91 scale. Even lyrical poetry Plato will have i)ractised only under the supervision of judges. Epic and dramatic poetry (nay Homer and Hesiod themselves !) shall be banished from the state, the one because it excites and misleads the mind, the other because it propagates de- basing representations of the gods. With like rigorism the Platonic state proceeds against physical defects : feeble children, or children born imperfect, are to be cast out ; the sick are not to be tended and nourished. We find here the main antithesis of the ancient states hy nature to the modern states by law. Plato recognised not the knowledge, will, and purpose of the individual, and yet the individual has a right to demand this. To reconcile the two sides — the general end and the indi- vidual end — to combine with the greatest possible omni- potence of the state the greatest possible freedom of the conscious individual will, this was the problem reserved for the modern state. The political institutions of the Platonic state are de- cidedly aristocratic. Grown up in aversion to the extra- vagances of the Atlienian democracy, Plato prefers an un- limited monarchy to all other constitutions, but still only such a one as shall have for its head a consummate ruler, a perfected philosopher. The saying of Plato is familiar, that only when philosophers shall become rulers, or when those who are at present rulers shall philosophize fully and truly, and shall unite political power and philosophy together, will it be possible to elevate the state to its true purpose (v. 473). That there should only be one riiler, this appears to him just, because there are so few men possessed of political wisdom. In his Laws, Plato re- nounces this ideal of a perfect ruler, who as a living law shall have power to govern the state according to his own unrestrained authority, and prefers as the best, those mixed constitutions which combine in themselves both something of monarchy and something of democracy. It is the aristocratic tendency of the Platonic political ideal which gives rise further to the sharp distinction of the various classes, and the entire exclusion of the third from any share in pohtical life proper. Psychologically, Plato in strictness has only a bipartition into the senses and the intellect, into mortal and immortal ; politically also he has only a similar division into the government and its subjects. This distinction is proclaimed the neces- sary condition of every state ; but, in analogy -ndth the 9^ HIST OB Y OF PHILOSOPHY. psychological middle term of the heart, there is interca- lated, between the niling class and the working class, the middle term of the fighting class. We have thus three classes, that of the rulers, correspondent to reason, that of the warriors correspondent to heart, and that of the workers correspondent to appetite. To these three classes belong three several functions : to the first the function of legislation, of acting and consulting for the universal ; to the second the function of defending the common weal against enemies from without ; to the third the function of providing for the material singular, for the daily want, as in agriculture, the raising of cattle, and the building of houses. Through each of the three classes and its functions there accrues to the state a special virtue : through the class of rulers •wisdom, through the class of warders or warriors cour- age, through the class of workers temperance, which, as securing obedience to the rulers, is peculiarly the virtue of this last class. From the due union of these thre^ virtues in the general life of the state, there arises justice, a virtue, consequently, which represents the systematic articulation of the totality, the organic distribution of the whole into its moments. With the lowest class, that of manual labourers, Plato occupies himself the least ; for the state it is only an instrument. Even legislation and the administration of justice in reference to the labouring mass of the people, he holds for inessential. The dis- tance between rulers and warders is less marked ; Plato rather, as if reason were but the highest development of courage, allows, in analogy with the fundamental psycho- logical bipartition, the two classes to pass over into each other, in appointing that the oldest and best of the warders shall be selected for rulers. The education of the warders, therefore, shall be carefully planned and administered by the state, in order that with them the principle of courage, without forfeiting the energy pecu- liar to it, may be imbued with reason. The most virtu- ous, and dialectically the most accomplished among the warders, are, immediately on completion of their thirtieth year, to be taken apart, tried, and ordered to the dis- charge of ofiices. When in these they have again ap- proved themselves, they are in their fiftieth year to be Ttaised to the highest rank, and to be held bound in duty, if they have realized the idea of the good, to sub- etantiate that exemplai in the state, yet so that each, PLATO. 93 only when his turn comes, shall imdertake the control of the state, but shall devote to philosophy the rest oi his time. By means of these dispositions the state shall be exalted into an unconditional sovereignty of reason under guidance of the idea of the good. 7. Retrospect. — With Plato, Greek philosophy has attained to the culminating point of its development. The Platonic system is the first complete scientific con- struction of the entire natural and spiritual universe under guidance of a philosophical |:rinciple ; it is the first type and pattern of all higher speculation, of all meta- physical as well as of all ethical idealism. Reared on the simple foimdation of Socrates, the idea of philosophy has here for the first time gained an all-embracing realiza- tion. The spirit of philosophy has, indeed, raised itself here into full consciousness of itself, a consciousness which first awoke in Socrates only as a dim and uncer- tain instinct. The eagle flight of the genius of Plato required to add itself before there could be imfolded into full reality that for which Socrates had been able only to clear the way. At the same time, nevertheless, with Plato, philosophy exhibited an idealistic antithesis to the given actuality, an antithesis which, lying more in the character of its originator and in his relation to the time, than in the nature of the Greek spirit, demanded the supplement of a more realistic theoiy of things. This was suppUed by Aristotle. XV.— The Older Academy. IN the older academy the spirit that prevailed was not one of invention. With the exception of a few attempts at continuation, we find only standstill, and a gradual retrogression of the Platonic philosojthizing. After the death of Plato, Speusippus, his nephew, taught in the academy for the period of eight years ; Xenocrates succeeded him ; and Polemon, Crates, and Grantor fol- lowed. We find ourselves in a time now in which express educational mstitutions for higher culture are established, and the earlier teacher transfers the succession to the later. The older academy, so far as can be gathered from the scanty records, was characterized in general by a predominance of the tendency to erudition, by the in- crease of Pythagorean elements, — particularly as regards 94 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. the Pythagorean number-theory, -with ■which were con- nected the high estimation of the mathematical sciences (especially arithmetic and astronomy), and the regression of the ideal theory, — and finally by the coming into vogue of fantastic demonological conceptions, in which worship of the stars played a principal part. At a later period efforts were made to return again to the unso- phisticated doctrine of Plato. Grantor is named as the first expounder of the Platonic writings. As Plato was the only true disciple of Socrates, so in turn the only true disciple of Plato was, though by his fellows accused of infideUty, Aristotle. To him we pass at once for the demonstration, as well of his true relation to Plato, as of his advance be- yond Plato, and within Plato's own philosophy. (Com- pare XVI. 3, c. aa.) XVI.— Aristotle. LIFE AST) Writings of Aristotle. — Aristotle was born at Stagira, a Greek colony in Thrace, in the year 384 b.c. Nicomachus, his father, was the physician and friend of Amyntas, king of Macedonia. The former relation may have influenced the scientific pursuits of the son ; the latter his subsequent call to the Mace- donian court. Early deprived of his parents, he came in his seventeenth year to Athens ; and here in Plato's society he remained twenty years. Of his personal relations to Plato there are several rumours, — some favourable, as that Plato, for his unceasing study, shall have called him the reader, and, comparing him with Xenocrates, shall have said, the latter requires the spur, the former the bridle, — some also unfavourable. Among the latter is the reproach of ingratitude to his master, and although the most of the anecdotes in this connexion deserve little credit, — especially as we find Aristotle on friendly terms with Xenocrates, even after the death of Plato, — yet the author Aristotle cannot be altogether acquitted of a certain unscrupulousness towards Plato and the philosophy of Plato, which is still capable, perhaps, of a certain psychological explana- tion (through indication, that is, of human motive). Aristotle, after the death of Plato, went with Xenocrates to the court of Hermeias, prince of Atarneiis in Mysia, whose sister or niece Pythias he took to wife, when ARISTOTLE. 95 Hermeias fell beneath the perfidy of the Persians. After the death of Pythias he married HerpyUis, by whom he had his son Nicomachus. In the year 343, he was appointed by Philip, king of Macedon, to superintend the education of his son Alexander, then thirteen years old. Father and son honoured him highly, and the latter subsequently assisted his studies with royal munificence. When Alexander set out on the Persian expedition, Aristotle took up his abode in Athens, teaching in the Lyceum, the only gym- nasium left open for him ; for the Academy and the Cynosarges were already occupied, the one by Xeno- crates and the other by the Cynics. His school de- rived its name, Peripatetic, from the shady walks (■nepLiraToi) of the Lyceum, in which Aristotle was ac- customed to walk about as he philosophized. He is said to have lectured in the morning to his more ad- vanced disciples on abstruser science (acroamatic inves- tigation), and in the evening to a larger audience on the disciplines which concern a more general education {exoteric discourses). After the death of Alexander, with whom latterly he had fallen out of favour, being accused (probably from political motives) of blasphemy by the Athenians, he left their city, where he had taught for thirteen years, in order, as he expressed it, that they might not sin a second time against philosophy. He died in the year 322 at Chalcis in Euboea. Aristotle left behind him an imusual miJtitude of writings, of which the fewer number (a sixth perhaps), but incomparably the more valuable, have come down to us : in such a state, nevertheless, as leaves room for many doubts and diflBculties. The account given by Strabo, it is true, of the fate of the Aristotelian writings, and of the damages received by them in the cellar at Scepsis in Troas, has been proved a fable, or at least to be limited to the original manuscripts : but the fragment- ary, sketch-like appearance of several of them, and these the most important, as the Metaphysics, the repeated re^a- sion and reconstruction of the same treatise, as the Ethics, the disorder and striking repetitions in single works, the distinction made by Aristotle himself between writ- ings acroamatic and writings exoteric, — all this leads to the conjecture that we have before us for the most part but redactions of oral discovirses at the hands of pupils. 2. Geneea-L Chaeacter a>'d Classification of the 96 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. Abistotelian Philosophy. — ^With Aristotle, pldlosophy, whicli in Plato's hands remained popular both in form and matter, becomes universal, freed from its Hellenic specialty. The Platonic dialogue is metamorphosed into dry prose. In the place of poetic drapery and myths we have a cold fixed technical dialect ; the faculty wliich in Plato was intuitive is in Aristotle discursive ; the direct vision through reason of the one is replaced ia the other by reflection and logic. Turidng from the Platonic unity of being, Aristotle prefers to direct his regards to the variety of the world ; he seeks the idea only in its concrete realization, and seizes the individual fact in its characteristic quality and dififerences, rather than in its relation to the idea. He receives with equal interest the fact of nature, or of history, or of the soul of maa. But he proceeds always by reference to what is individual ; he re- quires always a datum, on occasion of which to unfold his thoughts ; it is always what is empirical and matter-of-fact that solicits his speculation and leads it forward. His whole philosophy is a description of the given and empirical, and only because it takes this up in its totality, takes up its synthesis, only because it carries the induction com- pletely out, does it deserve the name of a philosophy. Only as the absolute empiricist is it that Aristotle is the true philosopher. This character of the Aristotelian philosophy explains in the first place its encyclopaedic tendency, inasmuch as all the facts of experience have, as such, equal claims on observation. Hence Aristotle is the founder of several sciences unknown before him : he is not only the founder of logic, but the founder also of natural history, of empi- rical psychology, and of the theory of morals. The love of facts in Aristotle explains further his pre- dominating inclination for physics ; for nature is what ia most a fact, what is most undeniably there. It coheres with this, too, that Aristotle is the first philosopher, who (in his own way) deigned to bestow on history any exact attention. The first book of the Metaphysics is the first attempt at a history of philosophy, just as his Politics are the first critical history of the various forms and consti- tutions of the state. As through criticism of his prede- cessors in the one, so through criticism of the pre-existent constitutions in the other, does he lay the ground for his own theory, which he desires to appear always only as the consequence of historical fact. ARISTOTLE. 97 It is clear from this that likewise the method of Aris- totle must be different from that of Plato. He proceeds, not syntheticall}^ and dialectically like the latter, but almost exclusively analj'tically and regressively, that is to say, passing ever backwards from what is concrete to its ultimate grounds and principles. If Plato took his stand on the idea, in order from that position to elucidate and explain the data of experience, Aristotle, on the contrary, takes his stand on these data in order to discover in them and demonstrate in them the idea. His method, therefore, is induction, that is, the derivation of general inferences and results from a sum of given facts and phenomena, while his exposition is the usual raisonne- ment, a dispassionate estimate of facts, phenomena, circumstances, and possibilities. He bears himself mostly only as a thoughtful observer. Eenouncing any expecta- tion of universahty and necessity in his conclusions, he is contented to have established an approximate truth, and satisfied to have reached the greatest possible probabilit}'. He frequently declares, that science relates not merely to the immutable and necessary, but also to what generulJy happens : beyond its province, he says, there is only the contingent. Philosophy has consequently for him the character and the value of a calculation of probabilities, and his mode of exposition assumes not unfrequently only the form of a dubious counting up. Hence no trace of the Platonic ideals. Hence his dislike to imaginative flights and poetic figures in philosophy, a dislike which on one hand led him, indeed, to a fixed philosophical terminology, but was the occasion, on the other, of a frequent misinterpretation of those who had preceded fiim. Hence, too, in the sphere of action his invariable submission to the existent fact. AVith the empirical character of Aristotle's philoso- phizing, there coheres finally the disjointed nature of his writings, their want of any systematic classifica- tion and division. Always advancing from particular fact to particular fact, he takes each region of reality by itself, and makes it the object of a special treatise ; but he omits for the most part to demonstrate the threads by which the parts might mutually cohere and clasp together into the whole of a system. He obtains thus a plurality of co-ordinated sciences, each of which has its independent foundation, but no highest science which should comprehend all. A leading and con- 98 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHr. necting thought is doubtless present ; all his writings follow the idea of a whole ; but in the exposition systematic arrangement fails so much, each of his works is so much an independent monograph, that we are often perplexed by the question, What did Aristotle himself consider a part of philosophy and what not ? Nowhere does he supply either scheme or skeleton, seldom any concluding resiilts or general summaries ; even the various classifications which he proposes for philosophy differ very much the one from the other. Sometimes he distinguishes practical and theoretical science, sometimes he places with these a third science, named of artistic production, and sometimes he speaks of three parts, ethics, physics, and logic. Theoretical philosophy itself, again, he divides at one time into logic and physics, and at another into theology, mathematics, and physics. None of these classifications, however, has he expressly adopted in the exposition of his system ; he sets in general no value on them, he even openly declares his aversion to the method by divisions at all, and it is only from considerations of expediency that we, in ex- pounding his philosophy, adopt the Platonic trichotomy. 3. Logic and Metaphysics. — (a.) Notion and relation of both. — The name Metaj)hysics is a creation of the Aristo- telian commentators. Plato's word for it was Dialectics, and Aristotle uses instead of it the phrsise ' first (funda- mental) philosophy,' while physics in a like connexion are for him ' second philosophy.' The relation of this first philosophy to the other sciences is defined by Aristotle as follows. Every science, he says, selects for investiga- tion a special sphere, a particular species of being, but none of them apphes itself to the notion of being as such. There is a science necessary, therefore, which shall make an object of inquiry on its own account, of that which the other sciences accept from experience, and, as it were, hypothetically. This is the office of the first philosophy, which occupies itself, therefore, with being as being, whereas the other sciences have to do with special con- crete being. Metaphysics constituting, then, as this science of being and its elementary grounds, a presupposi- tion for the other disciplines, are, naturally, first philoso- phy. If there were, namely, says Aristotle, only physical beings, physics would be the first and only philosophy ; but if there is an immaterial and unmoved essence, which is the ground of all being, there must be also ARISTOTLE, 99 an earlier, and, as earlier, universal philosophy. This first ground now of all being is God, and tor that reason Aristotle sometimes also calls his first philosophy theology. It is difficult to define the relation between this first philosophy as the science of ultimate grounds, and that science which, usuallj' named the logic of Aristotle, is found to receive its exposition in the writings in- cluded together under the title of Organon. Aristotle has not himself precisely determined the relations of these sciences, though, perhaps, it is the incomplete state of the Metaphysics that is partly to blame here. As, however, he includes both sciences under the name logic ; as he ex- pressly calls the investigation of the essence of things (vir. 17), and of the theory of ideas (xiii. 5), logical investiga- tion ; as he seeks to establish at fidl in the Metaphysics {IV. ) the logical principle of contradiction as the absolute presupposition (condition) of all thinking, speaking, and philosophizing ; as he appropriates the inquiry into the process of proof to the same science which has also to inquire into essence (iii. 2, iv. 3) ; as he discusses the categories (to which he had previously devoted a special book incorporated with the Organon) over again in the Metaphysics (v.), — this much at all events may be main- tained with safety, that the inquiries of the Organon were not for him directly divided from those of the Metaphysics, and that the usual separation of formal logic and of metaphysics had not a place in his mind, although he has omitted any attempt to bring them closer. (6.) Logic. — The business of logic, natural or scientific, as faculty or as art, is to be able to prove through syllogisms, to form syllogisms, and to pronounce on syllogisms ; but Byllogisms consist of propositions, and propositions of no- tions. It is in accordance, then, with these points of view, which belong naturally to the position, that Aristotle, in tlie various books of the Organon, discusses the details of logic and dialectics. The first essay in the Organon is 'The Categories,' an essay which, by treating the various notions proper, the universal predicates of being, constitutes the first attempt at an ontology. Aristotle enumerates ten of these — substance, quantity, quality, relation, where, when, position, possession, action, passion. The second essay treats of language as expression of thought (' De Interpre- tatione '), and discusses the various parts of discourse, as propositions and sentences. The third treatise consists of the 'Analytic Books,' which show how conclusions may 100 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. be referred to tlieir principles, and arranged according to tlieir premises. The first (prior) Analytics contain in two books tbe general theory of the syllogism. Syllogisms, again, are in matter and purpose either apodictic, pos- sessed of certain and rigorously demonstrable truth, or dialectic, directed to what is probable and disputable, or, lastly sophistic, intended to deceive by a false show of correctness. Apodictic arguments, and consequently proof in general, are treated in the two books of the second (posterior, last) Analytics, dialectic in the eight books of the Topics, and sophistic in the essay on ' The Sophistical Elenchi.' Further details of the Ai'istotelian logic are, — ^through the usual formal exposition of this science, for which Aris- totle has furnished almost the entire material (hence Kant was able to say that logic, since Aristotle, had not made any step forwards nor any back wards), — known to every- body. Present formal logic is in advance of Aristotle only in two respects : first in adding to the categorical syllogism, which Aristotle alone contemplated, the hypothetical and disjunctive ones ; and, second, in supplementing the three first figures by the fourth. But the defect of the Aristote- lian logic, which was excusable in its founder, — its wholly empirical procedure, namely, — has not only been retained by the present formal logic, but has been even raised into a principle through the un- Aristotelian antithesis of the forms thinking, and the matter thought. Aristotle's object, properly, was only to collect the logical facts in reference to the formation of propositions and the process of syllogisms ; and he has supplied in his logic only a natu- ral history of finite thought. However much, then, this attaining to a consciousness of the logical operations of the understanding, this abstracting from the materiality of ordinary thought, is to be valued, the striking want in it of aU scientific foundation and derivation must at tlie same time be recognised. The ten categories, for ex- ample, though discussed, as observed, in a special work, are simply enumerated without any assignment of a prin- ciple, whether of foundation or of classification. It is for him only a fact that there are so many categories, nay, they are even differently stated in different works. In the same way, the syllogistic figures are taken up only empirically ; he regards them as only modes anrl relations of formal thought, and jjersists in this position within the logic of the understanding simply, though he declares ARISTOTLE. 101 the sj'Uogism to be the single form of science. Neither in his Metaphysics nor in his Physics, does he apply the formal syllogistic rules which he develops in the Orga- non : a clear proof that he has duly wrought into his system neither the theory of the categories, nor his analytic in general. In short, his logical inquiries enter not into the development of his philosophical thoughts, but have for the most part only the value of a prelimi- nary linguistic investigation. (c.) Metajihysics. — Of all the writings of Aristotle, the Metaphysics present the least the appearance of a connected whole, but rather that of a collection of sketches, which follow indeed a certain main idea, but fail in inner union and complete development. Seven cliief groups may be distinguished here — (1.) A criticism of the previous philosophical systems from the point of view of the four Aristotelian principles (Book i.) ; (2.) A statement of the aporias or philosophical preliminary questions (ni.) ; (3.) The principle of contradiction (iv.) ; (4.) The definitions (v.) ; (5.) A discussion of the notion of substance [ovala.), and of logical essence (the tL Tjv elvai), or of the notions matter {v\t]), form (etSos), and of the composite thing {cvvoXov) that is formed of both (VII., VIII.) ; (6.) Potentiality and actuality (ix.) ; (7.) The divine spirit that, unmoved itself, moves all (xii.); (8.) To this there is added the polemic against the Platonic theory of ideas and numbers, which pervades the entire 3fetaphysics, but which is more particulai'ly the business of Books XIII. and xrv. {aa.) The Aristotelian criticism of the Platonic Ideal Theory. — It is in Aristotle's opposition to the Platonic ideal theory that the specific difference of the two systems is to be sought. Aristotle, indeed, returns, on every opportunity that presents itself (especially Meta. I. and xiTi.), to this his antithesis to the Academics. Plato had conceived the idea (or ideas) of all that is real, but the idea, if true, had still no movement for him ; it was not yet wrought into life and the process of nature. It was thus rather itself finite, had tlae phenomenal world, however much agninst Plato's own will, opposed to it in independent being, and possessed not in its own self the principle of this beincr. Aristotle means this when he objects to Plato that his ideas are only ' things of sense immortaUzed and eternalized,' and that they are incom- petent to explain the being and becoming of nature. In 102 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. order to escape these consequences he himself attributes to mind an original connexion with the outward phenomena ; he characterizes the relation of the two as that of the actual to the possible, of form to matter, he conceives thought as the absolute reality of matter ; matter as thought in itself (potential). His objections to the Platonic theory, Aristotle reasons out in the following manner : — Leaving out of view that Plato had led no competent proof of the objective reality of the ideas, in independ- ence of the things of sense, and that his theory is un- verified, this theory is, in the first place, completely sterile, as it offers no explanatory reason of existence. The ideas are devoid of any special independent matter of contents. We need only remember how they origi- nate. In order to save the possibility of science, Plato had attempted to set up certain substances, independent of sense, uncoloured by its stream. But for this purpose, nothing else offered itself to him than the individual units beside him, the things of sense. He assumed these, therefore, but in a universalized form as ideas. And thus it happens that his ideas are so little different from the actual units of sense that participate in them. The ideal duality and the empirical duality have one and the same import. We may easily con- vince ourselves of this by challenging the adherents of the ideas to say definitely what their imperishable sub- stances specially are beside the things of sense which participate in them. The entire distinction between them is limited to an in itself which attaches to the latter : instead of a man, a horse, we have a man in him- self a horse in itself Only on this formal alteration does the ideal theory rest : the finite import (constitution of the object) remains, it is only expressed as an eternal one. This objection, that in the ideal theory the sen- suous is in strictness only assumed as uusensuous and distinguished with the predicate of immutability, is, as already remarked, understood by Aristotle in this way, that he calls the ideas, ' eternalized things of sense,' not as if they were actually something sen- suous, something in space, but because the sensuous individual is in them immediately enunciated as a universal. He compares them in this connexion to the gods of the anthropomorphistic popular religion. As these are nothing else than deified men, so those ARISTOTLE. 103 are nothing else than potentiated things of nature, what is sensiions exalted into what is not sensuous. It is this ' sjmonymousness ' of the ideas and the correspon- dent things of sense, which gives to the assumption of the ideas the appearance of a superfluous and cumber- some duplication of the objects that are to be explained. Why should we take the same thing twice ? Why, be- sides the two and the three of sense, assume a two and three in the idea? Aristotle intimates, therefore, that the adherents of the ideal theory, in supposing an idea for every class of things in nature, and in bringing for- ward, by meaus of this theory, a double series of sen- suous and unsensuous substances under one and the same name, appear to him like men who should be of opinion that it is not equally easy to count with few numbers and with many, and should accordingly increase their numbers before proceeding to calculations in hand. Or, to take it once again, the ideal theory is a tautology, and as an explanation of natural existence whoUy fruit- less. 'Towards knowledge of the individual things that participate in the idea, these ideas themselves give no assistance, since, indeed, they (ideas) are not immauent in them, but sundered from them.' Equally barren the ideas are seen to be when considered in relation to the origi- nation and dissolution of the things of sense. They pos- sess not any principle of the genesis of this movement. There is no causality in them either to produce change or to explain its actual existence. In themselves immobile and without process, they could bring about, did any influence at all belong to them, no result but a complete standstill. According to the Fhcedo, indeed, the ideas are causes of being as well as of becoming, but, de- spite the ideas, nothing becomes without a moving force, and, in their separation from the subject of the becom- ing, the ideas are none such. This indifference of the ideas to the process of actuality, their unyielding remote- ness, is, under application of the categories potentiality and actuality, further described by Aristotle as the mere potentiality, possibility, virtuality which belongs to them in contrast to the actuality which fails them. The inner contradiction of the ideal theory is briefly this, that it enimciates an individual directly as a universal, and, conversely, the universal, the genus as what is at the same time numerically individual, or that it expresses the idea, on the one hand, as a separate siiecific individual. 104 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. ' and, on tlie other hand, as participant, and consequently as universal (generic). Although, then, the ideas are originally generic notions, universals, originating in the demonstration and iixation of the one in the many, of the permanent in the mutable, of the veritably beent in the ^ phenomenally existent, still, being at the same time, ac- cording to the Platonic assumption, separate substances, they are quite incapable of definition. That is, neither definition nor derivation is possible of anything that is absolutely singular, a wholly peculiar individual unit ; and the reason is that words — and only through words is definition possible — are by very nature universal and applicable to a variety of objects, and, consequently, that all predicates by which I may attempt to assign the de- termination of any particular object, are, for this speci- fic object, not specific, and cannot be specific. Tho supporters of the ideal theory, then, are not in a position logically to determine any idea; their ideas are indefinable Plato has left in complete obscurity the relation in gene- ral of things to the ideas. He terms the ideas arche- tjrpes, and supposes things to participate in them; but such expressions are only hollow poetical metaphors. How are we to conceive this ' participation ' in, this copying of, these patterns thus remote, absent in an alien region ? It is in vain to seek in Plato any definite expla- nation here. It is wholly unintelhgible how and why matter comes to participate in the ideas. To explain it at all, recourse must be had, in addition to the ideas, to another and a higher principle, which should hold in it the cause of this ' participation ' of things, for without any principle of movement it is impossible to get to understand the ' participation.' In every case there must be assumed, in addition to the idea (of man, for example), and in addition to the sensuous manifestation (a certain individual man, say), and as common to both, a tertium, a third, in which both should be united; that is to say, as Aristotle usually couches this ob- jection, the ideal theory involves the supposition of a 'third man.' The immanence of the universal in the singular, this is the result of the Aristotelian critique of the ideas. However sound it was in Socrates to insist on the discovery of the universal as the true soul of the individual, and on the consequent assignment of the logical definition (for without the universal no science is possible), the Platonic theory that would transform these ARISTOTLE. 105 generic notions into real, individual substances, existing independently and by themselves, is quite unsound. A universal, a genus, a species, is not a thing that exists alongside of, or apart from, the singular, the individual. A thing and its notion cannot be separated from each other. With all these conclusions, Aristotle, nevertheless, is so little opposed to the principle of Plato (namely that the universal is alone the veritably beent, the truth of in- dividual things), that he has rather only relieved it of its accompanying abstraction, and more deeply reconciled it with the world of sense. Despite all apparent an- tagonism to his master, his main proposition is the same as Plato's, namely that the true nature of a thing [rb ri iffTLv, rb ri ^v dvai) is known and shown only iu the notion. But still for him the universal, the notion, must be as little separated from the particular exemplification of it in sense, as form from matter ; and essence or sub- stance (ovala) in its strictest sense is for him ouly that which is not predicated of anything else, but of which all else is predicated — whatever, namely, is a this thing (rdde Ti), an indi\4dual thing, a special unit, not a universal. (66.) The four Aristotelian principles or causes, a?i(Z ^^ the relation of form and matter. — From the critique of the Platonic ideas, there directly result the two main char- acteristics of the Aristotelian system, and which to gether constitute its cardinal point ; they are form (elSus) and matter (CXt;). Aristotle, for the most part, it is true, when he aims at completeness, enumerates four metaphysical principles or causes, — the formal, the mate- rial, the efficient, and the final. In the case of a house, for example, the building materials ai'e the matter, the idea of it the form, the efficient cause the builder, and the actual house the end (final cause). These four prin- ciples of all being, however, will be found on closer inspection to reduce themselves to the single antithesis of matter and form. In the first place, the notion of the efficient cause coincides with that of the two other ideal principles (form and end). The efficient cause, namely, is what conducts the transition of potentiality into actu- ality (entelechie), or the realization of matter into form. In all movement, however, of an unactual into an actual, the latter is the logical (notional) prius, and tJie logical (or notional) motive of the movement itself. The effi- cient cause of matter is consequently the form. Thus man is the efficient cause of man ; the form of the statue in 106 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. the understanding (artistic phantasy) of the sculptor is the cause of the movement through which the statue comes into being ; health in the mind of the physician precedes the process of cure. In a certain way, therefore, health is the medical art, and the form of a house archi- tectural art. But the efl&cient, or first cause, is equally identical with the final cause or end, for this (the end) is the motive of all becoming and of aU movement. The builder is the efficient cause of the house, but the efficient cause of the builder is the end to be accomplished, the house. In these examples it is already evident that the principles of form and end also coincide, so far as both are conjoined in the notion of actuality (evipyeta). For the end of everything is its completed being, its notion, or its form, the development into full actuality of what- ever is potentially contained in it. The final cause of the hand is its notion ; that of the seed the tree, which is the true nature of the seed. There remain to us, therefore, only the two principles, which pass not into each other, matter and form. Matter is, for Aristotle, conceived in its abstraction from form, as what is without predicate, determination, distinction ; what is permanent subject in all becoming, and assumes the most contradictory forms ; what how- ever in its own being is different from everything that is become, and has in itself no definite form whatever ; what then is everything in possibility, but nothing in actuality. As the wood the bench, and the brass the statue, so there underlies every determinate a materia prima, a first matter. Aristotle takes credit to himself for having resolved with this notion of matter the much- vexed question of how anything can originate, inasmuch as what is can neither originate from what is, nor from what is not. For not from what directly is not, but only from what in actuality is not, that is to say, only from what potentially is, can an3rthing originate. Pos- sible (potential) being is as little non-being as it is actu- ality. Every existing thing of nature is therefore a possibility that has attained to actuality. Matter is to Aristotle, accordingly, a much more positive substrate than to Plato, who pronounced it the absolutely non- beent. This explains how Aristotle could conceive matter, in contradistinction to form, as a positive nega- tive, as a counterpart to form, and designate it as posi- tive negation (cr7-^pj;. Matter, then, it is that prevents the existent from being pure form, pure notion ; it is the ground of the becoming of plurality, multiplicity, and contingency ; it is at the same time what prescribes to science its limit. For an individual thing cannot be known in proportion as it contains matter. From this it follows, however, that the antithesis between matter and form is a fluent one. What in one reference is matter, is in another form. Wood in relation to the finished house is matter, in relation to the growing tree, form ; the soul in rela- tion to the body is form, in relation to reason, which is the form of the form (elSos etSous), it is matter. In this way, the totality of existence must constitute a gra- duated scale, of which the lowest degree wiU be a first matter {wpihT-q iiXri) entirely without form, and the highest a last form entirely without matter (pure form — the absolute, divine spirit). What finds itself between these extremes will be in the one direction matter, in the other form, which amounts to a continual self -translation of the former into the latter. This (the foundation of the Aris- totelian theory of nature) is the conception, — first come upon in the analytic method of observing nature, — that all nature is an eternal graduated conversion of matter into form, an eternal breaking out into life, on the part of this inexhaustible primeval substrate, in higher and higher ideal formations. That all matter should become form, all possibility actuality, all being knowing, this is, indeed, at once the impracticable postulate of reason and the aim of all becoming — impracticable, since Aristotle expressly maintains that matter, as privation of form, as jTiprjau, 108 II I ST OR Y OF PHIL OSOPH Y. can never wholly attain to actuality, nor consequently to understanding. So, then, the Aristotelian system ends also in an insurmountable dualism of matter and form. {cc). Potentialltij and Actuality (duvafxis and iv^pyeia). — The relation of matter to form has, logically taken, mani- fested itself as the relation of potentiality to actuaUty. Aristotle first invented these terms (in their philosophi- cal sense), and they are what is most characteristic of his system. In the movement of potential being into actual being we have the explicit notion of becoming, as in the four principles generally an explication of this notion into its moments. The Aristotelian system, consequently, is one of becoming ; and thiis in him (as in Plato the prin- ciple of the Eleatics), there returns, but in richer and con- creter form, the principle of Heraclitus. Aristotle, then, has made an important step here towards subjugation of the Platonic dualism. If, as possibility of form, mat- ter is reason in process of becoming, then the antithesis between idea and world of sense is at least in principle or potentially surmoimted, so far as it is one single being, but only on different stages, that exhibits itself in both, in matter as well as in form. The relation of the poten- tial to the actual, Aristotle illustrates by the relation of the raw material to the finished article, of the proprietor to the builder, of the sleeper to the waker. The seed is the tree potentially, the tree the seed actually ; a potential philosopher is the philosopher not philosophizing ; the better general is potentially the conqueror even before the battle ; space potentially is divisible ad infinitum : in general that is potential, whatever possesses a prin- ciple of movement, development, change ; whatever, un- hindered from without, will through its own self be. Actuality or entelechie, again, applies to the accom- plished act, the attained goal, the consummated reality (the mature tree, e.g., is the entelechie of the seed), that actuosity in which the action and its completion coincide, as to think, to see (he thinks and he has thought, he sees and he has seen, are identical) ; whereas in acts which involve a becoming, as to learn, to go, to get well, the two (the act and its completion) are divided. In this conception of the form (or idea) as actuahty or entele- chie, — in its connexion, that is, with the movement of becoming, — there hes the chief distinction between the system of Aristotle and the system of Plato. To Plato the idea is stable, self-subsistent being, the opposite of ARISTOTLE. 109 motion and becoming ; to Aristotle it is the eternal pro- duct of becoming, eternal energy, activity in completed actuality, tbe goal that is in every instant attained by the movement of the «n-ifee{/' (potentiality) to ihefor-it- self (actuality), not a fabricated and finished being, but such as is eternally being produced. {dd.) Theahsolute, dlvinespirit. — Aristotlehas attempted, from various points of view, but especially in connexion with the relation of potentiality^ and actualitj', to deter- mine the idea of the absolute spirit, or as he also names it, the first mover, (a.) The cosmological form. — The actual is always earlier than the potential, not only in its notion — for I can affirm power only in connexion with its activity — but also in time, for the potential be- comes actual only tkrough an actuating something (the uneducated becomes educated through the educated) : this leads to the inference of a first mover, who is pure actuosity. Or, motion, becoming, a causal series, is only possible, if a principle of motion, a mover, pre-exists ; this principle of motion, however, must be such that its very nature is actuality, since what only potentially exists may quite as well not pass into actuality, and not be, there- fore, a principle of movement. All becoming postulates, consequently, an eternal, unbecome Being, who, himself unmoved, is principle of movement, the first mover. (b.) Ontologicalform. — Even from the very notion of po- tentiality it results that the eternal and necessarily exis- tent Being cannot be merely potential. For what potentially is, may as well not be as be ; but what pos- sibly is not, is perishable. What, therefore, is abso- lutely imperishable is not potential, but actual. Or, were potentiality the first, there might possibly exist nothing at all, which contradicts the notion of the absolute, to be that which cannot not be. (c.) Moral form. — Potentiality is always the possibility of the opposite. Who has the power to be well has also the power to be ill : in actu- ality, again, no one is at once well and ill. Consequently actuality is better than potentiality, and the former alone accrues to the Eternal, (d.) So far as the relation of potentiality and actuality is identical with that of mat- ter and form, these arguments for the existence of a Being who is pure actuality, may be put in this shape also : — The supposition of an absolutely formless matter (irpuTt) vXt)) postulates that of an absolutely matterless form (irpQrov eZSoj) at the other extreme. And since the I 1 1 HI ST OR Y OF PHIL OSOPH Y. notion of form divides into the tliree fundamental dis- tinctions of the efficient, the notional, and the final cause, the eternal Being is also, similarly, absolute efficient principle (first-mover, -irpQnov kivovv), absolute notion (purely intelligible, pure tL ^v ilvai), and absolute end (primitive good). AU other predicates of the prime mover or supreme principle result from these premises with rigorous neces- sity. He is one, since the ground of the plurality, the multiplicity of being, lies in matter, and he is unparti- ciimnt of matter. He is immovable and immutable, as otherwise he were not possibly the absolute mover, the cause of all process. As actuose self-end, as entele- chie, he is life. As absolutely immaterial, and free from nature, he is at once intelligence and intelligible. He is active, that is, he is thinking inteUigeuce, because he is in his very nature pure actuality. He is intelligence that thinks its own self, because the divine thought can- not have its actuality out of itself, and because, if he were the thought of another than himself, he could reach actuality only by a necessary commencement from poten- tialitj\ Hence Aristotle's famous definition of the abso- lute, that it is the thought of thought {vb-qci^ poTjo-ews), the personal unity of thinking and thought, of kno^iving and known, the absolute subject-object. Meta. xii. 7 contains a rehearsal of these attributes of the divine spirit, and an almost hymnic description of the ever-blessed God, who, in eternal peace, in eternal self -fruition, knows him- self as the absolute truth, and is in want neither of action nor of virtue. As appears from this statement, Aristotle, although led to it through many consequences of his system, and in many movements preparing for it, has not completely deduced the idea of his absolute spirit, and stUl less satisfactorily reconciled it with the conditioning bases and presuppositions of his philosophy. It makes its appear- ance in the twelfth book of the Metaphysics quite asser- torically, nay unexpectedly, without the aid of any further induction. It suffers, too, under important diffi- culties. Why the ultimate ground of movement, which properly is all that his absolute spirit is, must be also thought as a personal being, it is impossible to see. It is impossible to see also how there can be something that is a moving cause and yet itself unmoved ; a cause of all becoming, that is, of all origination and decease, and yet ARISTOTLE. Ill itself permanent, self-identical energy ; a principle of movement, and yet itself without potentiality : for what moves must at least stand iu a relation of action and re- action with what is moved. On the whole, Aristotle has not, as ah-eady appears from these contradictions, with completeness and consistency established the relation be- tween God and the world. Since indeed he characterizes the absolute spirit one-sidedly only as contemplative theo- retical reason, and excludes from him, as the perfected end, aU action (which were to presuppose an unperfected end), any right motive of activity in regard to the world fails. In his only theoretical relation, he is not even truly the first mover ; extra-mundane and unmoved, as in essential nature he is, he enters not at all with his activity into the life of the world ; and as on its side matter is never quite resolved into form, there manifests itself here too the unreconciled dualism between the di\Tne spirit and the incognisable in-itself (potentiality) of matter. The objections which Aristotle makes to the god of Anaxagoras apply in part to his own. 4. The Aristotelian Physics. — The jjhj'sics of Aris- totle, taking up the largest part of his writings, con- tinue the consideration of the rise of matter into form, of the graduated series which nature, a living being, de- scribes in order to become an individual soul. AU pro- cess, namely, has an end in view ; an end, however, is form, and the absolute form is the spirit. It is with due consequence, then, that Aristotle recognises the end and centre of terrestrial nature in the realized form, man, and man-male. Everything sublunary else is, as it were, only nature's failure to produce a male man, a surplus- age due to the inability of nature always to master matter and mould it into form. "Wliatever attains not to the universal end of nature must be regarded as defec- tive, and is in strictness an exception or an abortion. Thus it even appears a false birth to Aristotle when the child resembles not the father ; and the birth of a female child is for him only a smaller degree of falsity, which aiises from this that the procreating man, as formative principle, possessed not strength enough. In comparison with man, Aristotle regards woman generally as some- thing maimed, and the other animals he finds in a greater degree deficient. Did nature act with fuU consciousness, these imperfect and incompetent formations of nature, these failures, were inexplicable ; but she is an artist that 1 1 2 HISTOR Y OF PHILOSOPH Y. works only on unconscious instinct, and completes not her work with clear perception or rational reflection. (a.) In his physical books, Aristotle considers the uni- versal conditions of all natural existence — motion, S2')ace, time. These physical principles he reduces, also, to the metaphysical principles of potentiality and actuality. Motion is defined, accordingly, as the action of what potentially is, and consequently as mediatrix between potential being and entirely realized actuahty. Space is defined as the possibility of motion, and possesses the quality, therefore, of being — potentially, not actually, — divisible ad infinitum. Time, as the measure of motion, equally divisible ad infinitum, and numerically expressible, is the numbering of motion in reference to an earlier and a later. All three are infinite, but the infinite that dis- plays itself in them is only potentially, not actually, a whole : it contains not, but is contained, which is misun- derstood by those who are accustomed to extol the infi- nite as if it embraced all and contained all, because it possesses a certain similarity to a whole. {h.) Aristotle derives from the notion of motion his theory of the entire universe as set out in his books De Ccelo. As uninterrupted, uniform, and self-comjjlete, the circular is the most perfect motion. The world, then, as a whole, is conditioned by this motion ; it is globe- shaped and self-contained. For the same reason, how- ever, — namely, that the motion which returns into itself is better thau any other, — that sphere in this globe-shaped universe is the better which is participant of the more perfect movement, and placed consequently in the peri- phery, while that is the worse which is disposed around the centre. The former is the heaven, the latter the earth, a.nd between both there is also the sphere of the planets. Heaven, as seat of spheral movement and of im- perishable order, is nearest to the first moving cause, and stands directly under its influence ; it consists not of perishable matter, but of higher element, the ether ; and in it the ancients sought the godhead, guided by a true tradition of vanished wisdom. Its parts, the stars, are impassive, changeless, and eternal beings ; who, occupied for ever in untroubled employment, have received the better part ; and are, though not capable of being clearly understood, certainly much more diAane than man. Under the sphere of the fixed stars, comes the lower sphere of the planets, among which x\ristotle enumerates. ARISTOTLE. 113 besides the five usually acknowledged by the ancients, the sun and the moon. This sphere is less near in posi- tion to what is perfect. Unlike that of the fixed stars, it is moved, not to the right, but in an ojiposite direction, and in oblique courses. It, too, possesses its diviue movers, who also are spiritual and immortal beings. Lastly, in the middle of the world there is the earth ; the farthest removed from the prime mover, and the least participant of divinity consequently ; the sphere — under influence of the planets, and especially of the sun — of a constant interchange of origin and decease, but exhibit- ing even in this infinite process, a copy of the eternity of heaven. There are thus assumed as necessary for the explanation of nature three species of beings, represent- ing, at the same time, three degrees of perfection : an immaterial being, that, itself unmoved, imparts move- ment, namely, the absolute spirit or God ; secondly, a being that moves and is moved — though not without matter — eternally, imperishably, in a constantly uni- form circle, the super-terrestrial region of heaven ; and lastly, in the lowest sphere, the perishable beings of earth, to which belongs only the passive role of receiving movement. (c.) Nature in the stricter sens^, as scene of elemental action, exhibits to us a progressive transition of the elements into plants, and of plants into animals. The lowest step is occupied by the inanimate things of nature, pure products of the intermixing elements, and possessing their entelechie consequently only in the particular relations of the combination of these ele- ments ; whilst their energy, on the other hand, expresses itself only in their tendency towards a position in the iiniverse adapted to them, which gained, they there rest. Such mere external entelechie is not the property of animate existences ; in them the motion by which they attain to actuality dwells inwardly as organizing prin- ciple, and continues as conservative activity to act in them, even after complete organization ; in short, they possess soul, for soid is the entelechie of an organic body. Soul we find operative in plants only as force of conservation and nutrition ; the plant has no other function or vocation than to nourish itself and pro« pagate its kind. In animals, which also exhibit a gra- duated series according to the mode of their propagation, the soul appears as sensitive. Animals have senses, and 114 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. are capable of locomotion. The human soul, finally, ia nutritive, sensitive, and cognitive. {d.) Man, as goal of universal nature, is the central and combining ganglion of the various grades in which the life of nature exhibits itself. The classifying principle of animate nature in general, therefore, will be necessarily that also of the faculties of the soul. If nutrition (vege- tation) fell to plants, sensation to animals, and locomo- tion to the higher animals, all three belong to the human soul. Of these the one preceding is always condition of necessity and presupposition in time to the one succeeding, and the soul itself is properly nothing else than the unifi- cation of these various functions of organic life into a single common designful activity, the designing unity or ente- lechie of the organic body. The soul is related to the body as form to matter ; it is animating principle. Simply for this reason the soid cannot be thought without the body; neither can it exist by itself, and with the body it ceases to be. It is different, however, with the fourth power, with thought or reason (i/oOs), which constitutes what is specific in man. This is essentially different from the soul, it is no product of the lower faculties, it is not related to them as mere higher developmental stage, as soul to body perhaps, as end to instrument, as actuality to jiossibility, as form to matter ; but, as pure intellectual principle, it requires not the intervention of any bodily organ, it stands not in connexion with the bodily functions, it is absolutely simple, immaterial, self- subsistent, it is what is divine in man ; it comes, as being no result of lower processes, from elsewhere into the body, and is equally again separable from it. There cer- tainly exists a connexion between thought and sensation ; for the sensations, at first externally separated according to the various organs of sense, meet inwardly in a centre, a common sense, where they are transformed into images and conceptions, and further again into thoughts. A.nd it might seem from this as if thought were only a result of sensation, as if the intelligence were only pas- sively determined, naj', Aristotle himself distinguishes between an active and a passive (receptive) reason, which latter is only gradually developed into thinking cognition. (In place here is the proposition erroneously ascribed to Aristotle, Nihil est in intellectu, quod non fuerit in sensu, as well as the widely known, but much misunderstood, comparison of the soul to a tabula ARISTOTLE. 115 rasa. This latter means only that as the tabula rasa is a book potentially but not actually, so human reason is at first not actually but potentially cognitive ; or thought possesses the imiversal notions withia itself in principle, so far as it is capable of forming them, but not in actuality, not definitely developed.) But this passivity presupposes rather an activity ; for if thought in its actuality, as cognition, becomes all forms, and conse- quently all things, it must make itself all that it becomes, and the passive reason has therefore an active one as moving principle behind it, by means of which it be- comes that which in itself it is. This active reason is reason in its purity, which as such is independent of and unaS'ected by matter, and consequently even on the death of the body is unconcerned, and, as universal reason, continues eternal and immortal. Thus here, too, the Aristotelian dualism breaks out. Obviously, this active intelligence is related to the soul as God to nature; the sides stand in no essential mutual relation. As the divine spirit becomes not truly part of the universal life, neither does the human spirit become truly part of the life of the senses ; though defined as immaterial and in- susceptible of outer influence, as soul it is still to be supposed connected with matter ; though pure, self -cog- nising form, it is still to be supposed di0"erent from the di-\ane spirit, which has been similarly characterized ; the deficiency of conciliation as well on the one side as the other, the human as well as the divine, is in these cir- cumstances not to be mistaken. 5. Aristotle's Ethics. — {a.) Relation of the ethics to the j)hysics. — Led here, too, by his tendency to nature, Aristotle has united ethics more closely with physics than his two predecessors Socrates and Plato did. If Plato found it impossible to discourse of the good in the affairs of man without being obliged to introduce the idea of the good in itself, Aristotle, on the contrary, held that the good in itself, the idea of the good, was of no assistance towards a knowledge of the good that was practicable in actual life, the good for us. Only the latter, morality in the life of man, not the good on the great scale as in re- lation to the tmiverse, was for him the object of ethics. Hence Aristotle prefers to consider the good in its rela- tion to the actual constitution of man, as the aim appointed by nature herself ; he conceives the moral element as flower, as etherealizatioD, spiritualization of 1 1 G IIISTOR Y OF PHILOSOPH Y. the physical, rather than as something purely intellec- tual ; virtue as normal development of natural instinct rather than as dependent on knowledge. That man is a political animal hy nature, this for him is the premiss and the fundamental presupposition for any theory of the state. This conjunction of the ethical with the physical element explains the polemic of Aristotle against the Socratic notion of virtue. Socrates, looking for the foundation of morals in the action of intelligence as in superiority to sense, had set virtue and knowledge as one. But this, in the opinion of Aristotle, were to de- stroy the pathological moment that is planted by nature herself in every moral action. It is not reason that is the first principle of virtue, but the natural seusations, inclinations, and appetites of the soid, without which action were not to be thought. The provision of nature, the impulse which in the beginning instinctively seeks natural good, and to which moral insight is only subse- quently added, this is the first ; only from natural virtue does that of morality arise. Aristotle, for the same reason, also disputes the teachableness of virtue. It is not through cultivation (;f knowledge, according to him, but through exercise — exercise directing natural inclination and impulse to the good, accustoming them to the good, weaning them from the bad — that virtue is realized. We become virtuous through the practice of virtue, as through the practice of music and architecture we be- come musicians and architects. Virtue is no mere know- ledge of the good, but confirmation in it, conviction, principle. But principle is only the result of usage to the good, and that requires again persistent exercise and perpetual discipline. Judgment is certainly neces- sary for knowledge of the good, and its application in detail ; but it cannot produce a \'irtuous will ; nay, it is rather conditioned bj^ the latter, for a vicious will corrupts and misleads judgment. Man, then, is good through three things : through nature, through habit, and through reason. Aristotle is, in these respects, directly opposed to Socrates. Whilst the latter, viewing morality and nature as opposed, made moral action the result of rational insight ; the former, holding both to be steps of development, makes rational insight in moral things a result of moral action. (h.) The summum bonum. — All action has an end in view ; but every end cannot be only again means tc ARISTOTLE. 117 another end ; there must be a last and highest end, there must be something to be striven to for its own sake, something that is good absokitely, something that is best. We are at least agreed on the name of this, which name is Happiness. But about the notion of happiness there is still question. If it is asked, What constitiites happiness ? — the answer can only be, That must depend on the peculiar nature of man, and consist in a course of action which, flowing from this peculiar nature, exalts it into such perfect actuality as brings with it the feeling of entire satisfaction. But sensuous feeling is not what is peculiar to man, for this he shares with the lower animals ; it is intelligence. The pleasure derived from the gratification of sense may constitute the bliss of the brute, then ; but it is certainly not that which is essential to man. What is specially human is the exercise of reason rather. Man, by nature and in- telligence, is formed for action, for rational action, for rational application of his natural powers and faculties. That is his destination and his happiness ; to the active, action, the imobstructed, successfully contiaued exercise of tliat activity to which nature calls, is always highest and best. Happiness, therefore, is such a well-being as is also well-doing, and such a well-doing as yields, in unobstructed energy and natural activity, the highest satisfaction. Action and pleasure are inseparably united then, by a natural bond, and constitute in their union, if carried out throughout an entire life, happiness. Hence the Aristotelian definition of happiness, that it is a per- fect activity in a perfect life. But if from this description, Aristotle appears to have considered action in accordance with nature sufficient for happiness and sufficient for itself, he does not, at the same time, conceal from himself the dependence of hap- piness on competent means and other advantages, the pos- session of which is not necessarily within our power. He declares, indeed, that moderate means suffice, and that only unusually great misfortunes are worth regarding, but he holds at the same time that riches, friends, chil- dren, noble birth, personal beauty, etc., are more or less necessary conditions of happiness, which, then, depends in part on contingencies. This moment of the Aristotehan theory has its foundation naturally in his empirical ten- dencies. Carefully pondering every consideration which universal experience appears to furnish, he pronounces 118 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. exclusively neitlier for virtue and rational action nor for external fortune, because fact testifies to tlie condi- tiouedness of the one by the other ; and he is in this free from the one-sidedness of later authorities, who deny to externality any application in happiness, (c.) Notion of virtue. — As results from the Aristotelian polemic against Socrates, virtue is the product of fre- quently repeated moral action ; it is a quality won through exercise, an acquired moral ability of the soul. The nature of this ability may be characterized as fol- lows : — Every act accomplishes something as its work ; but a work is imperfect if either in defect or excess. The act itself, therefore, will be similarly imperfect either by defect or excess ; nor will an act be perfect iinless it attain to a right proportion, to the due middle between too much and too little. Virtue in general, then, may be defined as observation of the due mean in action, not the arithmetical mean, the mean in itself, but the mean for us. What, namely, is enough for one man, is not so for another. The virtue of a man is one thing, but that of a wife, a child, a slave, quite another. In like man- ner there must be consideration of time, circumstances, and relations. To that extent, indeed, the determina- tion of the due mean will always involve uncertainty. But in the absence of any exact and infallible prescript, it is practical judgment that must pronounce ; and in effect that is the due mean which the man of understand- ing considers such. That there must be as many virtues as there are rela- tions of life, follows of itself from the very notion of virtue. As man, too, falls ever into new circumstances, in which it is often hard to detennine the proper course of action, any exact enumeration of the various particular virtues is impossible (in contrast to Plato), and therefore not to be discussed. Only so far as there are certain constant relations in life will it be possible to assign also certain leading virtues. One con- stant human relation, for example, is that of pleasure and pain. The moral mean in this reference, then, or neither to fear pain, nor j'et not to fear it, will be fortitude. The due mean in regard to pleasure, again, as between apathy and greed, will be temperance. In social life the mean between the doing of wrong and the suffering of wrong, between selfishness and weakness, is justice. In the same way many other virtues may be characterized ; ARISTOTLE. 119 aud it can be demonstrated in all of them tliat they oc- cupy the middle between two vices, which are opposed to each other, the one by defect, the other by excess. The details of the Aristotelian scheme here possess much psychological and practical value, but less philosophical. Ai'istotle derives the notions of his virtues from current speech rather than from the realization of any classifying princij)le ; his specification of the virtues of practical life remains in pai-ticular destitute of any systematic deduc- tion and arrangemeut. The most scientific perhaps is his classification of virtues into ethical and dianoetical, that is, into such as concern the affections and passions, and such as concern the intellect, theoretical or practical. The latter as the virtues of vovs, of what is highest in man, are superior in his estimation to the former ; wis- dom, 'itewpla, is what is best and noblest ; and life in it, philosophy, the supreme degree of felicity. But precisely in this class of vii-tues the criterion of a mean is found to be inapplicable ; they stand quite nnconnectedly beside each other, in the same dualistic manner in which reason stands to the other faculties of the soul. {(1.) The State. — Neither virtue nor happiness, accord- ing to Aristotle, can be attained by the individual him- self. Moral development and moral activity, as well as the procuring of the necessary external means, are con- ditioned by a regulated life in common, within which the individual obtains education in the good, the protection of the law, the assistance of others, and opportunity for the practice of virtue. Even by nature man is born for a life in common ; be is a political being ; life for him is only possible with his fellows. The state, then, is higher than the individual, higher than the family ; individuals are only accidental parts of the political whole. Aris- totle at the same time is far from entertaining the abs- tract conception of this relation which belongs to Plato ; the latter's politics, rather, he expressly opposes. AVith him also the business of the state is to rear its citizens into good men, to raise human life into its perfection ; but without prejudice to the natural rights of the indi- vidual and the family, of the thine and the mine, of per- sonal liberty. The state, he says, is not unity, but essentially plurality of individuals and smaller communi- ties ; this it has to recognise, and it has to effect also by law and constitution that \'irtue, humanity, shall become as universal as possible, as well as that jjolitical power 120 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. shall remain in tlie hands of the virtuous citizens. Of the various political forms, Aristotle giv^es the preference to constitutional monarchy and aristocracy, that is, to the state, in which not riches and not number of heads rule, but all such citizens as are possessed of competent property, as have been educated in all moral integrity, and as are capable of protecting and administering the whole. That state is the best in which the virtue, whether of one or of many, governs. For the rest, Aris- totle will not support any pohtical form as the only true one. The question, he thinks, is not of any political ideal, but of what is most advisable at the time, under the given natural, cHmatical, geographical, economical, intellectual, and moral relations. Thus here, too, he is true to the character of his entire philosophy — criticaUj"- and reflectingly to advance, that is, only on the ground of experience, and, despairing of the attainment of any absolute good or true, to keep in \'ie w what are relatively such, namely, the probable and the practicable. 6. The Peripatetic School. — The school of Aristotle, named Peripatetic, can, in consequence of the relative ^v'ant of independency in its philosophizing, which accordingly was not of great or universal influence, be only mentioned here. Theophrastus, Eudemus, Strato are the most cele- brated leaders of it. In the usual manner of philosophical schools, it restricted itself almost entirely to the explica- tion and exacter completion of the Aristotelian system. Any attempts to extend it concerned, in view of its ten- dency to the cultivation of material knowledge, natu- rally only the empirical spheres, that of physics especi- ally, with neglect and disregard of the more speculative principles. Strato, the ' physicist,' went the farthest in this direction ; he abandoned the dualism of Aristotle between the intelligent and the natural principle of things, and upheld nature as the one, sole, all-productive (even of thought), aU-formative might of existence. 7. Transition to the Post-Aristotelian Philosophy. — The productive power of Grecian philosophy is, contem- poraneously and in connexion with the general decline of Grecian hfe and intellect, exhausted with Aristotle, In- stead of the great and universal systems of a Plato and an Aristotle, we have now one-sided subjective systems, correspondent to the general breach between the subject and the objective world, which characterizes, in political, religious, and social life, this last epoch of Greece, the ARISTOTLE. 121 time after Alexander the Great. The principle of sub- jectivity, that first showed itself in the Sopliists, stands now after long struggles triumphant over the ruins of Grecian politics and Grecian art. The individual has emancipated himself from society and the state. The simple trust of the subject in the given world is com- pletely at an end ; the question henceforward is of the realization and satisfaction of the individual subject, now autonomic and secluded to himself. This progressive course of the universal spirit is also seen in philosophy. It, too, is no longer handled in a purely scientific, any more than in a purely poHtical, interest ; it becomes rather means for the subject, and aims to procure him, what is no longer possible on the part of the sinking religion and morality of the state, a philosophical conviction in reference to the highest religious, moral, and philosophical problems, a fixed theory of the universe for life and action, acquired, too, only through free thought. All now, even logic and physics, is looked at from this practical point of view ; the former shall extend to the subject a secure know- ledge to raise him above all disquieting doubt ; the latter shall supply the necessary explanations in regard to the ultimate grounds of existence, God, nature, humanity, in order that man may know how to relate himself to all things, what to fear or hope from the world, and in what to place his happiness in accordance with the nature of things. In one respect, consequently, the Post-Aristo- teUan systems denote a spiritual progress ; they are in earnest with philosophy, which is to be in place now of religion and tradition, which is to aiford truth for life itself, which is to be creed, dogma, conviction, by which the subject shall consistently detennine his entire life and action, in which he shall find his peace, his happiness. And the result is that now above all things certainty is a;med at, definitive knowledge. The effort is towards a fixed foundation ; the transcendentalism of the Platonic idealism, and the hypothetical philosophizing of Aristotle, are abandoned ; position is taken on the realistic terrain of immediate outer and inner experience in order to reach thence a theory of things that shall be logically estab- lished, and that shall leave nothing undecided. The en- deavour in particular is to abolish the duahsm of the Platouico-Aristotelian philosophy, and finally solve the problem of the reduction of aU the differences and con- trarieties of existence, subject and object, spirit and 1 22 HISTOR Y OF PHILOSOPII Y. matter, to a single ultimate ground. Pliilosopliy shall explain all ; nowhere shall there be left any hiatus, any uncertainty, any haKness. On the other hand, agaiu, there fails even so to the Pest-Aristotelian philosophy, all simple scientific devotion to the object ; it is a dog- matism that demands truth only for the subject, and ia therefore one-sided. It no longer allows free scope to the interest itself, to cognition, but it accentuates the subjective consequence of thought ; it seeks truth in the consequent reahzation of a single principle throughout the universal sphere of existence. Hence there presents itself opposite this dogmatism, and with equal decision, a scepticism that denies the possibility of all real know- ledge, and in which the negative tendencies of the Sophistic and Megaric eristic are developed up to their extremest consequences. The chief system of the Post-Aristotelian period is Stoicism, In it subjectivity appears as universal, think- ing subjectivity (compare xi. 6). Precisely this over- mastering grasp of the universality of subjectivity, of thought, and in superiority to all that is particular and individual, it adopts for principle both in theory and practice. Every particular existential detail is only pro- duct of the aU-reason that lives and works throughout the system of the universe ; reason, one and universal, is the essential principle of things. Thus, too, the voca- tion of man is no other than to be universal subjectivity exalted above every circumstance, and to seek his well- being only in a life according to nature and reason, not in external things, or individual enjoyment. The direct contrary of this is maintained by Epicureanism. In it the subject retires into the individuality of pleasure, into the bliss of philosophical repose, enjoying the present, free from care and inordinate desire, and interested in the objective world only so far as it extends means for the satisfaction of his individuality proper. Scep- ticism agrees with these two systems in aiming at the undisturbeduess and unmovedness of the subject by anything external ; but it would attain this in negative wise, through indifference to the objective world, through resignation of all definite knowledge and particular will. The same character of subjectivity, finally, is exhibited by the last of the ancient philosophical systems, 2seo- Plato- nism ; for here, too, the exaltation of the subject to the absolute forms the cardinal point of the system. Even, STOICISM. 123 indeed, when Neo-Platonisin speculates objectively in regard to God and his relation to the finite, this, too, has its motive in the desire to demonstrate the graduated transition from the absolute object to the personality of man. Here, too, then, the dominant principle is the in- terest of subjectivity, and the greater wealth of objective specifications has its ground only in the enlargement of subjectivity into the absolute. XYll.— Stoicism. THE founder of the Stoic School is Zeno, born in Citium, a to'wn of Cyprus, about the year 340, not of pure Greek, but of Phoenician extraction. Deprived of his property by shipwreck, but impelled as weU by inclination, he took refuge in philosophy. He was pupil first of Crates the Cynic, then of Stilpo the Megaric, and lastly of Polemo the Academic. After having passed twenty years in this manner, convinced at length of the necessity of a new philosophj'', he opened, in an arcade at Athens, a school of his own. This arcade was named, from the pa^'ntings of Polygnotus with which it was decorated, the ' many-coloured portico ' (Stoa Poecile) ; whence those who attended the new school were called ' philosophers of the Porch.' Zeno is said to have presided over the Stoa for fifty-eight years, and to have voluntarily ended his life at a great age. His abstemiousness and the severity of his morality were famous amongst the ancients ; his self- denial became proverbial. The monument to his memory, erected by the Athenians at the instigation of the Mace- donian king Antigonus, contained the fine encomium, ' His life corresponded to his precepts ! ' Zeno's succes- sor in the school was Cleanthes of Assos, in Asia Minor, a faithfiJ follower of the tenets of his master. Cleanthes was succeeded by Chiijsippus, who was bom at Soli in Cilicia, and died about the year 208 ; he was so jjre- eminently the support of the Stoa, that it used to be said, ' If Chrysippus were not, the Stoa were not.' At all events, as, for all the later Stoics, he was an object of exalted veneration, and almost infallible authority, he must be regarded as the most eminent originator of their doctrine. He was so fertile a writer that, as it is said, he composed no fewer than 705 books, his habit, indeed, being to discuss the same proposition repeatedly, 12-1 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. and to sujiport it by a vast number of extracts from other works, especially those of the poets, by way of testi- monies and examples. But of all his works not any are left to us. Chrysippus closes the series of philosophers who founded the Stoa. Subsequent chiefs of the school, as Pancetius, the friend of the younger Scipio (his cele- brated book on duties was wrought by Cicero into his own work of the same name), and Posidonius (whom Cicero, Pompey, and others attended), proceeded more eclectically. Among the Stoics, philosophy was in the closest union with practical life. Philosophy is for them wisdom in a practical interest ; it is the exercise of virtue, the train- ing-school of virtue, the science of those principles by which a virtuous life shall form itself. All science, art, instruction that is only for its own sake, is to them but a superfluous accessory ; man has nothing to strive for but Avisdom, wisdom in divine and human things, and adapt his life accordingly. Logic supplies the method for at- taining to true knowledge ; physics teach the nature and order of the universe ; and ethics draw thence the inferences for practical life. What is most remarkable in their logic, and most characteristic of the dogmatic nature of the Post-Aristo- telian philosophy, is the quest of a subjective criterion of truth that may assure the determination of true and false ideas. All our knowledge, according to the Stoics, springs from actual impressions on us of the external things, from the objective experiences of sense, which are then combined into notions by the understanding. Knowledge, then, is not due to the subject, but to the object, and therefore is it true. As it is possible, how- ever, that ideas of our subjective imagination may mingle with the true perceptions produced in us by things, the question comes, how are we able to separate the two sorts of consciousness — by what distinguish the true as true, the false as false ? The criterion here is the irre- sistible evidence, the power of con^action, with which an idea forces itself on the soul. In regard to any idea which possesses evidence of this nature, which involun- tarily compels the soul to the recognition of its truth, it is to be assumed that it is no mere imagination, but the product of a real object. Any other criterion than this ' striking evidence ' is impossible, for we know things only through the medium of our impressions. This STOICISM. 125 Stoic theory of cognition, then, occupies a middle place between empiricism and idealism. Only experience of sense is certain ; but whether there be something actually perceived, is only decided by the irresistible impression of truth which the experience brings with it for the subject. In their ^A?/sJcs, in which they essentially follow Hera- clitus, the Stoics distinguish themselves from their pre- decessors, especially Plato and Aristotle, chiefly by their rigorously applied axiom that nothing incorporeal exists, that everything substantial — that all things are corporeal (as in logic they held that all knowledge is due to percep- tion of sense). This sensualism or materialism of the Stoics looks strange beside their general idealistico-moral tendency. Nevertheless it is quite in keeping with their dogmatic stand-point : an ideal entity is not objective, not substantial enough for them ; the relations and func- tions of things are ideal, but the things themselves must possess bodily reality. At the same time it appeared impossible to them that anything ideal could act on any- thing corjioreal, anything spiritual on anything material, or conversely. Wliat things mutually act must be of like substance ; spirit, divinity, the soul consequently is a body, but only of another soit than matter and the outward body. The immediate consequence of this effort of the Stoics to abolish all dualism between the spu'itual and the material is their pantheism. If Aris« totle, before them, had divided the divine being from the world, as the pure eternal form from the eternal matter, the Stoics could not in consistency admit this separation, excluding as it did all real operation of God on the world. To separate God from matter appeared to them a false self -substantiation of the world, and so, like force and its manifestation, they made God and the world one. Matter is the passive foundation of things, the primal substrate of divine activity — God is the active and formative power of matter, immanent in it and essentially combined with it. The world is God's body, God the world's soul. Thus, then, the Stoics con- ceived God and matter as one substance identical with itself, called matter when considered on its passive and mutable side, God on the side of its active and ever self-identical power. The world has no independent existence, it is not self-subsistent finite being ; it is produced, animated, ruled by God : it is a prodigious living thing (i'woj'), the rational soul of which is God. K 126 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. All in it is equally divine, for the divine power equally pervades all. In it God is the eternal necessity which subjects all to unalterable law, the rational providence which duly forms and frames all, the perfect wisdom which upholds the order of the universe, commands and rewards the good, forbids and corrects the bad. Nothing in the world can isolate itself, nothing quit its nature and its limit ; all is unconditionally bound to the order of the whole, of which the principle and the might are God. Thus, in the physics of the Stoics, we see mirrored the rigorously law-directed spirit of their philosophy ; like Heraciitus, they are the sworn foes of all individual self- will. This principle of the unity of all being, brought them into connexion with Heraciitus in another respect ; like him they conceived the being of God, ah-eady (as said) corporeal to them, as the fiery, heat-giving powei', which, as such, is life in the world, but equally resumes all life into itself, in order to give it forth again, and so on ad infinitum (compare vii. 4). They called God, now the spiritual breath that permeates nature, now the art-subserving fire that forms or creates the uni- verse, and now the tether, which, however, was not different to them from the i)rinciple of fire. In conse- quence of this identification of God and the world, in agree- ment with which the entire evolution of the universe was assumed, further, as but a development of the divine life, the remaining theory of existence acquired a very simple form. All in the world appears to them inspired by the divine life, coming into special existence out of the divine whole, and returning into it again, and thus bringing to pass a necessary cycle of constant origination and decease, in which, perpetually recreating itself, only the whole is permanent. On the other hand, again, within the whole no single unit is in vain, nothing is without an end, in every actual existence there is reason. Even evil (within certain limits) belongs to the perfection of the whole, as it is the condition of virtue (injustice, for example, of justice) ; the system of the universe could not possibly be better or fitter for its purpose than it is. The ethics of the Stoics are very closely connected with their physics. In the latter, the rational, divinely insti- tuted order of the universe has been demonstrated. Here now their ethics come in, referring the entire moral rectitude of life, and consequently the highest law of human action, to the rationality and order of universaJ STOICISM. 127 nature, and asserting the siipreme good, or the supreme end of our endeavours, to be an adaptation of our life to the universal law, to the harmony of the world, to nature, 'Follow nature,' or ' live in agreement with nature,' this is the moral princijile of the Stoics. More precisely : live in agreement with thy own rational nature, so far as it is not corrupted and distorted by art, but remains in its natural simplicity ; be know- ingly and willingly that which by nature thou art, a rational part of the rational whole, be reason and in reason, instead of following unreason and thy own parti- cular self-will. Here is thy destination, here thy happi- ness, as on this path tliou avoidest every contradiction to thy own nature and to the order of things without, and providest thyself a life that glides along undisturbed in a smooth and even stream. From this moral princijile, which involves at the same time the Stoic conception of virtue, all the peculiarities of the developed theory, follow with logical necessity. [a.) The relation between virtue and pleasure. Through the postulate of a life in accordance with nature, the unit is placed in subjection to the whole ; every per- sonal end is excluded, and consequently the most perso- nal, — pleasure. Pleasure as a remission of that moral energy of the soul, which alone is happiness, could seem to the Stoics only as an interruption to life, as evil. It is not in accordance with nature, it is no end of nature, was the opinion of Cleanthes ; and if other Stoics relaxed eomething of this severity, in allowing it to be regarded as in accordance with nature or even as a good, they stiU maintained that it possessed no moral worth, and was no end of nature, that it was something only accidentally connected with the due and proper operation of nature, that it was no active but only a passive condition of the soul. The whole austerity of the Stoic moral theory lies here : every personal consideration is rejected, every external end is to be looked on as alien to mora- lity ; wise action, that is the only end. There directly coheres with this (6.) the opinion of the Stoics in regard to material goods. Virtue, the sole end of man as a rational being, is also his sole happiness, his sole good : only the inner reason and strength of the soul, only will and action in conformity with nature, can render man happy, and supply him with a counterpoise to the continccncies and obstructions of external life. ItfoUows, I2S HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. in simple conseqiience from tliis, that external goods, health, wealth, etc., are, one and all of them, indifferent; they contribute nothing to reason, nothing to the great- ness and strength of the soid ; they may be used as well rationally as irrationally ; they may issue in grief and they may issue in joy ; they are not, therefore, anything really good ; only virtue is profitable ; to want or to lose external possessions affects not the happiness of the vir- tuous ; even the so-called external evils are no evils, the only evil is vice, the unreason which is contrary to nature. The Stoics, differing in this respect from their predecessors the Cynics, grant that there are differences in these external things ; that some of them, though certainly not morally good, have ' a certain value,' are ' preferable ' to others ; and that this preferableuess, so far as it contributes to a life in accordance with nature, may be reckoned into the general moral account. Thus the wise man, when offered his choice, prefers health and riches to sickness and poverty ; and in so preferring he follows a rational reason, for health and riches are more favourable to action, and consequently to virtuous action, than their contraries. But he regards them not as positive goods, for they are not that highest good to which all is to be sacrificed. They are inferior to the possession of virtue itself, in respect of which, in- deed, they come not at all into account. It is seen from this distinction between the good and the preferable, how the Stoics were always bent on taking the good only in its highest sense, and on excluding from it everything re- lative, (c.) This abstract apprehension of the notion of virtue announces itself further in their abrupt antithesis of virtue and vice. Virtue is reasonableness, due action according to the nature of things ; vice is contrariety to reason, that perversity which is in contradiction to nature and truth. The action of man is either, as they further argue, rational and free from contradiction, or it is not so. In the first case he is virtuous ; in the second, how- ever inconsiderable may be his contradiction to reason and nature, he is vicious. He only is good, who is per- fectly good ; vicious is every one who is irrational or wrong in any one point, who is subject, for example, to any appetite, affection, passion, fault, or who commits a fault. There is no transition from contradiction to free- dom from contradiction, there is no middle term between them, any more than between truth and falsehood. It STOICISM. 129 was but the same doctrine wlien tlie Stoics affirmed that really faultless moral action is only possible through the possession of entu'e virtue, a perfect perception of the good, and a perfect power of its realization. Virtue is capable of being possessed only wholly, or else not at all, and conseqTiently we are only then moral when we pos- sess it wholly. Akin to this is the further Stoic para- dox, that all good actions are equally right, and all bad ones equally wrong, that there are no degrees of good and bad, of virtue and vice, but tb,at there is between both an absolute and essential contrast. The Stoics allowed here only, that legal acts, — such acts as substan- tially coincide with the law of \'irtue, without ha^^ng directly risen from this law as source, — lie in the middle between virtue and vice, but are morally worthless, (d.) The special theory of ethical action was completely elabo- rated by the later Stoics, who were thus the founders of all deontological schemes. Virtue consists, according to them, in absolute judgment, absolute control of the soul over pain, absolute mastery of desire and lust, absolute justice that treats all only according to its worth in the system of things. Duties are respectively duties to self and duties to others. The former concern the preserva- tion of self, with pursuit of all that agrees and avoidance of aU that disagrees with nature and reason. The latter concern the relations of indi\'iduals socially, who have to guide themselves according to the principles of their social nature, and fulfil in one another's regard all the resultant duties of justice and humanity. The state is likewise an emanation from the social nature of man. The separation of men into a variety of hostile states, is a contradiction to the notion of the state ; but the entire race ought to form a single community with the same principles and laws. Thus Stoicism originated the idea of cosmopolitism, (e.) The picture of the ivise man forms the conclusion of the teaching of the Stoics. This, as pattern and model for action, is to be a representation of the ideal of wtiie in its most rigorous form, and of the absolute felicity that is given with it. The wise man is he who actually possesses a true knowledge of divine and human things, as well as the absolute moral percep- tion and strength that flow from it, and who by conse- quence unites in himself every conceivable perfection of himianitj'. Any more special realization of this ideal seems paradoxical, as such absolute perfection is quite 130 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. incapable of union with the idea of the indi\'idual. Precisely here, however, the Stoics laid most stress, inas- much as the elevation of the subject to virtue, a virtue that is pure and entire, is the postulate that pervades then' whole ethical system, and specifically distinguishes it from the Aristotelian requisition of merely individual and relative virtues. The wise man, they said, knows all that there is to know, and understands it better than any oue else, because he possesses a true constitution of soul, and a true knowledge of the nature of things. He alone is the true statesman, lawgiver, orator, educator, critic, poet, physician ; whilst the unwise man remains always raw and unformed, let him possess what ac- qiiirements he may. The wise man is without fault or failing, as he always uses reason, and thuiks all in its rational connexion. On the same account, nothing sur- prises, nothing terrifies him ; he falls not into weakness or passion. He alone is the true fellow-citizen, fellow- man, kinsman, and friend, because he alone perfectly knows and fulfils the duties which these relations in- volve. In the same way, the wise man, as he possesses the good as his own law within himself, is free from all restriction of external law and established observance : he is king, lord of his action, for from the same cause he is responsible only to himself. No less free is he, by his character and his virtue, in reference to business and vocation ; he can move with ease in every sphere of life ; he is rich, for he can procure himself all that he wants, and dispense with all that he is without ; he is happy under all circumstances, for he has happiness in himself, in his virtue. The unwise, a.gain, do not in truth possess all the internal and external goods which they seem and suppose themselves to possess, because they possess not the indispensable condition of true happiness, perfection of soul. In this thought, that inner moral integrity is the necessary basis of all quahfication for action and of aU true haj^jiiness, lies the truth of this Stoical doctrine. It equally displays the abstraction, however, in which the whole system is involved ; this wisdom is an unreal ideal, as indeed the Stoics themselves admitted ; it is a general notion of perfection which, inapi^licable to life, proves that its supporters had only one-sidedly adopted for principle the universality of subjectivity. The sub- ject, that is, if fonnerly only an accident of the state, is now to be absolute. But j ust so his reality disappears EPICUREANISM. 131 into the mist and vapour of an abstract ideal. The merit of the Stoic i^hilosophy, nevertheless, is that, in an age of ruin, they held fast by the moral idea, and, through ex- clusion of the political element from morality, estab- lished the Latter as an independent special science. XVIIl. — Epicureanism. NEAHLY contemporaneously with the Stoa, or a little earlier, there arose the Epicurean school. Its founder, Epicurus, the son of an Athenian who had emigrated to Samos, was born 342 B.C., six years after the death of Plato. Of his youth and culture little that is trustworthy is known. In his thirty-sixth year, lie opened at Athens a philosophical school, over which he presided till his death (in the year 270 B.C.) His dis- ciples and adherents formed a private society, which was held together by a close tie of friendship (after Alex- ander, social life comes now in place of the falling poli- tical life). Epicurus himself compared his society to that of the Pythagoreans, though it placed not, like theirs, its means in a common fund, since, as Epicurus was accustomed to say, one true friend must trust another true friend. Epicurus's moral character has been fre- quently assailed ; but his life, according to tho most credible testimony, was in every respect blameless, and he himself alike amiable and estimable. Much of what is reported about the offensive sensuality of the Epicu- rean sty is in general to be considered calumny. Epi- curus wrote a great many works, more even than Aris- totle, less only than Chrysippus. He himself prepared the way for the disappearance of his greater works, by reducing the sum of his philosophy to short extracts, which he recommended his disciples to get by rote. These extracts have been for the most part preserved to us. The tendency of Epicurus is very distinctly character- ized in his definition of philosophy. He denominated it an activity which realizes a happy life through ideas and arguments. It has essentially for him, therefore, a prac- tical object, and it results, as he desires, in ethics which are to teach us how to attain to a life of felicity. The Epicureans did, indeed, accept the usual division of philosophy into logic (called canonic by them), physics, 132 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. and etliics. But logic, limited to the investigation of the criteria of truth, was considered by them only as ancillary to physics. Physics, again, existed only for ethics, in order to secure men from those vain terrors of empty fables, and that superstitious fear -which might obstruct their happiness. In Epicureanism, we have still, then, the three ancient parts of philosophy, but in reverse order, logic and physics being only in the service of ethics. To this last we shall limit the present exposi- tion, the othera being but of small scientific interest, and the physics especially, while very incomplete and incoherent in themselves, being nothiig but a return to the atoms of Democritus. With Aristotle and the other philosophers of his time, Epicurus, as said, sought the summum bonum in felicity of life. But happiness in his view consists in nothing but jileasure. Virtue, he declares, can have no value in itself, but only so far as it offers «s something — an agreeable life. The qxiestion now, then, is the more exact defini- tion of pleasure, and here Epicurus differs in essential points from his predecessors the Cyrenaics (compare xni. 3). (a.) While Aristippus viewed the pleasure of the moment as the object of hmnan effort, Epicurus holds this object to be the permanent tranquil satisfac- tion that is the enduring condition of an entire life. True pleasure, therefore, is a subject of calculation and reflection. Many a pleasure must be rejected, as pre- paring us only pain ; many a pain must be accepted as preparing us only a greater pleasure, (b. ) As the wise man seeks his supreme good not for the moment, but for the whole of life, spiritual joy and sorrow, which, as memory and hope, embrace the past and the future, evidently claim more of his consideration than the fleshly pleasure and pain which are only temporary. But the joy of spirit consists in the imperturbable tran- quillity of the wise man, in the feeling of his inner worth, of his superiority to the blows of fate. Thus Epicurus could truly say that it is better to be sad with reason than without reason glad ; and that the wise man may exist in happiness even amid tortures. Nay, it was allowable for him (in this a true follower of Aristotle) to place pleasure and happiness in the closest union with virtue, and maintain the one to be inseparable from the other, happiness impossible without virtue, and virtue impossible without happiness. For the same reason. EPICUREANISM 133 friendship was to liim, tliougK lield by the Cyrenaics to be superfluous, a chief means of happiness ; and this it is as an enduring, life-gladdening, life-embellishing union of congenial natures, and as conferring so a lasting satisfaction which the joys of sense can not procure, (c.) When other hedonists declared the positive feeling of pleasure, raised, too, to the highest pitch of intensity, to be the highest good, Epicurus, keeping before him the possibility of a well-being that should extend over the whole of life, could not agree with them. He demands not for a happy life the most exquisite pleasures ; he recommends, on the contrary, sobriety and temperance, contentment with little, and a life generally in accord with nature. lie protests against the false interpretation, of his doctrine, that represents him to recommend as the greatest good the sensual enjoyments of the voluptuary and the debauchee ; he boasts to be willing to vie with Jupiter himself in happiness, if allowed only plain bread and water ; and he even abhors those gratifications which necessitate expense, not perhaps for their own sakes, but for the evils with which they are attended. Not, indeed, that the Epicurean sage will live like a CjTiic : he will enjoy wherever he can harmlessly enjoiJ^ ; he will also endeavour to procure himself the means of living with decency and comfort. Still the wise man can dispense with these finer enjojnnents, even though not obliged to do so, for he possesses within himself the greatest of his satisfactions, he enjoys within himself the truest and the most stable joy, — tranquillity of soul, impassibility of mind. In opposition to the positive pleasure of some hedonists, the theory of Epicurus ends rather in the recommendation of negative pleasure, so far as he regards freedom from pain as already pleasure, and advises the efforts of the sage to be preferably directed to the avoidance of the disagreeable. Man, says Epicurus, is always plotting in his heart not to suffer or to fear pain ; if he has accomplished this, nature is satisfied ; positive delights cannot augment happiness, but only complicate it. Happiness to him, accordingly, is some- thing simple, and easy to be attained, if man will but follow nature, and not destroy or imbitter for himself his own life by inordinate demands, or else by the foolish fear of evils in supposition. To the evils which we are not to dread, belongs, before all, death. It is no evil not to live. And so the wise man fears not death, before 134 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. wbicli most men tremble : for if we are, it is not, if it is, we are not ; when it is present we feel it not, for it is tlie end of all feeling, and what cannot harm us when present, that need not trouble us in the future. The teaching of Epicurus tends ever indeed to enjoin the pure subjective endeavour to secure for the individual i:)eace and contentment in life ; he knows nothing of a moral destiny in man ; but he has ennobled the antique conception of pleasure to the full of its capacity. Epicurus crowns his general view by his doctrine of the gods, to whom he applies his ideal of happiness. The gods lead, he thinks, in human form, but without human wants, and without permanent bodies, in the empty interspaces of the infinite worlds, an untroubled, unalter- able life, whose bliss is insusceptible of increase. From this bliss of the gods he infers that they can have nothing to do with the superintendence of our affairs : for bliss is peace ; they trouble neither themselves nor others ; and therefore they are not to be regarded as objects of super- stitious and disquieting terrors. These inert gods of Epi- curus, these imperturbable and j^et unstable forms, these Ijodies which are not bodies, do, indeed, fit in but poorly with the rest of the system ; still it is the happiness of man that is consulted here also, the gods are disarmed of their terrors, and yet preserved in such modified shape as serves rather to confirm than refute the Epicurean creed. XIX. — Scepticism and the Later Academy. THE conclusion of all these subjective tendencies is scep- ticism, manifesting itself in the complete destruction of the bridge between subject and object, in the denial of all objective knowledge, science, truth, in the complete retirement of the sage into himself and his subjective ex- perience. But there is a distinction between the elder scepticism, the later Academy, and subsequent scepticism. 1. The elder Scepticism. — The head of the oldersceptics is Pyrrho of Elis, a contemporary of Aristotle. Our chief informant in i-egard to PyiTho's ojiinions, is, — he himself having left nothing in writing, — his disciple and adherent Timon of Phlius, the satirist or sillographist (author, that is, of a satirical poem on the whole of Greek philo- sojihy up to that time). The tendency of these sceptical SCEPTICISM AND THE LATER ACADEMY. 135 pliilosopliers was, like tliat of the Stoics and Ei^icureans, proximately a practical one : pliilosophy sliall conduct us to happiness. But to live happy, we must know how things are, and how, consequently, we must relate oiir- selves to them. They answered the first question in this way : What things really are, lies beyond the sphere of our knowledge, since we jDerceive not things as they are, but only as they appear to us to be ; our ideas of them are neither true nor false, anything definite of anything cannot be said. Neither our perceptions nor our ideas of things teach us anything true ; the opposite of every pro- position, of every enunciation, is still j^ossible ; and hence, in regard to one and the same thing, the contradictory \news of men in general, and of professed philosophers in particular. lu this impossibihty of any objective know- ledge, of science, the true relation of the philosopher to things is entire suspense of judgment, complete reserve of all positive opinion. In order to avoid all definite ex- pressions, the sceptics on all occasions availed themselves, therefore, of doubtful phrases : it is possible, it may be, perhaps, as it seems to me, I know nothing for certain (to which they carefully added, nor do I know even this for certain that I know nothing for certain). In this sus- pense of judgment, they believed their practical end, happi- ness, attained : for, like a shadow, imperturbability of soul follows freedom from judgment, as if it were a gift of for- tune. He who has adopted the sceptical mood of thought, lives ever in peace, without care and without desire, in a pure apathy that knows neither of good nor evil. Be- tween health and disease, between life and death, difTerence there is none — in this sheer antithesis, Pyrrho is iinder- stood to have enunciated the axiom of sceptical apathy. It lies in the nature of the case that the sceptics ob- tained the matter of their conclusions chiefly by means of a polemical discussion of the views and investiga- tions of the dogmatists. But their supporting groimds were shallow, and appear to be pai-tly dialectical blunders readily refuted, and partly empty subtleties. To the older sceptics is ascribed the employment of the following ten sceptical tropes (points or arguments) , which, however, were probably collected and perfected, neither by Pyrrho nor Tinion, but by .iS^nesidemus, who, as it appears, flourished shortly after Cicero. The sceptical reservation of opinion made appeal (1.) to the varieties of the feelings and sensa- tions of living beings in general ; (2.) to the bodily and 136 HISTOBY OF PHILOSOPHY, mental diversities of men, by reason of which things ap- pear dififerent to different persons; (3.) to the varying accounts of the senses themselves in regard to things, and to the uncertainty as to whether the organs of sense are competent or not ; (4.) to the dependence of our perceptions of things on our different bodily and mental states ; as well as (5.) on the various positions of things to us and to each other (distance, etc.) ; (6.) to the fact that we know nothing directly, bat all only through some extraneous medium (air, etc.); (7.) to the varjnng im- pressions of the same thing by varying quantity, tempera- ture, colour, motion, etc. ; (8.) to the dependence of our impressions on custom, the new and strange affecting us differently from the common ; (9.) to the relativity of all notions, predicates in general expressing only relations of things to each other or to our perceptions of them ; (10.) to the diversity of the customs, manners, laws, religioiis conceptions, and dogmatical opinions of men. 2. The later Academy. — In consequence of its contest with the Stoics, in especial, Scepticism, when introduced into the Platonic school (first by Arcesilaus, 316-241), obtained greater importance than in the contributions of the Pyrrhonists. Here it sought its supports prin- cipally in the authority of the writings of Plato, and in the traditions of his oral teaching. Arcesilaus would never have been able to assume and maintain his chair in the Academy, had he not entertained himself and communicated to his disciples the conviction that his tenet of a suspense of judgment was essentially in agreement with those of Socrates and Plato, and that by banishment of dogmatism, he was only restoring the pristine and true dialectic signification of Platonism. His action was further influenced by the opposition entertained by him to the harsh dogmatism which, pretending to be in every respect an improvement on the Platonic teaching, was but just set up in the Stoa. Hence the remark of Cicero, that Arcesilaus directed all his sceptical and polemical attacks against Zeno, the founder of the Stoa. He particularly dispiited the Stoic theory of cognition, alleging against it that even false perceptions may induce perfect conviction, that all per- ception, indeed, leads only to opinion, and not to know- ledge as such. Accordingly, he denied the existence of any criterion by which truth might be accurately dis- criminated. Whatever truth our opinions might contain, THE ROMANS. 137 we could never, he tliouglit, be certain of it. It was in this sense that he said, * We can know nothing, not even this itseK, that we know nothing.' In the moral sphere, however, in the love of the good and the hatred of the bad, he demanded that we should foUow the course of probability, that course namely that showed for itself the most and the best reasons : so we should act rightly and be hajiiiy, for that was the course of action which accorded with reason and the nature of things. Of the subsequent leaders of the New Academy we can mention here only Carneades (214-129), whose whole philosophy, however, almost exclusively consisted in his polemic against the logic, theology, and physics of the Stoics. His positive contribution was an attempt to introduce a doctrine of method for probable thought, or a theory of philosojshical probabihty which should determine the various grades of it J for to Carneades also probability was a necessity in practical life. Later still, the Academy tended more, in a retrograde direction, to an eclectico-dogmatic doctrine. 3. Later Scepticism. — Scepticism proper was once more revived at the time of the total decline of Greek philosophy. Of this period the most imiwrtant sceptics, or at least promoters of scepticism, are j^nesidemus, Agrijjpa (later than .(Enesidemus, and who principally insisted on the necessity of leaving nothing without proof, at the same time that the proof itself demanded agaiu proof, and so on usque ad infinitum), and Sextus Emjnri- cits (a Greek physician, that is, of the Empirical sect), who lived probably in the first half of the third century after Christ. The last is the most considerable, as we possess from him two writings of genuine historical value (the Pyrrhonic Hyiyotyposes in three books, and his work Adversus llathematicos in eleven), in which he has ex- pounded at full all that ancient scepticism could contrive to bring forward against certainty in knowledge. XX. — The Romans. THE Romans have no share of their own in the deve- lopment of philosophy. After an interest in Greek philosophy and literature began among them, — after the embassy to E-ome, on the part of Athens, of the three distinguished representatives of Attic culture and elo- quence, Carneades the Academic, Critolaiis the Peripv 138 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. tetic, and Diogenes the Stoic, — and after the closer connexion of the two States in consequence of the con- version (a few years later than the embassy) of Greece into a province of Rome, almost all the more important Greek systems of philosophy, especially the Epicurean (Lucretius) and the Stoic (Seneca), flourished and found adherents among the Romans, but without receiving from them any actual philosophical improvement. The uni- versal character of the Roman philosophizing is eclec- ticism, which very strikingly exhibits itself in the case of the most important and influential of philosophical writers among the Romans, Cicero. Nevertheless, the popular philosophy of this and other thinkers of a similar bent is not, despite its want of originality, independency, and rigour, to be too lightly estimated ; for it led to the introduction of philosophy as a constituent element in cidture generally. XXI. — Neo-Platonism. IN Neo-Platonism the spirit of antiquity made its last desperate attempt at a philosophical monism which should put an end to the dualism between subjectivity and objectivity. It makes this attempt on the one hand from the position of subjectivity, and stands in this re- spect on the same plane with the other Post-Aristotelian subjective philosopliies (compare x\a. 7). On the other hand, again, it aims at the establishment of objective principles in regard to the highest notions of metaphysics, in regard to the absolute — it aims, indeed, at the estab- lishment of a system of absolute philosophy, and in this respect is a counterpart of the Platonico-Aristotelian philosophy, with which it connects itseK externally also in professing to be a revival of the pristine Platonism. On both aspects, then, it constitutes the close of ancient philosophy ; it represents the final gathering-in, but not less the exhaustion of antique thought and the dissolu- tion of ancient philosophy. The first, and, at the same time, the most important representative of Neo-Platonism, is Plotlnus of Lycopolis in Egj'i^t. He was a disciple of Ammonins Saccas, who taught Platonic philosophy at Alexandria in the begin- ning of the third century, biit left behind him nothing in writing. Plotinus (205-270 a.d.) taught philosophy at NEOPLA TONISM. 1 39 Rome from tlie age of forty. He explained his views in a series of hastily wiitten, ill-connected tractates, which, after his death, and in obedience to his directions, Por- phyry, the most celebrated of his disciples (born 233, taught also at Rome philosophy and eloquence), arranged and edited in six Enneads (parts consisting of nine books each). From Rome and Alexandria, the Neo-Platonism of Plotinus passed, in the f om-th century, to Athens, where it established itself in the Academy. Among the Neo- Platonists of the fourth century, Porjihyry's disciple lambliclius, among those of the fifth Proclus (412-485), possessed pre-eminently the respect of the school. With the disappearance of Paganism before the triumphant advance of Christianity, this last blossom of Greek philo- sophy, in the course of the sixth century, faded too. The common characteristic of the wdiole of the Neo- Platonic philosophei-s is the tendency to enthusiasm, to theosophy, and theurgy. The most of them addicted themselves to sorcery, and the more eminent professed to enjoy divine communications, to foresee the future, and to perform miracles. They bore themselves then as hierophants quite r.s much as philosophers ; with the unmistakable endeavour to found — as Pagan antitype of Christianity — a philosophy which should be at the same time a universal religion. In the following exposition of Neo-Platouism we confine ourselves more particularly to Plotinus. (a.) The Subjective Coitoition of Ecstasy. — The re- sult of the philosophical attempts that had preceded Neo- Platonism. was scepticism, recognition of the inadequacy of the Stoic and the Epicurean wisdom in the practice of life, an absolutely negative relation to all positive theo- retical acquisitions. But scepticism was in this way brought only to the contrary of what it aimed at. It had aimed at complete apathy on the part of the sage, but ■what it was brought to was the necessity of a perpetual opposition in refutation of all positive allegations, not the repose which was to follow scepticism, but an unappeas- able unrest. This absolute dispeace of consciousness that strives to absolute peace could lead only to the longing to be freed from this dispeace itself, the longing for a conclusion that, secure from every sceptical objection, ehould absolutely satisfy. This longing for absolute truth found its historical expression in Neo-Platonism. The individual seeks to become master of the absolute, 140 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. to embrace it, to hold it immediately witliiu himself, that is, to attain to it, not through objective knowledge, not through any dialectical process, but directly through his own inner mystical subjective exaltation, in the form of immediate vision, of ecstasy. Knowledge of the true, Plotinus maintains, is not won by proof, not by any in- termediating process, not so that objects remain outside of him who knows, but so that all difference between the knowing and the known disappears ; it is a vision of reason into its owti self ; it is not we who have vision of reason, but reason that has vision of its own self ; in no other manner can fruition of it be reached. Nay, even this vision of reason, within which subject and object are still ojiposed to each other as different from each other, must itself be transcended. The supreme degree of cog- nition is vision of the supreme, the single jjrinciple of things ; in which all separation between it and the soul ceases ; in which this latter, in divine rapture, touches the absolute itself, feels itself filled by it, illuminated by it. He who has attained to this veritable union with God, desjiises henceforth even that pure thought which he formerly loved, because it was still after aU only a movement, and presupposed a difiference between the seer and the seen. This mystical absorption into divinity or the One, this trance or swooning into the absolute, is what gives so peculiar a character to Neo-Platonism as opposed to the Greek philosophical systems proper. (b.) The Cosmical Principles. — In close connexion with this rapture-theory of the Neo-Platonics stands their doctrine of three cosmical principles. To the two already assumed cosmical principles of a (world-) soul and a (world-) reason, they added a third and higher lirinciple, as ultimate unity of all differences and contra- rieties, in which, consequently (simply to be this), differ- ence must be resolved into the pure simplicity of essential being. Reason is not this simple principle, for in it the an- tithesis of thinking, — of thinker and thought, and of the movement from the first to the last, — still exists ; reason has the nature of the many in it ; but the one as prin- ciple must precede the many (unity precede variety); if then there is to be a unity of the totality of being, reason must be transcended for the absolute one. This primal being is now variously named by Plotinus ; he calls it the first, the one, the good (see xrv. 4. /), what rtands above the beent (the beent disappears for him into NEO-PLATONISM. 141 an accessory notion of reason, and foi-ms, united with reason, in tlae co-ordination of the highest notions, only the second step or grade), names truly through which Plotinus hopes not adequately to express the nature of that primitive one, but only figuratively shadow it out. Thought and will he allows it not, because it is in want of nothing, can require nothing ; it is not energy but above energy ; life is not a predicate of it ; nothing beent, no thing and no being, none of the most universal cate- gories of being can be attributed to it ; all other negative determinations are incomjietent in its regard : in short, it is something unspeakable, unthinkable. Plotinus is wholly bent on thinking his first principle as absolute unity, excludent of all and every determinateness that would only render it finite, and therefore, as in itself, independent of all connexion with everything else. He is unable to maintain this pure abstraction, however, when he sets himself afterwards to show how from the first principle there become or emanate all the others, and primarily the two other cosmical ones. In order to obtain a beginning for his theory of emanation, he finds himself compelled to assiime and to think his first prin- ciple, in its relation to the second, as a creative or gene- rative one. (c.) The Neo-Platonic Theory of Emanation. — Every such theory, and the Neo-Platonic as well, assumes the world to be an effluence or eradiation of God, in such manner that the remoter emanation possesses ever a lower degree of perfection than that which precedes it ; and represents consequently the totality of existence as a descending series. Fire, says Plotinus, emits heat, snow cold, fragrant bodies exhale odours, and every organized being, so soon as it has reached maturity, generates what is like it. In the same manner, the all-perfect and eter- nal, in the exuberance of its ijerfection, permits to ema- nate from itseK what is equally everlasting and next itself the best, — reason, which is the immediate reflexion, the ectype of the primeval one. Plotinus is rich in images to make it conceivable that, in this emission or produc- tion of reason, the one loses nothing and nowise weakens itself. After the one, reason possesses the greatest per- fection. It contains within itself the world of ideas, the aU of immutable, veritable being. Of its sublimity and glory we may gain some conception, if we attentively consider the world of sense, its vastness and magnificence. 142 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. the harmony of its everlasting motion, and then elevate our thoughts to its archetype, to the being of the intel- ligible world, contemplating intelligible things in their pure imperishable essence, and acknowledging intelligence as their creator and preserver. In it there is no past, no future, but only an eternal present, and no more any dividedness of space than any changeableness of time ; it is the tme eternity which time but copies. As reason from the one, so from reason again, and equally without change on its part, there emanates the eternal soul of the world. This soul is the ectype of reason : filled with reason, it realizes the latter in a world without : it re- presents the ideas in external sensible matter, which (matter;, unqualified, indefinite, non-beent, is, in the scale, the last and lowest of emanations. In this manner the universal soul is the fashioner of the visible world, form- ing it as material copy of its own self, penetrating and animating it, and moving it in circle. The series of emanations closes here, then, and we have reached, as was the intention of the theory, in an uninterrupted descent from highest to lowest, what is but a copy of tiiie being, the world of sense. The individual souls, like the soul of the world, are amphibia between the higher element of reason and the lower of sense, now involved in the latter, and the desti- nies of the latter, and now turning to their source, reason. From the world of reason, which is their true and proper home, they have descended, each at its appointed time, reluctantly obedient to an inner necessity, into the cor- poreal world, without, however, wholly breaking with the world of ideas : rather they are at once in both, even as a ray of light touches at once the sun and the earth. Our vocation, therefore — and here we reach again the point from which, in the exposition of the Neo-Platonic philosophy, we started — can only be a turning of our senses and our endeavours to our home in the world of the ideas, emancipation of our better self from the bond- age of matter, through mortification of sense, through ascesi^. Once in the ideal world, however, that reflexion of the primal beautiful and good, our soul reaches thence the ultimate end of every wish and longing, ecstatic vision of the one, union with God, unconscious absorp- tion — disappearance — in God. The Neo Platonic philosophy, it will now be seen, is monism, and the completion, consequently, of ancient CHRISTIANITY AND SCHOLASTICISM. 143 philosophy, so far as it would reduce the totality of being to a single ultimate ground. As able, however, to find its highest jjrinciple, from which aU the rest are derived, not through self-consciousness and natural rational ex- planation, but only through ecstasy, mystic annihilation of self, ascesis, theurgy, it is a desperate overleaping of all— and, consequently, the self-destruction cf ancient — philosoiihy. XXII. — Christianity and Scholasticism. THE Chkistian Idea. — The character of Greek intellec' tual Hf e at the time of its fairest bloom was the direct dependence of the subject on the object (nature, the state, etc.) The breach betAveen them, between spirit and nature, had not yet begun ; the subject had not yet re- flected himself into himself, not yet comprehended him- self in his absolute significance, in his infinitude. After Alexander the Great, with the decline of Greece, this breach appeared. Surrendering the objective world, self- consciousness drew back into itself, but only with the downfall of the bridge between them. Truth, all element of divinity, must now appear to consciousness, not yet duly deepened, as ahen and remote ; and a feeling of un- happiness, of unajipeasable longing, take the place of that fair unity between spirit and nature which had been characteristic of the better periods of Grecian poli- tical and intellectual life. A last desperate attempt to reach the alienated divine life, to bring the two sides violently together, by means of transcendent speculation and ascetic mortification, by means of ecstasy and swoon, was made by Neo-Platonism ; it failed, and ancient philo- sophy sank in complete exhaustion, ruined in the attempt to conquer dualism. Christianity took up the problem : nay it proclaimed for principle the very idea which ancient thought had been unable to realize, anniilment of the alienation (farness) of God, the substantial unity of God and man. That God became man — is, speculatively, the fundamental idea of Christianity, an idea which is ex- pressed practically, too (and Christianity from the first had a practically religious character), in the redemption (reconciliation) and the call for regeneration (that is, of a purification and religious transformation of sense in con- trast to the merely negative action of ascesis). From this 144 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. it is that monism has remained the character and the fun« damental tendency of the whole of modern philosophy. And in truth modern philosophy began at that precise point at which ancient philosophy ended : the withdrawal of thought, of self-consciousness into its own self, this, which was the stand-point of the post-Aristotelian philo- sophy, constitutes in Descartes the starting-point of modern philosophy, which advances thence to the logical resolution of that antithesis beyond which ancient philo- sophy had been unable to pass. 2. Scholasticism. — Christianity, in the Apologists of the second century and the Alexandrine Fathers, related itself very early to the philosophy of the time, especially Pla- tonism. Then, later, in the ninth century, attempts were made, through Scotus Erigena, at a combination with Neo- riatonism. But it was only in the second half of the middle ages, or from the eleventh centurj'^ downwards, that there developed itself — in the proper sense — a Chris- tian philosophy, the so-called Scliolasticism. The character of Scholasticism is conciliation between dogma and thought, between faith and reason. When the dogma passes from the Church, where it took birth, into the school, and when theology becomes a science treated in universities, the interest of thought comes into play, and asserts its right of reducing into intelligibleness the dogma which has hitherto stood above consciousness as an exter- nal, unquestionable power. A series of attempts is now made to procure for the doctrines of the Church the form of a scientific system. Of such systems the first is that of Petrus Lomhardus (d. 1164) in his four books of Sen- tences, a work which, on the part of later scholastics, gave rise to very numerous commentaries. All these systems assumed as infallible presupposition that the creed of the Church was absolutely true (no Scholastic system ever transgressed this presupposition) ; but they were all guided at the same time by a desire to comprehend this revealed, positive truth, to rationalize the dogma. " Credo ut in- telligam," this dictum of Anselm, the beginner and foun- der of Scholasticism (born about 1035, Archbishop of Canterbury from 1093), was the watchword of the whole movement. In the resolution of its problem, Scholasti- cism applied, indeed, the most briUiant, though mostly only formal, syllogistic acuteness, and gave rise to mighty doctrinal structures, not unlike in complicated bulk to the huge domes of Gothic architecture. The universal study CHRISTIANITY AND SCHOLASTICISM. 145 of Aristotle, named par excellence ' the philosopher,' ■who had several of the most important Scholastics for commentators, and who was highly popular at the same time among the Arabians [Avicenna and Averroes), siip- pHed a terminology and schematic points of view for method. The zenith of Scholasticism is constituted by these indisputably greatest masters of the art and method, Thomas Aquinas (d. 1274, a Dominican), and Buns Scotus (d. 1308, a Franciscan), — the founders of two schools, into which the entire movement was thenceforward divided ; the one proclaiming the understanding {intellec- tus) as principle, the other wiU {voluntas) ; both through this antithesis of the theoretical and the practical prin- ciples, leading to two tendencies essentially different. Just here, however, the decline of Scholasticism began : its zenith was the turning-point to dissolution. The ration- ality of the dogma, the unity of reason and faith, this was the presupposition tacitly adopted ; but this presupposition feU to the ground, and the whole foundation of Scholastic metaphysics was in principle abandoned, the moment Duns Scotus transferred the problem of theology to the practi- cal sphere. With the separation of theory and practice, and still more with the separation in nominalism (see 3) of thought and thing, philosophy became divided from theology, reason from faith : reason took position above faith, above authority (Modern Philosophy), and the re- ligious consciousness broke with the traditional dogma (the Reformation). 3. NoivnNALiSM AND REALISM. — Hand in hand Avith the development of Scholasticism in general, proceeded that of the antithesis between nominalism and realism, an anti- thesis the origin of which is to be found in the relation of Scholasticism to the philosophy of Plato and Aristotle. The nominalists were those who held universal notions {universalia) to be mere names, flatus vocis, empty con- ceptions withoixt reality. With nominahsm, there are no general notions, no genera, no species : all that is, exists only as a singular in its pure individuality ; and there is no such thing as pure thought, but only natural conception and sensuous perception. The realists again, by example of Plato, held firm by the objective reality of the uniyer- sals (universalia ante res). The antithesis of these opinions took form first as between Roscelinus aud Anselm, the for- mer as nominalist, the latter as realist ; and it continues henceforth throughout the whole course of Scholasticism. 1 4G III ST OR Y OF PHIL SOP II Y. There began, however, as early as Ahelard (b. 1079) an intermediate theory as well nominalistic as realistic, which after him, with unimportant modifications, remained, on the whole, the dominant one [universalia in rehus). In this view the universal is only conceived, only thought, but even so it is no mere product of consciousness ; no, it possesses also objective reality in the things them- selves, nor could it be abstracted from them, unless it were virtually contained in them. This identity of being and of thought is the presupposition and foundation on which the entire dialectic industry of the Scholastics rests. All their arguments found on the assumption that whatever is syllogistically proved has exactly the same constitution in actuality that it has in logical thought. If this ])resapposition fell, there fell with it the whole basis of Scholasticism ; leaving nothing for thought — thus at fault as regards its own objectivity — but to with- draw into its own self. In effect this self-produced dis- solution of Scholasticism made its appearance in William Ockain ^d. 1347), the widely-influential reviver of nomi- nalism, which, powerful in the very beginning of Scholas- ticism, and now more powerful as opposed to a form of thought that was no longer growing but exhausted, with- drew the foundations from the whole structure of scho- lastic dogmatism and plunged it hopelessly in ruin. XXIII. — Transition to Modem Philosophy. THE struggle of the new philosophy with scholasticism, protracted throughout the entire fifteenth century in a series of intermediate events, reaches its termina- tion negatively in the course of the sixteenth, and posi- tively in the first half of the seventeenth century. 1. The Fall of Scholasticism. — The proximate cause of this altered spirit of the time we have just seen : it is the internal decline of scholasticism itself. As soon as the tacit presupposition, which underlay the theology and whole method of scholasticism, — the rationality of the dogma, namely, or the appUcability of scientific demon- stration to the matter of revelation, — was broken up, the entire structure, as already remarked, fell helplessly to the groimd. The conception directly opposed to the principle of scholasticism, that it was possible for the same thinrr to be at once true to the dogma and false or TRANSITION TO MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 147 at least iudemonstrable to reason, — a point of view applied by the Aristotelian Pomj^onatius (1462-1530) to the im- mortality of the soxil, and later by Vanini (see below) to the great problems of philosophy, — became, however much it was resisted by the church, ever more and more uni- versal, and brought with it a conviction of the impossibility of reconciling reason and revelation. The feeling that philosophy must be emancipated from its previous state of pupilage and servitude strengthened ; a struggle to- wards greater independency of research awoke ; and, though none durst turn as yet against the church itself, attempts were made to shake the authority of the main pillar of scholasticism, the philosophy of Aristotle, or what was then considered such. (Particularly distin- gviished here was Petrus Ra'nius, 1515-1572, massacred on the Eve of St. Bartholomew.) The authority of the church declined more and more in the opinion of the nations, and the great systems of scholasticism ceased to be continued. 2. Results of Scholasticism. — Notwithstanding all this, scholasticism was not without excellent results. Although completely in the service of the church, it originated in a scientific interest, and awoke consequently the spirit of free inquiry and a love of knowledge. It converted objects of faith into objects of thought ; raised men from the sphere of unconditional belief into the sphere of doubt, of search, of understanding ; and even when it sought to establish by argument the authority of faith, it was really establishing, contrary to its own knowledge and will, the authority of reason : it brought thus another principle into the world, different from that of the ancient church, the principle of intellect, the self- consciousness of reason ; or at least it prepared the way for the triumph of this principle. The very defects of the scholastics, their many absurd questions, their thou- sandfold useless and arbitrary distinctions, their curiosi- ties and suhtilities, must be attributed to a rational principle, to the spirit of inquiry, the longing for light, which, opi^ressed by the authority of the church, was able to express itself only so, and not otherwise. Only when left behind by the advancing intelligence of the time, did scholasticism become untrue to its original import, and unite its interests with those of the church, exhibiting itself then, indeed, as the most violent oppo- nent of the new and better spu'it. 148 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 3. The Revival or Letters. — A cliief instrument ol that change in the spirit of the time, which marks the beginning of a new epoch for philosophy, was the revival of classical literature. The study of the ancients, especi- ally of the Greeks, had, in the course of the middle ages, ceased to be cultivated. The philosophy of Plato and of Aristotle was, for the most part, known only through Latin translations or secondary sources. AH sense for beauty of form or taste in expression had died out. Of the spirit of classical life there was not left even a dream. But this was altered now, chiefly by the arrival in Italy of certain learned Greeks, fugitives from Constantinople. Under their influence the study of the ancients in the original sources came again into vogue ; the newly dis- covered printing-press multiplied copies of the classics ; the Medici drew scholars to their court ; in particular Bessarion (d. 1472) and Ficinus (d. 1499) were influential in bringing about a better acquaintance with ancient philosophy. And so gradually a band of men classically educated opposed itself to the stereotyped, uncritical, tasteless manner in which the sciences had been hitherto cultivated ; new ideas came into circulation ; and the free, imiversal, thinking spirit of antiquity was born afresh. Classical studies found a fruitful soil in Germany also. Reuchl'm (b. 1455), Melanchthon, and Erasmus were their advocates ; and the humanistic partj', in its hostility to the scholastic aims, belonged to the most decided in- fluences that were now in favour of the advancing cause of the Reformation. 4. The Reformation. — All the new elements — the straggle against scholasticism, the interests of letters, the striving for national independency, the endeavours of the state and the corporations to emancipate themselves from the church and the hierarchy, the direction of men's minds to nature and actuality, above all the longing on the part of consciousness for autonomy, for freedom from the fetters of authority — all these elements found their rallying-point and their focus in the German Refor- mation, Originating primarily in national interests and interests of religious practice, falling early too into an erro- neous course, and issuing in a dogmatic ecclesiastical one- sidedness, the Reformation was stiU in its principle and genuine consequences a rupture of thought with authority, a protest against the shackles of the positive^ a return of consciousness from its self-alienation into itself. Thought TRANSITION TO MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 149 returned from the yonder to the here, from the extra- mundane to the intra-mundane : nature and the moral laws of nature, humanity as such, one's own heart, one's own conscience, subjective conviction, in short, the rights of the siibject began at last to assume some value. Marriage, if considered hitherto not indeed immoral, but yet inferior to self-denial and celibacy, appeared now as something divine, as a law of nature imposed by God himself. Poverty, too, appeared no longer an object in itself ; though previously considered superior to riches, and though the contemplative life of the monk had hitherto ranked higher than the worldly activity of the layman supported by the labour of his hands. Religious freedom assumed the place of obedience (the third vow of the church) : monkhood and priesthood had come to an end. In the same way, with reference to knowledge, man re- turned to himself from the alien region of authority. He had become convinced that within himself must the entire work of salvation be accomjilished ; that recon- ciliation and grace were his own business, and indepen- dent of the interposition of priests ; that he stood to God in a direct relation. In his belief, in his conviction, in the depths of his own soul, he found his only true being. As then Protestantfism sprang from the same spirit as the new philosophy, it presupposes the closest connexion with this latter. Naturally, however, there will be a special distinction between the manner in which the new spirit realizes itself as religious principle, and that in which it realizes itself as scientific principle. But, as said, in both, in the Protestantism of religion as well as in the Protestantism of reason, this principle is one and the same ; and in the progress of history both interests are found to advance hand in hand. For, the reduction of religion to its simple elements (a reduction which Protestantism had once for all begun, but which it had only carried forward to the Bible, and there left), must of necessity be continued farther, and closed only with the ultimate, original, supra-historical elements, — that is, with reason, reason that knows itself the source of all philosophy as of all religion. 5. The Gkowth of the Natural Sciences. — To all these movements, which are to be regarded not only as signs and symptoms, but as causes of the various revolu- tions of the epoch, there is yet another to be added, which very much facilitated and assisted the emancipa- 150 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. tioQ of philosophy from the fetters of the church, and that is, the coming into existence of natural science, and of the observation of nature by the method of experience. It is an epoch of the most penetrating and fruitful dis- coveries in the pro\'ince of nature. The discovery of America and that of the maritime route to the Eastern Indies, had already widened the visible horizon ; but still greater revolutions are associated with the names of Copernicus (d. 1543), and Kepler (d. 1631), and Galileo (d. 1642), — revolutions which could not possibly remain without influence on the prevalent idea of the uni- verse, and the entire mode of thought of the time, and which more especially produced a mighty inroad on the authority of the church. Scholasticism, withdrawn from nature and the world of experience, blind to that which lay at its feet, had lived in a dreamlike intellectualism ; but nature was restored to honour now, and became, in her majesty and her glory, in her fulness and her endless- ness, again the immediate object of contemplation ; while natural investigation demonstrated itself as an essential object of philosophy, and empirical science consequently as a universal human interest. From this epoch empirical science dates its historical importance ; and only from this epoch does it possess a continuous history. The conse- quences of the new movement admit of an easy estimate. Scientific inquiry not only destroyed a variety of trans- mitted errors and prejudices, but, what was highly impor- tant, it turned the thoughts and attention of men to the mundane, to the actual ; fostering and encouraging the habit of reflection, the feehng of self-dependence, the awakened spirit of scrutiny and doubt. The position of a science of observation and experiment presupposes an in- dependent self consciousness on the part of the individual, a wresting of himself loose from authority and the creed of authority, — in a word, it presupposes scepticism. Hence the originators of modern philosophy, Bacon and Des- cartes, began with scepticism ; the former in requiring an abstraction from aU prejudices and preconceived opinions as condition of the study of nature, and the latter in his postulate, to doubt at first all. No wonder that between natural science and ecclesiastical orthodoxy there pre- sently broke out an envenomed struggle, — a struggle which was to cease only with the overthrow of the latter. 6. Bacon of Verulajsi. — The philosopher who, for TRAN'SITIOX TO MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 151 principle, consciously adopted experience, or an observ- ing and experimenting investigation of nature, and that, too, in express contrast to scholasticism and the previous method of science, and who, on that account, is fre- quently placed at the head of modern philosophy, is (the just named) Bacon, Baron of Verulam (b. 1561, Lord- Keeper of the Great Seal, and Lord Chancellor under James i., subsequently disgraced, d. 1026 — a man not tvithout weaknesses of character). The sciences, says Bacon, have hitherto found them- selves in a most deplorable condition. Philosophj', lost in barren and fruitless logomachies, has, during so many centuries, produced not a single work or experiment capable of bringing any actual advantage to the life of the race. Logic hitherto has subserved rather the con- firmation of error than the investigation of truth. How is this ? From what does this poverty of the sciences in the past proceed ? From this, that they have been sepa- rated from their root in nature and experience. Several causes are responsible for this : first, the old and inveterate prejudice that man would derogate from his own dignity, did he occupy himself much or long with experiments and the things of matter ; secondly, superstition, and the blind fanaticism of religion, which in every age has proved itself the irreconcilable foe to natural science ; thirdly, the exclusive attention of the Eomaus to morals and politics, and of the better heads among Chris- tians to these and to theology ; fourthly, the veneration of antiquity and the overwhelming authority of certain philosophers ; lastly, a certain despondency and despair of being able to overcome the many and great difficulties which oppose themselves to the investigation of nature. To all these causes the depression of the sciences is to be traced. What is wanted now, then, is a thorougli renewal, regeneration, and reformation of the sciences from their lowest foundations upwards : we must find at all costs, a new basis of knowledge, new principles of science. This reformation and radical cure of the sciences is dependent on two conditions : objectively, on the re- duction of science to experience and the study of nature ; subjectively, on the purification of the mind and intellect from all abstract theories and transmitted prejudices. These conditions united yield the true method of natural science, which is no other than the method of induction, On correct induction depends the salvation of sciences. 152 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. Bacon's philosophy is comprised in these propositions. His historical import, then, is in general this, that he directed anew the observation and reflection of his contem- poraries to actiial fact, proximately to nature ; that he raised experience, which hitherto had been only matter of chance, into a separate and independent object of thought ; and that he awoke a general consciousness of its indispensable necessity. To have established the prin- ciple of empirical science, of a thinking exploration of nature, this is his merit. But still only in the proposing of this j)rinciple does his import lie : of any contained matter of the Baconian philosophy, we can, in rigour, not speak ; although he has attempted (in his work De Aug- mentis Scientiaritm), a systematic encyclopaedia of the sciences on a new principle of classification, and has scattered through his writings a profusion of fine and fertile observations (which are still in vogue for mottoes) . 7. The Italian Philosophers of the Transition Period. — With Bacon there must be mentioned some others who prepared the way for the introduction of the new philosophy. First of all a series of Italian philoso- phers who belonged to the second half of the sixteenth and first half of the seventeenth century. With the ten- dencies of the period already described, these philoso- phers cohere in two ways : firstly, in their enthusiasm for nature, an enthusiasm which, with all of them, has more or less of a pantheistic character (Vanini, for ex- ample, entitled one of his writings, ' Of the wonderful Secrets of the Queen and Goddess of Mortals, Natui-e '), and secondly, in their devotion to the ancient systems of philosophy. The best known of them are these : Carda7i (1501-1575), Campanella (1568-1639), Giordano Bruno (-1600), Vanini (1586-1619). They were all men of passionate, enthusiastic, impetuous nature ; wild, un- settled character ; roving and adventurous life : men animated by an intense thirst for knowledge, but who gave way withal to extravagant wildness of imagina- tion, and to a mania for secret astrological and geo- mantic arts ; on which account they passed away without leaving any fruitful or enduring result. They were all perseciited by the hierarchy ; two of them (Bruno and Vanini) perished at the stake. In their entire historical appearance they are, like the eruptions of a volcano, rather precursors and prophets, than originators and founders of a new era of philosophy. TRANSITION TO MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 153 The most important of them is Giordano Bruno. He revived the old (Stoic) idea, that the world is a living being, and that a single soul pervades the universe. The burthen of all his thoughts is the deepest enthusiasm for nature, and for the reason which lives and works in nature. This reason, according to him, is the artificer within, who fashions matter, and reveals himself in the shapes of the ivorld. Out from the interior of the root, or of the seed- grain, he causes the stems to spring, from these the branches, from the branches boughs, and so on to buds and leaves and flowers. All is inwardly planned, pre- pared, and perfected. In the same way does this univer- sal reason, from its place within, recall the sap from the fruits and the blossoms, to the branches, etc., again. The world is thus an infinite animal in which all lives and moves in the most varied manner. Bruno charac- terizes the relation of reason to matter quite in the Aris- totelian way : they are to each other as form and matter, as actuality and potentiality ; neither is without the other ; form is the internal impelling power of matter, matter as infinite possibility, as infinitely formable, is the mother of all forms. The other side of Bruno's philosophizing, his theory of the forms of knowledge (Topic), which takes up the greater part of his writings, as of smaller philo- sophical value, shall be here omitted. 8. Jacob Bohm. — Like Bacon in England, and Bruno in Italy, Bohm bespeaks in Germany the same movement of transition that is now before us. Each of the three in a manner that is characteristic of his nationality : Bacon as champion of empiricism, Bruno as representative of a poetic pantheism, Bohm as father of theosophical mys- ticism. In depth of principle, Bohm belongs to a much later period ; but in imperfection of form he retrocedes to the time of the middle-age mystics ; while, in an historico- genetic point of view, again, he is connected with the German Preformation and the various Protestant elements at that time in ferment. We shall best place him among the precursors and prophets of the new era. Jacob Bohm was born in 1575, at Altseidenburg, not far from Gorlitz, in Upper Lusatia. His parents were poor country-people. When a boy he herded the cattle ; when older, and after he had learned in the village-school to read and barely write, he was apprenticed to a shoe- maker in Gorlitz ; and finally, having accomplished hia travels as journeyman, he settled down, in 1594, at Giir- 154 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. litz, as master of his trade. He had experienced revela- tions or mysterious visions even in his youth, but still more at a later period, when the longing for truth took possession of him, and his soul, already disquieted by the religious conflicts of the time, found itself in a state of highly-wrought excitement. Besides the Bible, Bcihm had read only a few mystic books of theosophic and alchemistic import, for example, those of Paracelsus. Now, then, that he set himself to the writing down of his thoughts, or, as he called them, his visions (illumina- tions), the want of all previous culture at once disclosed itself. Hence the painfiJ struggling of the thought with the expression, which not unfrequently, nevertheless, at- tains to dialectic point and poetic beauty. In conse- quence of his first work Aurora, composed in the year 1612, Bbhm fell into trouble with the rector at Gorlitz, Gregorius Kichter, who publicly denounced the book from the pulpit, and even reviled the person of its author. He was prohibited by the magistrates from the Miiting of books, an interdict which he observed for years, till at leugth the edict of the spirit became ill too strong iu him, and he resumed composition. Bohni was a plain, quiet, gentle, and modest man. He died in 1624. It is exceedingly difficult to give in a few words any statement of the theosophy of Bbhm, inasmuch as Bbhm has been able to give birth to his thoughts, not in the form of thoughts, but in that of sensuous figures, of ob- scure images of nature, and for the expression of them has frequently availed himself of the strangest and most arbitrary expedients. There reigns in his v/ritings a twilight, so to speak, as iu a Gothic dome,^ into which the light falls through windows variously stained. Hence the magical effect which he produces on many minds. The main thought of Bohm's philosophizing is this : that self-distinction, inner diremption, is the essential charac- ter of spirit, and consequently of God, so far as God is to be conceived as spirit. To Bbhm God is a living spirit only if, and so far as, he comprehends within himself difference from himself, and through this other, this difference within himself, is manifest, is an object, is n cognising consciousness. The difference of God in God is alone the source of his and of all actuosity and sponta- neity, the spring and jet of self -actuating life, that out of its own self creates and produces consciousness. Bbhm is eshaustless in metaphors to render intelligible this nega- 1 Sec Preface, p. xi TRANSITION TO MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 155 tivity in God, tliis self-differeutiatiou and self-externali- zation of God into a world. Vast width without end, he say?, stands in need of a straitness and confiningness in which it may manifest itself ; for in width without con- tinement manifestation were impossible : thei-e must, therefore, be a drawing-in and a closing-in through which a manifestation may be realized. See, he elsewhere ex- claims, were will only of one sort, then mind had only one quality, and were a moveless thing, that lay ever still, and did nothing further than always one and the same thing ; there were no joy in it, neither any art nor science of severals, and there were no wisdom ; all were a nothing, and there were properly no mind nor will to anything, for all were only the sole and single. It can- not be said, then, that the entire God is in a single will and a single being : there is a difference. Nothing with- out contrariety can become manifest to itself ; for were there nothing to resist it, it would proceed perpetually of itself outwards, and would not return again into it- self ; but if it enter not again into itseK, as into that out of which it originally went, nothing is known to it of its pi'imal being. Bohm expresses the above thought quite perfectly, when, in his answer to theosophical ques- tions, he says : the reader is to understand that in Yes and No consist aU things, be they divine, diabolic, ter- restrial, or however they may be named. The One, as the Yes, is pure power and love, and it is the truth of God, and God himself. He were incognisable in Himself, and in Him there were no joy or upliftingness, nor yet feeling, without the No. The No is a counter-stroke of the Yes, or of the truth, in order that the truth may be manifest and a something, wherein there may be a contrarium, wherein there may be the eternal love, moving, feeling, and willing. For a one has nothing in itself that it can will, unless it double itself that it may be two ; neither can it feel itself in oneness, but in twoness it feels itself. In short, without difference, without antithesis, without duaUty, there is, according to Bohm, no knowledge, no consciousness possible ; only in its other, in its oppo- site (that is yet identical with its own being), does some- thing become clear and conscious to itself. It lay at hand to connect this fundamental idea, the thought of a one that in itself diiTerentiated itself, with the doctrine of the Trinity ; and the trinitarian schema accordingly, in many an a]iplication and illustration, underlies Bcihm's 1 5 6 HI ST OR Y OF PHIL OSOPH Y. conception of the divine life and differentiating process. Schelling afterwards took up anew these ideas of Bbhm's, and philosoi)hicaIly reconstructed them. Were we to assign to the theosophy of Bbhm a place in the history of the development of later philosophy correspondent to the inner worth of its ])rinciple, we should most appropriately set it as a complement over against the system of Spinoza. If Spinoza teaches the re- flux of everything finite into the eternal One, Bohm de- monstrates the efflux, the issue, of the finite out of the eternal One, and the inner necessity of this efflux and issue, inasmuch as, without self-diremption, the being of this One were rather a non-being. Compared with Des- cartes, Bohm has certainly more profoundly seized the notion of self-consciousness and the relation of the finite to God. His historical position, however, is in other re- spects much too isolated and exceptional, his form of statement much too troubled, to allow us to incorporate him without any hesitation in a series of systematic evolutions otherwise continuous and genetically coherent. XXIV.— Descartes. THE originator and father of modern philosoj>hy is Descartes. Whilst, on the one hand, like the thinkers of the transition-period, he has completely broken with previous philosophy, and once again con- sidered all from the very beginning ; he has, on the other hand, again, not merely, like Bacon, proposed a principle that is only methodological ; or, like Bbhm and the con- temporary Italians, given expression to philosophical glances without methodic foimdation ; but he has, from the stand-point of entire freedom from presupposition, introduced a new, positive, materially full, philosophical principle, and then endeavoured to develop from it, by method of continuous proof, the leading propositions of a system. The want of presupposition and the new- ness of his principle constitute him the originator, its inner fruitfulness the founder of modern philosophy, Ilen6 Descartes (Renatus Cartesius), was born in 1596 at La Haye in Toixraine. Ali'eady in his early years, dis- satisfied with the prevalent philosophy, or rather alto- gether sceptical in its regard, he resolved, on completion of his studies, to bid adieu to all school learning, and DESCARTES. 157 benceforward to gain knowledge only from himself and the great book of the world, from nature and the obser- vation of man. When twenty years of age, he exchanged the life of science for the life of the camp, serving as a ' volimteer first under Maurice of Orange, and afterwards under Tilly. The inclination to philosophical and mathe- matical inquiries was too powerful in him, however, to allow him permanently to quit these. In 1621, the design of a reformation of science on a firmer foundation, being now, after long internal struggles, ripe within him, he left the army ; passed some time in various pretty ex- tensive travels ; made a considerable stay in Paris ; aban- doned finally his native country in 1 629 ; and betook himself to Holland, in order to live there imkuown and undisturbed wholly for philosophy and the prosecution of his scientific projects. In Holland, though not without many vexatious interferences on the part of fanatical theologians, he lived twenty years, tiU in 164:9, in conse- quence of an invitation on the part of Queen Christina of Sweden, he left it for Stockholm, where, however, he died the very next year, 1650. The subject-matter of the philosophy of Descartes, and the course it took in his own mind, may be concisely stated in the following summary : — (a.) If we are ever to establish any fixed and per- manent article of knowledge, we must begin -with the foundation, we must root out and destroy every presup- Qfj position and assumption to which from our childhood we <"- . h-^ may have been accustomed, — in a word, we must doiibt all /^ SlA^ ' things that appear even in the least degree uncertain. We must not only doubt, therefore, of the existence of the things of sense, since the senses often deceive, but even of the truths of mathematics and geometry : for however certain the proposition may appear, that the sum of two and three is five, or that a square has four sides, we can- not know whether any truth of knowledge is at all in- tended for us finite beings, whether God has not created us rather for mere opinion and error. It is advisable, therefore, to doubt all, nay, even to deny all, to assume alias false, (h.) In thus assuming everythiag as false, ^ in regard to which any doubt can be at all entertained, ^^f ^-"^ there is one thing, nevertheless, that we cannot deny : V^'~']>e this truth, namely, that we ourselves, we who so think, ^^ ^ exist. Precisely from this rather, that I assume all things ^.ax-va><-- 33 false, that I doubt all things, there e%'idently follows M 158 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. my own existence, the existence even in doubting, of the subject that doubts. The proposition, consequently, I think, therefore I am {Corjito, ergo sum), is the first, most certain proposition that meets every one who attempts to philosophize. On this most certain of all propositions depends the certainty of all other articles of knowledge. The objection of Gassendi, that existence may be equally well inferred from every other human function, as from that of thought, — that it may be equally well said, I walk, therefore I am, ■ — does not apply, for of none of my actions am I abso- lutely certain, unless of my thought, (c.) From the pro- position, I think, therefore I am, there follows further , ^ , now the whole constitution of the nature of spirit. In .^^ investigating, namely, who then are we, who thus hold JLAJLcf^/sj^ all things for false that are diflferent from us, we see , clearly that, without destroying our personality, we can ''p, _ think away from ourselves everything that belongs to us, c I J except our thought alone. Thought persists, even when "v^^^^ it denies all else. There cannot belong any extension, therefore, any figure, or anything else that the body may possess, to our true nature : to that there can belong thought only. 1 am, then, essentially a thinking being, or thinking being simply, that is to say, spirit, soul, in- telligence, reason. To think is my substance. The mind, then, can be perfectly and cleai-ly known in itself, in its own independency, without any of the attributes that attach to the body ; in its notion there is nothing that belongs to the notion of body. It is impossible, conse- quently, to apprehend it by means of any sensuous con- ception, or to form to one's-self a picture of it : it is apprehended wholly and solely through pure intelligence. {(l.) From the proposition, I think, therefore I am, there follows still further the universal rule of all certainty. I am certain that, because I think, I exist. What is it 1 i^ J that gives me the certainty of this proposition ? Evi- D dently nothing else than the clear percejjtion that it is (US^ _, impossible for any one to think and not be. From this, 0>\^^A*AX'ifchen, there follows of itself, and for all other know- ledge, the criterion of certainty : that is certain, what- ever I recognise as clearly and evidently true, whatever my reason recognises as true with the same irresistible distinctness as the above cogito ergo sum. (e.) This rule, however, is only a principle of certainty, it does not sup- ply me yet with a hioivleJge of the body of truth. We DESCARTES. 160 review, therefore, under application of tlie rule, all our thoiiglits or ideas, in order to discover something that shalfbe objectively true. But our ideas are partly in- Jjj^^ nate, partly contributed from without, partly formed ^'^^J. by ourselves. Amongst them all we find that of God Q eminent and first. The question occurs, Whence do we ^-iifA get this idea ? Evidently not from ourselves : this idea c can only be implanted in us by a being that possesses in his own nature the complete fulness of every perfection ; that is, it can be implanted in us only by an actually existent God. On the question, how is it that I am capable of thinking a nature more perfect than my own ? I find myself always driven to this answer, that I must •have received it from some being, whose natitre actualUf is more perfect. All the attributes of God, the more I contemplate them, demonstrate that the ideas of them could not be produced by me alone. For although I may possess the idea of a substance, as lam a substance, the same reason would dispossess me of the idea of infinite substance, as I am only finite substance. Such an idea (IS infinite substance can be produced in me only by an actually infinite substance. And let it not be thought that the notion of the infinite is acquired by means of abstraction and negation, as darkness, it may be, is nega- tion of light ; for I see rather that the infinite has more reality than the finite, and that therefore the notion of the infinite must, in a certain sort, be earlier in me than that of the finite. But if this clear and distinct idea, which I have of infinite substance, possesses more objec- tive reality than any other, neither is there any other of which I can possibly have less reason to doubt. It re- mains, then, knowing, as I now do, that it is from God that the idea of God has come to me, only to investigate in what manner it Jias come. It cannot possibly have u^^...^- been acquired through the senses, whether consciously / r ^j^ or unconsciously ; for ideas of sense originate in external HA-^-*^*"^ affections of the organs of sense, and it is self-evident that no such origin can be predicated of it. Neither can I have invented it, for I can as little add to, as subtract from it. But as we have seen, if it is not contributed from without, and if it is not formed by myself, it must be innate — just as the idea of my own self is innate. The first proof that can be led for the existence of God, then, is, that I find the idea of God existing in me, and that of this existence there must be a cause. Further, I infer 160 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. the existence of God from my own imperfection, and, ir; l^articular, from my knowledge of it. For as I am ac- quainted with certain perfections which belong not to my- self, there must evidently exist a being more perfect than I am, on whom I, for my part, depend, and from whom I have received whatever I possess. The best and most evident proof for the existence of God, finally, is the proof that follows from the very notion of him. My mind, in observing amongst its various ideas one that is the most eminent of all, that namely of the most perfect being, perceives also that this idea not only possesses -v^ . like all the rest, the possibility of existence, that is, con- UCoC«'Ai-^A^ tingent existence, but that it likewise involves necessary 'u-4. ^vftXXlK-C^-'^^^*^^*^®- Just as I infer for every possible triangle that equality of its three angles to two right angles which lies in the idea of the triangle in general, so from the neces- sary existence that belongs to the idea of the most perfect being, do I infer his actual existence. No other idea that I possess involves necessary existence, but from this idea of the Supreme Being, necessary existence is, without con- tradiction, inseparable. It is only our prejudices that prevent us from seeing this. Because we are accustomed, namely, in the case of all other things, to separate the notian of them from the existence of them, and because also we often form ideas in our own fancy, it is easy for us, in regard to the Supreme Being, to fall into doubt as to whether this idea too be not one of the fancied ones, or at least such as does not in its notion involve existence. This proof is essentially different from that of Anselm of Canterbury, as disputed by Thomas, the reasoning of which is this : — ' Consideration demonstrates the word God to mean that which must be thought as what is greatest ; but to be in actuality as well as in thought, is greater than to be in thought alone ; therefore, God exists not only in thought, but in fact.' But this conclusion is manifestly vicious, and we ought to infer instead, There- fore God must be thought as existing in fact ; from which proposition plainly the reality of his existence is no neces- sary result. My proof, on the other hand, is this : what- ever we clearly and distinctly perceive to belong to the true and unalterable nature of anything, to its essence, its form, that may be predicated of it. Now we found, on investigating God, that existence belongs to his true and unalterable nature, and, therefore, w^e may legi- timately predicate existence of God. In the idea of the DESCARTES. lOl most perfect being necessary existence is involved, not because of any fiction of oiir understanding, but because existence belongs to his eternal and unalterable nature. (/.) This result, the existence of God, is of the greatest consequence. At first it was obligatory on us to re- nounce all certainty, and to doubt of everything, because we knew not whether error belonged not to the natm-e of man, whether God had not created us to err. But now we know, by reference to the innate idea and the neces- sary attributes of God, that he possesses veracity, and that it were a contradiction did he deceive us or cause in us error. For even if the ability to deceive were re- garded as a proof of superiority, the wiU to deceive would be certainly a proof of wickedness. Our reason conse- quently can never apprehend an object that were pos- sibly untrue, so far, that is, as it is apprehended, or so far as it is clearly and distinctly known. For God were justly to be named a deceiver, had he given us so per- verted a judgment that it took falsehood for truth. And thus the absolute doubt with which we began is now re- moved. All certainty flows for us from the being of God. Assured of the existence of an undeceiving God, it is enough, for the certainty of any knowledge, that we clearly and distinctly know its object, {g.) From the true idea of God there result the principles of natural philosophy, or the theory of the duality of substance. . That is substance which requires for its existence the ^ existence of nothing else. In this (highest) sense only Q^J^A'aXL God is substance. God as infinite substance has the ground of his existence in himself, is the cause of him- self. The two created substances, on the contrary, thiuking substance and bodily substance, mind and mat- ter, are substances only in the less restricted sense of the term ; they may be placed under the common definitiou, that they are things requiring for their existence only the co-operation of God. Each of these two substances has an attribute constitutive of its nature and being, and to which all its other characteristics may be collectively re- duced. Extension is the attribute and being of matter ; thought is the being of spirit. For everything else that may be predicated of body presupposes extension, and is but a mode of extension, while, similarlj^, everything that we find in spirit is only a modification of thought. A substance to which thought directly appertains is called spirit, a substance which is the immediate sub- 162 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. *\^ strate of extension is called body. Thought and exten- sion are not only different from eacli other, but it is the very nature of these substances to negate each other ; for spirit is not only cognizable without the attributes of body, but it is in itself the negation of the attributes of body. Spirit and body are essentially diverse, and possess nothing in common. (A.) In an anthropological reference (to omit the physics of Descartes, as only of subordinate interest philosophically), there results from this anta- gonistic relation between spirit and matter, a similar antagonistic relation between soul and body. Matter being essentially extension, spirit essentially thought, and neither having anything in common, the union of soul and body can only be conceived as a mechanical one. The body, for its part, is to be regarded as an automaton artificially constructed by God, as it were a statue or a machine formed by God of earth. In this body there dwells the soul, closely, but not inwardly, con- nected with it. The union of the two is but a forcible collocation, since both, as self-subsistent factors, are not only different from each other, but essentially opposed to each other. The self-dependent body is a completed machine, in which the accession of the soul alters nothing ; the latter, indeed, may produce certain additional move- ments in the former, but the wheel-work of this machine remains as it was. The indwelling thought alone dis- tinguishes this machine from others ; and the lower ani- mals, consequently, as unpossessed of self-consciousness and thought, are necessarily assigned only the same rank as other machines. It is here, now, that the question of the seat of the soul becomes of interest. If body and soul are mutually independent, essentially opposed substances, it will be impossible for them to interpenetrate and per- vade each other ; contact of any kind, indeed, will be im- possible between them imless by force, and in a single point. This point in which the soul has its seat is not to Descartes the whole brain, but only the inmost part of it, a small gland in the midst of its substance, which is named the pineal gland. The proof of this assumption depends on the circumstance that all the other parts of the brain are double, and consequently disqualified from acting as organ of the soul, which, so jirovided, would necessarily perceive things in a twofold manner. There is no other spot in the body capable of uniting impressions equally with the pineal gland, and this gland, therefore, is the DESCARTES. 163 capital seat of the soul, and the locus of formation for all our thoughts. Having thus developed the leading ideas of the Carte- sian system, we shall now concisely recapitulate the characteristics of its historical and philosophical position. Descartes is the founder of a new epoch in philosophy, because, firstly, he enunciated the postulate of an entire removal of any presupposition. This absolute protest maintained by Descartes against the acceptance of any- thing for true, because it is so given to us, or so found by us, and not something determined and established by thought, became thenceforward the fundamental prin- ciple of the moderns. Descartes first proposed, secondly, the principle of self -consciousness, of the pure, self-subsis- tent ego, or the conception of mind, thinking substance, as individual self, as a singular ego — a new principle, a con- ception unknown to antiquity. Descartes, thirdly, gave complete distinctness to the antithesis of being and thought, existence and consciousness ; and announced the conciliation of this antithesis as a philosophical problem — the problem, for the future, of aU modern philosophy. But these great ideas, distinctive of an epoch in the history of philosophy, are suggestive, at the same time, of the philosophical defects of the Cartesian system. Firstly, Descartes empirically assumed the constituents of his sys- tem, particularly his three substances. It appears, indeed, from the protest with which the system begins, that nothing ready-given or ready-found is to be assumed, but that all is to be deduced from thought. But this protest is not so serious in the event ; what has been apparently set aside is taken up again unchanged, once the principle of certainty has been made good. And hence it is that Descartes finds ready to hand, directly given, as weU the idea of God as the two sub- stances. In order to deduce them, he appears, indeed, to abstract from much that is empirically present, but when he has abstracted from everything else, the two substances remain behind in the end simply as residue. That is, then, they are empirically assumed. It is a second defect that Descartes isolates the two sides of the antithesis, thought and being, in their mutual relation. He makes both, ' substances ; ' elements, that is, which mutually exclude and negate each other. The being of matter he places only in extension, or in pure self- excludedness ; that of spirit only in thought, or intension. 164 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. pure self-includedness. They stand opposed to each other like centrifugal and centripetal forces. But with such a conception of si)irit and matter any internal assi- milation of them becomes impossible ; where the two sides meet and unite, as in man, this they are enabled to do only by a forcible act of creation, only by the divine assistance. Descartes, nevertheless, demands and en- deavours to find a conciliation of the two sides. But precisely the inability really to overcome the duaUsm of his position is the third and capital defect of his sys- tem. It is true that in the statement, ' I think, there- fore I am,' or ' I am thinking,' the two sides, being and thinking, are conjoined together, but then they are so conjoined only to be established as mutually independent. To the question, How does the ego relate itself to what is extended ? it can only be answered. As thinking, that is, as negative, as excludent. And thus for the conciliation of the two sides there remains only the idea of God. Both substances are created by God, both are held to- gether by the will of God, and through the idea of God is it that the ego obtains the certainty of the existence of what is extended. God is thus, in a measure, a deus ex machina, in order to bring about the unity of the ego with the matter of extension. The externality of any such process is obvious. It is this defect in the system of Descartes that acts as conditioning motive to the sj'stems that follow. XXV. — Geulmx and Malehranclie. DESCAHTES had placed mind and matter, conscious- ness and the world, in complete separation from each other. Both are for him substances, independent powers, mutually exclusive contraries. Spirit (that is to say, in his conception, the simple self, the ego) is essen- tially what distinguishes itself from, what excludes, mat- ter, — what abstracts from sense. Matter, on the other hand, is essentially what is oj^posed to thought. But the relation of the two principles being thus determined, the question involuntarily occurs. How then is it possible for any connexion to have place between them ? Both being absolutely different, nay, mutually opposed, how is it pos- sible for the affections of the body, on the one hand, to act on the soul, and how, on the other hand, is it pos QEULINX AND MALEBRANCHE. 1G5 sible lOi the volitions of the soul to act on the body? It was at this point that the Cartesian Arnold Oeidinx. (bom 1625 at Antwerp, died 1669 as Professor of Philo- sophy at Ley den), took up the system of Descartes ir. order to procure for it a more consistent form. For his part, Geulinx is of opinion that neither the soul acts directly on the body, nor the body directly on the soul. Not the former : since I can at discretion manifoldly de- termine or influence my body, but I am not the cause of this, for I know not how it happens, I know not in what manner influence is propagated from my brain to my limbs, and I cannot possibly suppose myself to do that in regard to which I am unable to understand how it is done. But if I am unable to produce movement within my body, still less must I be able to produce movement without my body. I am only a spectator of this world, then ; the only action that is mine, that remains for me, is contemplation. But this veiy contemplation can only take place mysteriously. For how do we obtain our per- ception of an external world ? The external world can- not possibly act directly on us. For, even if the external objects cause, in the act of vision say, an image in my eye, or an impression in my brain, as if in so much wax, this impression, or this image, is still something corporeal or material merely ; it cannot enter into my spirit, therefore, which is essentially disparate from matter. There is nothing left us, then, but to seek in God the means of uniting the two sides. It is God alone who can conform outer to inner, inner to outer ; who, convert- ing external objects into internal ideas, — ideas of the 3oul, — can render visible to the latter the world of sense, and realize the determinations of the will within into facts without. Every operation, then, that combines outer and inner, the soul and the world, is neither an effect of the spirit nor of the world, but simply an immediate act of God. Wlien I exercise volition, consequently, it is not from my wQl, but from the wiU of God that the pro- posed bodily motions follow. On occasion of my will, God moves my body ; on occasion of an affection of my body, God excites an idea in my mind : the one is but the occasional cause of the other (and hence the name. Occa- sionalism, of this theory). My will, nevertheless, moves not the mover to move my limbs ; but he who im- parted motion to matter, and assigned it its laws, even he created my wiU also, and he has so united togethex 166 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. these most diverse things, material motion aiul men- tal volition, that, when my vriU wills, such a movement follows as it wills, and when the movement follows, my will wills it, not that either, however, acts or exerts physical influence on the other. On the contrary, just as the agreement of two watches which go so perfectly together, that both strike exactly the same hour at once, results not from any mutual influence on their part, but simply from the fact that they were both set together ; so the agreement of the bodily motion and the mental volition depends only on that sublime artificer who has jirodiiced in them this inexplicable community. Geulinx, then, it is obvious, has only brought the fundamental dualism of Descartes to its ultimate point. If Descartes called the union of soul and body a violent collocation, Geulinx calls it, in so many words, a miracle. The strict consequence of such a conception, then, is, that there is possible not any immanent, but only a transcendent prin- ciple of union. 2. Analogous to the theory of Geulinx, and equally at the same time only a consequence and further extension of the philosophizing of Descartes, is the philosophical position of Nicholas Malehranche (born at Paris 1638 ; en- tered, at the age of twenty-two, the congregation de Vora- toire, determined to the prosecution of philosophy by the writings of Descartes ; died, after many troubles with theological opponents, 1715). Malebranche takes his point of departure from the Cartesian view of the relation between soul and body. These are rigorously distinguished from each other, and in their essence mutually opposed. How does the soul (the ego) attain, then, to a knowledge of the exter- nal world, to ideas of corporeal things? For only in the spiritual form of ideas is it possible for external, and, in particular, material tilings, to be present in spirit ; or the soul cannot have the thing itself, but only an idea of it, the thing itseK remaining without the soul. The soul can dei'ive these ideas neither from itself, nor from things. Not from itself : for any power of gene- rating the ideas of things purely from its own self, can- not be ascribed to the soul as a limited being ; what is merely an idea of the soul docs not on that account .actually exist, and what actually exists depends not for its existence and apprehension on the goodwill of the soul j the ideas of things are given to us, they are no pro- GEULINX AND MALEBBANCHE. IGT duction of our own thouglit. Bat just as little does the soul derive these ideas from the things themselves. It is impossible to think that impressions of material things take place on the soul, which is immaterial, not to mention that these infinitely niunerous and complex impressions would, in impinging on one another, reciprocally derange and destroy one another. The soul, then, — there is no other resource, — must see things in a third something that is above the antithesis, that is, in God. God, the absolute substance, contains all things in himself, he sees all things in himself according to their true nature and being. For the same reason in him, too, are the ideas of all things ; he is the entire world as an intellectual or ideal world. It is God, then, who is the means of medi- ating between the ego and the world. In him we see the ideas, inasmuch as we ourselves are so completely contained in him, so accurately united to him, that we may caU him the place of spirits. Our volition and our sensation in reference to things proceed from him ; it is he who retains together the objective and the subjective worlds, which, in themselves, are separate and apart. The philosophy of Malebranche, then, in its single leading thought that we see and know aU things in God, demonstrates itself to be, Like the occasionalism of Geu- linx, a special attempt to overcome the dualism of the Cartesian philosophy on its own principles and under its own presuppositions. 3. Two defects or inner contradictions of the philo- sophy of Descartes are now apparent. Descartes con- ceives mind and matter as substances, as mutually ex- clusive contraries, and sets himself forthwith to find their union. But any union in the case of such presupposi- tions can only be one-sided and external. Thought and existence being each a substance, must only negate and mutually exclude each other. Unnatural theories, like the above, become, then, unavoidable consequences. The simplest remedy is this, to abandon the presupposi- tion, to remove its independency from either contrary, to conceive both not as substances, but as forms of the manifestation of a substance. This remedy is parti- cularly indicated and suggested by another circumstance. According to Descartes, God is the infinite substance, — in the special sense of the word, the only substance. Mind and matter are also, indeed, substances, but only in re- lation to each other ; while in relation to God, again, IGS HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. tliey are dependent and not substances. This, properly speaking, is a contradiction. It were more consistent to say, that neither the thinking individuals nor the material things, are anything self-subsisteut, but only the one substance, — God, God only has real being ; whatever being attaches to finite things is unsubstantial, and they themselves are but accidents of the one tnie substance. Malebranche approaches this conclusion ; the corporeal world is at least for him ideally sublated into God, in whom are the eternal archetypes of all things. It is Spinoza, however, who, logically consequent, directly enunciates this conclusion of the accidentality of the finite and the exclusive substantiality of God. His system, then, is the truth and completion of that of Descartes. XXNl.— Spinoza. BARUCH SPINOZA was born in Amsterdam on the 24th of November 1G32. His parents, Jews of Portitguese extraction, were w^ell-to-do tradespeople, and gave him the education of a scholar. He studied with diligence the Bible and the Talmud. He soon ex- changed, however, the study of theology for that of physics and the works of Descartes. About the same time, having long broken inwardly with Judaism, he broke with it outwardly also, without, however, formally em- bracing Christianity. In order to escape the persecutions of the Jews, who had excommunicated him, and with whom his life was in danger, he left Amsterdam and be- took himself to Rhynsburg, near Le5'^den, but settled finally at the Hague, where, wholly absorbed in scienti- fic pursuits, he lived in the greatest seclusion. He earned his living by the polishing of optical glasses, which his friends disposed of. The Elector of the Palatinate, Carl Ludwig, made him an offer of a philosophical chair at Heidelberg, wdth the promise of complete liberty of opinion ; but Spinoza declined it. Delicate by nature, suffering from ill-health for years, Spinoza died of con- siimption on the 2Ist of February 1677, at the early age of forty-four. The cloudless purity and sublime tran- quillity of a perfectly wise man were mirrored in his life. Abstemious, satisfied wdth little, master of his passions, never immoderately sad or glad, gentle and benevolent,. of a character admirably pure, he faithfully followed thf SPINOZA. 1G9 doctrines of his pliilosophy, even iu liis daily life. His thief work, the Ethic, was published the year he died. He would have liked probably to have published it in his lifetime, but the hateful name of Atheist must have de- terred him. His most intimate friend, Ludwig Mayer, a physician, in accordance with his will, superintended the publication after his death. The system of Spinoza is supported on three fundamen- tal notions, from which all the others follow with mathe- matical necessity. These notions are those of substance, attribute, and mode. (a.) Spinoza starts from the Cartesian definition of sub- stance : substance is that which, for its existence, stands in need of nothing else. This notion of substance being assumed, there can exist, according to Spinoza, only a single substance. What is through its own self alone is necessarily infinite, unconditioned and unlimited by any- thing else. Spontaneous existence is the absolute power to exist, which cannot depend on anything else, or find in anything else a limit, a negation of itself ; only un- limited being is self-subsistent, substantial being. A plurality of infinites, however, is impossible ; for ons were indistinguishable from the other. A plurality of substances, as assimied by Descartes, is necessarily, there- fore, a contradiction. It is possible for only one sub- stance, and that an absolutely infinite substance, to exist. The given, finite reality necessarily presupposes such single, self-existent substance. It were a contradiction, that only the finite, not the infinite, should have exist- ence ; that there should be only what is conditioned and caused by something else, and not also what is self- existent and self-subsistent. The absolute substance is rather the real cause of all and every existence ; it alone is actual, unconditioned being ; it is the sole virtue of existence, and through this \artue everything finite is : without it there is nothing, with it there is all ; all reality is comprehended in it, as, beside it, self-dependent being there is none ; it is not only cause of all being, but it is itself all being ; every special existence is only a modifi- cation (individualization), of the universal substance itself, which, by force of inner necessity, expands its own in- finite reality into an immeasurable quantity of being, and comprises within itself every possible form of exist- ence. This one substance is named by Spinoza God. A3 is self-evident, then, we must leave out of view here 170 HISTOllY OF PHILOSOPHY. the Christian idea of God, the conception of an individual, spiritual personality. Spinoza expressly declares that he entertains quite a different idea of God from Christians ; he distinctly maintains that all existence, material exist- ence included, epi'inga directly from God as the single substance ; and he laughs at those who see in the world aught but an accident of the divine substance itself. He recognises in the views of these a dualism which would annul the necessary unity of all things — a self- substantiation of the world, which would destroy the sole causality of God. The world is for him no product of the divine will that stands beside God, free : it is an emanation of the creative being of God, which being is, by its very nature, infinite. God, to Spinoza, is only the substance of things, and not anything else. The propositions, that there is only one God, and that the substance of all things is only one, are to him identical. What properly is substance now ? What is its positive nature ? We have here a question that from the position of Spinoza is very hard to answer. Partly for this reason, that a definition, according to Spinoza, must include the proximate cause (be genetic) of what is to be defined, whilst substance, as increate, can have no cause exter- nal to itself. Partly, again, and chiefly for this reason, that to Spinoza, all determination is negation (omnis de- terminatio est negatio, though only an incidental expres- sion, is the fundamental idea of the entire system), for determination implies a defect of existence, a relative non-being. Special, positive designations, then, would only reduce substance to something finite. Declarations in its regard, consequently, must be only negative and provisorj'^, as, for example, it has no external cause, is not a many, cannot possibly be divided, etc. Spinoza is re- luctant to say even that it is one, because this predicate may be easily taken as numerical, and then it might ap- pear as if another, the many, were opposed to it. Thus there are left only such positive expressions as enunciate its absolute relation to its own self. It is in this sense that Spinoza says of it, it is the cause of itself, or its nature implies existence. And it is only another ex- pression for the same thought when he calls substance eternal, for by eternity he understands existence itself, so far as it is conceived as following from the definition of the object, in the same sense in which geometricians speak of the eternal qualities of figure.«, Spinoza applies SPINOZA. 17: to substance the predicate infinite also, so far as the notion of infinitude is identical to him with the notion of true being, with the absolute affirmation of existence. In the same manner the allegation, that God is free, expresses only what the others express, to wit, negatively, that all external force is excluded, and positively, that God is in agreement with himself, that his being corresponds to the laws of his nature. In sum, there is only one infinite substance, excludent of all determination and negation from itself, the one being in every being, — God. (&.) Besides infinite substance or God, Descartes had assumed two derivative and created substances, the one spirit or thought, the other matter or extension. These also re-appear here as the two ground-forms under which Spinoza subsumes all reality, — the two ' attributes' in which the single substance reveals itself to us, so far as it is the cause of all that is. How now, — this is the per- plexing question, the Achilles' heel of the Spinozistic system, — are these attributes related to the infinite sub- stance ? Substance cannot wholly disappear in them ; else it were determinate, limited, and in contradiction, there- fore, to its own notion. If then these attributes do not ex- haust the objective being of substance, it follows that they are determinations in which substance takes form for the subjective apprehension of understanding ; or for behoof of understanding all is once for all divided into thought and extension. And this is the conception of Spinoza. An attribute is for him what understanding perceives in substance as constitutive of its nature. The two attributes are therefore determinations, which ex- press the nature of substance in these precise forms, only for perception. Substance itself being vmexhausted by any such specialties of form, the attributes must be con- ceived as but expressions of its nature for an understand- ing that is placed apart from it. That such understanding should perceive substance only under these precise two forms is indifferent to substance itself, which impUciter possesses an infinitude of attributes. That is to say, all possible attributes, not limitations, may be assumed for substance. It is only the human imderstanding that in- vests substance with the two specially mentioned, and exclusively with these two, for of all the notions of the understanding, they are the only ones actually positive or expressive of reality. To the understanding, sub- 172 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. stance is thouglit, then, considered under tlie attribute of thought, and extension, considered under the attribute of extension. In a word, the two attributes are but empi- rically derived determinations, that are incommensurate besides with the nature of substance. Substance stands behind them as the absolute infinite which cannot be com- prehended in any such special notions. The attributes explain not what substance really is ; and in its regard consequently appear contingent. Spinoza fails to supply any principle of union between the notion of absolute substance and the particular manner in which it mani- fests itself in the two attributes. In their own natural relation, the attributes, as with Descartes, are to be directly opposed to each other. They are attributes of one and the same substance, it is true, but each is independent in itself, as independent indeed, as the very substance which it is supposed reali- ter to represent. Between thought and extension, then, spirit and matter, there can be no mutual influence ; what is material can only have material causes, what is spiritual only spu'itual ones, as ideas, volition, etc. Neither spirit, consequently, can act on matter, nor matter on spirit. Thus far, then, Spinoza adheres to the Cartesian severance of spirit J.nd matter. But, as re- ferred to the notion of the single substance, both worlds are equally again one and the same ; there is a perfect agreement between them, a thorough parallelism. One and the same substance is thought as present in both at- tributes — one and the same substance in the various forms of existence under either. * The idea of the circle and the actual circle are the same thing, now under the at- tribute of thought and again under that of extension.' From the one substance there proceeds, in effect, only a single infinite series of things, but a series of things iu a variety of forms, even after subjection pi'imarily to one or other of the forms of the attributes. The various things exist, hke substance itself, as well under the ideal form of thought, as under the real form of extension. For every spiritual form there is a correspondent cor- poreal one, as for every corporeal form a correspondent spiritual one. Nature and spirit are different, indeed, but they are not isolatedly apart : they are everywhere together, like type and antitype, like things and the ideas of things, like object and subject, in which last the object mirrors itself, or what realiter is, idealUer reflects SPINOZA. 173 itself. The world were uot the product of a single sub- stance, if these two elements, thought and extension, were not, at every point in inseparable identity, united in it. Spinoza subjects, in particular, the relation between body and soul to the idea of this inseparable unity of spirit and matter, a unity which, according to him, per- vades the whole of nature, but in various grades of per- fection. And here we have his simple resolution of th^ problem, which, from the point of view of Descartes, was so difficult, and even inexplicable. In man, as every- where else, extension and thought (the latter, in his case, not only as feehng and perception, but as self-conscious reason) are together and inseparable. The soul is the consciousness that has for its objects the associated body, and through the intervention of the body, the remaining corporeal world, so far as it affects the body ; the body is the real organism whose states and affections con- sciously reflect themselves in the soul. Biit any influence of the one on the other does not for this very reason exist ; soul and body are the same thing, but expressed in the one case only as conscious thought, in the other as material extension. They differ only in form, so far as the nature and Hfe of the body, so far, that is, as the various corporeal impressions, movements, functions, which obey wholly and solely the laws of the material organism, spontaneously coalesce in the soul to the unity of consciousness, conception, thought. (c.) The special individual forms which are ideas or material things, according as they are considered under the attribute of thought or under the attribute of exten- sion, receive their explanation at the hands of Spinoza by reference to the notion of accident, or, as he names it, mockis. By modi we are to understand, then, the various individual finite forms, in which infinite substance particu- larizes itself. The modi are to substance what the waves are to the sea — shapes that perpetually die away, that never are. Nothing finite is possessed of a self-subsist- ent individuality. The finite individual exists, indeed, because the unlimited j)roductive power of substance must give birth to an infinite variety of particular finite forms ; but it has no proper reality, — it exists only in substance. Finite things are only the last, the most subordinate, the most external terms of existence, in which the universal hfe gives itself specific forms, and they bear the stamp of finitude in that they are sub- 174 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. jected, without will, witliout resistance, to the causal chain that pervades this world. The di\Tiie substance is free only in the inner essence of its own nature, biit in- dividual things are not free, they are a prey to all the others with which they are connected. This is their finitude, indeed, that they are conditioned and deter- mined, not by themselves, but by what is alien to them. They constitute the domain of pure necessity, within which each is free and independent only so far as power has been given it by nature to assert itself against the rest, and maintain intact its own existence and its pro- per and peculiar interests. These are the fundamental notions, the fundamental features of the system of Spinoza. As for his practical philosophy, it may be characterized in a few words. Its main propositions follow of necessity from the metaphysical princijjles which we have just seen. And for first example we have the inadmissibleness of what is called free-will. For, man being only modus, what is applicable to the others is applicable to him ; he is involved in the infinite series of conditional causes ; and free-will, therefore, can- not be predicated of him. His will, like every other bodily function, must be determined bj' something, whether an impression from without or an impulse from within. Men believe themselves free, simply because they are conscious of their own acts, but not of the motives of them. In the same way, the notions, which we usually connect with the words good and bad, rest on an error, as follows at once from the simple notion of the absolute divine cause. Good and bad are not anything actual in things themselves, but only express relative notions sug- gested to us by our own comparison of things one with another. We form for ourselves, namely, from the ob- servation of particular things, a certain general conception, and this conception we continue to regard as if it were a necessary rule for all other particular things. Should now some single individual clash with our general conception, that indi^ndual would be regarded as imper- fect, and as in disagreement with its own nature. Sin, then,the bad, is only relative, and not positive, for nothing happens contrary to the wUl of God. It is a mere nega- tion or privation, and appears something positive only to our finite minds. There is no bad to God. WTiat, then, are good and bad ? That is good which is useful fco us, that bad which prevents us from attaining to the SPINOZA. good. That, again, is useful wliich procures us greatv^^ reality, which preserves aud promotes our being. Our true being, however, is reason ; reason is the inner nature of our soul ; it is reason that makes us free ; for it is from reason that we possess the motive and the power to resist the molestations of things from without, to deter- mine our own action according to the law of the due pre- servation aud promotion of our existence, and to place ourselves as regards all things in a relation adequate to our nature. What, consequently, contributes to our knowledge, that alone is useful. But the highest know- ledge is the knowledge of God. The highest virtue of the soul is to know and love God. From knowledge of God there arises for us the supreme happiness aud joy, the bliss of the soul : it gives us peace in the thought of the etenial necessity of all things ; it delivers us from all dis- cord and discontent, from all fruitless struggling against the linitude of our own being ; it raises us from life in sense to that life in intellect, which, freed from aU the troubles and the trials of the perishable, is occupied only with itself aud with the eternal. Felicity, then, is not the reward of virtue, — it is \'irtue itself. What is true and great in the philosoiihy of Spinoza is, that everything individual, as finite, is merged by it in the gidf of substance. With regard immovably du-ected to the Eternal One, to God, it loses sight of all that to the common mind passes for real. But its defect is, that it fails truly to convert this negative gulf of substance into the terra Jirma of positive existence and actual life. It is with justice, then, that the substance of Spinoza has been compared to the den of the lion, where there are many steps to, but few from.* The existence of the phe- nomenal world, the reality of the finite, if perishable, if null, is still not explained by Spinoza. We cannot see what this finite world of null appearance is here for ; anj' living connexion to God fails. The substance of Spinoza is exclusively a principle of identity ; it is not a principle of difference. Reflection, in its reference, proceeds from the finite to the absolute, but not also from the latter to the former ; it clasps together the many into a selfless unitj^ in God ; it sacrifices all indi- vidual existence to the negative thought of unity, instead of enabling this unity, by a living evolution into concrete variety, to negate its own barren negativity. The sys- tem of Spinoza is the most abstract monotheism that cau * Schwegler says " none," not " few." " Few " stultifies Spinoza's den : but " none," the lion's. i HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. fjossibly be conceived. It is not by accident, then, tliat Spinoza, a Jew, has, in explanation of the universe, once more revived the idea of its absohite unity : such idea is, in some sort, a consequence of his nationality, an echo of the East. XXVII. — Idealism and Realism. WE stand now by a knot-point, a ganglion, a commis- sure, in the onward course of philosophy. Des- cartes had demonstrated the antithesis of thought and existence, of mind and matter, and had postulated a principle of resolution for it. This resolution succeeded iU with him, however, for he had placed the two sides of the antithesis in their greatest possible mutual isolation, he had assumed both as substances, as independent, mutually negating powers. The successors of Descartes sought a more satisfactory solution ; but the theories to which they found themselves compelled, only showed the more plainly the untenableness of the entire presupposi- tion. Spinoza, finally, abandoned the false presupposi- tion, and stripped each of the opposing sides of its inde- pendent substantiality. In the infinite substance, spirit and matter, thought and extension, are now one. But they are not one in themselves ; and only as one in them- eelves were there a true unity of both. That they are in Bubstance one avails them little, for to substance itself they are indifi'erent, that is, they are not immanent differences of substance. With Spinoza, too, then, they are absolutely separated from one another. The reason of this isolation is simply that Spinoza has not suffi- ciently disembarrassed himself of the presuppositions and dualism of Descartes, — he, too, looks on thought as only thought, on extension as only extension, and this con- ception of them necessarily excludes the one from the other. If an inner principle of union is to be found for them, this abstraction of each must be broken up and removed. In the opposed sides themselves must the re- conciliation be accomplished. There are, consequently, two ways possible, either from the position of the material side, to explain the ideal, or from that of the ideal side to explain the material. And in effect both ways were almost simultaneously attempted. From this point begins each of the two series of views which hav« LOCKE. ITi divided the intellectual world since, that, namely, of Idealism one-sidedly on the one hand, and that of Realism (empiricism, sensuaUsm, materialism), equally one-sidedly on the other. XXVIII.— Loc^-e. THE originator of the realistic series, the father of modern materialism and empiricism, was the Eng- lish John Locke. He possessed a precursor, indeed, in his countryman, Thomas Ilohhes (1588-1679) ; whom, howevei-, we merely mention in this place, as hia in- fluence concerned rather the history of political science. John Locke was born at Wrington in 1632. His early studies were directed to philosophy, and, in particular, to medicine. His delicate health, however, precluded the practice of the latter ; and, little interrupted by any claims of business, he lived a life of merely literary activity. Not without considerable influence on his life and circum- stances was his connexion with the celebrated statesman Lord Ashley, afterwards Earl of Shaftesbury, in whose house he was always welcome, and where he enjoyed intercourse with the most distinguished men in England. In the year 1670, at the instigation of some of his friends, he sketched the first plan of his celebrated Essay concern- ing Human Understanding. The complete work, however, was published only in 1690. Locke died in 1704, at tbe age of seventy-two. Precision and clearness, perspicuity and distinctness, are the characteristics of his writings. Acute rather than deep in his thinking, he is true to the character of his nationality. The fundamental thoughts and chief results of his system are now elements of popu- lar or general informatAon everywhere, especially in Eng- land ; but we are not to forget on that account that he was the first to give scientific position to that standard of intel- ligence, and that he occupies, therefore, however much his principle may fail in any internal capability of develop- ment, a legitimate place in the history of philosophy. Locke's philosophy (that is, his theory of knowledge, for that is the scope of his entire inquiry) rests on two thoughts, the subjects of constant repetition : first (nega- tively), that there are no innate ideas ; and second (posi- tively), that all oixr knowledge springs from experience. Many are of opinion, says Locke, that there are innate 178 HISTOE Y OF PHILOSOPH Y. ideas, received into the soiil at birth, and brought with it into the world. In proof of these ideas, they appeal to the universal existence of them in every human being, without exception. But, even granting this to be the fact, it would prove nothing, if the universality of the agreement could be explained otherwise. But the al- leged fact is not fact. Principles, universally admitted, there are none such, — whether in the theoretical or in the practical world. Not in the practical world, — for the s])ectacle of the various uations, and at the various periods of their history, teaches us that there is no moral rule observable by all. Not in the theoretical world, — for even the propositions which have the greatest preten- sions to universal validity, as ' What is, is,' or, ' It is im- possible for the same thing to be and not to be,' are not by any means universally admitted. Children and idiots have no conception of these principles, and neither do the uneducated know anything about such abstract pro- positions ; how, then, can they be implanted in them by nature ? Were ideas innate, we should all, of necessity, be aware of them even from our earliest childhood. For * to be in the mind ' is the same thing as 'to be known.' The reply that these ideas are imjilanted in the mind, only it is unconscious of them, is therefore a mani- fest contradiction. As little is gained by the plea, that, so soon as men make use of their reason, they become conscious of these principles. This aUegatiou is simply false, because said axioms come much later into conscious- ness than many other particulars of knowledge, and chil- dren, for example, give numerous proofs of their exercise of reason before they know that a thing cannot possibly be, and not be. It is certainly correct to say that nobody attains to a consciousness of the principles in question without reason ; but it is untrue that, with the first act of reason, tliey become present to consciousness. The first facts of knowledge, rather, are not general principles, but particular instances (impressions). The child knows that sweet is not bitter, long before it understands the logical proposition of contradiction. Whoever atten- tively reflects, will hardly maintain that the particular propositions, 'sweet is not bitter,' for instance, — flow from the general ones. Were these latter innate, they ought to constitute for the child, the first elements of consciousness, for what nature has implanted in the soul must plainly be earlier present to consciousness, than LOCKE. 179 svhat slie lias not iniplauted. The existence of innate ideas, consequently, whether theoretical or practical, is an assumption as much to be rejected as that of an innate existence of arts and sciences. The understanding (or the soul) is in itself a tahula rasa, a void surface, a blank page on which nothing has been written. How, then, does the mind acquire its ideas ? They are due to experience, on which all knowledge is founded, — on which, indeed, as its princiijle, all knowledge depends. Experience, however, is in itself twofold : it is either the perceptiou of the external objects through the special senses, in which case it is named sensation ; or it is the perception of the intei'nal operations of the soul, in which case it is named the internal sense, or, better, reflection. Sensation and reflection furnish the understanding with all its ideas. These faculties are to be regarded as the single window by which the light of the ideas falls into the camera obscura of the mind. The external objects supply the ideas of sensible qualities ; the internal object again, the life of the soul, supplies the ideas of its own operations. The problem of the philosophy of Locke, then, is to derive and explain the ideas generally, by a reference to these two sources. They are divided, in the first place, into the simple and the complex. Simjile ideas are such as the mind receives from elsewhere, in the same manner as a mirror receives the images of the objects presented to it. They are partly such as reach the mind through a single sense, as ideas of colour through sight, of sound through hearing, and of solidity, or impenetra- bility, through touch ; partly such as are contributed by several senses, as the ideas, for instance, of extension and motion, which are due to the senses of touch and sight combined ; partly such as are derived from reflection, as the ideas of thought, and of will ; jmrtly such, finally, as spring from sensation and reflection together, as the ideas, for example, of power, unity, succession, etc. These simple ideas constitute the materials, as it were the letters, of all our knowledge. As language now, by means of various combinations of the single letters, forms syllables and words, so the mind, by means of various combinations of the simple ideas, forms the compound or complex ideas. These may be reduced to three classes, to ideas, namely, of modes, of substances, and of relations. The ideas of the first class consist of the modifications of «pace {distance, linear measure, immensity, surface, figure, ISO HISTOBY OF PHILOSOPHY. etc.), of time (duration, eternity), of tliouglit (perception, memory, abstraction), of number, and so on. In parti- cular, Locke subjects to a strict examination tbe notion oj substance. He explains its origin in this way : we learn as well from sensation as reflection, that a certain num- ber of simple ideas frequently present themselves to- gether. Being unable to think, now, these simple ideas as self-supported, we accustom ourselves to conceive a self-subsistent substrate as their basis, and to this sub- strate we give the name of substance. Substance is the imknown something which is thoxight as the vehicle of such qualities as produce in us the simple ideas. It follows not, however, that substance, though product of our own subjective thought, does not at the same time exist with- out us. It is rather distinguished from aU the other com- plex ideas, by the fact that it does possess an objectively real archetype without us ; while these, spontaneously formed by the mind, are devoid of any correspondent reality. What the archetype of substance is, we know not ; we only know the attributes of substances. From the notion of substance Locke passes, in the last place, to that of relation. A relation takes place whenever the mind so unites two things that on observation of the one it immediately reverts to the other. All things are cap- able of being placed in relation by the understanding, or, what is the same thing, of being converted into relatives. It is thus impossible completely to enumerate relations. Locke considers, therefore, only a few of the more impor- tant relations, that of identity and difference among others, but above all, cause and effect. The idea of this relation arises on our perception of how something, whether a substance or a quality, begins to exist in con- sequence of the action of another something. Thus far the ideas ; to the combinations of which, further, we owe the conception of knowledge in general. Knowledge, in- deed, is related to the simple and complex ideas as a pro- position to its component letters, syllables, and words. It follows from this that ourknowledge extends not beyond the range of our ideas, and, consequently, of experience. These are the principal thoughts of Locke's philosophy ; and its empiricism is ob\4ous in them. The mind to it is in itself void, a mere mirror of the external world, a dark room into which the images of the things withoiit fall, without any contribution or action on its part ; its entire contents are due to the impressions made on it by HUME. 181 material things. Nihil est in inteUectu, quod non funrit in sensu, is the watchword of the position. And if Locke undoubtedly pronounces in these propositions the precedence of matter to mind, he makes the same opinion still more manifest when he thinks it possible, nay, pro- bable, that the soul is a material substance. The converse possibility, that material are subordinate to spiritual things as but a species of the latter, is not entertained by Locke. The soul to him, then, is but secondary to mat- ter, and he takes his place on that position of realism which has been already characterized (xxvii.). Locke, it is true, has, in the prosecution of his views, not always remained consistent to his principles. Empiricism in his hands is not, in several respects, a perfect structure. We can see already, however, that the subsequent course of this mode of thinking will incline towards a complete denial of the ideal factor. The empiricism of Locke, so well adapted as it is to the character of his nation, soon became, in England, the dominant philosophy. As occupying the general position, we may name Isaac Neicton, the great mathematician (1642-1727), Samuel Clarke, a disciple of Newton's, prin- cipally interested in moral philosophy (1675-1729) ; further, the English moralists of this period, William WoUaston (1659-1724), the Earl of Shaftesbury (1671- 1713), Francis Hutcheson (1694-1747); and even oppo- nents of Locke, as Peter Brown (d. 1735). XKIX.—Hume. LOCKE, as just remarked, was neither consistent nor successful in the completion and realization of em- piiicism. Although assigning material things a decided superiority to the thinking subject, he made thought, in one respect (in the notion of substance), the prescribing power of the objective world. Of all the complex ideas constructed by subjectir^'e thought, one alone, substan- tiality, possesses for Locke an exceptional character of objective reality ; whilst the others, purely subjective, are devoid of any correspondent objectivity. Subjective thought does not only introduce a notion of its own for- mation, substance, into the objective world, but it asserts, as correspondent to this notion, an objective relation, an objective connexion of things themselves, an existent 1 82 HI ST OR Y OF PHIL OSOPH Y. rationality. lu this reference, subjective reason stands, in a certain sort, as dominant over the objective world ; for the relation of substantiality is not immediately de- rived from the world of sense, — it is no product of sen- sation and perception. On a position purely empirical — and such is the position Locke himself assumes — it was an inconsistency to allow substantiality an objective validity. If the mind is in itself a dark empty room, a blank sheet of paper ; if its entire provision of objective knowledge consists merely of the impressions made on it by material things ; then the notion of substantiality must be also declared a merely subjective conception, an ai'bi- trary conjunction of ideas ; and the subject must be com- pletely emptied and deprived of the last support on which to found any claim of superiority to the world of matter. This step in the direction of a self-consistent empiricism was, in his critique of Causality, taken by Hume. David Hume was born at Edinburgh in 1711. En- gaged in his youth in the study of law, and then in mer- cantile pursuits, he devoted himself, at a later period, exclusively to history and philosophy. His first literary attempt attracted scarcely any attention. His Essays, — of which there eventually appeared, from 1742 to 1757, five volumes, — experienced a more favourable reception. Hume has discussed in these a variety of philosophical subjects ; in the manner of a thoughtful, cultivated, and polished man of the woi'ld ; to the consequent neglect of any rigorous systematic connexion. After his appoint- ment as librarian, at Edinburgh, in the year 1752, he commenced his celebrated History of England. He was aftei-wards Secretary of Legation at Paris, where he made the acquaintance of Rousseau ; and in 1767 he became Under-Secretary of State, an office, however, which he held only for a short time. His latter years were spent at Edinburgh, in the enjoyment of a tranquil and contented retirement. He died in 1776. The middle-point of the philosophizing of Hume is his critique of the notion of causahty. Locke had already expressed the thought that we owe the notion of sub- stance to the custom of always seeing certain modes to- gether. This thought was taken up seriously by Hume. How do we know, he asks, that two things stand to each other in the relation of causality ? We know it neither a priori, nor from experience : for knowledge a priori extend- ing only to what is identical, and the effect being differert HUME. 183 from tne cause, tlie former cannot be discovered in the lat- ter ; and experience, again, exhibits to us onlj'- a sequence of two events in time. All our reasonings from experi- ence, therefore, are founded solely on custom. Because we are accustomed to see that one thing follows another in time, we conceive the idea that it must follow, and from it ; of a relation of succession we make a relation of causality. Connexion in time is naturally something different, however, from connexion in causahty. In this notion we exceed experience, then, and proceed to the creation of ideas for which in strictness we have no autho- rity. What holds good of causality holds good also of all the other relations of necessity. We find we do pos- sess other such notions, as, for example, that of power and its realization. Let us ask how we obtain this idea, or the idea of necessary connexion in general Not possibly through sensation, for external objects may show us indeed simultaneous co-existence, but not necessary connexion. Perhaps, then, through reflection ? It certainly seems, as if we migh t get the idea of power from observing that the organs of the body obey the volitions of the mind. But since neither the means by which the mind acts on the body are kno%vn to us, nor all the organs of the body yield obedience to the mind, it follows that, even as regards a knowledge of these operations, it is to experience that we are driven ; and as ex])erience again is, for its part, able to exhibit only frequent co-existence, but no real con- nexion, it results that we obtain the notion of power, as that of all necessary connexion in general, only from being accustomed to certain transitions on the part of our ideas. AU notions expressive of a relation of necessity, aU sup- posed cognitions of an objective connexion in things, rest at last, consequently, only on the association of ideas. From the denial of the notion of substantiality there fol- lowed for Hume the denial of that also of the ego itself. Self, or the ego, did it really exist, would be substantial, a persistent vehicle of inherent qualities. But as our notion of substance is something merely subjective, with- out any objective reality, it results that there is no cor- respondent reaUty for our notion of the ego either. The self or ego is nothing else, in fact, than a complex of numerous swiftly succeeding ideas, under which complex we then suppose placed an imaginary substrate, named by us soul, self, or ego. The self or ego, therefore, rests whoUy on an illusion. In the case of such pre- 184 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. suppositions, there cannot be any talk naturally of tlie immortality of the soul. The soul being only a complex of our ideas, necessarily ceases with these, and conse- quently, therefore, with the movements of the body. After these propositions, which represent the principal thoughts of Hume, there is no call for any further argu- mentation to prove that Hume's scepticism was but a more consistent following out of Locke's empiricism. If we owe all our knowledge to perception of sense, then all determinations of universality and necessity must, in logical result, disappear ; for they are not contained in sensation. XXX. — Condillac. TO carry out the empiricism of Locke into its idtimate consequence, into sensualism and materialism, — this is the task which has been assumed by the French. Though grown on a soil of English principles, and very soon uni- versally prevalent there, empiricism could not possibly be developed amongst the English into the extreme form which presently declared itself among the French, — that is, into the complete destruction of all the foundations of the moral and religious life. This last consequence was not congenial to the national character of the English. On the contrary, as early as the second half of the eigh- teenth century, there appeared, in opposition not only to the scepticism of Hume, but even to the empiricism of Locke, that reaction which is named Scottish Philosophy (Reid, 1704-1796, Beattie, Oswald, Dugald Stewart, 1753- 1828). The aim of this philosophy was to establish, in contradistinction to the Lockian tabula rasa and the Humian despair of any necessity of reason, certain prin- ciples of truth innate or immanent in the subject ; and this (in a genuinely English manner), as facts of experi- ence, as facts of the moral instinct and healthy human understanding (common sense) ; as an element empirically so given, and discoverable by means of observation of ourselves, and reflection on our ordinary consciousness. In France, on the other hand, political and social circum- stances had so shaped themselves in the course of the eighteenth century, that we can recognise writings which drew relentlessly the ultimate practical consequences of the position, — systems, namely, of a materialistic theory CONDI LL AC. 185 of the world and of a deliberately reasoned egoistic mo- rality, — only as natural results of the universal corruption. The declaration of a great lady in regard to the system of Helvetius, that it only sj^oke out the secret of every- body, is, in this connexion, famiharly known. The sensualism of the Abb^ de Condillac stands closest to the empiricism of Locke. Condillao was born at Gre- noble in 1715. In his earliest writings an adherent of the theory of Locke, he subsequently went further, and endeavoured to make good a philosophical position of his own. Made member of the French Academy in 176S, he died in 1780. His collected writings, which bespeak moral earnestness and rehgious feeling, compose twenty- three volumes. Condillac, in agreement with Locke, began from the proposition, that aU our knowledge springs from expe- rience. Whilst Locke, however, assumed two sources of this empirical knowledge, sensation and reflection, or ex- ternal and internal sense, Condillac contended for the reduction of both to one, of reflection to sensation. Re- flection is for him equally sensation ; all mental processes, even will and the combination of the ideas, are in his eyes only modified sensations. The realization of this concep- tion, the derivation of the various mental faculties from external sense, — this constitutes the main interest and the main matter of CondUlac's philosophy. He endeavours to demonstrate his leading idea by reference to an ima- ginary statue, in which, — organized internally indeed like a human being, but destitute at first of any ideas, — one sense after another is conceived gradually to awake and to fill the soul with the various impressions. Man as in- debted for all his knowledge and for all his motives to external sensation, appears, in this mode of viewing him, quite on the footing of one of the lower animals. In consistency, therafore, Condillac calls men perfect ani- mals, and the other animals imperfect men. He still shrinks, however, from denial of the existence of God, and equally from assertion of the materiality of the soxd. These, the ultimate consequences of sensualism, were taken by others after him ; and they lie sufliciently on the surface. For if sensuahsm maintains, that truth, or M-hat really is, can only be perceived by the senses, we need but take this proposition objectively to have the thesis of materialism : only what is sensuous is, there ia no being but material being. 166 HISTOEY OF PHILOSOPHY. XXXL— Helvetia. THE moral consequences of the sensualistic position were drawn by Helvetius. Let theoretic sensual- ism declare, that all oiir knowledge is determined by external sensation, then practical sensualism adds the ana- logous proposition, that all our volition as well is deter- mined by external sensation, by the requirements of sense. The satisfaction of our sensuous desires was set up by Helvetius accordingly as the principle of morals. Helvetius was born at Paris in 1715. Appointed in his twenty-third year to the post of a Farmer-General, he found himself, at an early period of life, in possession of an opulent income. Nevertheless, after a few years, he resigned his place in consequence of the many unpleasant complications in which it involved him. The study of the writings of Locke decided his philosophical creed. Helvetius wrote his famoiis book De VEsjmt in the rural retirement that followed the resignation of his post. It appeared in 1758, and excited, both at home and abroad, great, and often favourable attention, but brought him also much bitter pei'secution, especially from the priests. Helvetius must have thought it foi-tunate, however, that they were satisfied with attempting to crush the book. The rural tranquillity in which he passed the later years of his life was only interrupted twice : once by a jour- ney to German}'', and again by a voyage to England. He died in 1771. His personal character was estimable, full of good-nature and love to his fellows. In his post of Farmer-General, he was benevolent to the poor, and sternly opposed to the exactions of his subordinates. His works are wi'itten with perspicuity and elegance. Self-love, interest, says Helvetius, is the lever of all our actions. Even our purely intellectual activities, our desire of knowledge, our traffic in ideas, spring from the love of self. But all self-love tends in the end only to bodily enjoyment. All our actions, therefore, mental and other, have no source or spur but the gratification of sense. And in this there is already indicated where the principle of morality is to be sought. It is absurd to expect men to do the good for the sake of the good. Thia is as little in their power as to will the bad for the sake of the bad. If, then, morality is not to remain com- pletely fruitless, it must return to its empirical source. THE FRENCH ILLUMINATION. 1S7 and dare to proclaim as its principle tLe true principle of all action, animal feeling, pleasure and pain, self-interest. . As therefore true legislation procures obedience to the laws by the stimulus of punishment and reward, by self- interest ; so that only is the true moral principle which, regarding the duties of mankind as results of self-love, demonstrates the general nature of what is forbidden us to be the producing of disgust, etc, in short, of pain. If morality bring not men's interest into play, — if it re- sist them, — then plainly it will be necessarily fruitless. XXXII. — French Illumination and Materialism. IT has been already remarked (xxx.), that the pushing of empiricism to an extreme, as reahzed in France, has a very close connexion with the general social and political condition of the French people at the time that precedes the Revolution. The struggle characteristic of the middle ages, the external, duahstic relation to the church, was continued in Catholic France to the confusion and corruption of all the interests of life. Men's minds were demoralized everywhere, especially under the influ* ence of a dissolute court ; the state was become an unre- strained despotism ; the church had sunk into an equally hypocritical and tyrannical hierarchy. AU substance and worth, then, having disappeared from the spiritual world, there was left nothing but nature ; in the form, too, of an unspirituaHzed mass, of matter; and an object for man only as it was subserAnent to his sensuous greeds and needs. It is, however, not specially the extreme of materialism that constitutes the characteristic of the French illumination. The common character of the so-called Philosophes of the eighteenth century in France, is rather their tendency to oppose all the tyranny and corruption that were then prevalent in morals, reli- gion, and the state. They directed their ]iolished and sparkling, rather than strictly scientific critical polemic, against the entire world of received opinions, of the tra- ditional, the given, the positive. They endeavoured to demonstrate the contradiction in which all that was estab- lished in church and state stood to the irrefutable de- mands of reason. What was received and unquestionet^ this— if unable to justify its existence in the sight of reason — they strove to shake in the belief of the world 1 S8 HISTOR Y OF PHILOSOPH T. at tlie same time that they vindicated for man, rational man, the full consciousness of his native freedom. Truly to appreciate the immeasurable merit of these men, we must realize to ourselves the condition of things against which their attacks were directed : the licentiousness of a miserable court that demanded slavish obedience ; the tyranny and hypocrisy of a priesthood rotten to the core, that insisted on blind submission ; the degradation of a disintegi-ated church that exacted veneration — in short, an administration of the state, a dispensation of justice, a condition of society that must revolt to the utmost every intellectual principle, and eveiy moral feeling of man. To have exposed to hatred and contempt the baseness and worthlessness of existing interests, sum- moned the minds of men to indifference for the idols of the world, and awakened them to a consciousness of t3icir autonomy — this, of these men, is the imperishable glory. 2. The most brilliant and influential spokesman of this period is Voltaire (1G94-1778). Not a professed philo- sopher, but an infinitely versatile writer, and an unsur- passed master of expression, he acted more powerfully than any of the philosophers of the time on the whole mode of thought of his age and nation, Voltaire was not an atheist. On the contrary, he considered belief in a Supreme Being so absolutely essential that he said, if there were no God, it would be necessary to invent one. As little did he deny the immortality of the soul, though he frequently expressed doubts of it. The atheistic materialism of a La Mettrie he looked upon aa mere stupidity. In these respects, then, he is far from occupying the position of his philosophical successors. On the other hand his heart's hatred is to the positive of religion, — the simply dictated. He regarded the destruc- tion of hierarchical intolerance as his special mission, and he left no stone unturned in order to accomplish this pas- sionately cherished end. His indefatigable struggle against all positive religion, by advancing information generally, however, essentially prepared the way for the later opponents of spii'itualism. 3. Markedly more sceptical is the relation of the Encyclopcedists to the principles and presuppositions of spiritualism. The philosophical Encyclopaedia originated by Diderot (1713-1784), and edited by him in conjunction with D'Alembert, is a remarkable monument of the spirit which prevailed in France in the generation before THE FliEXCH ILLUMINATION. ]89 the Revolution. It was the pride of France at that time, because it spoke out, in a brilliant, universally accessible form, its own inmost convictions. With the keenest wit, it reasoned out of the state law, out of morality free-will, out of nature God, and all this only in interrupted, and for the most part half-apprehensive hints. In the otherwritings of Diderot we find considerable philosophical talent combined with a certain depth of earnestness. Still his philosophi- cal views cannot be easily assigned or acc\irately deter- mined ; for both they themselves were of very gradual growth, and Diderot trusted himself to express them not without accommodation and reserve. On the whole, how- ever, his mode of thought approached, in the course of its development, nearer and nearer to the extreme of the prevailing philosophical tendency. A deist in his earlier writings, the drift of those subsequently produced amounts to the belief that all is God. At first a defender of the immateriality and immortality of the soul, he perempto- rily declares at last, that only the genus endures, that in- dividuals pass, and that immortality is nothing but life in the remembrance of posterity. The consequent extreme of materialism, Diderot, however, refused to accept : from that he was rescued by his moral earnestness. 4. The last word of materiaHsm, nevertheless, was, with unhesitating hardihood, spoken out by Diderot's contem- porary, the physician La Mettrie (1709-1751). Anything spiritual, namelj% is now a delusion, and physical enjoy- ment is the chief end of man. As for belief in a God in the first place. La Mettrie pronounces it equally ground- less and profitless. The world will never be happy till Atheism is universal. Only then shall we have no more religious wars ; only then will those fearfulest of fighting men, the theologians, disappear, and leave the world they have poisoned to return to itself. As for the soul, there can be no philosophy but materiaHsm. All the obsen^a- tions and experiments of the greatest physicians and philo- sophers pronounce for this. Soul is nothing but an empty name, which gets sense only when understood as that part of the body that thinks. This is the brain, which has its fibres of cogitation, as the legs have their muscles of motion. That man has the advantage of the lower animals, is owing, firstly, to the organization of his brain, and, secondly, to the education it receives. Man, otherwise, is an animal like the rest, — in many respects inferior to them. Tmmortahtv is an absurdity. The 190 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. son), as a part of the body, goes with the body. At death all is 'up,' la farce estjouee! Moral : let us enjoy while we can, and never throw a chance away. 5. What La Mettrie threw out Avith levity and a grin, the Systeme de la Nature, as the representative book of philosophical materialism, endeavoured to establish with the seriousness and precision of science, — the doctrine, namely, that nothing exists but matter, and mind is either naught, or only a finer matter. The Systeme de la Nature apjieared pseudonymoucly in London, in the year 1770, under the name of the deceased Mirabaud, secretary of the Academy. Without doubt it originated in the circle of heaux esprits who frequented the table of Baron Holbach, and took its tone from Dide- rot, Grimm, and others. Whether it was Holbach him- self, or his domestic tutor Lagrange, or several together, who wrote the work, it is impossible now to decide. The book is not a French book : the writing is tame and tedions. There is nowhere anything, says the Systeme de la Nature, but matter and motion. Both are inseparably combined. When matter is at rest, it is at rest only as prevented from moving ; it is not itself a dead mass. There are two sorts of motion, attraction and repulsion. From these two we have the various other motions, and from these, again, the various combinations, and so, con- sequently, the entire midtiplicity, of things. The laws according to which these actions take place are eternal and immutable. The most important results are these : — (a.) The materiality of man : man is no equivoque, as is erroneously supposed, of mind and matter. K we ask, for instance, what then is this thing that is called mind, the usual answer is, that the most accurate philosophical in- vestigations demonstrate the motive principle in man to be a substance which, in its essence, is incomprehensible indeed, but which is known, for all that, to be indixns- ible, unextended, invisible, etc. But how are we to find anything definite or conceivable in a being that is but a negation of all that constitutes knowledge — a being, the very idea of which is but the absence of all idea what- ever ? Moreover, how is it explicable, on the supposition in view, that a being, not material, itself, can act on, and give movement to, beings which are material, although plainly there can exist no point of contact between them ? The truth is, that those who distinguish their soul from THE FRENCH ILLUMINATION. 191 tlieir body, only distinguish their brain from theii body. Thought is only a modification of the brain, as will is but another modification of the same corporeal organ. (6.) On a par with this duplication of himself into soul and bodj'^, there is in man another chimera — belief in the existence of a God. This belief has its origin, like the assumption of a soul, in a false distinction of mind from matter, in an unwarrantable doubling of nature. Man referred the evils he experienced, and of which he was unable to detect the natural causes, to a God, a God which he had fabled for himself. Fear, sufi"ering, igno- rance, — these, then, are the sources of our first ideas of a God. We tremble, because our forefathers, thousands of years ago, trembled before us. This is not a circumstance to create any favourable pre-judgment. But it is not only the cruder conception of God that is worthless, the more elaborate theological theorj' is equally so, for it ex- plains not one single phenomenon of nature. It is full, too, of absurdities, for in ascribing moral attributes to God, it humanizes him, aud yet, by means of a mass of negative attributes, it would, at the very same moment, distiugiiish him, and in the most absolute manner, from all other beings. The true system, the system of nature, is consequently Atheism. Such a creed requires, on the one side, education, and, on the other, courage ; for it is not the possession as yet of all, nor even of many. If by atheist there is understood a man who believes only in dead matter, or if by God, the moving jJOicer in nature, then, certainlj', a single Atheist cannot possibly exist, unless he were a fool. But if by Atheist is understood one that denies the existence of an immaterial being, of a being whose imaginary qualities can only distmb man- kind, then, in that sense, there are Atheists, and there would be still more of them, were a sound understand- ing general, and did a true idea of nature more com- monly obtain. But Atheism being truth, it must be spread. There are many, it is true, who having rescued themselves from the yoke of religion, still beUeve in its necessity for the herd, in order to keep it in bounds. But this is nothing else than to poison a man to prevent him from abusing his gifts. Any deism is necessarily but a direct step to superstition, for pure deism is a position not possibly tenable, (c.) With such presupposi- tions there can be no talk of the immortality and free- will of man. Man is not different from the other thinga y 192 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. of nature. Like them, lie is a link in the indissoluble chain, a blind tool in the hands of necessity. Did any- thing possess the ability to move itself, that is, to produce a motion not referable to any other cause, it would have power to bring to a stop the motion of the universe ; but that is impossible, for the universe is an infinite series of ne- cessary motions, which continue and propagate themselves to all eternity. The assumption of individual immortality is a nonsensical hypothesis. For to maintain that the soul endm-es after the destruction of the body, is to maintain that a function may remain when its organ has disap- peared. Other immortality there is none than that of fame in the future, {d.) The results, practically, of the theory, afford a powerful support to the system of nature ; and the utility of a theory is always the best criterion of its truth. Whilst the ideas of theologians can only dis- quiet and torment man, the system of nature relieves him from all such anxieties, teaches him to enjoy the present, and furnishes him with that apathy for the compliant bearing of his lot, which everybody must esteem a happi- ness. Morality, to be practical, must be founded on self- love, on interest ; it must be able to show the individual in what his well-understood advantage lies. That man who follows his own interest so that other men for their interest must contribute to his, is a good man. A system of self-interest, then, promotes the union of mankind mutually, and conseqviently also true morality. This consistent dogmatic materialism of the Systhne de la Nature is the utmost extreme of the empirical ten- dency, and closes, consequently, the systems of abstract realism that began with Locke. The derivation and ex- planation of the ideal from and by the material world, initiated by Locke, have terminated in materialism, in the reduction of the spiritual to the material principle, in the denial of spirit generally. We have now, before going further to consider, as ali-eady intimated (xxvii.), the other or idealistic series which runs parallel with the realistic one. And at its head is Leibnitz. 'KXKlll.—Leihnitz. F empiricism was animated by a desire to subordinate mind to matter, to materialize mind, idealism will seek, ou the contrary, to sinritualize matter, or so to con- LEIBNITZ. 103 strue the idea of spirit, that matter shall be subsumed under it. If to the former, spirit was nothing but a 'j; finer matter, matter to the latter will prove itself, con- R versely, only crassified spirit (or, as Leibnitz expresses^/ it, only ' confused ideation '). The one, indeed, was, in logical consistency, driven to the proposition. There are only material things ; the other, again (in Leibnitz and Berkeley), will take stand by the opposed result, There are only spirits (souls), and the thoughts of spirits (ideas). For the one-sided realistic stand-point, material things were the veritable substantial element ; while, contrari- v/ise, for the correspondent idealistic stand-point, this element will be only spiritual beings, egos. Spirit was to one-sided realism in itself empty, a tabula rasa, dependent on the external world for its entire provision. T)ne-sided idealism, on the contrary, will strive to the proposition. That nothing can come into the soul, that is not at least preformed within it, That all its knowledge must be derivative from itself. To the former mode of view, knowledge was a passive relation ; to the latter, it will appear an active one. Lastly, if abstract realism pre- fer to explain the becoming and eventuality of nature by real grounds, or mechanically (L'Homme Machine is the title of a work by La Mettrie), abstract idealism will seek its explanation, ex contrario, iu ideal grounds, or teleologicaUy. Or if the former asked, by predilection, for efficient causes, and often even ridiculed the demand for final causes, it will be to these that the latter will direct its principal aim. The notion of design, in short, the teleological harmony of all things (pre-estal)lished harmony), will now be looked to for the means of union between spirit and matter, between thinking and being. In this way the stand-point of the philosophy of Leib- nitz may be briefly characterized. Gottfried WiUwhn Leibnitz was horn in 16-46 at Leipsic, where his father held a professor's chair. Having chosen Law for his profession, he entered the university in 16C1 ; he defended, in 1663, for the degree of Doctor of Philo- sophy, his dissertation De Principio Individui (a charac- teristic thesis when we regard his subsequent philosophiz- ing) ; thereafter he went to Jena, later to Altdorf, where he took the degree of Doctor of Laws. A chair of juris- prudence offered him in Altdorf he declined. His further career is an erratic, busy life of movement, chiefly at courts, where, as an accomplished courtier, he wa.s em- ]P4 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. ployed in the most multiform afifairs, diplomatic and other. In the year 1672 he went to Paris, charged in efifecfc with a commission to persuade Louis XR'. to attempt the conqiiest of Egypt, and so divert that monarch's dangerous military inclinations from Germany. From Paris he passed to London ; thence, in the capacity of councillor and librarian of the learned Catholic duke, John Frederic, to Hanover, where he spent the most of his remaining hfe, not without the interruption, how- ever, of numerous journeys to Vienna, Berlin, etc. He stood on terms of intimacy with the Prussian Queen, Sophia Charlotte, a talented lady who gathered around her a circle of the most eminent saiKints of the period, and for whom Leibnitz, at her own instigation, had undertaken the composition of his Theodicee. His pro- posal for the i&istitution of an academy in Berlin obtained effect in 1700, and he became its first president. Similar proposals in regard to Dresden and Vienna were without result. By the Emperor Charles vi., he was made a member of the imperial aulic council La 1711, and raised to the rank of Baron. Soon afterwards he made a considerable stay at Vienna, where, at the suggestion of Prince Eugene, he composed his Monadologie. He died in 1716. Leibnitz, after Aristotle, is the poly- math of the greatest genius that ever lived. He united the greatest, the most penetrating power of intellect with the richest and most extensive erudition. Ger- many has a special call to be proud of him, for, after Jacob Bohm, he is the first important philosopher whom we Germans can claim. Through him pliilosophy was naturalized among us. Unfortunately, jiartly the mul- tiplicity of his engagements and literary undertakings, partly his wandering way of life, prevented him from ac- complishing any connected exposition of his philosophy as a wliole. His views are chiefly set out only in short occasional papers, or in letters, and generallj'^ in French, For this reason an inwardly coherent siimmary of his philosophy is by no means easj', although none of his opinions can be said to be isolated from the rest, but all of them stand in sufficiently exact connexion with each other. The following are the main points of view : — 1. The System of Monads. — The fundamental charac- teristic of the teaching of Leibnitz is its difference from that of Spinoza. Spinoza had made the one universal eubstance the single liositive element in existence. Leib- LEIBNITZ. 19? nitz, too, takes the notion of substance for the founda- tion of his philosophj"^, but he defines it differently ; conceiving substance as eminently the living activity, the working force, and adducing as example of this force a bent bow, which asserts its power so soon as all external obstacles are withdi'awn. That active force constitutes the quality of substance, is a j^roposition to which Leib- nitz always returns, and with which the other elements of his philosophy most intimately cohere. This is appli- cable at once to the two fiu-ther determinations of sub- stance (also quite opposed to the theory of Spinoza), firstly, that substance is individual, a monad, and, secondly, that there is a pluraHty of monads. Substance, iu exercising an activity similar to that of an elastic body, is essentially an excludent power, repulsion : but what excludes others from itself is a personahty, an individu- ality or individuum, a monad. But this involves the second consideration, that of the plurality of the monads. It is impossible for one monad to exist, unless others exist. The notion of an individuum postulates individua, which, as excluded from it, stand over against it. In antithesis to the philosophy of Spinoza, therefore, the fundamental thesis of that of Leibnitz is this : there is a plurality of monads which constitutes the element of all reality, the fimdamental being of the whole physical and spiritual universe. 2. The Exacter Specification of the Monads is the next consideration. The monads of Leibnitz are, in general, similar to the Greek atoms. Like the latter, they are punctual unities, insusceptible of influence from with- out, and indestructible by any external power. If simi- lar, they are also, however, dissimilar, and in important characteristics. Firstly, the atoms are not distinguished from one another ; they are qualitatively alike : the monads, on the other hand, are qualitatively different ; each is a special world apart ; none is like the other. To Leibnitz, no two things iu the world are qiiite alike. SeconiUy, the atoms, as extended, are divisible ; the monads, on the contrary, are actual (indivisible) points, metaphj'sical points. In order not to be repelled by this proposition (for it is natural to object that no aggregate of iuextended things, like the monads, can ever account for extended things), it is necessary for us to recollect that Leibnitz regards space, not as real, but only as con- fused subjective conception. Thirdly, the monad is a 196 EISTOBY OF PHILOSOPHY. living spiritual being, a soul. In the atomists there is notMng whatever of this idea ; but with Leibnitz it plaj'S a very important part. Everywhere in the world, there is to Leibnitz life, living indi\aduality, and living con- nexion of individualities. The monads are not dead, as mere extended matter is ; they are self-s\ibsistent, self- identical, and indeterminable from without. Considered (a.) in themselves, however, they are to be thought as centres of living activity, living mutation. As the human soul, a monad of elevated rank, is never, even when tmconscious, free from the action of at least ob- scure thought and will, so every other monad continually . undergoes a variety of modifications or conditions of being, correspondent to its own proper quality. Every- where there is movement, nowhere is there dead rest. And (5.) as it is with the human soul, which sympathizes with all the varying states of nature, which mirrors the universe, so it is with the monads universally. Each — and they are infinitely numerous — is also a mirror, a centre of the universe, a microcosm : everything that is or happens is reflected in each, but by its own spontane- ous power, through which it holds ideally in itself, as if in germ, the totality of things. By him, then, who shall look near enough, aU that iu the whole huge universe happens, has happened, or will happen, may, in each in- dividual monad, be, as it were, read. This livingness of the monads themselves, and of their relation to the rest of the world, is more particularly characterized by Leib- nitz in this way, that he represents the life of the monads to consist in a continuous sequence of perceptions, that is, of dimmer or clearer ideas of their own states, and of those of all the rest ; the monads proceed from percep- tion to perception ; aU, consequently, are souls ; and that constitutes the perfection of the world. 3. The pre-established Harmony. — The universe, then, is but sum of the monads. Everything, or every- thing that is composite, is an aggregate of monads. Every body is an organism, not a single substance but a complex of substances, a plurality of monads, just as a machine, even in its minutest parts, consists of machines. Leibnitz compares bodies to a iish-poud, the component parts of which live, though it cannot be said that the jiond itself lives. The usual conception of things is thus completely turned upside down ; from the point of view of the monadology, it is not the body, the aggregate, LEIBXITZ. 197 that is tlie substantial element, but its constituent parta There is no such thing as matter iu the vulgar sense of in- sensible extension. How then are we to think the inner connexion of the universe ? In the following manner. Every monad is a percipient being, but each is different from each. This difference, plainly, must be essentially a difference of perception; there must be as many various degrees of perception as there are monads, and these de- grees may be arranged in stages. A main distinguishing difference is that of the more confused and the more dis- tinct cognition. A monad of the lowest rank {une monaile toute nue), is one that just conceives and no more, that has its place, that is, on the stage of the most confused cognition. Leibnitz compares this state to a swoon, or to our condition in a dreamless sleep, in which we are not indeed without ideas (else we should have none on awaking), but in which the ideas neutralize themselves by their own number, and never attain to consciousness. This is the stage of inorganic nature, on which the life of the monads expresses itself only in the form of motion. 'I hose are higher monads in wliich thought is formative N-itahty, but still without consciousness. This is the stage of plants. It is a further advance in the life of the monads when they attain to sensation and memory, which is the ease in the auimal world. Whilst the in- ferior monads only sleep, the animal monads dream. When the soul rises to reason and reflection it is named spirit. The distinction of the monads, then, is that, though each mirrors the whole universe and the same universe, each at the same time mirrors it differently, the one less, and the other more perfectly. Each contains the entire universe, entire infinitude within itself. Each, then, resembles God in this, or is a parvus in suo genere deiis. The difference is this only, that God knows all with perfect distinctness, while the monads perceive with less or more confusion. The limitation of any one monad, then, consists not in its possessing less than any other, or even than God, but in its possessing the common fund in a more imperfect manner, inasmuch as it attains not to a dis- tinct knowledge of all. So conceived, the universe affords us a spectacle, as well of the greatest possible unitj', as of the greatest possible variety; for if each monad mirrors the same universe, each also mirrors it differently. But this is a spectacle of the greatest possible perfection, or of absolute harmony. For variety in unity is harmony. In another 198 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. respect also the universe is a system of harmony. Since the monads act not on one another, and each folloAvs the laws of its own being, there is a risk of the inner agree- ment of the universe being disturbed. In what manner is this risk precluded ? In this way, that each monad stands in living relation to the whole universe and the same luiiverse, or that the universe and the life of the universe are completely reflected in each. In conse- quence of this reciprocal correspondency of their percep- tions, the alterations of all the monads are mutually parallel ; and precisely in this (as pre-established by God) consists the harmony of the all. 4. What is the relation of God now to the monads ? What part does the notion of God play in the system of Leibnitz ? One certainly, without much to do. In strict consistency, Leibnitz ought not to have entertained any question of Theism ; for in his system the harmony of the whole must be regarded as having taken the place of God, He usually designates God as the sufficient reason [la raison svffisante) of all the monads. But he commonly regards the final cause of a thing as its sufficient reason. Leibnitz, then, on this question, is not far from identify- ing God with the absolute final cause. At other times he designates God as the primitive simple substance, or as the single primitive unity, or again as pure immaterial actuality, actus purus (the actuality of the monads, on the other hand, is matter, an actuality — a nisus, appetitio — not in pure freedom, but limited, obstructed, by a prin- ciple of passive resistance to the movement of sponta- neity), or even again as monad (this however in evident contradiction to his other specifications). It was a hard matter for Leibnitz to bring — without abandoning the I)resuppositions of both, — his monadology and his Theism into unison. If he assume the substantiality of the monads, he runs the risk of losing their dependence on God, and in the opposite case, he relapses into Spino- zism. 5. The Relation of Soul and Body adinits of a par- ticular explanation with reference to the pre-established harmony. On the presiippositions of the Monadologie, this relation might easily appear enigmatic. If one monad cannot act on another, how is it possible for the soul to act on the body, to put it in motion, to guide it in motion? The pre-established harmony solves this problem. Soul and body certainly do follow, each in LEIBNITZ. 199 independence of the otlier, tlio laws of its own being, — the body, laws that are mechanical ; the soul, laws that are ends. But God has instituted so harmonious an agi cement of the two factors, so complete a parallelism of both functions, that, in point of fact, there is a perfect unity of soul and body. There are, says Leibnitz, three views of the relation between soul and body. The first, the usual one, assumes a mutual action of both. This view is untenable ; for between spirit and matter there can be no reciprocity. The second, that of occasional- ism (xxv. 1), attributes this reciprocity to the continual assistance of God ; but that is as much as to make God a Deus ex machina. There remains, then, for the solu- tion of the problem only the assumption of a pre-estab- lished harmony. Leibnitz illustrates these three views by the following example. Let us suppose two watches, the hands of which alwaj'S indicate exactly the same time. This agreement may be explained, firstly, by the assumption of an actual union between the hands of both watches, in such a manner that the hands of the one draw those of the other along with them (the usual view) ; secondly, by assuming that a watchmaker always sets the one watch by the other (the occasioualistic view) ; and finally, by a third assimiption, that both watches possess so complete a mechanism, that each, though in perfect independence, goes also in perfect agreement with the other (the pre-established harmony). That the soul is immortal (indestructible), follows of itself from the nature of the theory. Properly there is no such thing as death. What is called death consists only in the loss to the soul of a part of the monads which con- stituted the machine of its body, at the same time that the living principle returns to a condition similar to that which it possessed before it appeared on the theatre of the ■world. 6. Ox THE Theory of Knowledge the consequences of the Monadologie have a very important bearing. ^ As, with reference to ontology, the philosophy of Leibnitz is conditioned by its opposition to Spinozism, so with reference to the theory of cognition, it is conditioned by its opposition to the empiricism of Locke. Locke's inquiry into tbe hiiman understanding interested Leib- nitz without satisfying him ; and, in his Nouveaux Fssais, he set on foot, therefore, a counter inquiry, in which he was led to defend iiinate ideas. But Leibnitz freed this 200 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. hypothesis from the imperfect conception of it which had justified the objections of Locke. Innate ideas are not to be supposed expUciter and consciously, but only im- pliciter and potentially, contained in the souL The soul has power to bring them into existence out of its own self. All thoughts are properly innate : they come not into the soul from without, but are produced by it from its own self. An external influence on the soul is incap- able of being thought ; even for the sensations of sense, it is not in want of any outer things. If Locke compares the soul to a blank sheet of paper, Leibnitz, for his part, compares it to a block of marble in which the veins pre- figure the shape of the statue. The usual contrast between rational and empirical knowledge shrinks for Leibnitz, therefore, into the graduated difference of less or more distinctness. Amongst the innate theoretical ideas, two, as principles of all cognition and of all reasoning, occupy for Leibnitz the first rank, — the pro- position of contradiction (prindpium contradictionh), and the proposition of the sufiicient reason (principium rationis sufficienlis). To these, as a proposition of the second rank, he adds the principium indiscernibiUum, or the pro- position that there are not in nature two things per- fectly alike. 7. The theological opinions of Leibnitz are expressed at fullest in his TheodicSe. This, however, is his Aveakest book, and stands only in a very loose connexion with his remaining philosojihy. Originating in the re- quest of a lady, it behes this origin neither in its form nor in its matter. Not in its form, for in its striv- ing to popularity of statement it becomes dififuse and unscientific. Not in its matter, for it carries further its accommodation to the positive dogma and the presupjio- sitions of theology than the scientific principles of the system ])ermit. Leibnitz discusses in this work the rela- tion of God to the world, in order to demonstrate design in this relation, and. vindicate God from the imputation of having, in his works, done anything without purpose, or against reason. Why has the world precisely this form ? God surely might have made it quite different from what it is. Without doubt, Leibnitz replies, God saw the possibility of infinite worlds ; but out of them all he chose this. This is the famous doctrine of a best of aU possible worlds, according to which any more per- fect world than the existent world is impossible. But BERKELEY. 201 hov.-, tLen? Docs not the existence of evil contradict this ? In answer to this objection, Leibnitz distinguishes evil into three sorts, — into metaphysical evil, physical evil, and moral evU. Metaphysical evil, or the imperfec- tion and finitude of things, is as inseparable from finite existence, and therefore unconditionally wUled by God, necessary. Physical evil (pain, etc.), is certainly not un- conditionally -willed by God, but only conditionally, as in the form of punishment, or of corrective. Moral e\nl, or the bad, can, on the contrary, not be willed by God. To explain its existence, then, and remove its apparent con- tradiction to the notion of God, Leibnitz tries several shifts. He says, at one time, that the bad is only per- mitted by God as a conditio sine qua non, for without the bad there were no free will, and without free will there were no virtue. At another time he reduces moral to metaphysical evil. The bad, he says, is not anything real ; it is only absence of perfection, negation, limita- tion : it plaj's the same part as shading in a painting, or dissonance in music, neither of which lessens the perfection present, but enhances it by contrast. At another time, again, he distinguishes between what is material and what formal in an act that is bad : the material element of sin, or the power to act, comes from God ; but the formal element, or what is bad in the act, belongs to man, is the result of his limitation : or, as Leibnitz sometimes ex- presses it, of his eternal self -predestination. In no case is the harmonj' of the universe disturbed by the bad. These are the fundamental ideas of the philosophy of Leibnitz. The preceding exposition will have substan- tiated the general summary which heads the section. XXXIY.— Berkeley. IDEALISM in Leibnitz has not yet reached its ultimate extreme. On the one hand, indeed, space, motion, material things, were to him phenomena that existed only in confused perception ; but, on the other hand, the existence of the material world was not directly denied by him ; rather, on the contraiy, its essential reality was acknowledged in the very conception of the world of monads. The world of sense is supposed to possess in the monads its fixed and substantial foundation. And thus, then, Leibnitz, idealist though he be, has not yet ,/ 202 HISTOlif OF PHILOSOPHY. quite broken with realism. To have declared corporeal fixistences mere phenomena, mere subjective perceptions or conceptions without foundation of objective reality, or, in other words, entirely to have denied the reaUty of an objective world of sense, — this would have been the ulti- mate consequence of a perfectly pure idealism. This consequence — the idealistic counterpart of the realistic extreme, materialism — was taken by George Berkeley (b. in Ireland 1685, made bishop 1734, d. 1753). We must therefore rank him — as completer of ideahsm — in the same series as Leibnitz, although he stands in no external connexion with the latter, but is related rather to the empiricism of Locke. Our sensations, says Berkeley, are altogether subjec- tive. When we believe ourselves to feel or perceive in- dependent external objects, that is an error : what we so feel and perceive are only our sensations and percep- tions themselves. It is evident, for example, that neither the distance, nor the size and form of objects are, pro- perl}', through the sensations of sense seen : these quali- ties we infer rather in consequence of having experienced that a certain sensation of sight is attended by cer- tain sensations of touch. What we see are only colours, light, dark, etc., and it is therefore altogether untrue to say that we see and feel one and the same thing. In the case, then, of the very sensations to which we attacli the most specially objective character, we are still within our- selves. The jH'oper objects of our mind are only our own affections, and all objective ideas, therefore, are but our own sensations. An idea can just as little as a sensation exist apart from the subject of it. What are called things consequently exist only in our percipient mind : their esse is a mere j^ercipi. Almost all philosophers are mis- led by the fundamental error of conceiving material things to exist apart from the mind that perceives them, and of fading to see that things are only something mental. How could material things possibly produce anything so utterly different from themselves as sensations and perceptions ! There exists not, then, any material external world : only spirits exist, thinking beings whose nature consists of conception and volition. But whence then do we receive our sensations, which come to us without our help, which are not products of our own will, like the forms of phan- tasy ? We receive them from a spirit superior to our own (for only a spirit were able to produce ideas in us), we WOLFF. 203 receive tliem from God. God, tlien, gives us the ideas ; but it were a contradiction for a being to communicate ideas and yet have none : the ideas consequently, which we receive from God, exist in God. In God they may be called archetypes, in us ectypes. This theory, according to Berkeley, nevertheless, does not deny to objects a reality independent of us ; it denies only the possibility of their existing anjrwhere but in a mind. Instead, therefore, of speaking of a connected nature in which the sun (say) were the cause of heat, etc., we ought to ex- press ourselves with accuracy thus : through the visual sensation, God announces to us that we shall soon expe- rience a tactual one of heat. By natui'e we must under- stand, therefore, only the succession or co-existence of ideas ; by laws of nature, again, the constant order in which they accompany or follow one another, that is, the laws of their associations. This consistent pure idealism is, in its complete denial of matter in the strict sense, the surest way, according to Berkeley, of destroy- ing scepticism and atheism. XXXV.— Wolf. THE idealism of Berkeley remained naturally with- out any further development. The i^hUosophy of Leibnitz, on the other hand, found continuation and re- arrangement at the hands of Christian Wolff (b. 1679 at Breslau ; removed, by a cabinet-order of Nov. 8, 1723, from his chair of philosophy at Halle, after a long course of disagreement with the theological professors there, because the doctrines he taught were opjiosed to the revealed truth of the Word of God, and required, under penalty of the halter, to quit the Prussian territory within forty-eight hours ; then Professor in Marburg, recalled by Frederic ii. immediately on his accession to the throne ; subsequently raised to the rank of Baron of the Empire ; d. 1754). In his main thoughts (with omission, it is true, of the bolder ideas of his predecessor) he adhered to the philosophy of Leibnitz, — an adhesion which he himself admits, though he resists the identification of his philo- sophy with that of Leibnitz, and rejects the name Philo- sophia Leihnitio • Wolfiana, originated by his disciple Bilfinger. Wolff's historical merit is threefold. He was the first, in especial, to claim again, in the name of phiio- 204 HISTORY OF nilLOSOPIIY. eopliy, the entire field of knowledge — the first who at- tempted to construct again a systematic whole of doc- trine, an encyclopaBdia of philosophy in the highest sense of the word. If he has not indeed contiibuted much new material to the work, he has at least skilfully availed himself of that already provided to his hand, and ar- ranged it with a certain architectonic spirit. Secondlj'', he again made philosojAical method as such an object of attention. His own method, indeed, as the mathemati- cal (mathematico-syllogistic) method recommended by Leibnitz, is a method quite external to the matter ; but even this j^latitudinizing formalism (for example, the eighth theorem in Wolff's Elements of Architecture runs thus : ' A window must be wide enough to allow two persons to place themselves conveniently at it,' a theo- rem which is then proved thus : ' It is a common custom to place one's-seK at a window, and look from it in com- pany with another person. As now it is the duty of the architect to consult in all respects the intentions of the builder (Sect. 1), he wiU necessarily make the window wide enough to allow two persons to place themselves conveniently at it — q. e. cV), even this formalism pos- sesses the advantage of rendering philosophical mat- ter more readily intelligible. Wolff, finally, first taught philosophy to speak German, an accomplishment which it has never since unlearned. To him (after Leibnitz, to whom the first impulse is due) belongs the merit of hav- ing for ever raised the German language into the organ of i)hilosophy. As regards the matter and scientific classification of the Wolfian philosophy, the following remarks may suffice. Wolflf defines philosophy to be the science of the possible, as such. Possible is what involves no contradiction. WoLfi" defends this definition from the reproach of assump- tion. He does not pretend by it, he says, that he or any philosopher knows all that is possible. He means by it only to claim for philosophy the whole field of human knowledge ; and he thinks it always better, in defining philosophy, to have in view the highest perfection of which it is capable, however much it may, in actuality, fall short of it. Of what does this science of the possible consist ? Wolff, relying on the empirical fact, that there are in us two faculties, one of cognition and another of volition, divides philosophy into two great branches, into theoretical ])liilosoj)hy (an expression, however. WOLFF. 205 wliiuli is first emploj'-ed by his disciples) or metaphysics, and into practical phUosopliy. Logic precedes both as propaedeutical of the study of philosophy in general. Metaphysics, again, are subdivided into (a.) Ontology, (h.) Cosmology, (c.) Psychology, {d.) Natural Theology ; while the subdivisions of practical philosophy are (a.) Ethics (the object of which is man as man), (6.) Eco- nomics (the object of which is man as member of the family), and (c) Politics (the object of which is man as member of the state). Ontology, then, is the first part of metaphysics. It treats of what are now called categories, of those radical notions of thought which as applicable to all objects, must be first investigated. Aristotle was the first to pro- pose a table of such principles, but he had got at his categories only empirically. Nor does it succeed much better with the ontology of Wolfi", which looks like a jihilosophical vocabulary. At the top of it Wolff places the proposition of contradiction : the same thing cannot at once be and not be. The notion of possibility comes next. Possible is what involves no contradiction. That is necessary, the contrary of which is a contradiction ; that contingent, the contrary of which is equally possible. All that is possible, though only imaginary, is something ; while whatever neither is, nor is possible, is nothing. When one thing is made up of many things, the former is a whole, the latter are parts. The magnitude of any- thing lies in the number of its parts. If one thing A im- plies something that renders it intelligible why another thing B is, then that in A that renders B intelUgible is the ground of B. The whole A that contains the ground is a cause. What contains the ground of its other quali- ties is the principle (nature) of the thing. Space is the order of things that are together ; place the special man- ner in which one thing exists simultaneously with all others. Motion is change of place. Time is the order of what is successive, etc. (6.) Cosmology. — Wolff de- fines the world to be a series of mutable things which exist beside and follow after one another, but as a whole are so connected with one another that the one always contains the ground of the other. Things are connected together either in space or time. The world, by reason of this universal connexion, is one, a compound. The mode of composition constitutes the nature of the world. This mode is incai>able of change. Ingredients can 20C HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. neither be added to it, nor taken from it. All altera- tions in tlie world must arise from its own natiire. In this reference the world is a machine. Events in the world are only hypothetically necessary, so far, that is, as those that preceded them have been so and so ; they are contingent, so far as the world might have been con- stituted differently. As regards the question whether the world has a beginning in time, Wolff vacillates. As God is independent of time, the world again eternally in time, the latter cannot be eternal in the same manner as God. Neither space nor time is to Wolff anything sub- stantial. A body is what is composed of matter, and possesses moving force. The forces of a body are named collectively its nature, and the sum of all beings is nature in general. What has its ground in the nature of the world, is natural ; what not, is supernatural, or a miracle. Wolff treats, lastly, of the perfection and imperfection of the world. The perfection of the world lies in this, that all things, whether simultaneous or successive, mutually agree. But as everything has its own special rules, each individual must dispense with as much perfection as is necessary to the symmetry of the whole, (c.) Rational psychology. — What in us is conscious of its own self, that is soul. The soid is conscious of other things also. Con- sciousness is distinct or indistinct. Distinct conscious- ness is thought. The soul is a simple, incorporeal sub- stance. It possesses the power of perceiving the world. In this sense a soul may be conceded to the lower ani- mals ; but a soul possessed of understanding and will, is spirit, and sjurit is the possession of man alone. A spirit which is in union with a body is properly a soul, and this is the distinction between man and the superior beings. The movements of the soul and those of the body mutually agree by reason of the pre-established harmony. The freedom of the human -wall consists in the power to choose which of two possible things appears the better. But the will does not decide without motives ; it always chooses that only which it esteems preferable. The will would appear thus to be compelled to act by its ideas ; but the understanding is not compelled to accept something as good or as bad ; and neither is the will, therefore, under compulsion, but free. Our soids, as simple, are indivisible, and therefore imperishable ; the lower animals, however, being devoid of understanding, are incapable after death of reflecting on their bypast THE GERMAN ILLUMINATION. 207 life. Only tlie human soul is capable of this, and only the human soul, therefore, is immoiiaL (d.) Natural Theology. — Wolfif here proves the existence of God by the cosmological argument. God might have created many worlds, but riori is evident from this, that every experience, if only to be able to take place, always presupposes time and space as already existent. I perceive something external to my- self : but this external to myself presupposes space. Further, I have sensations either together or after one another : these relations, it is obvious, presuppose the existence of time. (6.) Space and time are not on this account, however, notions, but forms of sensuous percep- tion, or simply perceptions. For general notions contain their particulars only under them, and not as parts in them ; whereas all particular spaces and all particular times are contained in space and time generally. (2.) In the transcendental exposition Kant makes good his indi- rect proof by showing that certain universally accepted sciences are inconceivable without assuming the a-priority of space and time. Pure mathematics is only possible, if space and time are pure and not empirical perceptions. Kant, therefore, placed the whole problem of the tran- scendental sesthetic in the single question. How are the pure mathematical sciences possible? Time and space, says Kant, are the element in which pure mathematics moves. But mathematics takes it for granted that its propositions are necessary and universaL Necessary and universal prepositions, however, can never originate in exjjerience ; they must have a foundation a priori : time and space, consequently, from which mathematics takes its principles, cannot possibly be given a posteriori, but necessarily a priori, as pure (non-empirical) intuitions or perceptions of — general not special — sense. There is, therefore, an a priori knowledge, a science founded on a pririori in sense. But the mind of man is not contented with the mere receptivity of sense : it does not merely receive objects, but applies to them its own spontaneity, embracing them in its intelligible forms, and striving to think them by means of its notions (still possibly in a.per- cepiiwe reference). The investigation of these a priori notions or forms of thought, 'lying ready in the understandingfrom the first,' like the forms of space and time in the sensible faculty, is the object of the transcendental analytic (which forms the first part of the transcendental logic). KAXT. 221 2. The transcendental Analytic. — The first task of the analytic will be the discovery of the pure intelligible notions. Aristotle has already attempted to construct such a table of categories ; but, instead of deriving them from a common principle, he lias merely empirically taken them up as they came to hand : he has committed the error also of including space and time among them, which, however, are not intelligible, but sensible forms. Would we have, then, a complete and systematic table of all pure notions, of all the a prion forms of thought, we must look about us for a principle. This principle, from which the pure notions are to be deduced, is the logical judgment. The primitive notions of imderstanding may be completely ascertained, if we will but completely ex- amine all the species of judgments. This examination Kant accomplishes by means of ordinary logic (which, however, is a priori in its nature as well as a demons- trated doctrine for thousands of years). In logic there are four species of judgments, namely, judgments of Quantity. Quality. Relation. Modality. Universal, Affirmative, Categorical, Problematic, Particular, Negative, Hypothetical, Assertoric, Singular. Infinite or Limitative. Disjunctive. Apodictic. From these judgments there ai-ises an equal number of primitive pure notions, the categories, namely, of Quantity. Quality. Relation. Modality. Totality, Keality, Substance and Accident, Possibility and Impossibility, Plurality, Negation, Causality and Dependence, Existence and Non-existence, Unity.* Limitation. Commimity (reciprocity). Necessity and Contingency. From these twelve categories, in combination with each other (or with the pure modi of sense), all the other pure or a 2^>'iori principles may be derived. The adduced categories having demonstrated themselves to be the a priori possession of the intellect, these two consequences toUow : (1.) These notions are a priori, and possess, therefore, a necessary and universal validity ; (2.) per se they are empty forms, and obtain filling only by percep- tions. But as our perception is only a sensuous one, these categories have validity only in application to sensuous perception, which, for its part, is raised into experience proper (perfected perception), only by being taken up into the pure notions (and so brought to an ob- * Kant himself (if. of P. B.) makes Einheit first, and Allhcit last 222 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. jective synthesis). And hero we arrive at a second question : How does this take place ? How are objects (at first mere blind blurs of special sensation, and the perceptive forms of general sense), subsumed under the em])ty intelligible forms (and so made, for the first time, properly objects) ? This snbsumption would have no difficulty if objects and notions were homogeneous. But they are not so. The objects, as coming iuto the mind through sense, are of sensuous nature. The question is, then. How can sensible objects be subsumed under intelligible notions ? how can the categories be applied to objects ? how can principles be assigned in regaixl to the manner in which we have to think (perceive) things in correspondence with the categories ? This appUcation cannot be direct, a third something must step between, which shall unite in itself as it were both natures, which, on one side, then, shall be pure, or a priori, and on the other side sensuous. But siich are the two pure perceptions of the transcen- dental aBsthetic, such are time and space, especially the former, and such are time and space alone. A quality of time, such as simultaneousness, is, aa a priori, on one side homogeneous with the categories ; while on another side, inasmuch as all objects can only be perceived in time, it is homogeneous with objects. In this reference Kant calls the quality of time a transcendental schema, and the use to which the mind puts it, he calls the transcendental schematism of the pure intellect. The schema is a pro- duct of imagination, which spontaneously determines inner sense so ; but the schema is not to be confounded with the mere image. The latter is always an indi\ddual perception ; the former, on the contrary, is a universal form which imagination produces as picture of a category, through which this category itself becomes capable of application to the appearance in sense. For this reason a schema can exist only in the mind, and can never be sensuously perceived. If, looking closer now at this schematism of the understanding, we ask for the tran- scendental time-quality of each category, the answer is this : (1.) The relation of time that constitutes the schema of quantity is se7-ies in time or number, — a conception that consists of the successive addition of like imit to like unit. The pure notion of magnitude I cannot otherwise conceive than by figuring in imagination a succession of units. If I arrest the movement in the very beginning, KANT. 223 I have uuity ; if I allow it to continue longer, plurality ; and if I allow it to continue without limit, totality. The notion of magnitude, then, is applicable to appearances of sense only through the scheme of this homogeneous succession. (2.) The contents of time constitute the schema of qvality. If I would apply the pure notion of reality (due to logical quality) to anything sensuous, I conceive to myself a filled time, a contained matter of time. Real is what tills time. Similarly to conceive the jJiire notion of negation, I figure an empty time. (3.) The categories of relation find their schemata in the order of time. For if I want to conceive a determinate relation, T call up always a determinate order of things in time. Substan- tiahty appears thus as permanence of reality in time, causality as regular sequence in time, reciprocity as regular co-existence of the states of one substance with the states of another. (-4.) The categories of modality derive their schemata from connexion with time as a whole, that is, from the manner in which an object belongs to time. The schema of possibility is agreement with the conditions of time in general ; the schema of actual- ity is existence in a certain time ; the schema of neces- sity is existence in all time. We are now, then, equipjjed with all the appliances necessary for the subsumption of sensible appearances (lihenomena) under intelligible notions, or for the applica- tion of the latter to the former, in order to show how, from this application, experience, coherent cognitive percep- tion, results. We have (1.) the various classes of categories, of those a priori notions, namely, which, operative for the whole sphere of perception, render possible a synthesis of perceptions in a whole of experience. And we have (2.) the schemata through which to apply them to the objects of sense. With every category and its schema there is conjoined a special mode of rediicing the objects of sense under a universal form of intellect, and, conse- quently, of bringing vmity into cognition. Or with every category there are principles of cognition, a i^riori rules, points of view, to which the objects of sense must be sub- jected in order to perfect them into a coherent experience. These principles, the most universal synthetic judgments ^egulati^'e of experience, are, in correspondenoe with the four categorical classes, as follows : — (1.) All objects of sense are, as only apprehended in time and space, in their form magnitudes, quanta, multiples, supplied by the 224 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. conception of a definite space or a definite time, and conse' quently extensive magnitudes or wholes consistent of parts successively added. All perception depends on our ima- gination apprehending objects of sense as extensive magnitudes in time and space. For this reason too, then, all perceptions will be in subjection to the a priori laws of extensive quantity, to those of geometrical construc- tion, for instance, or to that of the infinite divisibility, etc. These principles are the axioms of intuition or gene' ral perception — laws obligatory on perception as a whola (2.) In reference to reality, all objects of sense are inten- sive magnitudes, inasmuch as without a greater or less degree of impression on sense, no definite object, nothing real, could be at all perceived. This magnitude of reahty, the object of sensation, is merely intensive, or determin- able according to degree, for sensation is not anything extended either in space or time. All objects of percep- tion are intensive as well as extensive magnitudes, and subjected to the general laws of the one not less than to those of the other. All the powers and qualities of things, accordingly, possess an infinite variety of degrees, which may increase or decrease ; anything real has always some degree, however small; intensive may be independent of extensive magnitude, etc. These principles are the antici- pations of sensation, riiles which precede all sensation, and prescribe its general constitution. (3.) Experience is pos- sible only through the conception of a necessary connec- tion of perceptions ; without a necessary order of things and their mutual relation in time, there cannot be any knowledge of a definite system of perceptions, but only contingent individual perceptions, {a.) The first principle in this connexion is, that amid all the changes of pheno- mena, the substance remains the same. Where there ia nothing permanent, there cannot be any definite relation of time, any duration of time ; if in the conditions of a thing, I am to assume one certain condition as earlier or later, if I am to distinguish these conditions in time, I must oppose the thing itself to the conditions it under- goes, I must conceive it as persistent throughout all the vicissitudes of its own conditions, that is, I must con- ceive it as self -identical substance. (6.) The second prin- ciple here is. That all mutations obey the law of the connexion of cause and effect. The consequence of seve- ral conditions in time is only then a fixed and determin- ate one, when I assume the one as cause of the other, or KANT. 225 as necessarily preceding it in obedience to a rule or law, the other as effect of the former, or as necessarily succeed- ing it ; determinate succession iu time is only possible through the relation of causaUty ; but without a deter- minate succession in time there were no experience ; the causal relation consequently is a principle of aU empirical knowledge ; only this relation it is that produces con- nexion in things ; and without this relation we should only have incoherent subjective states. (c.) A third principle fiu'ther is, that all co-existent substances are in complete reciprocity ; only what acts in community is de- termined as inseparably simultaneous. These three prin- ciples are the analogies of experience, the rules for cognising the relations of things, without which there were for us mere piece-meal units, but no whole, no nature of things. (4.) The postulates of empirical thought correspond to the categories of modality, (a.) What agrees with the for- mal conditions of experience is possible, or may exist. (6.) What agrees with the material conditions of experi- ence is actual, or does exist, (c.) What is connected with actual existence through the universal conditions of ex- perience, is necessary, or must exist. These are the only possible and authentic synthetic judgments a priori, the first lines of all metaphysics. But it is to be rigidly itnderstood, that of all these notions and principles we can make only an empirical use, or that we can apply them, never to things in themselves, but always only to things as objects of possible experience. For the notion with- out object is an empty form ; an object can be found for it again only in perception ; and, lastly, perception, the pure perceptions of time and space, can acquire filling only through sensation. Without reference to human experience, the a priori notions and princiijles, therefore, are but a play of the imagination and understanding with their own ideas. Their special function is, that by their means we are able to spell actual perceptions, and so read them as experience. But here we encounter an illusion which it is hard to avoid. As, namely, the categories are not derived from sense, but have their origin a priori, it easily seems as if they might be extended beyond sense in their application also. But this idea, as said, is an illusion. Of a knowledge of things in themselves, of noumena, our notions are not capable, inasmuch as, for ih^iv filling, perception provides only appearances (phe- nomena), and the thing in itself is never present in any 226 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. possible experience ; our knowledge is restricted to phe- nomena alone. To have confounded the world of pheno- mena with the world of uoumena, this is the source of all the perplexities, errors, and contradictions of meta- physics hitherto. Besides the categories, which in strictness are intended only for experience, although, indeed, they have been often erroneously applied beyond the bounds of experi- ence, there are certain other similar notions which from the first are calculated for nothing else than to deceive, notions which have the express function to transgress the bounds of experience, and which therefore maybe named transcendent. These are the fundamental notions and propositions of former metaphysics. To investigate these notions, and to strip from them the false show of objec- tive knowledge, this is the business of the second part of the transcendental logic, or of the transcendental dialectic. 3. The transcendental Dialectic. — Reason is distinguished from understanding in the more restricted sense. As the understanding has its categories, reason has its ideas. As the understanding forms axioms from the notions, reason from the ideas forms principles in which the axioms of the understanding reach their ultimate unity. The first principle of reason is, to find for the conditioned knowledge of understanding the unconditioned, and so complete the unity of knowledge in general. Reason, then, is the facidty of the unconditioned, or of principles. As it refers, however, not to objects directly, but only to understanding, and to the judgments of understand- ing concerning objects, its true function is only an imma- nent one. Were the ultimate unity of reason understood, not merely in a transcendental sense, but assumed as an actual object of knowledge, this were, on our part, a transcendent use of reason ; we should be applying the categories to a knowledge of the unconditioned. In this transcendent or false use of the categories originates the transcendental show (Schein) which amuses us with the illusion of an enlargement of understanding beyond the boimds of experience. The detection of this transcenden- tal show is the object of the transcendental dialectic. The speculative ideas of reason, derived from the three forms of the logical syllogism, the categorical, the hypo- thetical, and the disjunctive, are themselves threefold : — ■ (1.) The psychological idea, theidea of the soul as a think- ingsubstance (the objectof preceding rational psychology). KANT. 227 (2. ) The cosmological idea, the idea of the world as totality of all pheuomena (the object of pi-eceding cosmo- logy). (3.) The theological idea, the idea of God as ultimate condition of the possibility of all things (the object of preceding rational theology) . , Through these ideas, in which reason attempts to apply the categories to the unconditioned, it gets only entangled in unavoidable show and deception. This transcenden- tal show, or this optical illusion of reason, displays itself variously in the various ideas. In the psychological ideas reason commits a simple paralogism {the paralogisms of pure reason) : in the cosmological ideas it is the fate of reason to find itself comijelled to make contradictory asser- tions (the antinomies) : and in the theological ideas reason is occupied with a void ideal {the ideal of pure reason). {a.) The psychological idea, or the paralogisms of pure reason. — What Kant propounds under this rubric is in- tended completely to subvert the traditional rational psychology. This doctrine viewed the soul as a psychi- cal thing with the attribute of immateriality ; as a simple substance with the attribute of indestructibility ; as an intellectual, numerically identical substance with the pre- dicate of personality ; as an inextended thinking substance with the predicate of immortality. All these statements are, according to Kant, subreptions, petitiones principii. They are derived one and all of them from the simple ' I think : ' but the ' I think ' is neither perception nor notion ; it is a mere consciousness, an act of the mind which attends, unites, supports all perceptions and notions. This act of thought now is falsely converted into a thing ; for the ego as subject, the existence of an ego as object, as soul, is substituted ; and what applies to the former analyti- cally is transferred to the latter synthetically. To be able to treat the ego as an object and apply categories iu its regard, it would have required to have been empiri- cally given in a perception, which is impossible. From this it follows, too, that the arguments for the immor- tality rest on sophisms. I can certainly ideally separate my thought from my body, but it by no means follows on that account that my thought, if really separated from the body, would continue. The result that Kant claims for his critique of rational psychology is this : There is no rational psychology as a doctrine which might pro- cure us an addition to the knowledge of ourselves, but 228 HISTOBY OF PHILOSOPHY. only as a discipline wliich sets insurmountable bounds to specidative reason in this field, in order, on the one hand, that we may not throw ourselves into the lap of a soul- less materialism, and on the other hand that we maj' not lose ourselves in the fanaticism of a spiritualism that is inappHcable to life. We may view this discipline, too, as admonishing us to regard the refusal of reason per- fectly to satisfy the curious in reference to questions that transcend this life as ahintof reason's own towithdrawour attempts at knowledge from fruitless extravagant specu- lation, and apply them to the all-fruitful practical field. {b.) The antinomies of cosmology. — For a complete list of the cosmological ideas, we require the cue of the cate- gories. In (1.) a quantitative reference to the world, time and space being the original quanta of all j^ercep- tion, it were necessary to determine something in regard to their totality. (2.) As regards quality, some conclu- sion were required in reference to the divisibility of mat- ter. (3.) On the question of relation, we must endeavour to find for all the effects in the world the complete series of their causes. (4.) As for modality, it were necessary to understand the contingent in its conditions, or, in other words, the absolute system of the dependency of the con- tingent in the phenomenal world. Reason, now, in at- tempting a determination of these problems, finds itself involved in contradiction with its own self. On each of the four points contradictory conclusions may be proved with equal validity. As (1.) the thesis : The world has a beginning in time and limits in space ; and the antithe- sis : The world has neither beginning in time nor limits in space. (2.) The thesis : Every compound consists of simples, nor does there exist in the world anything else than simples and their compounds ; and the antithesis : No compound consists of simples, nor does there exist in the world anything that is simple. (3.) The thesis : Causahty according to the laws of nature is not the only one from which the phenomena of the world may be collectively derived, there is required for their explanation a caus- ality of free-will as well ; and the antithesis : Free-will there is none, all happens in the world solely by law of nature. Lastly, (4.) the thesis : There is something in the world, which, either as its part or as its cause, is an absolutely necessary being ; and the antithesis : Neither within the world nor without the world does there exist any absolutely necessary being as its cause. Thia dia- KANT. i"2a kctical conflict of the cosmological ideas demoustrates its own nullity. (c.) The ideal of pure reason or the idea of God. — Kant shows first of all how reason attains to the idea of an all-perfect being, and then directs himself against the attempt of former metaphysicians to prove the existence of this all-perfect being. His critique of the traditional arguments for the existence of God is essen- tially as follows : — (1.) The ontolog'ical proof reasons thus : There is possible a being the most real of aU. But in all reality, existence is necessarily included ; if I deny this existence, then, I deny the possibility of a being the most real of all, which is self -contradictory. But, rejoins Kant, existence is nowise a reality, or a real predicate, that can be added to the notion of a thing ; existence is the position of a thing with all its qualities. But the suppression of existence suppresses not one single signifi- cate of a notion. Though, then, it possess every one of its significates, it does not on that account possess exist- ence also. Existence is nothing but the logical copiila, and nowise enriches the (logical) comprehension of the subject. A hundred actual crowns, for example, contain no more than a hundred possible ones : only for my means are the cases different. A being the most real of all may, consequently, be quite correctly thought as the most real of all, even when also thought as only possible, and not as actual. It was therefore something quite un- natural, and a mere revival of school-wit, to propose to dig out of an arbitrary idea the existence of its corre- spondent object. All the pains and trouble, then, of this famous argument are only lost ; and a man is no more likely to be made, by mere ideas, richer in knowledge, than a merchant in means by the addition to his balance of a few ciphers. While the ontological proof reasoned to necessary existence, (2.) the cosmological proof takes its departure from necessary existence. If anything exists, there must exist an absolutely necessary being as its cause. But I myself at all events exist, therefore there exists also an absolutely necessary being as my cause. This proof, so far, is now criticised by reference to the last of the cosmological antinomies. The conclu- sion perpetrates the error of inferring from the pheno- menal contingent a necessary being in excess of experience. But were this inference even allowed, it implies no God. It is reasoned further, then, that it is possible only for 230 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. that being to be absolutely necessary who is the sum of all reality. But if we invert this proposition and say, that being Avho is the sum of all reality is absolutely ne- cessary, we are back in the ontological proof, with which, then, the cosmological must fall also. The cosmological proof resorts to the stratagem of producing an old argu- ment in a new dress, in order to have the appearance of appealing to two witnesses. (3.) But if, in this way, neither notion nor experience is adequate to prove the existence of God, there is still left a third expedient, to begin, namely, with a specific experience and so deter- mine whether it may not be possible to conclude from the frame and order of the world to the existence of a supreme being. This is the object of the ^j/ti/sico- theological proof, which, taking its departure from the existence of design in nature, proceeds, in its main moments, thus : everywhere there is design ; design in itself is extrinsic or contingent as regards the things of this world ; there exists by necessity, therefore, a wise and intelligent cause of this design ; this necessary cause is necessarily also the most real being of all beings : the most real being of all beings has consequently necessary existence. Kant answers, the physico-theological proof is the oldest, the clearest, and the fittest for common sense ; but it is not apodictic. It infers from the form of the world a cause proportioned to the form. But even so we have only an originator of the form of the world, only an architect of the world : we have no originator of matter, we have no author and creator of the universe. In this strait a shift is made to the cosmological argu- ment again, and the originator of the form is conceived as the necessary being whom things imply. We have thus an absolute being whose perfection corresponds to the perfection of the universe. In the universe, how- ever, there is no absolute perfection ; we have thus, then, only a very perfect being; and for a most perfect being V\'e must have recourse once more to the ontological argument. The teleological argument, then, imphes the cosmological ; the cosmological the ontological ; and out of this circle the metaphysical demonstration is unable to escape. The ideal of a supreme being, accordingly, is nothing else than a regulative principle of reason which leads us to view all connexion in the world, as if it were due to an all-sufficient necessary cause, as source of unity and foundation of the rule of explanation : in which case, KANT. 231 indeed, it is unavoidable that in consequence of a tran- scendental subreption, we should mistake a merely for- mal principle for a constitutive one, and hjrpostasize it withal into a creative absolute iateUigence. In truth, however, a supreme being constitutes, so far as the specu- lative exercise of reason is concerned, a mere but faiilt- less ideal, a notion which is the close and the crown of human knowledge, but whose objective realitj', never- theless, can, with apodictic certainty, neither be proved nor refuted. The preceding critique of the ideas of reason leaves one more question to answer. If these ideas are without an objective value, why do they exist in us? Being necessary, they will possess, of course, their own good reason. And this good reason has just been pointed out on occasion of the theological idea. Though not consti- tutive, they are regulative principles. In arranging our mental faculties, we never succeed better than when we proceed ' as if ' there were a soul. The cosmological idea gives us a hint to regard the world ' as if ' the series of causes were infinite, without exclusion however of an in- telligent cause. The theological idea enables us to con- sider the entire world-complex under the point of view of an organized imitj'. In this way, then, these ideas, if not constitutive principles to extend our knowledge be- yond the bounds of experience, are regulative principles to arrange experience and reduce it under certain hypo- thetical unities. If they compose not an organon for the discovery of truth, they stiU constitute — the whole three of them, psychological, cosmological, and theological — a canon for the simplification and systematization of our collective experiences. Besides their regulative import, the ideas possess also a practical one. There is a species of certainty, which, though not objectively, but only subjectively competent, is pre-eminently of a practical nature, and is called belief or conviction. If the liberty of the will, the immortality of the soul, and the existence of God, are three cardinal tenets, such that, though not necessary for knowledge, they ai-e stiU urgently pressed on us by reason, then wdthout doubt they will have their own value in the practical sphere as regards moral conviction. This con- viction is not logical, but moral certainty. As it i-ests, then, entirely on subjective grounds of the moral feeling, I cannot say, It is morally certain, but only, I am morally 232 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. certain that there is a God, etc That is to say, belief in God and another workl is so interwoven with my moral feeling, that, as little as I run risk of losing this latter, so little am I apprehensive of being deprived of the for- mer. With this we are ah-eady within the sphere of practical reason. w*,jt ^^' — ^^^ Kritik of Practical Reason. With the Kritik of Practical Reason we enter an entirely different world, in which reason is amply to recover all that has been lost in the theoretical sphere. The problem now is essentially, almost diametrically, different from the problem then. The speculative Kritik had to examine whether pure reason is adequate to an a priori knowledge of objects : the object of the practical Kritik is to exa- mine whether pure reason is capable of an a priori deter- mination of the will in reference to objects. The question of the former concerned the a priori cognisableness of objects : that of the latter concerns, not the cognisableness of objects, but the motives of the will, and all that is capable of being known in the same connexion. All therefore, in the Kritik of Practical Reason presents itself in an order precisely the reverse of the Kritik of Pure Reason. The primitive determinants of cognition are perceptions ; those of volition are principles and notions. The Kritik of Practical Reason must begin, therefore, with the moral principles, and, only after their establishment, proceed to any question of the relation of practical reason to sense. The results, too, of these two Kritiken are opposed the one to the other. If in the theoretical sphere, because reason that sought the thing iu itself be- came transcendent (perceptionless), the ideas remained only on the whole negative, the contrary is now the case in the practical sphere. In this sphere the ideas demon- strate themselves true and certain, in a manner direct and immanent, without once quitting the Umits of self- consciousness and inner experience. The question here is of the relation of reason, not to outer things, but to an internal element, the will. And the result is, tliat reason is found to be capable of influencing the will purely from its own self, and hence now the ideas of free-will, immor- tality, and God, recover the certainty which theoretical reason had been unable to preserve to them. That there is a determination of the will by pure rea- KANT. 233 son, or that reason has practical reality, this is not imme- diately certaiu, inasmncli as the actions of men appear conditioned, in the iii'st instance, by the sensuous motives of pleasure and pain, of passion and inclination. The Kritik of Practical Reason will require to examine, then, whether these determinants of will are actually the only ones, or whether there is not also a higher active faculty in which not sense, but reason, gives law, and where wiU follows not mere incentives from without, but obeys in pure freedom a higher practical principle from within. The demonstration of aU this belongs to the analytic of practical reason, while to the dialectic of practical reason it belongs to consider and bring to resolution the anti- nomies which result from the relation between the prac- tical authority of pure reason, and that of the empirical instigations of sense. 1. Analytic. — The reality of a higher active faculty in us, is made certain by the fact of the moral law, which is nothing else than a law spontaneously imposed on the will by reason itself. The moral law stands high above the lower active faculty in us, and, with an in- ward irresistible necessity, orders us, in independence of every instigation of sense, to follow it absolutely and un- conditionally. AU other practical laws relate solely to the empirical ends of pleasure and happiness ; but the moral law pays no respect to these, and demands that we also shall pay them none. The moral law is no hypo- thetical imperative that issues only prescripts of profit for empirical ends ; it is a categorical imperative, a law, universal and binding on every rational will. It can de- rive consequently only from reason, not from animal will, and not from individual self-wUl ; only from pure reason, too, and not from reason empirically conditioned : it can only be a commandment of the autonomous, one, and universal reason. In the moral law, therefore, reason demonstrates itself as practical, reason has direct reality in it. The moral law it is that shows pure reason to be no mere idea, but a power actually deter- minative of will and action. This law it is, also, that procures perfect certainty and truth for another idea, the idea of free-will. The moral law says, ' Thou canst, for thou shouldst,' and assures us thus of our own freedom, as indeed it is, in its own nature, nothing but the wiU itself, the will in freedom from aU sensuous matter of desire, and constituting therefore our very highest la-"* 234 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. of action. But now tliere is tlie closer question, What^ then, is it that practical reason categorically commands ? For an answer to this question we must first consider the empirical will, the natural side of mankind. Empirical will consists in the act of volition being directed to an object in consequence of a pleasure felt in it by the subject ; and this pleasure again roots in the nature of the subject, in the susceptibility for this or that, in natural desires, etc. Under this empirical will must be ranked all appetition for any precise object, or all mate- rial volition ; for nothing can be an object of subjective will unless there exist a natural sensibility in conse- quence of which the object is not indifferent, but suggests ])leasure to the subject. All material motives of will come under the principle of agreeableness or felicity, or, in the subject, of self-love. The will, so far as it follows such, is dependent on, and determined by, empirical natural ends, and is, consequently, not autonomous, but heteronomous. But from this it follows that any law of reason unconditionally obligatory on all rational beings, must be totally distinct from all material principles, must contain, indeed, nothing material whatever. Material principles are of empirical, contingent, variable nature. For men are not at one about pleasure and pain, what is pleasant to one being uni^leasant to another ; and even were they at one in this respect, the agreement would only be contingent. Material motives, consequently, are not capable, like laws, of being considered binding on every one ; every single subject is at liberty to select other motives. Subjective rules of action are named by Kant maxims of volition, and he censures those moralists who set lip siich maxims as universal moral principles. Maxims, nevertheless, though not the supreme prin- ciple of morahty, are yet necessary to the autonomy of the will, as without them there were no definite object of action. Only imion of the two sides, then, can con- duct us to a true principle of morals. To that end the maxims must be relieved of their limitation, and enlarged into the form of universal laws of reason. Only those maxims must be adopted as motives which are suscep- tible of being made universal laws of reason. The supreme j)rinciple of morals is consequently this : act so that the maxim of your will may be capable of being regarded as a principle of universal validity, or so that from the thought of your maxim as a law universally obeyed, no KANT. 235 contradiction results. All material moral principles, aa only of empirical, sensuous, heterouomous nature, are ex- cluded by this formal moral principle : in it there is a law provided that raises the will above the lower motives, a law that reduces all wills to unanimity, a law that, binding on all rational beings, is consequently the one true law of reason itself. A fiu-ther question now is, what induces the will to act according to this supreme law of reason ? The answer of Kant is, that the only spring of human will must be the moral law itself, or respect for it. An action in accord- ance with the law, but only for the sake of felicity or sensuous inclination, and not purely for the sake of the law itself, gives rise to mere legality, not to morality. The inclinations of sense, taken collectively, are self-love and self-conceit. The former is restricted by the moral law, the latter completely quashed. Whatever quells our self-conceit, however, whatever humbles us, must appear to us extremely estimaljle. Such being the action of the moral law, then, respect will be the positive feel- ing entertained by us in regard of the moral law. This respect is indeed a feeling, but it is no feeling of mere sense, no pathological feeling ; on the contrary, it is an intellectual feeling produced by consciousness of the prac- tical law of reason, and is directly opposed to the other. This respect again is, on one side, as subjection to law, pain, but on the other side, as the subjection is that of our own reason, pleasure. Kespect, awe, is the only feehng which beseems man in presence of the moral law. Natural love to it is not to be expected from men who, as sensuous beings, are subjected to many passions which resist the law : love to the law, then, can only be re- garded as a mere ideal. The moral piirism of Kant — that is, his anxiety to purge the motives of action from all the greeds of sense — ends thus in rigorism, or the gloomy ^^ew that duty can only be reluctantly performed. It is this exaggeration that is pointed to in a well-known Xeniiim of Schiller's. The following scruple of conscience, namely, ' Willing serve I my friends all, but do it, alas, with affection ; And so gnaws me my heart, that I'm not virtuous yet — Schiller answers thus, 'Help, except this, there is none: you must strive with might tj contemn them, And with horror perform then what the law may enjoin.' 236 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 2. Dialectic. — Pure reason must always have its dia- lectic, for it lies in its nature to demand the uncondi- tioned for the given conditioned. Thus, too, then, practical reason demands for the conditioned goods which influence the action ot man, an unconditioned supreme good. What is this siLmmum bonum ? If the ultimate good, the fundamental condition of all other goods be understood by it, then it is virtue. But virtue is no completed good, for finite rational beings require, as sentient, felicity. The greatest good is then only complete, therefore, when the greatest feUcity is united with tlie greatest virtue. How now are these two moments of the greatest good mutually related ? Are they analytically or synthetically combined ? The for- mer was the opinion of the greater number of the ancient, especially Greek, moral philosophers. They either re- garded felicity, Hke the Stoics, as accidental moment in virtue, or virtue, like the Epicureans, as accidental moment in felicity. Felicity, said the Stoics, is the con- sciousness of virtue ; virtue, said the Epicureans, is the consciousness of the maxim that leads to fehcity. But, says Kant, an analytic uuion is impossible in the case of two such heterogeneous notions. A synthetic union, con- sequently, can alone take place between them, a causal union, namely, in such manner that the one is cause and the other efifect. Practical reason must regard such a i-elation as its greatest good, and must propose the thesis, therefore : virtue and felicity are to be correspondently connected as cause and effect. But this thesis founders at once on actual fact. Neither of them is the direct cause of the other. Neither is the desire of fehcity motive to virtue, nor is virtue the efficient cause of feli- city. Hence the antithesis : virtue and felicity are not necessarily correspondent, and are not mutually related as cause and effect. Kant finds the solution of this anti- nomy in the distinction between the sensible and the intelligible world. In the world of sense virtue and feli- city are certainly not correspondent ; but rational beings, noumenally, are citizens of a supersensuous world where conflict between virtue and felicity does not exist. Here felicity is always adequate to virtue ; and with his trans- lation into the supersensuous world man may expect as well the realization of the supreme good. But, as ob- served, the supreme good has two constituents ; (1.) supreme virtue, and (2.) supreme felicity. The necessary KANT. 237 realization of the first moment postulates the immortality of the soul, that of the second the existence of God. (1.) For the supreme good, there is required in the jBrst place perfected virtue, holiness. But now no sensuous being can be holy. A being composed of reason and sense is only capable of approaching in an infinite series nearer to holiness as to an ideaL But such infinite pro- gress is only possible in an infinite duration of personal existence. If then the supreme good is to be realized, the soul's immortality must be presupposed. (2.) For the supreme good there is required, in the second place, perfected felicity. Felicity is the condition of a rational being in the world, for whom everything happens according to his wish and his will. But this can only be realized when entire nature agrees with his ob- jects, and this is not the case. As active beings we are not causes of nature, and the moral law affords no ground for a connexion of moraUty and felicity. Still we ought to, or we are to endeavour to promote the supreme good. It miist be possible therefore. The necessary union of these two moments is consequently postulated, that is to say, the existence of a cause of natui'e distinct from nature, and which will constitute the ground of this union. A being must exist, as com- mon cause of the natural and the moral woi'ld ; such a being withal as knows our minds, an intelligence, and, according to this intelligence, distributes to us felicity. Such a being is God, Thus from practical reason there flow the idea of im- mortahty and the idea of God, as previously the idea of free-will. The idea of free-will derived its reality from the possibility of the moral law ; the idea of immortality derives its reality from the possibility of perfected virtue, and that of God from the necessity of perfected felicity. These three ideas, therefore, which to speculative reason were insoluble problems, have acquired now, in the field of practical reason, a firmer basis. Nevertheless, they are not even now theoretical dogmas, but, as Kant names them, practical postulates, necessary presuppositions of moral action. My theoretical knowledge is not extended by them : I know now only that there are objects corre- spondent to these ideas, but of these objects I know no- thing more. Of God, for example, we possess and we know no more than this idea itself. Should we construct a theory of the superseusuous founded on categories alone, K 238 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. we should only convert theology into a magic lantern of chimeras. Practical reason, nevertheless, has still pro- cured lis certainty as regards the objective reality of these ideas which theoretical reason was obhged to leave in abeyance, and so far therefore the former has the ad- vantage. This respective position of the two faculties haa been wisely calculated in reference to the nature and destiny of man. For the ideas of God and immortality remaining dubious and dark theoretically, introduce not any impurity into our moral principles through fear oi hope, but leave free scope for awe of the law. So far the Kantian critique of practical reason. By way of appendix we may here give a summary of Kant's religious views as expressed in his work, Religion within the Limits of Pure Reason. The fundamental thought of this work is the reduction of rehgion to morals. Between morals and religion there may exist a double relation : either the former founds on the latter, or the latter on the former. In the first case, however, fear and hope woidd become the motives of moral action : there i-e- mains for us, then, only the second way. Morality leads necessarily to religion, for the supreme good is neces- sarily the ideal of reason, and is capable of being realized only by God ; but rehgion must not by any means alone impel us to \'irtue, for the idea of God ought never to become a mere moral motive. Religion is to Kant the recognition of all our duties as commandments of God. It is revealed religion when through it I must first of all know that something is a commandment of God before I can also know that it is my duty : it is natural religion when I miist first of all know that something is a duty before I can know that it is a commandment of God. A church is an ethical community which has for object the fulfilment and the greatest possible reahzation of the moral prescripts, — an association of such as with united efforts will resist sin and advance moralitj'. The church, so far as it is not an object of possible experience, is the in\'isible church : it is then a mere idea of the union of all good men under the moral government of God. The visible church, again, is that chnrch which represents the kingdom of God on earth, so far as that is possible by man. The requisites, and consequently the criteria of the true visible church (which dispose themselves according to the table of the categories, because this, church is one given in experience), ai'e as follows: (a.) With reference KANT. 239 to quantiti/, the chiirch must possess totality or univer- sality, and, though divided indeed into contingeDt opiuions, mi;st still be established on such principles as necessarily unite all these opinions in a single church. (h.) The quality of the true ^'isible church is pwn'i?,', as it is animated only by moral motives at the same time that it is purified as well from the fatuousness of superstition as from the mania of fanaticism. (c.) The relation of the members of the church reciprocally rests on the principle of liberty. The church is a free state, therefore ; neither a hierarchy nor a democracy, but a free, universal, permanent spiritual union, {d.) In modality, the church aims at immutability of constitu- tion. The laws themselves must not be changed, though the right of modification be reserved for more contingent arrangements that concern administration alone. What alone is able to constitute the foundation of a universal church is moral, rational behef, for only such belief is capable of being communicated to every one with con- viction. But in consequence of the peculiar weakness of human natui-e, this pure belief can never be counted on as the sole foundation of a church ; for it is not easy to convince mankind that striving to virtue, a good Hfe, is all that is required by God : they suj^pose always that they must render to God a particular traditional worship, in regard to which all the merit depends on the render- ing of it. For the establishment of a church, therefore, there is still necessary an historical and statutory belief that is founded on certain facts. This is the so-called creed. In every church, then, there are two elements, the pure moral, rational belief, and the historico-statu- tory creed. On the relation of these two elements it depends, whether a church shall possess worth or not. The statutory is in function always only the vehicle of the moral element. Whenever the statutory element becomes an independent object, claims an independent authority, the church sinks into corruption and unreason ; whenever the church assumes the pure belief of reason it is in the way to the kingdom of God. This is the distinc- tion between true worship and false worship, religion and priestcraft. The dogma has value only so far as it has a moral core. Without this moral belief the apostle Paul himself would have hardly put faith in the legends of the creed. The doctrine of the Trinity, for example, con- tains, in the letter, absolutely nothing for practice. 240 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. Whether three or ten persons are to be worshipped in the Godhead, is indiflferent, inasmuch as no difference of rule results thence for the conduct of life. Even the Bible and the interpretation of the Bible are to be placed under the moi'al point of view. The revealed documents must be interpreted in accordance with the universal rules of rational religion. Reason is in matters of reli- gion the supreme interpreter of Scriptui'e. Such inter- pretation may in reference to the text often appear forced : nevertheless it must be preferred to such a literal inter- pretation as yields nothing for morality, or is directly opposed to ethical principles. The possibility of such moral interjjretation, without distortion of the literal sense, lies in the fact of the instinct to moral religion having been always present in the reason of man. The representations of the Bible have only to be divested of their mystical husk (and Kant has given examples of this in his moral interpretations of the most impor- tant dogmas) in order to obtain a universal rational sense. The historical element of the sacred writ- ings is in itself indifferent. The riper reason becomes, the more it is capable of being satisfied with the exclu- sive moral interpretation, the less indispensable become the statutory dogmas of the creed. The transition of the creed into a purely rational faith, is the coming of the kingdom of God, towards which, however, we can draw near only in an infinite progress. The actual realization of the kingdom of God is the end of the world, the close of history. III. — The Kritik of Judgment. Kant sketches the notion of this science as follows. The two mental faculties which have been hitherto con- sidered, are those of cognition and volition. As regards the former (cognition), that only understanding is pos- sessed of constitutive a priori principles, was proved in the Kritik of Pure Reason. As regards the latter (voli- tion), that only reason is possessed of constitutive a jjviori principles, was proved in the Kritik of Practical Reason. "Whether judgment now, as middle-term be- tween understanding and reason, supplies its object, the emotion of pleasure and pain, as middle-term between cognition and volition, with constitutive (not merely regu- lative) a priori principles of its own, — this is what tho KANT. 241 Kritik of Judgment lias to determine. This faculty, judgment, is by virtue of its peculiar function a middle- term between understanding (simple apprehension) as faculty of notions, and reason (reasoning) as faculty of principles (syllogistic premises). Theoretical reason has taught us to comprehend the world only according to Jaws of nature : practical reason has disclosed to us a moral world in which all is under the control of liberty. There were, then, aninsurmountablecleft between the kingdom of nature and the kingdom of liberty (free-will), should judgment prove unable to replace this cleft by the notion of a common ground of unity for both. The warrant of such expectation lies in the notion of judgment itself. The function of this faculty being to think the particular as contained under a imiversal, it will naturally refer the empu'ical pluraUty of nature to a supersensual transcen- dental principle as ground of unity to this plurality. This principle, as object of judgment, will, therefore, be the notion of design in natui-e, for design is nothing else than this supersensual unity which constitutes the reason of the reality of objects. Then all design, all reahzation of a proposed end, being attended with satisfaction, it will be easily understood why judgment has been said to contain the laws for the emotion of satisfaction and dis- satisfaction. Adaptation in nature, however, may be either subjec- tively or objectively conceived. In the first case, I ex- perience pleasure or pain directly on the presentation of an object, and before I have formed any notion of it. An emotion of this nature can be referred only to a har- monious relation subsisting between the form of the object and the faculty that perceives it. Judgment in this subjective aspect is cesthctic judgment. In the second case I form first of all a notion of the object, and then decide whether the object corresponds to this notion. That my perception should find a flower beautiful, it is not necessary that I should have formed beforehand a notion of this flower. But to find contrivance in the flower, to that a notion is necessary. Judgment as the faculty cognisant of objective adaptation is named teleo- logical judgment. 1. Critique of cestlietic judgment. — {a.) Analytic. — The analj'tic of esthetic judgment is divided into two prin- cipal parts, the analytic of the beautiful and the analytic of the sublime. 242 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. To discover on wliat the naming of an object beautiful jlepends, we must analyse the judgments of Taste as the faculty that is cognisant of the beautiful. (1.) In quality the beautiful is the object of a satisfaction that is wholly disinterested. This disinterestedness distinguishes the satisfaction of the beautiful as well from that of the agreeable as from that of the good. In the agreeable and in the good also, I am interested. In the case of the agreeable my satisfaction is accompanied by a feeling of desire. My satisfaction iu the good is at the same time motive to my will for the realization of it. Only in the case of the beautiful is my satisfaction free from interest- edness. (2.) In quantity the beautiful gives a universal satisfaction. As regards the agreeable every one is con- vinced that his pleasure in it is only a personal one ; but whoever says, This picture is beautiful, expects every one else to find it so. Nevertheless, this decision of taste does not arise from notions ; its universality, there- fore, is merely subjective. My judgment is not that all objects of a class are beautiful, but that a certain parti- cular object will appear beautiful to all beholders. The judgments of taste are singular judgments. (3.) As re- gards relation the beautiful is that in which we find the form of adaptation without conceiving at the same time any particular end of this adaptation. (4.) In modality, the beautiful is, without notion, object of a necessary satis- faction. Every consciousness may be at least conceived as capable of causing pleasure. The agreeable actually does cause pleasiire. But the beautiful must cause plea- sure. The necessity of the aesthetic judgment, then, is a necessity of the agreement of all in a judgment which is regarded as example of a universal rule, which rule agaiu it is impossible to assign. The subjective principle which underlies the judgments of taste, therefore, is a sensus communis that determines only by feelings and not by notions what should please or displease. Sublime is what is absolutely or beyond all comparison great, — that compared with which all else is small. But there is nothing in nature that may not be surpassed by yet a greater. The infinite alone is absolutely great, and the infinite is only to be found in om-selves as idea. The sublime is not properly in nature, then, but is only reflected from the mind to nature. We call that sublime in nature M^hich awakens in us the idea of the infinite. As with the beautifub it is principally quality that is in KANT. 243 question, so witli the sublime it is principally quantity ; and this quantity is either magnitude of extension (the mathematical sublime) or magnitude of power (the dyna- mical sublime). In the subUme the satisfaction concerns formlessness rather than form. The sublime excites a powerfiU mental emotion, and gives pleasure only through pain, or by occasioning a momentary feeling of obstructed vitality. The satisfaction of the sublime, then, is not so much positive pleasure, as rather -vvonder and awe, — what may be called negative pleasure. The moments of the aesthetic appreciation of the sublime are the same as in that of the beautiful. (1.) In quantitative reference that is sublime which is absolutely great, and in comparison with which all else is small. The eesthetic estimation of magnitude, however, does not lie in number but in the mere perception of the subject. The magnitude of a natural object, in the comprehension of which imagina- tion vainly exerts its entire facidty, infers a supersensual substrate great beyond aU measure of sense, and with which properly the feeling of the sublime is connected. It is not the object, the raging sea, for example, that is sublime, but rather the mental emotion of him Avho contemplates it. (2.) As regards quality, the subUme creates not pleasure like the beautiful, but rather in the first instance pain, and only through pain pleasure. The feeHng of the inadequacy of imagination in the sesthetic estimation of magnitude produces pain ; but again the consciousness of our independent reason in its superiority to imagination produces pleasure. Sublime, then, in this respect is that which in its opposition to the interest of the senses directly pleases. (3.) As con- cerns relation, the sublime causes nature to appear as a power in relation to which we possess nevertheless a consciousness of our superiority. (4.) As for modality, our judgments in reference to the sublime are as neces- sarily valid as those in reference to the beautiful — with this difference only, that the former are accepted by others with greater difficulty than the latter, because for our sense of the sublime culture and developed moral ideas are necessary. (b.) Dialectic. — A dialectic of sesthetic judgment is pos- sible, like every other dialectic, only where there are judgments that pretend to an a priori imiversality. For dialectic consists in the contrariety of such judgments. The antinomy of the principles of taste depends on the 244 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. two opposed momenta of tlae relative judgment, that it is purely subjective, and yet claims universality. Hence the two commonplaces : In matters of taste there can be no dispute ; and, Tastes differ. This gives rise to the follow- ing antinomy, (1.) Thesis : The judgment of taste is not founded on notions, otherwise dispute were possible (proofs might be led). (2.) Antithesis : The judgment of taste is founded on notions, otherwise, despite its diver- sity, dispute were impossible. This antinomy, says Kant, is only an apparent one, and disappears as soon as the two propositions are more precisely understood. The thesis, namely, should run so : The judgment of taste is not founded on definite notions, or, it is not susceptible of strict proof ; the antithesis again so : The judgment of taste is founded on a notion ; but an indefinite notion, that, namely, of a supersensual substrate of the pheno- mena. In this construction there is no longer any con- tradiction between the two propositions. Now, at the close of the inquiry, an answer is possible for the question : does the adaptation of things to our judgment of them (their beauty and subhmity), lie in us or in them ? .Esthetic realism assumes that the supreme cause of nature has willed the existence of things which should appear to imagination as beautiful and subhme. The organized forms are the principal witnesses for this view. But, again, even in its merely mechanical forms, nature seems to testify such a tendency to beauty, that it is possible to believe in a mere mechanical production even for those more perfect forms as weU, and the adap- tation, consequently, would lie, not in nature, but in us. This is the position of idealism, and renders possible an explanation of the capacity to pronounce a priori on the beautiful and the subhme. The highest mode of view- ing the aesthetic element, however, is to regard it as a symbol of the moral good. And thus, in the end, taste, like religion, is placed by Kant as a corollary to morals. 2. Critique of teleological judgment. — In the preced- ing, the subjectively aesthetic adaptation of the objects of nature has been considered. But these objects stand to each other also in a relation of adaptation. This ob- jective adaptation is now to be the consideration of teleo- logical judgment. (a.) Analytic of teleological judgment. — This analytic has to determine the kinds of objective (material) adap- tation. These are two : an external, and an internal KANT. 245 External adaptation, as it designates merely tlie utility of one thing for another, is ouly something relative. The sand, for example, deposited on the sea-shore is good for pine-trees. For animals to live on the earth, the latter must produce the necessary nourishment, etc. These examjiles of external adaptation show that the means in such a case possess not adaptation in themselves, but only contingently. The sand is not understood in conse- quence of it being said that it is means for pine-trees : it is intelligible ^le?' se quite apart from any notion of use. The earth produces not food because men must neces- sarily live on the earth. In short, this external or rela- tive adaptation is to be understood by a reference to the mechanism of natur-e alone. Not so the internal adap- tation, which exhibits itself principally in the organic products of natiire. These are so constituted that each of their parts is end, and each also instrument or means. In the generative process the product of nature generates itself as a genus ; in the process of growth the product of nature produces itself as an individual ; in the pro- cess of formation each part of the individual produces its own self. This organism of nature is inexplicable by mere mechanical causes : it admits of being explained only teleologically, or by means of final causes. (b.) Dialectic. — This antithesis of natural mechanism and of teleology, it is the business of the dialectic of teleological judgment to reconcile. On the one side we liave the thesis : All production of material things must be held possible only according to mechanical laws. On the other side the antithesis is : Some products of material nature cannot be held possible on the mere supposition of mechanical laws, but demand for their explanation the existence of final causes. If these two propositions were assumed as constitutive (objective) principles for the possibility of objects themselves, they would contradict each other ; but as mere regidative (subjective) principles for the investigation of nature they are not contradictory. Earlier systems treated the notion of design in natm-e dogmatically ; they either affirmed or denied it as — with reference to nature — an actual thing in itself. We, however, aware that teleo- logy is only a regulative principle, are indifferent as to whether internal adaptation belongs to nature or not : we maintain only that our judgment must regard nature as implying design. We look the notion of design, so to 246 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. speak, into nature, leaving it quite undetermined whether, perhaps, another understanding, not discursive like our own, might not find any such notion quite unnecessary for the comprehension of nature. Oixrs is a discursive understanding, that, proceeding ever from the parts, con- ceives the whole as product of them. The organic pro- ducts of nature, therefore, in which, on the contrary, the whole is originating principle and prius of the parts, it cannot otherwise conceive than under the point of view of the notion of design. Were there, however, an in- tuitive understanding which should recognise in the uni- versal the particular, in the whole the parts, as already co-determined, such an understanding would, without resorting to the notion of design, comprehend the whole of nature by reference to a single principle. If Kant had been but serious with this notion of an intuitive understanding, as well as with the notion of immanent adaptation, he would have surmounted in principle the position of subjective idealism, to escape from which he had made several attempts in his Kritik of Judgment. In effect, however, he has only casually suggested these ideas, and left their demonstration to hia successors. XXXIX. — Transition to the Post-Kantian Philosophy. THE Kantian philosophy soon acquired in Germany an almost absolute sovereignty. The imposing bold- ness of its general position, the novelty of its results, the fertility of its principles, the moral earnestness of its view of the universe, above all, the spirit of liberty and moral autonomy which breathed in it, and which power- fully supported the tendencies of the time, procured it a reception equally enthusiastic and universaL It excited an interest in philosophical inquiries that extended itself throughoiit all the educated classes, and in such propor- tions as were never before witnessed in any other nation. In a short time a numerous school sprang up around it, and there were soon few universities in Germany where it was not represented by talented discijiles. It pre- sently exerted an important influence on all departments of science and literature, particularly on theology, morals, and the liberal sciences (Schiller). The majority of the writers, however, of the Kantian school, confine them- THE POST-KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY. 247 selves to popular explanatory applications of the received doctrine, and even the most talented and independent of the supporters or improvers of the Critical Philosophy (as Heinhold, 1758-1813; Bardlli, 1761-1808; Schulze, Beck, Fries, Kriuj, Boutenoech), sought only to find for it a firmer basis of support, or to remove from it certain faults and defects, or to demonstrate its position generally in a manner more logical and exact. Among those who continued and further developed the Kantian philosophy there are only two men, Fichte and Herbart, who have earned the prominence of an epoch-making position, and the praise of actual progress ; while amongst its oppo- nents (Hamann, Herder), only one man, Jacobi, was of philosophical importance. These three philosophers, therefore, are next to be considered ; but, before enter- ing on the exacter analysis, we shall premise a brief pre- liminary characterization of their relation to Kant. (1.) Kant had critically annihilated dogmatism; his Kritik of Pure Reason had for result the theoretic inde- monstrability of the three ideas of reason, — God, free- will, and immortality. True, he had recalled in a practi- cal interest (as postulates of practical reason), these very ideas which had just been banished in a theoretical one. But as postulates, as mere practical presuppositions, they afford no theoretic certainty, and remain exposed to doubt. In order to remove this uncertainty, this despair of knowledge, which appeared to be the end of the Kantian philosophy, Jacobi, a younger contemporary of Kant's, opposed as antithesis to the position of criticism the position of the philosophy of belief. Certainly the highest ideas of reason, the eternal, the divine, are not to be attained or proved by means of demonstration : but this indemonstrableness, this inaccessibleness, is the very nature of the divine. For certain apprehension of the highest, of what lies beyond understanding, there is but one organ, — feelinsr. In feeling therefore, in in- tuitive cognition, in belief, Jacobi expected to find that certainty which Kant had in vain laboured to attain through discursive thought. (2.) Fichte bears to the Kantian philosophy the rela- tion of direct consequence, as Jacobi that of antithesis. The dualism of Kant, which represents the ego, now as theoretical ego in subjection to the external world, and now as practical ego in superiority to it, in other words, now as recei)tive and now as spontaneous in regard of 248 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. objectivity— this dualism Ficlite eliminated by being in earnest -with the primacy of practical reason, by regard- ing reason as exclusively practical, as will, as spontaneity, and by conceiving its theoretical, receptive relation to objectivity as only lessened power, as only a limitation imposed by reason itself. For reason, so far as it is practical, objectivity there is none unless what shall be due to itself. The will knows no fixed existence, but only what is to be or ought to be. That truth is any definite object is thus denied, and the unknown thing- in-itself must of itself, as an unreal shadow, fall to the ground. * All that is, is ego,' this is the principle of the Fichtian system ; which system, therefore, exhibits sub- jective idealism in its conseqiience and completion. (3.) Whilst Fichte's subjective idealism found its con- tinuation in the objective idealism of ScheUing, and in the absolute idealism of Hegel, there sprang up contem- poraneously with these systems a third result of the criticism of Kant, the philosophy of Herhart, It con- nects, however, rather subjectivo-genetically than ob- jectivo-historically with the philosophy of Kant, and occupies in principle, for the rest, all historical conti- nuity being broken down in its regard, only an isolated position. Its general basis is to this extent Kantian, that it also adopts for problem, a critical investigation and construction of subjective experience. We have given it a place between Fichte and ScheUing. XL. — Jacohl. FRIEDRICH HEmmCH JACOBI was born in 174.3 at Diisseldorf. His father intended him for busi- ness. After having studied at Geneva (and acquired there a taste for philosophy), he undertook the business of his father ; but gave it up again on becoming Jiilich-Bergian acting councillor of the exchequer and commissioner of customs, as well as privy councillor at Diisseldorf. At Diisseldorf, or at his country-seat, Pempelfoi-t, in the neighbourhood, he spent the greater part of his life ; de- voting himself, in by-hours, with zeal and interest, to philosophy ; gathering around him, from time to time, in his summer quarters, a variety of friends ; keeping up his connexion with the absent ones by means of a constant correspondence; and renewing old acquaint- JACOB I. 249 anceships, or forming fresh ones, througli occasional journeys. In the year 1804 he was called to the newly- founded Academy of Sciences at Munich, where, in 1819, having been President of the Academy from 1807, he died. Jacobi was amiable and talented, a man of action, and a poet as well as a philosopher ; hence in the last capacity his want of logical order and precision in the expression of thought. His writings form not a syste- matic whole ; but are in their character occasional, com- posed ' rhapsodically, as the grasshopper jumps,' and generally in the shape of letters, dialogues, and novels. ' It was never my object,' he says himself, ' to construct a system for the school ; my writings sprang from my innermost life, they followed an historical course ; in a certain way I was not the author of them, not with my own wiU so, but under compidsion of a higher and irre- sistible power.' This want of systematic connexion and unity of principle renders the due statement of Jacobi's philosophy difficult. We adopt the three following points of view as the best for our purpose : (1.) Jacobi's polemic against indirect, mediate, or conditional know- ledge ; (2.) his principle of direct or intuitive knowledge ; (3.) his position to contemporary philosophy, especially that of Kant. (1.) Jacobi places his negative point of departure in Spinoza. In his essay On the System of Spinoza, in Letters to Moses Mendelssohn (1785), "he again drew public atten- tion to the quite forgotten philosophy of Spinoza. The correspondence is introduced thus : — Jacobi discovers that Lessing was a Spinozist and communicates this to Mendelssohn ; Mendelssohn refuses to believe it ; and so then the further historical pro and contra develops itself. The positive philosophical affirmations contained in this essay may be reduced to three: (1.) Spinozism is fatal- ism and atheism. (2.) Every method of philosophical demonstration conducts to fatalism and atheism. (3.) In order to escape these we must set limits to de- monstration, and acknowledge that belief is the element of all human knowledge. (1.) Spinozism is atheism, for the cause of the world is to it not a person, not a being endowed with reason and will, and action on design, and therefore not a God. It is fatalism, for it asserts the human will to be only erroneously considered free. (2.) This atheism and fatalism, however, are only the necessary results of aU philosophical demonstration. 250 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. To comprehend a thing is, Jacobi says, to deduce it from its proximate canses : it is to find for the actual the pos- sible, for the conditioned the uuconditioned, for the direct the indirect. We comprehend only what we can explain from something else. And so our intellection proceeds in a chain of conditioned conditions, and this concatena- tion forms a natural mechanism, in the exploration of which our understanding has its immeasurable field. As long as we desire to comprehend and prove, we must assume for every object ever a higher one which con- ditions it ; where the chain of the conditioned ceases, there cease also comprehension and proof ; unless we abandon demonstration, we reach no infinite. If philo- sophy would with the finite understaudiug seek to grasp the infinite, it must drag down the divine into finitude. AU philosophy as yet is in this strait ; and yet it appears self-evidently absurd to attempt to discover conditions for the unconditioned, to convert the absolutely neces- sary into a possible, in order to be able to construe it. A God that were capable of proof were no God, for the ground of proof must always be higher than that which is to be proved ; the latter, indeed, can hold its real- ity only in fee of the former. If the existence of God is to be proved, consequently, God must consent to be deduced from some ground which were at once before God and above God. Hence Jacobi's paradox : It is the interest of science that there should be no God, no super- natural, supramundane being. Only on the hypothesis that there is nothing but nature, that nature alone is what is self-subsistent and all in all, is it possible for science to reach its goal of perfection, or to flatter itself with the hope of being able to become adequate to its object, and itself all in aU. This, then, is the conclusion which Jacobi draws from the ' drama of the history of philosophy : ' ' There is no philosophy biit tliat of Spinoza. Whoever can suppose that aU the works and ways of men are due to the mechanism of nature, and that intelligence has no function but, as an attendant consciousness, to look on, — him we need no longer oppose, him we cannot help, him we must leave go. Philosophical justice has no longer a hold on him ; for what he denies caimot be philosophically proved, nor what he asserts philosophi- cally refuted.' In this emergency what resource is there ? ' Understanding, isolated, is materialistic and irrational ; it denies mind, and it denies God. Reason, isolated, is JACOBI. 251 idealistic and illogical ; it denies nature, and makes itself God.' But this being so we are driven to ask (3.) for another mode of cognising the supersensual, and this ia belief. This flight from finite cognition to belief, Jacobi calls the salto mortale of human reason. Every certainty which may require to be understood, demands another certainty ; and this regression necessitates at last an im- mediate certainty, which, far from requiring grounds and reasons, shall even absolutely exclude these. But such feeling of certainty as depends not on reasons of the un- derstanding is behef. The sensuous and the super- sensuous we know only through belief. All human knowledge oi'iginates in revelation and belief. These conclusions of Jacobi, contained in his letters on Spinoza, could not fail to give universal umbrage to the German philosophical world. He was reproached with being an enemy of reason, a preacher of blind faith, a scorner at once of science and philosophy, a fanatic, a papist. In order to repel these reproaches, and justify the position he had assumed, he wrote, in 1787, a year and a half after the publication of this work on Spinoza, hia dialogue entitled David Hume on Faith, or Idealism and Realism, in which he more definitely and fully developed his principle of faith, or of immediate (intuitive) know- ledge. (2.) First of all, Jacobi distinguishes between his faith, and faith on authority. Blind belief is such as is sup- ported not on rational grounds, but on the authority of another. This is not the nature of his beUef, which is supported rather on the inmost conviction of the subject himself. His belief again is no arbitrary imagination : we may imagine all manner of things, but to conceive a thing real, for that there is required an inexplicable con- viction of feeling which we can only call belief. Of the relation in which belief stands to the various aspects of human cognition, Jacobi, who is nowise consistent in his terminology, expresses himseK vacillatingly. In his earlier terminology he placed belief (or, as he also named it, the faculty of belief) beside sense or receptivity, and opposed it to understanding and reason, which two facul- ties as synonymous he identified with the finite and con- ditioned knowledge of preceding philosophy. Later, however, by the example of Kant, he opposed reason to understanding, calling that now reason that had been previously named sense and belief. Belief of reason, in- 252 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. tuition of reason, is now the organ for apprehension of the snpersensuous. As such it stands opposed to under- standing. There must be assumed to exist in us a higher faculty, to which what is true in and beyond the pheno- mena of sense, must, in a manner that is beyond the ken of sense and understanding, make itself known. Opposed to the explanatory understanding, we must acknowledge a n on -explanatory, positively revelatory, unconditionally deciding reason or belief of reason. As there is a per- ception of sense, so also there must be a perception of reason, against which latter demonstration will as little avail as against the former. In excuse of the expression a perception of reason, Jacobi refers to the absence of any other that were preferable. Language, he says, pos- sesses no other terms for the denotation of the mode and mlanner in which our a^-teeming feeling masters what is inaccessible to the senses. Should any one affirm that he knov/s something, he may be justifiably asked whence or how he knows it ; and then he is inevitably compelled to appeal either to the sensation of sense or to senti- ment of inind, the latter being as superior to the former as man to the brute. And so, sa3^s Jacobi, I ad- mit without hesitation that my philosophy founds on feeling, pure objective feeling, the authority of which is to me the highest authority. The faculty of feehng is the highest faculty in man ; it is that which specifically distinguishes him from the brute ; it is identical with reason, or from the faculty of feeling (sentiment) reason wholly and solely arises. Of the antithesis, in which, with this principle of intuitive cognition, he stood to pre- ceding philosophy, Jacobi possessed a perfectly clear con- sciousness. ' There has arisen,' he says, in the introduction to his collected works, ' since Aristotle, an increasing effort on the part of the schools to subordinate, nay even to sacrifice immediate to mediate knowledge, the faculty of perception on which all is originally founded to the faculty of reflection, conditioned as it is by the action of abstraction, the archetype to the ectype, the substance to the word, reason to understanding. Nothing is hence- forth to be considered here that has not demonstrated itself, twice demonstrated itself, now in perception, and now in the notioiL, now in matter of fact, and again in its image, the word, and only in the word, indeed, is the matter of fact to be conceived truly to lie and actually to be cognised. But every philosophy that assumes a re- JACOBI. 253 flective reason aloue must disappear at last in a nullity of knowledge. Its end is nihilism. (3.) What position Jacobi, in consequence of his prin- ciple of belief, would assume to the philosofthy of Kant, may be surmised from what has been already said. Ja- cobi, indeed, has explained himself in this reference, partly in the dialogue ' David Hume' (particularly in the appendix to it which treats of ' the transcendental ideal- ism,') and partly in the essay on The Attempt of Kri- ticismus to bring Reason to Understanding (1801). The relation concerned may be reduced to the following three heads : (1.) Jacobi dissents from the Kantian theory of sensuous cognition. He defends, instead, the position of empiricism, maintains the truth of sensuous perception, and denies the apriority of time and space. He repre- sents Kant as attempting to prove that objects as well as the relations of objects are mere determinations of our own selves, and wholly inexistent in externality to us. For even if it be said that there is something correspon- dent to our perceptions as their cause, what this some- thing is still remains unknown to us. On Kant's theory the laws of perception and thought are destitute of any ob- jective validity, or our entire knowledge contains nothing whatever of an objective nature. But it is absurd to assume that the phenomena disclose nothing of the truth that is concealed behind them. On such an assumption it were better entirely to eliminate the unknown thing- in-itself, and carry idealism out to its natural conclusion. ' Kant cannot in consistency assume objects for the im- pressions on our minds : he ought to maintain the most decided idealism.' (2.) Jacobi essentially, on the other hand, assents to the Kantian critique of the understand- ing. Like Jacobi, Kant too maintained the incompetency of the understanding to knowledge of the supersensuous, and the possibility of any apprehension of the highest ideas of reason only by belief. Jacobi conceives the main merit of Kant to lie in the clearing away of the ideas as logical phantasms and mere products of reflection. ' It is easy for understanding, forming notions of notions from notions, and so gradually rising to ideas, to fancy that, by means of these mere logical phantasms, which surpass for it the perceptions of sense, it too possesses- not only the power but the most manifest vocation really to tran- scend the world of sense and attain in its flight to a higher science, a science of the supersensuous, and that 254 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. is independent of perception. This error, this self-decep- tion, was detected and destroyed by Kant. And thns there was obtained, in the first place, at least room for genuine rationalism. This is, in truth, the great achieve- ment of Kant, and the foimdation of his immortal glory. The sound sense of our Sage, however, saved him from failing to j)erceive that this room woidd of necessity directly transform itself into an abyss for the swallowing up of all knowledge of the truth, unless — a God appeared. Here it is that my opinions and the opinions of Kant meet.' Jacobi, however, (3.) does not quite accept the Kantian denial to theoretic reason of any capacity for objective knowledge. He censures Kant for lamenting the inability of human reason to demonstrate theoreti- cally the reality of its ideas. Kant, to him, is still thus in bondage to the dream that sees the indemonstrability of the ideas to lie not in their own natm-e, but in the inadequacy of our faculties. And so it was that Kant was compelled to seek in the practical field a sort of scientific demonstration : a shift and circuit that to every deeper thinker must appear absurd, all proof iu any such case being at once impossible and imnecessary, Jacobi extends not his favour for Kant to the post- Kantian philosophy. The pantheistic tendency of the latter was peculiarly repugnant to him. ' For Kant, that deep thinking, candid philosopher, the words God, free-will, immortality, religion, had quite the same mean- ing that they possess, and have always possessed, for common-sense in general. Kant played no tricks with them. It gave offence that he irrefutably demonstrated the inadequacy to these ideas, of all specidative philo- sophical proofs. For the destruction of the theoretical proofs he made amends by the necessary postulates of pure practical reason. And by this expedient, according to his own assertion, philosophy was perfectly relieved ; and the good, which it had always hitherto missed, at length happily reached. But now, critical philosophy's own daughter (Fichte), makes a god of the moral order of the universe, a god, then, expressly without conscious- ness and personality. These bold words, which were quite openly and unhesitatingly spoken, excited, indeed, some little apprehension. But the alarm soon ceased. Directly afterwards, indeed, when the second daughter of the critical philosophy (Schelling), completely withdrew what had been left sacred by the first — the distinction FICHTE. 255 between natural and moral philosophy, between liberty and necessity, and without farther preamble declared nature alone all and nothing above nature, the result was no astonishment at all : this second daughter is an inverted or beatified Spiuozism, an ideal materialism.' The latter expression in reference to ScheUing, with which, in the same work, other and severer allusions were connected, provoked the latter's well-known reply [ScheUing^ s Memorial of the Work : On Divine Thinrjs, 1812). Throwing back a critical glance now on the philosophi- cal position of Jacobi, we may designate its distinctive peculiarity to be the abstract separation of understanding and feeling. These Jacobi was unable to bring to agree- ment. ' In my heart,' he says, ' there is light, but directly I would bring it into the understanding, it dis- appears. Which of the two elements is the true one ? That of the understanding, which displays indeed forms that are firm, but behind them only a bottomless abyss ? Or that of the heart, which, lighting with promise up- wards, fails still in definite knowledge ? Is it possible for the human mind to attain to truth, unless through union of both elements into a single light ? And is such a union attainable without the intervention of a miracle ? ' When now, however, Jacobi, in order to reconcile this difference of the heart and the understanding, attempted to rejjlace mediate (finite) cognition by immediate (in- tuitive) cognition, he only deceived himself. That very immediate cognition, which is supposed by Jacobi to be the special organ of the supersensuous, is in truth medi- ate, has already described a series of subjective inter- mediating movements, and can pretend to immediacy only in entire oblivion of its own nature and origin. XIA.—Fichte. JOHANN GOTTLIEB FICHTE was born in 1762 at Rammenau in Upper Lusatia. A Silesian nobleman interested himself in the boy, and placed him first with a clergyman and then at the institute of Schulpforte. In his eighteenth year, Michaelmas 1780, Fichte entered the university of Jena as a student of theology. He soon found himself attracted to the study of philosophy ; and the system of Spinoza in i)articular took a powerful 256 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. hold on him. The straits of his external position served only to harden his will and his energy. In the year 1784, and afterwards, he held the position of tutor in various families in Saxony, but, on applying in 1787 for the situation of country pastor there, he was rejected in consequence of his religious views. He was obliged now to quit his native couutry, to which he was devotedly attached, and accept a tutorship in Zurich, where he made the acquaintance of his future wife, a niece of Klopstock's. He retm-ned in Easter of 1790 to Saxony, and assumed the position of a privatim docens in Leipzag. Here he became acquainted with the i^hilosophy of Kant, in consequence of being engaged to give private lessons to a student of his system. In the spring of 1791 we find him, as a family-tutor again, in Warsaw, and shortly afterwards in Konigsberg, whither he had gone to make acquaintance with Kant, whom he enthusiastically ad- mired. Instead of a letter of introduction he handed to Kant his Critique of all Bevelation, a work com- posed by him in four weeks. Fichte attempted, in this work, to deduce from practical reason the possibility of a revelation. He proceeds not quite a priori, however, but under a certain empirical condition — this, namely, that it be presumed that man has fallen into such moral ruin that the moral law has lost all its influence on wiU, or, in short, that aU morality is extinct. In such a case, it is reasonable to expect on the part of God, as moral regent of the universe, the communication to men of pure moral principles through the medium of the senses, or the revelation of himself as lawgiver to them by means of a special and appropriate manifestation in the world of sense. An actual revelation would be here, then, a pos- tulate of practical reason. Even the possible matter of such a revelation Fichte attempted to determine a priori. We stand in need of no knowledge but that of God, free- will, and immortality ; the revelation, therefore, ■will substantively contain nothing more. But, on the one hand, it wiU contain these doctrines in an intelligible form ; and, on the other, it will not invest them in such symbolical dress as wiU claim for itself unlimited rever- ence. This tractate, which appeared anonjononsly in 1792, excited the greatest attention, and was universally regarded as a work of Kant's. It was pai-tly the cause of Fichte — then in Zurich for the celebration of his mar- riage — receiving soon afterwards (in 1793) a call to the FICHTE. 257 chair of philosophy at Jeua, which Reiuhold, invited to Kiel, had just vacated. At this time, also, Fichte published his anonymous Contributions in Correction oj the Judgme.nts of the, Puhlic on the French Revolution, a work which sat badly on the memories of the govern- ments. Fichte entered on his new ofSce at Easter in 1794, and speedily saw his reputation established. In a series of pubhcations (the Wissenscha/tslehre appeared in 1794, the Naturrecht in 1796, and the Sittenlehre in 1 798), he endeavoured to approve and complete his new prin- ciple in transcendence of that of Kant ; and exercised in this manner a powerful influence on the scientific move- ment in Germany, and all the more that Jena was one of the most flourishing universities, and the focus then of all energizing iatellects. Here Fichte stood in inti- mate relation witli Goethe, Schiller, the Schlegels, W. Humboldt, and Hufeland. Unfortunately in a few years these relations came to a rupture. In 1795 Fichte had become co-editor of Niethammer's Philosophical Journal. Forberg, rector at Saalfeld, a contributor, offered, in 1798, for insertion in this journal, au article on 'the determination of the notion of religion.' Fichte, who had advised against it, was still induced to insert it, but he premised an introduction ' on the grounds of our faith in a divine government of the W'orld,' the purpose of which was to remove or lessen anytliing that might ap- pear offensive in the article itself. Both contributions, however, were followed by a vehement cry of atheism. The Electorate of Saxqny confiscated the journal through- out its territories, and despatched a requisition to the Ernestine Dukes, the common protectors of the University of Jena, for the calling of the author to account, and the infliction of condign punishment on conviction. Fichte, in answer to the edict of confiscation, published (1799) a jus- tification of himself in his Aj^peal to the Public : a Wo7-k ichich Petitions to be Read before it is Confiscated. With reference to his own government, he vindicated himself in the Formal Defence of the Editors of the Philosophi- cal Journal against the Accusations of Atheism. The government of Weimar, which desired to consider as well him as the Electorate of Saxony, procrastinated with its decision. Meantime Fichte, however, having been secretly informed, rightly or wrongly, that it was in- tended to make an end of the whole affair by dismissing the accused with a reprimand for their imprudence, wi'ote, 258 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. in his desire either for legal conviction or signal satisfac- tion, a private letter to a member of the government, in W'hich he declared his resolution to send in his resigna- tion in case of a reprimand, and concluded with the threat that several of his friends would with him quit the University, and found a new one elsewhere in Ger- many. The government accepted this declaration as a letter of resignation, thereby indirectly pronouncing the reprimand as inevitable. Religiously and politically suspect, Fichte looked about him in vain for an asylum. The Prince of Eudolstadt, to whom he turned, refused him his protection, and even in Berlin his arrival (1799) at first excited commotion. Here, in familiar intercourse with Friedrich Schlegel, and also with Schleiermacher and Novalis, his views gradually modified themselves. The Jena catastrophe had diverted him from the one-sided moral position which, by example of Kant, he had hitherto occupied, to the sphere of religion ; and now it was his endeavour to reconcile religion with his position in the Wissenschaftslehre, through adoption of a certain mysticism (second form of the philosophy of Mchte). After he had lectured privately, and delivered philosophi- cal discourses in Berlin for several years, he received, in 1805, on the recommendation of Beyme and Altenstein to the Chancellor of State (Hardenberg), a chair of philo- sophy at Erlangen, with the permission at the same time of returning to Berlin in vrinter to lecture, as iisual, to a general audience, on philosophical subjects. Thus, in the winter of 1807-8, while a French marshal governed Berlin, and while the voice of the orator was often drowned by the noise of the enemy's drums in the street, he delivered his celebrated ' addresses to the Ger- man nation.' Fichte promoted in the most zealous manner the establishment of the Berlin University : for only to a complete change of the system of education did he look for the regeneration of Germany. On the opening of the new university in 1809, he was made dean of the philosophical faculty the first year, and rector the second. On the outbreak of the war of liberation, Fichte, both by word and by deed, took the liveliest interest in it. His wife in attending the wounded and sick contracted a nervous fever: she, in- deed, was saved ; but her husband fell under the same malady, and died on the 28th of January 1814, before completion of his fifty-second year. FIGHTE. 259 In the following exposition of liis pliilosophy we dis- tinguish, first of all, between the two (internally different) periods, that of Jena and that of Berlin. Under the first period, again, we have the Wissenschaftslehre in one divi- sion, and Fichte's practical philosophy in another, T. — The Philosophy of Fichte in its Earlier Form. (1.) Fielders theoretical philosupliij, or his WissemchaftS' lehre (theory of knowledge, gnosolocjy). — That Fichte's subjective idealism is only the consequence of the prin- ciples of Kant, has been already (xxxix.) briefly ex- plained. It was unavoidable that Fichte should wholly reject Kant's incognizable (but, nevertheless, supposed real) thing-in-itself, and should refer that outer impact which Kant attributed to these things in themselves, to the inner action of the mind itself. That only the ego is, and that what we regard as its Hmitation by external objects, is but its own self -limitation — this is the funda- mental thesis of the Fichtian idealism. Fichte liimself lays the foiindations of his gnosology thus : — In every perception there are present at once an ego and a thing, or intelligence and its object. Which of the two sides shall be reduced to the other ? Abstract- ing from the ego the philosopher obtains a thiug-in-itself, and is obliged to attribute the ideas to the object ; ab- stracting from the object again, he obtains only an ego in itself. The former is the position of dogmatism, the latter that of idealism. Both are incapable of being re- conciled, and a third is impossible. We must choose one or the other then. To assist decision, let us observe the following : (1.) The ego is manifest in consciousness ; but the thing-in-itself is a mei'e fiction, for what is in consciousness is only a sensation, a feehng. (2.) Dog- matism undertakes to explain the origin of an idea ; but it commences this explanation with an object in itself ; that is, it begins with something that is not and never is in consciousness. But what is materially existent pro- duces only what is materially existent — being produces only being — not feeling. The right consequently lies with idealism, which begins not with being (material exist- ence), but with inteUigeuce. To idealism intelligence is only active, it is not passive, because it is of a primitive and absolute nature. For this reason its nature is not being (material outwardness), but wholly and solely 260 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. action. The forms of this action, the necessaiy sj'stera of the acts of intelligence, we must deduce from the prin- ciple (the essential nature) of intelligence itself. If we look for the laws of intelligence in experience, the source from which Kant (in a manner) took his categories, we commit a double blunder, — (1.) In so far as it is not de- monstrated why intelligence must act thus, and whether these laws are also immanent in intelligence ; and (2.) In so far as it is not demonstrated how the object itself arises. The objects, consequently, as well as the prin- ciples of intelligence are to be derived from the ego itself. In assuming these consequences, Fichte believed him- self to be only foUowiiig the true meaning of the tenets of Kant, * What my system specially is, whether, as I believe, genuine Kriticismus duly followed out, or however otherwise it may be named, is nothing to the point.' Fichte maintains his system to entertain the same view of the subject as that of Kant, and he conceives the numerous adherents of the latter to have only misunder- stood and misrepresented their master. In his second introduction to the Wmenschaftslehre (1797) Fichte grants these expositors of the Kritik of Pure Reason that this work contains passages in which Kant demands sensations, given to the subject from without, as material conditions of objective reality. He sliows, however, that these pas- sages are wholly irreconcilable with innumerable asser- tions of the Ki-itik (to the effect that there cannot be any talk whatever of any operation on the part of a transcen- dental object in itseK and external to us) — if by source of sensations anything else be understood than a mere thought. 'So long,' Fichte continues, ' as Kant does not in so many words exjiressly declare that he derives sen- sations from the impress of a thing-in -itself, or, to use his own terminology, that sensation is to be explained by reference to a transcendental object indejiendently exis- tent without us, I will not consent to believe what these expositors tell us in regard to Kant. Should he, how- ever, make this declaration, then I will rather believe that the Kritik of Pure Reason is a work of chance, than that it is a product of intellect.' The aged Kant did not let the pubKc wait long for his answer, however. In the annotmcement-sheet of the AlUjemeine Literaturzeitung (1799), he formally, and with much emphasis, rejected the Fichtian improvement of his system, protested against FICHTE. 261 all interpretation of bis writings on any assumed spirit, and stood by tbe letter of bis theory as contained in the Kritik of reason. Reinbold in reference to this re- marks : ' Since Kant's public declaration as regards the philosophy of Ficbte, it is no longer susceptible of doubt, but that Kant conceives bis system himself, and wants others to conceive it, quite differently from the manner in which Ficbte has conceived it. But the most that we can conclude from this is, that Kant himself does not consider bis sj'stem inconsequent because it assumes a something external to subjectivity. It by no means follows, however, that Ficbte is wrong in declaring the system in question to be inconsequent because of this assumption.' That Kant himself had a feeling of this inconsequence is proved by his alterations in the second edition of the Kritik of Pure Reason, where tha idealistic side of bis system is made decidedly to recede behind the empirical one. The general stand-point of the TF2Sse?z.sc7m/oUtical rights, namely (nr.) a free contract on the part of the political units as a mutual guarantee of rights ; (b.) positive laws, a political legislature, through which the common wiU of all becomes law ; (c.) an execu- tive power, a political authority which realizes the com- mon will, and in which, therefore, the private and the general will are synthetically united. Fichte's conclud- 272 UISTOEY OF PHILOSOPHY. ing result here is this : on the one side there is the State of reason (philosophical jurisprudence), on the other, the State as it actually exists (positive juristic and political principles). But there arises thus the problem, to make the actual State more and more adequate to the rational State. The science which contemplates this approxima- tion is politics. Complete adequacy to the idea is not to be expected on the part of any actual State. Every poli- tical constitution is legitimate, provided only it renders not impossible the progress to a better. Wholly illegi- timate is only that constitution which would maintain aD as it now is. The absolute ego of the Wissenschaftslehre sunders in the Rechtslehre (theory of rights) into an infinite number of persons : to restore imity is the problem of the Sitten- lehre (theory of duties). Rights and morals are essen- tially different. Kight (justice) is the external necessity to do something or to omit something in order not to infringe the Liberty of others : the internal necessity to do or to omit something quite independently of external motives constitutes morality. And as the system of rights arose from the conflict of the tendency to freedom in one subject with the tendency to freedom 5>a another subject, so the system of duties arises similarly from a conflict, not however from any external conflict, but, on the contrary, from an internal conflict of different motives in one and the same person. (1.) Every rational being strives to independency, to freedom for the sake of freedom. This is the fundamental and pure spring of action, and it supplies at once the formal principle oi morals, the princijjle of absolute autonomy, of absolute independency of all that is external to the ego. But (2.) as a rational being in actual existence is empirical and finite, as by force of nature he assumes his own self as a corporeal being to which a non-ego opposes itself, there dwells in him beside the pure spring another and empiri- cal spring, the instinct of self-preservation, the instinct of nature, the aim of which is not freedom but enjojnnent. This instinct of nature supphes the material, eudsemonis- tic principle of a striving for enjoyment for the sake of enjoyment. These springs seem mutually contradictory ; but from a transcendental point of view they are one and the same primitive spring of human action. For even the instinct of self-preservation is an emanation of the ten- dency of the ego towards action, and it cannot be de- FICHTE. 273 stroyed : destruction of the instinct of nature would be followed by the destruction of all definite effort, of all conscious action. The two principles are to be united, then, but in such a manner that the natural shall be sub- ordinated to the pure principle. This union can only occur in an act which in matter looks (in obedience to the natural principle) to the world of sense ; but in ultimate end (obeying the pure principle) to an entire emancipa- tion from the world of sense. Neither mere negative withdrawal from the world of objects, in order to be a pure self-subsistent ego, nor yet mere striving to enjoy- ment is the problem, but a positive action on the world of sense so that the ego shall always become freer, its power over the non-ego greater, and the supremacy of reason over nature more and more realized. This striving to act free in order always to become more free, is, in its combination of the pure and the natural principle, the moral or practical motive. The end of moral action is placed in infinitude, however ; it can never be reached, for the ego can never possibly become wholly independent of any limitation, so long as it is destined to remain an intelligence, a self-conscious ego. The nature of the moral act is consequently to be defined thus. All action must coilisist of a series of acts, in continuing which the ego may be able to regard itself as always approaching to absolute independency. Every act must be a term in this series ; no act is indifferent ; to be always engaged in an act that lies in this series, this is our moral voca- tion. The principle of morals therefore is, Fulfil con- tinually your vocation ! It belongs, in a formal, sub- jective reference, to moral action, that it is an intelligent, free action, an action in accordance with ideas ; in all that you do, be free, in order to become free. We ought blindly to followneither the pure northe natural spring. We ought to act only in the clear conviction of our vocation or duty. We must do our duty only for the sake of duty. The blind impulses of uncorrupted instinct, sympathy, com- passion, benevolence, etc., do indeed, in consequence of the original identity of the natural and the pure principle, advance the same interests as the latter. But as natural impulses they are not moral ; the moral motive possesses causality as if it possessed none, for it says. Be free ! Only through free action according to the notion of his absolute vocation is a rational being absolutely self-de- pendent ; only action on duty is such a manifestation of 274 HIST OR Y OF PHIL OSOPH Y. a purely rational being. The formal condition of the morality of our acts, therefore, is, Act always up to the conviction of your duty ; or, Act according to your con- science. The absolute criterion of the correctness of our conviction is a feeling of truth and assurance. This in- stinctive feeling never deceives, for it only exists when there is perfect harmony of the empirical with the pure, original ego. Fichte now develops his system of special duties, which, however, we shall here omit. The religious opinions of Fichte are contained in the above-mentioned essay. On the ground of our Belief in a Divine Government of the World, as well as in his writ- ten defences which followed. The moral order of the universe, says Fichte, is that Divinity which we assume. By right action this divine element becomes alive and actual in us. Only under presupposition of it, presup- position, that is, of the moral end being capable of reali- zation in the world of sense by means of a higher order, is each of our acts performed. Faith in such order is the complete and perfect faith ; for this moral order, actually operative in life, is itself God : we neither require any other god, nor can we comprehend any other. We pos- sess no ground of reason for going beyond this moral order of the universe, and assuming, on the princifjle of concluding from the derivative to the primitive, that there is also a particular being who is the cause of it. Is this order, then, at all contingent in its natiire ? It is the absolute ^rs< of all objective knowledge. But even granting your conclusion, what properly have you as- sumed in it ? This being is to be supposed different from you and the world, it is to be suj^posed to act in the latter in obedience to ideas ; it is to be supposed consequently capable of ideas, possessed of personality, of conscious- ness ? What then do you call personality, consciousness ? Without doubt that which you have found in yourself, which you have known only in experience of yourself, and which you have named only from experience of your- self. But that it is absolutely impossible for you to think this being without limitation and finitude, the slightest attention to the construction of the notion will readily show you. By the mere attribution of the predi- cate you convert it into what is finite, into a being that is the fellow of yourself ; and you have not, as you in- tended, thought God, but only multi})lied your own self in thought. The notion of God as a particular substance FICHTE. 275 is contradictory and impossible. God veritably exists only in the form of a moral order of the universe. All belief in any divine element that involves more than this notion is to me a horror, and utterly unworthy of a rational being. Morality and religion are here, as with Kant, naturally one : both are a grasping to the super- sensual, the one by action, the other by belief. This ' religion of a happy right-doing ' we find further deve- loped by Fichte in his written defences against the accu- sation of atheism. He even maintains in these that nothing but the principles of the new philosophy is cap- able of restoring to men their lost sense of religion, and of revealing the true nature of the teachings of Christ. This he endeavours to demonstrate particularly in his Appeal to the public, where he says : To answer the questions, Wliat is good ? What is true ? this is the aim of my philosophical system. That system maintains first of aU that there is something absolutely true and good ; there is something that to the free flight of thought is restrictive and authoritative. A voice that may not die proclaims to man that something is his duty, which do he must, and for no other reason. This priu- cii>le in our nature opens to us an entire new world ; we receive from it a higher existence, which, completely independent of nature, has its foundations wholly and solely in ourselves. This absolute self-sufficiency of reason, this perfect emancipation from dependency, I wiU name it blessedness. As the single but infalHtle means of blessedness, conscience points out performance of my duty. An immovable conviction is laid within me, therefore, that there exists a law, an established order which renders blessedness a necessary result of tha pure moral character. That the man, who would main- tain the dignity of his reason, must establish himself on faith in this order of a moral universe, must regard each of his duties as a provision of that order, must consider all their results as good, as blessed, and joyfully submit to it, — this, absolutely necessary, is the essence of religion. Create within you the spirit of duty, and you will know God, and, whilst you appear to others as in the world of sense, you will, in your own self, know yourself to be, even here below, already in the life eternaL »76 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. IT. — TnE Philosophy of Fichte ix its Later Foem. All that Fichte has contribiitecl of importance to specu lative philosophy is contained in the system which has been just considered. After quitting Jena, however, this system underwent a gradual modification in consequence of several influences. It was naturally difficult to pre- serve so imcompromising an idealism as that of the Wis- senschaftslehre ; again the intercurrent nature-philosophy of SchelHng remained not without effect on Fichte's own mode of thought, although he denied this, and fell into a l)itter dispute with Schelling in regard to it ; and lastly, his private, not quite easy, external circumstances, may have tended to modify his general views of the world. Fichte's writings of this second period are for the most part of a popular nature, and calculated for a general audience. They bear all of them the stamp of his keen spirit and of his lofty manly moral nature. They want, however, the originality and the scientific rigour of his earlier writings. Even those among them which are more particularly scientific, satisfy not the demands for genetic construction and philosophical method, made earlier by Fichte himself with so much earnestness both on himself and others. His teaching now, indeed, has so much the appearance of a loosely connected intertex- ture of old subjectivo-idealistic views, and of new ob- jective-idealistic ones, that Schelling was justified in characterizing it as the most thorough syncretism and eclecticism. The distinction of his new position, namely, is, that — with points of resemblance to Neo-Platonism in it^ — he attempts to transform his subjective idealism into objective pantheism, or the ego of his earlier philosophy into the absolute, into the notion of God. God, the idea of whom he had formerly placed only at the end of his system in the equivocal shape of a moral order of the universe, became now the absolute beginning and the single element of his philosophy. This philosophy took on in this manner, then, quite another colour. Religious gentleness assumed the place now of moral severity ; in- stead of the ego and duty, life and love became the prin- ciples of his philosophy ; in room of the keen dialectic of the Wissenschaftslehre a predilection for mystical and figu- rative modes of expression manifested itself. Especially characteristic of this second periofl is the leanuig to re- FICHTE. 277 ligion and to Claristianity, chiefly in the work, Guidance to a Blessed Life. Fichte maintains here that his new doctrine is the doctrine of Christianit}', and particularly of the Gospel of John. This Gospel Fichte insisted on regarding at that time as the only genuine authority on Christianity, because tlie other apostles, remaining half Jews, had left standing the fundamental error of Jewry, its doctrine of a creation in time. Fichte attributed special worth to the first part of the prologue of John : in it the creation of the world out of nothing is refuted, and the true conception of a revelation equally eternal with God, and necessarily given with his being, enun- ciated. What, on the other hand, is said in the prologue of the incarnation of the Logos in the person of Christ, possesses for Fichte only an historical import. The ab- solute and eternally true position is, that, at all times and in every one without exception, who vitallj' per<"eives his unity with God, and who really and in deed demotes his entire individual life to the divine life within bin* — in him the eternal word, quite in the same manner as m Jesus Ckrist, becomes flesh and receives a personally sensiious and human form. The entire community of the faithful, the first born as well as the later bom, coalesce in the one common %atal source of all, the God- head. And so, then, Christianity, its end attained, coin- cides once more with absolute truth, and proclaims that all require to come into unity with God. So long as a man wants to become something for himself, God comes not into him, for no man can become God. So soon, however, as he annuls himself perfectly, completely, and to the last root, thei-e remains but God alone, and He is All in AIL Man cannot make for himself a God ; nevertheless himself, as the negation proper, he can annul, and then he is merged in God. The result of his advanced philosophizing, Fichte sums up, briefly and clearly, in the following verses, which wa take from two of his posthumous sonnets : — ' Th' undying One Lives as thou liv'st, and sees in all thou see'st, Nought is but God ; and God is nought but life. Quite clear the veil is raised from thee, and lo 1 'Tis self : let die, then, this destructible ; And henceforth God will live in all thy strife. Consider what sur\ives this strife below ; Then will the veil as veil be visible, And all revealed thou'it see celestial lifs.' 27 S HISTOBY OF PHILOSOPHY. XLU.—Herbart. ^^O^ A PECULIAR, in many respects estimable, continua- tion of the philosophy of Kant vvas attempted by Johann Friedrich Herbart (b. 1776 at Oldenburg; 1805, Professor of Philoso^jby at Gbttingen; 1808, Kant's suc- cessor at Kbnigsberg ; 1833, recalled to Gottingen, where, 1841, he died). The philosophy of Herbart distinguishes itself from most of the other systems in this way, that it sets not up an idea of reason as its principle, but, like the Kantian, finds its problem in a critical investigation and construction of subjective experience. It, too, is criticism, but with results that are at once peculiar, and altogether different from the Kantian. For this reason, from its very principle, it occupies, in the history of philosophy, an isolated position : almost all the earlier systems, instead of appearing as moments of the one true philosophy, are to it mistakes. It is particularly charac- teristic of it that it is eminently hostile to the post- Kantian philosophy of Germany, especially to Schelling's philosophy of nature, in which it can see only a delusion and a cobweb of the brain. In comparison with the philosophy of Schelling, indeed, it would rather declare its agreement with the philosophy of Hegel, although the latter is its polar opposite. We give a brief exposition of its leading ideas. (1.) The foundation and starting-point of philosophy is, to Herbart, the common view of things, knowledge gained by the method of experience. A i)hilosophical system is nothing more than an experimental scheme, by means of which some particidar thinker attempts to answer certain questions which he has put to himself. Every question that is to be proposed in philosophy must consider wholly and solely the given facts, or rather must owe to them its suggestion ; for the sole basal held of certainty for man, is experience alone. With it is every beginning in philosophy to be made. Thought must submit to the notions of experience : they shall lead it, not it them. Thus, then, experience is wholly and solely the object and foundation of philosophy ; what is no given fact, that cannot be an object of thought ; and it is impossible to realize any knowledge in excess of the limits of experience. (2.) The facts of experience are certainly the basis of HERBART. 279 philosopliy ; but, as simply ready-found, they are still without it. The question occurs, What is the first fact, the beginning of philosophj'^ ? Thought has first to free itself from experience, to make clear to itself the difli- culties of the investigation. The beginning of philosophy, ■where thought raises itself above the element that is simply given, is therefore deliberative doubt, or scepsis. There is a lower and a higher scepticism. The lower doubts only that things are so constituted as they appear to us ; the higher transcends the general phenomenal form, and asks whether there be au5rthing at all existent there. It doabts, for example, the succession of time ; it asks, in regard to design in natural objects, whether it belongs to them, or is simply thought as in them, etc. And thus we gradually attain to an expression of the pro- blems which constitute the interest of metaphysics. The result of scepticism is thus not negative, but positive. Doubt is nothing but the thinking of the notions of ex- perience, and these are the burthen of philosophy. Scepticism by means of this reflection enables us to per- ceive that the notions of experience, though referent to a given factum, do not possess, nevertheless, an imjiort that is thinkable, that is free from logical absurdities. (3.) Metaphysics, to Herbart, is the science of what is intelligible in experience. Thus far, namely, we have reached perception of two truths. On the one side it is seen that the sole basis of philosophy is experience, and on the other that sce]»sis has shaken the credibihty of experience. First of all, then, this scepsis must be con- verted into a precise knowledge of the metaphysical pro- blems. Notions are obtruded on us by experience which are in cogitable ; that is to say, they are thought indeed by our ordinary understanding, but this thought is only a confused and obscure thought, that does not distinguish and compare the contradictory attributes (nofce, logical significates). Skilled thought, on the contrary, logical analysis, finds in the notions of experience (time, space, origination, motion, etc.), contradictions, contradictory, mutually negating characters (notce). What are we to do then? These notions cannot be rejected, for they are given to us, and we can only hold by what is given ; neither can they be accepted, for they are incogitable, logically impracticable. The only measure that is left us is — to transform them. Transformation of the notions of experience, the elimination of their contradictions, in 2S0 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. the special act of speculation. Thus it is scepsis that has brought forward the more special problems, and it is the resolution of the contradictions of these that is the business of metaphysics. The most important of these problems are those of inherence, mutation, and the ego. The relation between Herbart and Hegel is here par- ticularly evident. As regards the contradictory nature of the categories and notions of experience both are agreed. But in the next step they separate. Inherent contradiction, says Hegel, is the very nature of these notions, as of all things in general : becoming, for example, is essentially unity of being and non-being, etc. That, rejoins Herbart, is impossible so long as the principle of contradiction still retains its authority. That the notions of experience present contradictions, that is no fault of the objective world, but of subjective perception, which must redress its erroneous construction by a transforma- tion of these notions and an elimination of their contra- dictions. Herbart accuses the philosophy of Hegel of empiricism, in that it accepts from experience these con- tradictory notions unaltered ; and, notwithstanding dis- cernment of their contradictory nature, regards them, iust because they are empirically given, as justified, and even, on their account, transforms the science of logic itself. Hegel and Herbart are related as Heraclitus and Parmenides (vi. and \ai). (4.) From this point Herbart proceeds in the following manner to his ' reals.'' The discovery, he says, of con- tradictions in all our notions of experience has tliat in it to lead to absolute scepticism, to despair of truth. But it is evident at once that if the existence of any basis of rea- lity is to be denied, appearance also (sensation, perception, thought) is sapped and ruined. But that being inadmis- sible, we must grant this proposition : so much appear- ance, so much proof of reality. To experience as given we certainly cannot ascribe any true, any absolutely existent reality ; it is not independent per se, it is in, or through, or by occasion of, another. True being (reality) is an abso- lute being, that, as such, excludes all relativity, all depen- dency ; it is absolute position, which we, for our part, have not to produce, but recognise. So far as this position is to be supposed to imply a something, reality belongs to it. What veritably is, therefore, is always a quale, a some- thing, which is regarded as real. In order, now, that this real may correspond to the conditions which are implied HERB ART. 2S1 lu tte notion of the absolute position, its what must be fchouglit, [a.) as absolutely positive or affirmative, that is to say, as without negation or limitation, which would cancel the absoluteness ; {h.) as absolutely simple, or as not a plurality and not subjected to inner antitheses ; (c.) as insusceptible of any quantitative determinations, that is to say, not as a quantum, divisible, extended in time and space, nor yet as a continuum. It is always to be kept in view, too, that this absolute reahty is not merely a reality thought, but one that is self-subsistent, self-dependent, and therefore only for the recognition of thought. The notion of this reality constitutes the entire foundation of the metaphysics of Herbart. One example of this. The first problem to be resolved by metaphysics is the problem of inherence — the thing and its qualities. Every object of perception appears to the senses as a complex of seve- ral quaUties. But all these qualities are relative. We say, sound, for example, is the quality of a body. A body sounds— but not without air ; what now is this quality in airless space ? A body is heavy, but only on the earth. It is coloured, but not without light ; how then about this quaUty in the dark 1 PluraUty of qualities, again, is incompatible with the unity of the object. If we ask, what is this thing, the answer is, the sum of its qualities : it is soft, white, sonorous, heavy, but the question was of a one, not of a many. The answer tells what it has, not what it is. The catalogue of qualities, moreover, is always incomplete. The what of a thing, therefore, can consist neither in the several qualities, nor in their com- bination. The only answer that remains is : a thing is that unknown x, whose position is represented by the positions implied in the various quahties ; in short, it is substance. For if we abstract from the qualities of a thing in order to see what the thing quite in its own self is, we find nothing left at last, and we perceive that it was only the complex of qualities, only their combina- tion into a whole, that we regarded as the particular thing. But inasmuch as every appearance points to a particular reahty, and we must assume, consequently, as many realities as there are appearances, the obvious conclusion is that we have to regard the basis of reality that under- lies a thing and its qualities, as a complex of realities, a complex of many simple substances or monads, of which monads the quality besides is different in the different (monads). The grouping of these monads repeated m 282 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. experience is considered by us as a thing. Let us briefly consider now what modification this conception of posi- tion (reality) entails on the main metaphysical notions. The notion of causality, in the first place, for example, is evidently no longer able to maintain its usual form. la its regard, in point of fact, we perceive at most the suc- cession in time, but not the necessary connexion of the cause with the effect. The cause itseK can neither be transcendent, nor immanent ; for, in the first case, real actions of one real upon another real contradict the notion of absolute reality, and, in the other case, substance would require to be thought as one with its qualities, M-hich contradicts the conclusions relative to a thing and its qualities. As little can the reason why particular natures are found together be expected from the notion of the real, for the real is absolutely unalterable. Caus- ality it is impossible to explain otherwise, then, than by conceiving the many reals (which uuderhe the qualities) to be an equal number of causes of an equal number of appearances, each independently. With causality the problem of change coheres. As, however, there exists to Herbart no inner change, no self-determination, no becom- ing or life, — as the monads are and remain unchange- able in themselves, they do not become different in quality, they are different the one from the otlier, from the first, and each of them preserves its own quality without altera- tion. A solution for the problem of change, then, can only be sought in a theory of the disturbances and self- preservations of the monads. But if all that can be called, not merely apparent, but actual change, in the monads is to be reduced to ' self-preservation,' as the last glimmer of action and life, the question still is, how will you explain at least the appearance of change ? For an answer it is necessary to have recourse to two expedients, fii'st, that of contingent aspects, and, second, that of in- tellectual space. The contingent aspects, a conception borrowed from mathematics, import, and in reference to the special problem, that the same notion may, without the least alteration in itself, take on in relation to others a variety of values ; thus the same straight line may be regarded as radius or as tangent, the same note as in harmony or not in harmony. By help of this conception, then, it is possible so to regard what actually takes place in the case of a monad brought into contact with others opposed to it in quality, that an actual change shall on HERBART. 283 the one hand appear to be .affirmed, while on the other the monad itself shall remain absolutely unaltered. (A grey colour, for example, beside black is white, beside white, black, without any change of its qiiahty.) The expedient of intellectual space, again, originates in the necessity to think the monads as well together as not together. Through its application elimination is accom- plished particularly of the contradictions in the notion of motion. Lastly, it is evident that the notions of matter and the ego (the transformation or psychological explana- tion of which is the remaining business of metaphysics) are, like the preceding, no less self-contradictory than in- compatible with the fundamental real ; for it is impos- sible to derive material extension from inextended monads, and with the loss of matter there follows that also of the usual (apparent) notions of time and space, while as regards the ego, it is not possible for its notion either, representing as it does that of a thing with many changeable qualities (states, powers, facidties), to be ad- mitted without transformation. Herbart's ' reals ' remind of the atoms of Democritus (IX. 2), the ' one' of Parmenides (vi.), and the monads of Leibnitz. As penetrable, however, they are distinguished from the atoms. Herbart's reals are as capable of being conceived in the same space, as mathematical points of being thought in the same spot. In this respect they have a greater resemblance to the Eleatic One : both are simple, and occupy an intellectual space. But then the reals differ from the one, not only as manj^, but as various, and even opposed. The resemblance of the reals to the monads of Leibnitz has been already alluded to ; the lat- ter, however, are essentially intelligent (percipient, con- cipient, ideating) ; they are beings with inner states ; whereas to Herbart intelligence belongs as little as every other state to the fundamental real itself. (5.) The physics and psychology connect with the meta- physics. The first explains, in accordance with the third, such matters as repulsion, attraction, affinity, etc. The second relates to the soul, the ego. The ego is firstly a meta- physical problem, as involving contradictions. Again, it is a psychological problem, explanation of its genesis being required. Firstly, then, those contradictions come to be considered which lie in the identity of the subject and the object. The ego affirms itself and is consequently an object to itself. The object affirmed, however, is iden- 284 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. tical with the subject aiErming. The ego consequently is, as Fichte says, a subject-object, and as such full of the most perplexing contradictions ; for the subject and the object can never be thought as identical without contradiction. The ego, however, is once for all given ; we cannot turn our backs upon it ; what is left then is to free it from contradiction. This is possible by regarding the ego as intelligence, and the various sen- sations, thoughts, etc., as the various appearances. The solution here, then, is the same as in the case of inherence. The thing was regarded in that case as a complex of as many reals as there are qualities ; and, inner being substituted for outer qualities, the ego is not differently situated. What we call ego, therefore, is nothing but the soul. As a monad, as an absolute real, the soul is simple, eternal, indissoluble, in- destructible, and, consequently, immortal in duration. From this position Herbai't directs his polemic against the ordinary psychology that attributes certain powers and faculties to the soul. What takes place in the soul is nothing but self-preservation, a process that differs and varies only in reference to the difference and variety of the other reals. These reals, coming into conflict with the monad that is soul, are the causes of the varioiis states of the latter — of aU that apparently infinite multiplicity of sensations, ideas, affections. This theory of self-pre- servation is the entire basis of the psychology of Herbart. What ordinary psychology calla feeling, thinking, per- ceiving, are but specific varieties in the self-preservation of the soul ; they represent no special conditions of the inner real, but only relations of the reals generally, rela- tions which, pressing in at once from a variety of direc- tions, partly neutralize, partly intensify, and partly modify one another. Consciousness is the sum of these relations, borne by the soul to the other monads. Neither the relations nor the correspondent ideas, how- ever, are equally definite ; as said, neutralizations, inten- sifications, modifications take place, and a general interaction results, which admits of being calculated by the principles of statics. The neutralized ideas are not conceived wholly to disappear either ; they remain as it were at the door of consciousness, till, through combina- tion with others like themselves, they attain the due intensity and are enabled to enter with recognition. This movement of the ideas, which is excellently described HERB ART. 285 by Herbart, is capable of being submitted to the prin- ciples of mechanics ; and we may form a conception now of what is known as Herbart's application of mathematics to empirical psychology. The repressed ideas, of which, darkly operative at the door of consciousness, we are only half aware, are the feelings. These announce them- selves, according as their tendency inwards has more or less success, as desires. Increased by the hope of fruition the desires are will. Will is not any special faculty of the soul, but depends on the relation of the predominant ideas to the rest. Energetic decision, the character of the man, results from the duration in consciousness of a cer- tain mass of ideas to the weakening of others, or their repulsion to the door of consciousness. (6.) The value of the philosophy of Herbart lies in its psychology and metaphysics. The other spheres of the spirit of man, law, morals, politics, art, religion, are for the most part in its case but very poorly furnished. Not that excellent relative remarks are altogether wanting, but they cohere ill with the speculative principles of the system. Herbart expressly isolates the particular philo- sophical sciences, and rigorously separates, in especial, theoretical and practical philosophy. He censures the attempts at unity in philosophy, and ascribes to them a variety of errors ; for logical, metaphysical, and sestheti- cal forms are to him essentially disparate. The objects of ethics and of sesthetics as a whole, concern an imme- diate evidence, while to metaphysics, in which all know- ledge is gained only by the elimination of error, any such evidence is, in its very nature, alien. The sesthetical prin- ciples, on which practical philosophy founds, are to Her- bart independent of the reaUty of any object, and come forward of themselves, even in the greatest metaphysical darkness, with intuitive certainty. The moral elements, he says, are pleasing and displeasing relations of will. He thus establishes practical philosophy entirely on aesthetic judgments. These are involuntary and intuitive, and attach to objects the predicate of approvableness or disapprovableness without jiroof . It is in this conclusion that the difference between Herbart and Kant is seen at its greatest. On the whole the philosophy of Herbart may be de- scribed as an extension of the monadology of Leibnitz, full of patient ingenuity, but devoid of inward fertility, or any germ of movement. U 28G HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. Xmi. — Schelling. SCHELLING originates in Fichte ; and without fuitliet introduction we may proceed at once to an exposi- tion of his philosophy, inasmuch as its derivation from the Fichtian forms part of the history of its growth, and is characterized there. Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling was born at Leon- berg in Wurtemberg, on the 27th of January 1775. Endowed with unusual precocity, he entered the theolo- gical seminary of Tubingen in his fifteenth year, and applied himself partly to the study of philology and mythology, partly and esjiecially to that of the philo- sophy of Kant. During this period he was in personal relations with Holderlin and Hecjel. He appeared very early as an author : first on taking his degree of master of arts, namely, in 1792, with a dissertation on the third chapter of Genesis, in which he gives an interesting philo- sophical interpretation of the Mosaic account of the FaU. In the following year, 1793, he contributed to the Me- morahilien of Paulus his essay of a kindred nature, Myths and Philosophemes of the Earliest Times. In the last year of his stay at Tubingen (1794-95) we have his two philosophical works : On the Possibility of a Form of Philosophy in general, and 0/ the Ego as Principle of Philosophy, or of the Unconditioned in II uman Knowledge. On completing his university course, Schelling went to Leipzig in the capacity of tutor to the Barons von Riede- Bel, and shortly afterwards to Jena, where he became Fichte's disciple and fellow-labourer. On Fichte's re- moval from Jena, he was appointed in his place as teacher of philosophy, and began, gradually abandoning the posi- tion of Fichte, to develop more and more his own ideas. At Jena he edited the Joiirnal of SpeciUative Physics, and, in conjunction with Hegel, the Critical Journal of Philo- sophy. In 1803 he was removed as Professor of Philo- sophy to Wurzburg, and in 1807to Munich, in the capacity of ordinary member of the newly instituted Academy of Sciences there. A year later he became General Secre- tary of the Plastic Arts, and, later still, on the establish- ment of the university of Munich, one of its professors. After Jacobi's death, he was made President of the Academy at Munich, but removed in 1841 to Berlin, where he gave several courses of lectures, particularly on SCHELLING. 2S7 the * Philosophy of Mythology,' and on that of ' llevela- tion.' For many years Schelliug published nothing of importance, and only after his death, which took place at Ragaz on the 20th of Augnst 1854, did the publication (completed in 18611 of his later works commence. Ten volumes comprise his earlier writings (some of them un- published in his lifetime), and four others his concluding lectures. The philosophy of Schelling is no finished and completed system to which his various works are but as component parts : like the philosophy of Plato, it is essentially a history of development, a series of progres- sive stages, through which the philosopher himself passed. Instead of systematically completing the various sciences in agreement with his general principle, Schelling seemed always beginning again with the beginning, always labouring at new positions, new foundations, mostly, like Plato, in connexion with earlier philoso- phemes (Fichte, Spinoza, Neo-Platouism, Leibnitz, Jacob Bohm, Gnosticism), which he endeavoured to assimilate, oue after the other, into his own system. An exposition of his philosophy, therefore, has to guide itself accor- dingly, and to take up its several periods singly, pursuant to the succession of the various groups of his writings, I. — First Period : Schelling^ s Derivation fr-om Ficlite. Schelling's starting-point was Fichte, to whom, in his earliest writings, he openly adhered. His work On the Possibility of a Form of Philosophy is intended to de- monstrate the necessity of an ultimate principle, as first proclaimed by Fichte. His other work. On. the Ego, again, shows how the ultimate groiind of our knowledge lies only in the ego, and how every true philosophy conse- quently must be idealism. If our cognition is to have any reality, there must be a point possible in which idea- lity and reality, thought and being, shall coincide and be identical ; and if cognition, in consequence of the exist- ence of a higher principle that conditioned it, were not itself highest, it could not possibly be absolute. Fichte regarded this work as a commentary on his Wissen- schaftslehre ; it contains hints, nevertheless, of Schelling's own later position, especially in the accent laid on the unity of knowledge, on the necessity of the various sciences becoming in the end one. The Letters on Dog- 2S8 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. matism and Criticism, 1795, are a polemic against tliose followers of Kant, who lapse from the critico-idealistic position of the master back into the ancient dogmatism again. In a series of articles in the journal of Nietham- iner and Fichte, Scbelling gave, 1797-98, a general view of the latest philosophical literature — also from Fichte's position. But stiU he begins here to direct his attention to a philosophical deduction of nature, if as yet, Fichte- like, only from the nature of the ego. The same views were further developed in his Ideas towards a Philosophy of Nature, 1797, and in his work On the World-Soul, 1798. The leading thoughts of the last three works are as follows. The origin of the notion of matter lies in the nature and action of the mind. Mind, namely, is the unity of a limiting and an unlimited force. Limitless- ness would render consciousness as impossible as an ab- solute limitedness. Feeling, perception, cognition is con- ceivable only if the force that tends into limitlessness become limited by an opposing force, and this latter in turn be relieved of its limits. Mind is but the antagon- ism of these two forces, or the perpetual process of their relative unity. Nature is similarly situated. Matter as such is not the prius, but tlie forces of which it is the unity. It is to be conceived only as continual product of attraction and repulsion, the primitive forces, and not as inert mass. But force is as it were what is imma- terial in matter. It is that which may be compared to the mind. Matter and mind, then, exhibiting the same conflict of opposed forces, must themselves be capable of union in a higher identity. But the mental organ for the apprehension of nature is perception, which possesses itseK of space — space limited and filled by the forces of attraction and repidsion — as object of outer sense. Thus the inference was necessary for Schelling, that there is the same absolute in nature as in mind, and that their har- mony is no mere reflexion of thought. ' Or if you main- tain that it is we who only transfer this idea to nature, then never upon yoxir soul has any dream dawned of what for us nature is and should be. For we will not allow nature only to agree contingently (as it were through interposition of a third something), with the laws of in- tellect, but necessarily and originally, and maintain her, not only to express, but to realize these laws, and to be nature and to be called nature, only in so far as she ac- eomplishes this. ' ' Nature shall be the visible soul, soul SCHELLING. 289 the invisible nature. And here, then, in the absohite identity of soul within us and of nature without us, must lie resolution of the problem as to the possibility of an external nature.' This thought that nature, matter, is the actuose unity of attraction and repulsion, in the same manner as mind is the unity of tendencies limiting and unlimited, that the repulsive force of matter corresponds to the positive unlimited element of mind, and the attrac- tive to the negative or limiting one — this idealistic de- duction of matter from the nature of the ego prevails throughout the writings of this period. Nature appears thus as the counterpart of the mind, and produced by the mind, only that the mind may, through its agency, at- tain to a pure perception of itself, to self- consciousness. Hence the series of grades in nature, in which all the stations of intellect on its way to self-consciousness are externally stereotyped. In the organized world espe- cially, it is that uatellect contemplates its own self-pro- duction. For this reason there is something symbolical in everything organic ; every plant is a corporealized throb of the soul. The main peculiarities of organic gi'owth, self-formation from within outwards, adaptation of means to ends, variety of interpenetration of form and matter, are all so many leading features of the mind. As in the mind there is an infinite effort towards self- organization, so also on the parb of the external world must a similar tendency disiilay itself. The entire sys- tem of the universe, therefore, is a species of organiza- tion, formed from a centre outwards, and rising ever from lower to higher stages. In accordance with this point of view, then, the great endeavour of the philo- sophy of nature must be to construe into unity the life of nature which has been sundered and dislocated by natural philosoithy into an innumerable variety of forces. ' It is needless pains, taken by many people, to prove how wholly different in their actions fire and electricity are. Everybody knows that who has ever seen or heard any- thing of either. But in our inmost soid we strive to unity of system in knowledge ; we are impatient of the importunity that obtrudes a special principle for every special phenomenon ; and we believe ourselves only there to catch a sight of nature, where, in the greatest com- plexity of phenomena, we discover at the same time the greatest simplicity of law, and in the most lavish prodi- gality of effects the strictest economy of means. There- 290 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. fore attention is due to every thought, even though still crude and incomplete, that tends to the simplification of principles : if for nothing else, it at least serves for im- pulsion to inquiry, and to exploration of the hidden tracks of nature.' The scientific investigation of nature showed a particular bias during this period, to the adop- tion of a duality of forces as dominant there. In mecha- nics, Kant had given a theory of the antithesis of attrac- tion and repidsion ; in chemistry, the phenomena of electricity, abstractly conceived as positive and negative, were assimilated to magnetism ; in physiology, there ■was the antagonism of irritability and sensibility, etc. etc. As against these dualities, now, Schelling pressed forward to the unity of all opposites, of aU dualities, not to the abstract unity, but to the concrete identity, the harmonious concert and co-operation of the whole hetero- geneous variety. The world is the actuose unity of a positive and a negative principle, ' and these two oppos- ing forces, in conflict or in coalition, lead to the idea of a world-organizing, world-systematizing principle, the soul of the universe.' In the work on the World-Soul, Schelling made great progi'ess towards an autonomic conception of nature. In such soul nature possesses a special, immanent, intelligible principle. The objectivity, the independent life of nature is recognised thereby in a manner that is impossible to the consistent idealism of Fichte. In this direction Schel- ling continued to advance, and distinguished presently with perfect consciousness transcendental philosophy and nature-philosophy as the two sides of philosophy in general. The addition to idealism of a complementary philosophy of nature was a decided advance on the part of ScheUing beyond the position of the Wlssenschaftslehre. With it, then, — though Schelling stiU continued to em- ploy the method, and to believe himself true to the spirit, of Fichte, — we pass into a second stadium of his philo- sophizing. 2. —Second Peetod : Distinction of Philosophy into Philosophies of Nature and of Mind {Spirit). This position is principally represented in the follow- ing works : First Sketch of a System of Nature-Philosophy, 1799; Introduction to this work, 1799; articles m the SCHELLING. 291 Journal of Speculative Physics, 2 vols., 1800-1801 ; Sijs- tern of Tramcendental Idealism, 1800. The two parts of philosophy SchelHng distinguishes thus. All knowledge rests on the agreement of a subject with an object. Nature is the sum of objecti\aty, as the ego, or intelli- gence, is the sum of what is subjective. There are two ways of joiuing the two sides. Either assuming nature to be the ^jn'ws, we ask, how does intelligence come to be added to it (that is, we resolve nature into pitre de- terminations of thought — philosophy of natui-e); or as- suming the subject to be the prhis, we ask, how are the objects produced from the subject — transcendental philo- sophy. All iihilosophj^ must endeavoirr to construct either intelligence out of nature, or nature out of intelligence. As transcendental philosophy subordinates the real to the ideal, so the philosophy of nature endeavours to deduce the ideal from the real. Both, however, are but the poles of one and the same knowledge, and they mutually seek each other : hence the one leads necessarily only to the other. (a.) Philosophy of Nature. — To philosophize on nature is as much as to create natxire, to raise it out of the dead mechanism in which it appears sunk, to animate it as it were with freedom, and render possible for it its own spontaneous evolution. And what then is matter but the e.xtinguished spirit ? Kature, accordingly, being but the visible organism of our minds, will be able to pro- duce nothing but what follows reason and law. But it is to destroy all idea of nature from the first, to assume the design exhibited by it to result from without, in con- sequence of the understanding of some other being acting on it. A perfect demonstration of the intelligible world as present in the laws and forms of the sensible world, and again a perfect comprehension of these laws and forms by means of the intelligible world, a demonstra- tion, consequently, of the identity of the worlds of nature and of thought — this it is the business of the philosophy of nature to accomplish. Its beginning, indeed, is im- mediate experience ; primarily we know nothing but from experience ; so soon, however, as I perceive the inner necessity of a proposition of experience, this propo- sition is already a priori. Empiricism enlarged into un- conditionedness is the philosophy of nature. The lead- ing ideas of this philosophy Schelb'ng enunciates thus : — Nature is an oscillation between productivity and product, 292 HISTOBY OF PHILOSOPHY. coutinuaUy passing into definite forms and products, but equally also productively passing beyond these. This os- cillation points to a duplicity of the principles by which nature is maintained in constant activity and preserved from exhausting itself, and coming to term in precise products. Universal duality, then, must be the prin- ciple of all interpretation of nature. The first principle of a philosophical theory of nature is, to look for polarity and dualism everywhere. On the other hand, again, all consideration of nature must end in recognition of the absolute unity of the whole, a unity, however, which is to be discerned in nature only on one of its sides. Nature is, as it were, the instrument by which absolute unity eternally makes real all that has been pre-formed in the absolute mind. The absolute, then, is completely to be perceived in nature, although the world of exter- nality produces only in series, only successively and in infinite gradation, what is at once and eternally in the world of truth. Schelling treats the philosophy of nature in three sections : (1.) Proof is to be given that, in its original products, nature is orfjanic ; (2.) the conditions of an inorganic nature are to be deduced ; and (3.) the reciprocity of organic and inorganic nature is to be demon- strated. (1.) Organic nature is deduced thus : In an absolute sense nature is nothing but infinite activity, in- finite productivity. Were this to realize itself unchecked, there were produced at once with infinite velocity an ab- solute product, whereby empirical nature were unex- pressed. But if the latter is to be expi-essed, if there are to be finite products, then it will be necessary to assume that the productive activity of nature is checked by an opposed retarding activity, also existent in nature. A series of finite products is the consequent residt. But the absolute productivity of nature aiming at an absolute product, these several products are only apparent pro- ducts, each is immediately transcended again by nature in order, through an infinite series of finite i)roducts, to satisfy the absoluteness of the inner productivity. In this eternal production of the finite, then, nature appears as a living antagonism of two opposed forces, one pro- moting and the other retarding. The latter acts also in infinite multiplicity ; the original productive force has to contend, not merely with a simple checking action, but with an infinity of reactions, which may be named the primitive qualities. Thus then every organic being is a SGHELLINO. 293 permanent expression of tlie conflict of the mutually dis- turbing and limiting actions of nature. And this, namely the primal limiteduess and obstructedness of the forma^ tive actions of nature, explains why each organization, instead of attaining to an absolute product, continues only to reproduce itself ad infinitum. Here, too, lies the importance of the relation of sex in the organic world. It fixes the products of the latter, it compels them ever to return to their own grade, and reproduce it only. In such reproduction, nature considers not individuals but the genua. The individual is repugnant to nature, whose desire is the absolute, and whose endeavour is ever to express it. The individual products, therefore, which exhibit the activity of nature as stationary, may be re- garded only as unsuccessful attempts to express the ab- solute. The genus is the end of nature, then, the indivi- dual but the means. So soon as the former is secure, nature abandons the latter, and works for its destruction. The dynamical gradation of organic nature is divided and classified by Schelling according to the three fundamen- tal functions of organized existences: — (a.) power of reproduction ; (6.) irritability ; (c.) sensibility. Those organisms stand highest in which sensibility is highest ; those lower in which irritability predominates ; lastly, reproduction appears in its greatest perfection where sensibility and irritability are almost lost. Nevertheless, these forces are woven into each other throughout the whole of nature, and consequently it is only a single organization which ascends there from plants to men. (2.) Inorganic nature is opposed to organic. The nature of the inorganic world ia conditioned by that of the organic. If the constituents of the latter are productive, those of the former are unproductive. If in the one, it is only the genus that is fixed, in the other it is the indi- vidual, to which there belongs no reproduction of the genus. Inorganic nature, as opposed to organic, is necessarily a multiplicity of materials which are not related together otherwise than as being at once apart from and beside each other. In short, inorganic nature is mere mass — mass held together by a cause that is without, — gravity. Like organic nature, it has its grades nevertheless. What in organic nature is process of re- production, is in inorganic nature process of chemistry (as, for exam])le, combustion) ; what is there irritability is here electricity ; what in the one is sensibility, the 294 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. highest organic grade, is in the other magnetism, or the highest inorganic grade. And thus we have already (3.) the reciprocity of the organic and the inorganic worlds. The result to which every true philosophy of nature must come is, that the difference between organic and in- organic nature exists in nature only as an object, while nature again as originally jjroductive soars over both. If the functions of organization are only possible under pre- supposition of an inorganic world without, the two worlds must have a common origin. We can only ex- plain this by assuming the existence of inorganic nature to imply a higher dynamic order of things to which it is subjected. There must be a third something that con- nects again organic with inorganic nature, a medium that supports the continuity of both. The identity of an ultimate cause must be assumed, by which, as by a com- mon soul (world-soul), universal nature, organic and inorganic, is animated ; a single principle which, fluc- tuating between organic and inorganic nature, and pre- serving the continuity of both, constitutes the first cause of all alteration in the one, and the ultimate ground of all activity in the other. We have here the idea of a uni- versal organism. That it is a single organization which unites the organic and inorganic worlds we saw above in the parallelism of the gradations of both worlds. What in inorganic nature is the cause of magnetism, causes in organic nature sensibility ; and this latter is but a higher potence of the former. Duplicity from iden- tity, as it appears in the organic world in the form of sen- sibility, so in the inorganic world it appears in the form of magnetism. The organic world, then, is in this man- ner but a higher stage of the inorganic ; it is one and the same dualism which, from magnetic polarity up through the phenomena of electricity, and the differences of chemistiy, presents itself also in the organic world. (h.) Transcendental Philosophy. — Transcendental philo- sophy is nature-philosophy made inward. The entire series, which we have described as it presents itself in the object, repeats itself as a successive development in the perceiving subject. The peculiarity of transcen- dental idealism, we are told in the preface, is, that it necessitates, so soon as it is accepted, a reproduction, as 't were, of all knowledge from the beginning. What has long passed for established truth must submit to proof anew, and issue from it, in the event of success, at sen EL LING. 295 least in a quite other shape and form. The various parts of philosophy, and philosophy itself, must be exhibited in a single continuity as the advancing history of con- sciousness to which the deposits of experience serve for memorial and document. Exposition of this consists in a gradation of intellectual forms, by means of which the ego rises to consciousness in its highest potence. Exact statement of the parallelism between nature and intelligence is possible neither to tranycendental philo- sophy nor to the philosophy of nature apart, but to both united : the one is to be regarded as the necessary coimterpart of the other. The principle of the sub- divisions of transcendental philosophy results from its problem, to reproduce anew all knowledge, and to test anew all prejudices and established opinions. The pre- judices of ordinary opinion are, in general, two : — (1.) That there exists without lis, and independent of us, a world of things which is perceived as it is. To elucidate this prejudice is the problem of the first part of the transcendental philosophy (theoretical philosophy). (2.) That we can at will affect the objective world in accord- ance with ideas originating freely in us. The solution of this problem is practical philosophy. But these two problems involve us (.3.) in a contradiction. How is mastery of the world of sense possible to thought, if in* telligence, in its very origin, is but the slave of the objects ? And, conversely. How is agreement possible between intelligence and things, if the latter are to be determined according to the former ? The solution of this problem, the highest in transcendental philosophy, is the answer to the question. How are we at once to think intelligence as in subjection to objects, and objects aa in subjection to intelligence ? This it is impossible to think, unless the faculty which produced the objective ■world be originally identical with that which expresses itself in will ; unless, therefore, the same faculty which in will is consciously productive, be in the production of the world, unconsciously pi'oductive. To prove this identity of the conscious and unconscious energies is the problem of the third part of the transcendental philo- sophy, or of the science of natural design and art. The three parts named completely correspond, consequently, to i\iQ th.ve& Kritikenoi Kant — (1.) Theoretical philosophy, beginning with the highest principle of knowledge, con- sciousness, develops thence the history of the latter in itg 296 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. principal epochs and stations, namely, sensation, percep- tion, productive perception (as producing matter), exter- nal and internal percejition (with deduction of space, time, and the Kantian categories), abstraction (distinction of in- telligence from its own products), absolute abstraction or absolute will. The absolute act of wiU introduces us into (2.) Practical philosophy. Here the ego is no longer merely perceptive or unconscious, but it is consciously productive, or it realizes. As an entire nature originated in the primitive act of self-consciousness, a second nature wiU now be found to spring out of the second, or that of the free determination of self, and this second nature it is the object of practical philosophy to deduce. Schel- ling follows in the sequel almost entirely the doctrine of Fichte, but concludes with such admirable remarks on the philosophy of history as demonstrate an advance on Fichte. The moral order of the universe is not enough to insure the free action of intelHgence its return. For this order is itself the product of the various subjects acting, and exists not where these act contrary to the moral law. It can neither be anything merely subjective, like the moral order of the universe, nor yet any mere submission to law on the part of objective natiire, that insures free action its return, and brings it about that, from the completely lawless play of the freedom of the individuals, there issues at last, for the entire family of free beings, an objective, rational, and harmonious result. A principle superior at once to subject and object must be the invisible root of this harmony of both which action demands : this principle is the absolute which is neither subject nor object, but the common root and the uniting identity of both. The free action of the genus of rational beings, realizing itself in that element of subjective and objective harmony which is the eternal production of the absolute, is history. History, consequently, is nothing but the realization of that perpetually progressive har- mony of subject and object, the gradual manifestation and revelation of the absolute. In this revelation there are three periods. The fb-st is that in which power re- veals itself only as destiny, blindly holds down freedom, and destroys, coldly and unconsciously, aU that is greatest and noblest. This is the tragic historical period, a period of brilliancy, but of the disappearance as well of the mar- vels of the old world and of its dynasties, of the noblest humanity that ever flourished. The second historical SCIIELLING. 297 period is that in whicli the former blind power manifests itself now as nature, and the obscure law of necessity ap- pears transformed into an open natural law, which com- pels the unbridled caprice of individual will to obey a plan of universal culture conducting lu the end to a union of the peoples, to a universal state. This period begins with the advance of the mighty Roman republic. The third period will be that in which what was fate and nature in the former periods will manifest itself as pro- vidence, while the dominion of fate and nature will be seen to have been but the imperfect beginning of the gradual revelation of providence. When this period will begin it is impossible for us to say. But when it is, God is. (3.) Philosophy of Art. — The problem of transcendental philosophy is the concord of object and subject. This concord was realized in history (with which practical philosophy closed) either not at all, or only as infinite progress. But now the ego must succeed in actually perceiving this concord or identity, which constitutes its deepest self. If now, then, all conscious action is design- ful, coalescence on its part with unconscious action is only possible in what, being designful in itself, has been without designfulness produced. Such a product is nature ; we have here the principle of all Teleology in which alone it is possible to find a solution of the given problem. What is distinctive of nature is that, though but blind mechanism, it is stUl designfid, that it exhibits an identity of conscious subjective and of conscious ob- jective action : in it the ego beholds its own innermost self, which indeed only consists in this identity. But in nature the ego regards that identity as only objective and external to itself : it must be enabled to perceive it also as such that its principle hes in the ego itself. Such per- ception is artistic perception. As the product of nati^re is an unconscious product that is like to a conscioiis one, so the product of art is a conscious product that is like to an unconscious one. To teleology, then, we must add CEsthetics. The contradiction of the conscious and the unconscious, which without cessation perpetuates itself in history, and which is unconsciously resolved in nature, finds conscious resolution in the work of art. Here at last intelligence reaches a perfect perception of its own self. The feeling that accompanies this percep- tion is a feeling of infinite satisfaction : all contradictions are removed, all mysteries revealed. The unknown 298 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. something that brings the objective and the conscious action into unexpected harmony, is nothing else than that absolute, that immutable identity which upholds exist- ence. The veil, with which it obscures itself for others, it lays aside for the artist, and impels him involuntarily to the production of his works. Thus art is the one and eternal rev slation ; there is no other ; it is the miracle that must convince lis of the absolute reality of that supreme principle which never becomes objective itself, but is the cause nevertheless of aU that is objective. And so it is that art stands higher than philosophy, for only in art does the intellectual perception attain objectivity. Art is what is highest for the philosopher, for it opens as it were the holy of holies to him, where in eternal and primeval union there burns as in a flame what in nature and history is separated, and what in life and action as well as in thought must be eternally divided. From this we are enabled to understand too, that philosophy, as philo- sophy, can never acquire a universal authority. The single recipient of absolute objectivity is art, and with art con- sciously productive nature perfects and completes itself. The ' transcendental ideaUsm' is Schelling's last work written in the method of Fichte. Its principle is a decided advance on the position of Fichte. What to Fichte was an inconceivable limit of the ego, becomes for Schelling a necessary duplicity dependent on the simple nature of the ego. If Fichte contemplated the union of subject and object as only infinite asymptotical progress, Schelling contemplates its actual present reali- zation in the work of art. God, whom Fichte conceived only as object of a moral belief, has become for Schelling a direct object of ajsthetic intuition. This his difference from Fichte could not long escape ScheUing. It was im- possible for him to remain unconscious of the fact that he stood no longer on the level of subjective, but had passed to that of objective idealism. Having then ad- vanced beyond Fichte in his antithesis of transcendental philosophy and the philosophy of nature, it was only consequent that he should proceed a step further and place himself on the indifference-iioint of both, that he should, now adopt for principle the identity of ideality and reality, of thought and existence. This was the principle of Spinoza before him, and to this philosopher of identity, consequently, he felt himself powerfully attracted. In- stead now of the method of Fichte, he adopted Spinoza's SCHELLING. 299 mathematical one, to which he ascrihed the greatest evi- dence of demonstration. 3. — Third Period : Tlie Period of Spinozism or of the IndtffereJice of the Ideal and Real. The principal writings of this period are : An Exposi- tion of my System of Philosophy (Journal of Speculative Physics, II. 2) ; the second and enlarged edition of the Ideas towards a Philosophy of Nature, 1803 ; the dialoguo Bruno, or on the Divine and Natural Prindpile of Things, 1802 ; Lectures on the Method of Academical Study, 1803 ; New Journal of Speculative Physics, 1802-3, three parts. Schelling's new position is perfectly characterized in the definition of reason, which he has placed at the beginning of the treatise first named : I call reason absolute reason, or reason so far as it is thought as total indifference of subjective and objective. The ability to think reason is to be presumed in every one ; to think it as absolute, or to reach the position required, the thinking subject must be abstracted from. For him who accomphshes this abstrac- tion reason immediately ceases to be something subjec- tive as it is generally conceived to be. Nay, it cannot be any longer thought even as something objective, for something objective, or something thought is only pos- sible in relation to a thinker. The abstraction, then, converts it into that true m-i^seZ/ (virtuality, or absolute), which precisely coincides with the indifference-point of subjective and objective. The position of philosophy is the position of reason ; the cognition of philosophy is a cognition of things as they are in themselves, that is to say, as they are in reason. It is the nature of philo- sophy wholly to eliminate all succession in time and separation in space, all difference generally, imported into thought by imagination, and to see in things only that by which they express absolute reason, not, how- ever, so far as they are objects for such reflection as merely follows the laws of mechanism and in time. ' All is in reason, and besides reason there is nothing. Keason is the absolute. Any objections to this allegation can derive only from our being accustomed to see things not as they are in reason, but as they appear. Everything, that is, is essentially identical, and one with reason. It is not reason that makes an externality to itself, but 300 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. only the false use of reason, -vrliich is conjoined "with the inability to forget the subjective element witLin our- selves. Reason is absolutely one and self-identical. The supreme law for the being of reason, and, as there is nothing but reason, for all being, is the law of identity. Between subject and object, then, one and the same absolute identity expressing itself in both, there is pos- sible, not a qualitative, but only a quantitative difference (a distinction of more or less), so that nothing is either simply object or simply subject, but in all things subject and object are united, although in various proportions with preponderance now of the one and now of the other. But the absolute being pure identity of subject and ob- ject, quantitative difference must fall outside of this identity, that is, into the finite. As the fundamental form of the infinite is A = A, so that of the finite is A = B (combinations, that is, of subject and object in various proportions). But in itself noihmg is finite, for identity is the single in-itsclf. So far as there is differ- ence in individual things, identity exists in the form of indifference. Were we able to take in at a glance all that is, we should jierceive in all a perfect quantitative equipoise of subjectivity and objectivity, or pure identity. In individual things, no doubt, there is a preponderance now on the one side and now on the other, but on the whole this is compensated. The absolute identity is ab- solute totahty, the universe itself. In itself there is no individual existence or individual thing. Without tota- lity there is nothing in itself; and if anything is per- ceived outside of totality, this is possible only as result of an arbitrary separation of the individual from the whole, the product of refiection and the source of aU errors. Essentially, there is the same absolute identity in every part of the universe. The universe consequently is to be conceived as a line, the centre of which is A = A, + the one end A = B (that is a preponderance of subjec- tivity), and the other end A = B (or a preponderance of objectivity), so, nevertheless, that even in the extremes there is still relative identity. The one side is reahty or nature, the other ideality. The real side develops three potences (a potence is a definite quantitative difference of subjectivity and objectivity). (1.) The first potence is matter aiid gravity- -the greatest overweight of the ob- SCHELLINO. 301 ject. (2.) The second potence is light (A^) — an inward (as gravity was an outward) perception of nature. Light is a higher movement of subjectivity. It is the absolute identity itself. (.3.) The third potence is the common product of light and gravity, organization (A^). Organi- zation is as original as matter. Inorganic nature as such does not exist : it is actually organized, and for the organization which proceeds from it as from the original seed. Each body's organization is this body's interior become outward ; earth itself becomes plant and animal. Organic does not form itself out of inorganic, but is from the first at least potential in it. What lies now before us apparently as inorganic matter is the residuum of the organic metamorphosis, what was unable to become orga- nic. The brain of man is the highest result of the entire ©I'ganic metamorphosis of the earth. From the preced- ing, ScheUing continues, it will have been seen as well that we maintain the internal identity of all things, and the potential presence of all in all, as that we regard so- called dead matter as only a plant-world and an animal- world asleep — a world, however, that animated by the being of absolute identity may still possibly awake at some future time. ScheUing breaks off here, leaving the correspondent potences of the ideal sphere undeveloped. Elsewhere, however, we have these latter stated thus : (1.) Knowledge, the potence of reflection; (2.) Action, the potence of subsumption ; (3.) Reason, the unity of reflection and subsumption. These three potences repre- sent : (1.) As the true, the assimilation of matter into form ; (2.) As the good, the assimilation of form into matter ; (3.) As the beautiful, or the work of art, the absolute assimilation and unification of form and matter. In order to attain cognition of the absolute identity, ScheUing even attempts to construct a new method. Neither the analytic nor the synthetic method appeared to him applicable for this purpose, both concerning finite cognition. Even the mathematical method he left off by degrees. The logical forms of common acceptation, nay, even the usual metaphysical categories, appeared to him now, too, as insufficient. As initial point of true cogni- tion, ScheUing indicated inteUectual perception. Percep- tion generally is an identifying of thought and being. When I perceive an object, the being of this object and my thought of it are for me absolutely the same thing. But in ordinary perception unity is assumed between X 302 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. tliought and some particular sensuous existence. In tha preception of reason, intellectual perception, on the con- trary, it is the absolute subject-object, that is perceived, ^r identity is assumed between thought and being in general, all being. Intellectual perception is absolute cognition, and absolute cognition must be thought as such that in it thinking and being are no longer opposed. Intellectually to perceive directly within yourself the same indifference of ideality and reality which you per- ceive, as it were, ijrojected out of 3'^ou in time and space, t.his is the beginning and the first step in philosophy This veritably absolute cognition is wholly and solely in the absolute itself. That it cannot be taught is evident. We do not see, either, why philosophy should be under any obligation to concern itself with this inability. It is advisable, rather, on all sides, to isolate from common consciousness the approach to philosophy, and to leave open neither footpath nor highroad from the one to tlie other. Absolute cognition, like the truth it contains, has no true contrariety without itself, and admits not of being demonstrated to any intelligence ; neither does it admit of being contradicted by any. It was the endeavour of Schelling, then, to reduce intellectual perception to a method, and this method he named construction. Of this method, the possibility aud necessity depended on this, that the absolute is in aU, and all is the absolute. The construction itself was nothing else than a demon- stration of how, in every particular relation or object, the whole is absolutely expi-essed. Philosophically to con- strue an object, then, is to point out that in it the entire inner structure of the absolute repeats itself. In accordance with the position of identity or indiffer- ence, Schelling attemjited an encyclopgedic construction of all the philosophical disciplines in his Lectures on the Method of Academical Study (delivered 1802, appeared 1803). Under the form of a critical review of the uni- versity curriculum, they afford a summary and connected but popular statement of his philosophy. The part most worthy of remark in them is the attempt at an historical construction of Christianity. The incarnation of God is an eternal incarnation. The eternal Son of God, born of the being of the father of all things, is the finite itself, as it is in the eternal perception of God. Christ is only the historical, sensuously-seen pinnacle of the incarnation ; as an individual he is quite intelligible from the circum- SCHELLIKG. 303 stances of the period. God being eternally independent of all time, it is inconceivable that he should have as- sumed human nature in any specific moment of time.- Christianity, as it is in time, exoteric Christianity, corre- sponds not to its idea, and has only to expect its comple- tion. A main obstacle to this completion was and is the so-called Bible, which besides, as regards true religions substance, is inferior to some other religious writings. (!) A new birth of esoteric Christianity, or a new and higher religion, in which philosophy, religion, and poetry shall be fused into unity, this must be the product of the future. The last statement contains already a hint of the 'revelation-philosophy,' and of tlie Johannine era annoimced in it. Similar other allusions occur also in the same work. Thus Schelliug places in the beginning of history a sort of golden age. It is inconceivable, he says, that man as he now appears, should have been of himself able to raise himself from instinct to conscious- ness, from aniraality to rationality. The present race of men must have been preceded, then, by another, immor- talized in the ancient legend under the figure of gods and heroes. An origin for religion and civilisation is intelli- gible only in the lessons of superior natures. I hold civilisation to have been the primal condition of man- kind, and the institution of states, of sciences, of reli- gion, and of arts, to have been contemporaneous, or rather one and the same : these things, indeed, were not then veritably sundered, but in perfect interpenetration, as they will be agaiu in the last days. SchelKng is only consistent, then, when he regards the symbols of mytho- logy, which we find to be historically first, as revelations of supreme cognition — and here, again, we have a step to the subsequent ' philosophy of mythology.' The mystical element, which we find expressed in these historical views, asserts itself henceforward more and more in Schelling. This mystical tendency was partly the result of his unsuccessful attempt to find an appropriate form, an absolute method, for the expres- sion of his philosophical ideas. All nobler mysticism depends on the impossibility of adequately expressing infinite matter in a logical form. And so it was that Schelling, after he had restlessly flung himself into every method, soon sickened of that of construction also, and henceforth completely abandoned himself to the bound- leas course of his own phantasy. Pai'tly, agaiji, hia 304 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. philosophical views had gradually undergone a transfor- mation. From the speculative science of nature he turned more and more to the philosophy of mind, and his defi- nition of the absolute changed accordingly. If the ab- solute had hitherto been to him the indifference of ideality and reality, preference was now given to the former in reference to the latter, and ideality became the funda- mental attribute of the absolute. Ideality is the prius, ideality, secondly, determines itself within itself to rea- lity, which as such consequently is only third. The for- mer harmony of spirit and nature is broken up, and matter appears as the negative of spirit. In thus distin- guishing from the absolute the universe as its antitype, ScheUing has decidedly abandoned the position of Spino- zism and passed to another. 4. — Fourth Period : The Mystic or Neo- Platonic Form of the Philosophy of ScheUing. The writings of this period are : — Philosophy and Religion, 1804 ; Exposition of the True Relation oj Nature- Pldlosophy to the amended Fichtian Vieivs, 1806; Annals of Medicine (co-edited with Marcus), 1805-1808. From the position of indifference, as has been said, the absolute and the universe were identical, nature and history were immediate manifestations of the absolute. But now ScheUing accentuates the difference between them, and in order most strikingly to express the sepa- ratedness of the world, he quite neo-Platouically repre- sents it, in the first work named, as oiuginating in a rupture, in a downfall from the absolute. From the absolute to the actual there is no continuous transition ; the origin of the material world is only conceivable as a comjilete break-off from the absolute by direct separa- tion. The absolute is the only reality ; finite things are not real. The existence of the latter, then, cannot de- pend on a communication of reality made to them by the absolute, but on their very distance, on their very downfall from the absolute. The reconciliation of this downfall, God's completed realization, is the goal of history. To this idea, there are then added some other conceptions of a neo-Platonic complexion. Thus we have the myth of Psyche falling from intellectuality to sense, and this fall even Platonically described ?« the punish- 8CHELLING. 305 ment of self n ess. Then we have the kindred myth of a palingenesia and migration of souls, which souls, accord- ing as they have more or less laid aside self here below, and purified themselves into identity with the infinite, either begin a higher life on better stars, or, satu- rated with matter, are driven down into still lower regions. Particularly neo-Platonic are the high estima- tion and mystico-symbolical interpretation of the Greek mysteries (begun even in the Bruno), as well as the opinion that religion, if it would preserve uninjured its pure ideality, can never exist otherwise than esoterically or in the form of mysteries. The same thought of a loftier unification of religion and philosophy pervades the whole of the writings of this period. All true experi- ence, says Schelliug, is religious. The existence of God is an empirical truth, nay, the ground of all experience. Religion, indeed, is not philosophy ; but a philosophy which should not unite in holy harmony religion with science, were certainly none. Something higher than science I certainly do know. And if to science there are only two ways open, that of analysis or abstraction and that of synthetic deduction, then all science of the absolute is denied. Specidation is the whole — vision, con- templation of everything, that is, in God. Science itself is valuable only so far as it is speculative, so far as it is contemplation of God as he is. A time will come, how- ever, when the sciences will more and more disappear, and immediate cognition assert itself. Only in the highest science does the mortal eye close, and then it is no longer man that sees, but eternal sight itself that has come to see in him. With such theosophical views, Schelling was naturally directed to the older mystics, whose writings he now began to study. In his polemic against Fichte, Schel- ling replies to the reproach of mysticism as follows : — Among the learned of one or two centuries past, there was a tacit understanding not to go beyond a certain point, where the genuine spirit of science was left to the unlearned. These, because they were unlearned, and had incurred the envy of the learned, were styled visionaries. But many a professed philosopher might be glad to exchange his entire rhetoric for the fulness of heart and soul that is present in the writings of these very vision- aries. I, then, would not be ashamed of the name of puch a visionary. Nay, T will endeavour to give a fomi- 306 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. ilation to the reproach : hitherto I have not properly studied the writings of these men, negligence has been the cause. Schelling failed not to make good these words. And it was especially to the kindred Jacob Bbhm that he henceforward more and more directed him- self. Study of Bohm, indeed, is already apparent in the writings before us. One of Schelling's most celebrated works (and which appeared soon afterwards), that on free- will [Philosophical Inquiries into the Nature of Human Free-will, 1809), is altogether built on Bohm. With it begins the last period of Schelling's philosophizing. 5. — Fifth Period : Attempt at a Theogony and Cosmogomj in agreement with Jacob Bohm. With Bbhm, Schelling had much in common. To both speculative cognition was a sort of immediate perception. Both employed a mixture of abstract and sensuous forms, a medley of logical precision and phantastic colouring. Both were alike, finally, in a speculative relation. A lead- ing thought with Bohm was the self-diremption of the ab- solute. Taking the divine substance as at first the form- less unqualified infinite and incomprehensible, that which was foundationless, Bbhm conceived it further, in the feeling of its own abstract infinite being, to shrink into finitude, into the ground or centre of nature, where in their dark torture-chamber, the qualities separate from each other, where at last from the hard contrition of these qualities the hghtening springs, which then, as spirit, or principle of light, dominates and illuminates the strug- gling powers of nature, until God, raised by the basis from his unbasedness, or by the ground from his un- groundedness, into the light of the spirit, lives and moves in an eternal realm of bhss. This theogony of Bbhm's is strikingly in harmony with the present views of Schelling. As Bbhm conceived the absolute to be the primal formless baselessness, or groundlessness, Schelling, as we have seen already, figured it as indifference. As Bbhm too proceeded to distinguish this all-unbasedness from the basis or nature, and from God as the light of the spirit, so Schelling apprehends the absolute now as what, externalizing itself, returns from this self-externahza- tion into a higher unity with its own self again. We have thus already indicated the three moments in the SCIIELLIXG. 307 history of God wliich constitutes tlie interest of tlie work on free-wiii already named : — (1.) God as indifference, or as primal baselessness, foundationlessness, groundless- ness, the unfounded void ; (2.) God as diremption into existence and ground (basis), ideal and real; (3.) Con- ciliation of this diremption and transformation of the original indifference into identity. The first moment in the divine life is that of pure indifference or distiuction- lessness. This that precedes all existence may be named the primal ground or unground (groundlessness, founda- tionlessness). The unground is no product of the anti- theses, nor are these implicit in it, but it is a special being devoid of all antithesis, and therefore such that it possesses no predicate but predicatelessness. Real and ideal, dai'kness and light, can never as antitheses be pre- dicated of the unground : only as non-antitheses, in a neither the one nor the other, is it possible to enunciate them of it. From this indifference now duality breaks forth : the unground parts into two equally eternal begin- nings, in order that ground and existence may become one in love, or in order that the lifeless and indefinite indifference may rise into the living and definite identity. As there is notlaing before or besides God, God must have the ground of his existence within himself. But this ground is not merely logical as a notion, but real, as a something actual and to be distinguished from existence in God : this ground is nature in God, distinguishable from God, but inseparable from God. In it, then, is neither understanding nor will, but only the craving for them ; it is the longing to give birth to itself. But the ground longingly moving thus, like a heaving sea, in obedience to some dark and indefinite law, there arises in God himself, correspondent to this first stu-ring of the divine existentiality in the ground, an iuner reflexive perception in which — no object being possible for it but God himself — God beholds himself in his own image. This perception is God born in God himself, the eternal Word in God (Gospel of John, i.), which rises on the night of the ground like light, and bestows understand- ing on its dark longing. This understanding united with the groiuid becomes free creative will. Its work is the setting in order of nature, the previously lawless ground ; and from this transformation of the real by the ideal there comes the creation of the world. In the-evolution of the world there are two stadia: — (1.) The birth of light, 308 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. or tlie gradual development of nature up toman; (2.) The birth of spirit, or man'a development in history. (1.) The development of nature in grades depends on a conflict of the ground with the understanding. Originally the ground endeavoured to shut itself in to its own self, and independently to produce all from its own self alone ; but its products without understanding were without stability and fell again to the groimd, a creation which we still behold in the extinct plants and animals of the prehistoric world. But even in the sequel the ground yields only gradually to the understanding, and every such step towards light is marked by a new class of be- ings. In evei'y natural existence there are, therefore, two principles to be distinguished : first, the dark prin- ciple, through which natural existences are separated from God, and possess a particular will ; secondly, the divine principle of understanding, or of the iiniversal ^vill. In irrational natural existences, these two prin- ciples, however, are not yet moulded together into unity, but the particular will is mere rage and greed in them, whilst the universal will, quite apart from the individual will, is operative as mere external natural power, as con- trolling instinct. Only (2.) in man are the two prin- ciples united as they are united in the absolute. But in God they are inseparable, while in man they are not only separable, but must separate, in order that there may be a difference of man from God, and that God, as opposed to man, may be revealed as that which he is, as unity of both principles, as spirit that subdues the difference, as love. Just this separableness of the universal and par- ticular wills is the possibility of good and evil. The good is the subordination of the particular to the universal will, and the inversion of this the true relation is evil. In this possibility of good and esnl, man's free will con- sists. Empirical man, however, is not free ; his whole empirical condition is determined by an intelligible act antecedent to time. As man acts now, he must act ; but nevertheless he is free in act, because from eternity he has freely made himself what he now necessarily is. From the very beginning of creation, the will of the self- substantiating ground has brouglit along with it the self- will of the creature for the production of the antithesis, in the subjugation of which God may realize himself as the reconciling unity. In this universal excitation of evil, man has involved himself in self-will and selfishness ; SCHELLING. 309 hence in all men evil as nature, and yet in each as his own free act. The history of man depends, on the great scale, on this conflict of self-will and universal will, as the history of natui-e on the conflict of the ground and the understanding. The various stages which evil as histo- rical power describes in battle with love, constitute the periods of universal history. Christianity is the middle- point of history. In Christ the principle of love became personally opposed to evil in the person of man. Christ was the mediator in order to restore to its highest position the connexion of creation with God ; for only the personal can be the saviour of the personal. The end of the world is the reconcihation of self-will and love, the dominion of universal will, so that God is all in all. The indifiference of the beginning is then raised into the absolute identity. In his reply to Jacobi (1812), Schelling gave a further justification of this his idea of God. He endeavours to repel Jacobi's accusation of naturalism, by demonstrating that the true idea of God is a union of naturalism and theism. Naturalism would think God as ground (imma- nent) ; theism as cause of the world (transcendent) : the truth is the union of both characters. God is at once cause and ground. It nowise contradicts the notion of God that he should be conceived, so far as he reveals himself, to proceed out of himself from imperfection to perfection, to develop himself : imperfection is perfec- tion itself, but as in process of becoming. The stages ol the process are necessary, in order to exhibit on all sides the fulness of perfection. Unless there be a dark gi-ound, a nature, a negative principle in God, there can be no talk of a consciousness of God. As long as the God of modern theism remains a simply single being, that is to be supposed purely essential, but is in fact only essence- less ; as long as there is not recognised in God an actual duality, and a limitative and negative power that is opposed to the expansive and afiirmative one, so long will the denial of a personal God be but scientific candour. It is universally and absolutely impossible to think a be- ing possessed of consciousness who has not been brought into limitation by a negative power within himself — as universally and absolutely impossible as to think a circle without a centre. Schelling's letter to Eschenmayer, in the Universal Journal by Germans for Germans, may be regarded as an elucidation of the views contained in the work on free 3iO HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. will, aufl in the reply to Jacobi. Tn this letter he ex- presses himself more plainly than he had previously done as to what is to be understood by ground, and as to his justification for speaking of a ground in GocL After this communication, there occurred a pause in the literary activity of Schelling. It was publicly rumoured, indeed, that the printing of an unusually great work, entitled The A ges of the Workl, had begun ; but also again that Schelling had recalled and destroyed the proofs. The title had seemed to give promise of a philosophy of his- tory ; and the description of the short essay On the Gods of Samothrace (1815), as supplementary to the work itself, made it seem likely, at the same time, that in it great stress would be laid on the development of the religious consciousness. Now, indeed, that in Schel- liug's collected works we have the printed treatise itself, we see that the Past, that is to say, what is to be thought as previous to nature, constitutes the theme of the first book (existent in the eighth volume of the collected works, in the form which Schelling may have given to it about the year 1815) ; that it is nature itself that, under the title of the ' Present,' is to be considered the subject of the second book ; and that, lastly, surmises of the Future were the material of the third book. For the rest, it is evident that at least the main features of the later doctrine of potences had even then taken fixed shape in the mind of SchelHng. A quite extraordinary sensation was produced — Stahl and Sengler having called public attention to the new turn in the views of Schelling — by the preface which he prefixed in the year 1834 to H. Becker's translation of a work of Cousin's. This not only because he spoke in it so bitterly of Hegel, who, he said, had quite misunderstood the sense of the Identitutssystem, but because he now openly de- clared that, while his entire earlier system formed but one half, and that the negative one, of philosophy, there required to be added, as complement to it, the second or positive half, in which the method should not be any longer one of pure a priori construction, but should adopt in part the process so exclusivelj' applied by empiricism. In a similar manner, but with somewhat less bitterne.ns Blaue Mnein) — he said, God is the One.' Hegel's reading of the whole passage, indeed, may be re- presented as running thus. Parmenides having said that the One was limited, and Melissus that it was un- limited, Xenophanes, for his part (in Aristotle's words) ov6h heaa^pqvKjiv, nowise declared or determined, nor seemed to tend to either opinion, but, looking round him generally, said, the One is God. Compared with the context which concerns a comparison of opinions, this in- terpretation of Hegel seems reasonable. Zeller, also (vol. i. p. 372, 1, and p. 385, 1), appears to support the same view, thoiigh he speaks of the vault of heaven in the text of the latter page. !Mr. Lewes differs (vol. L p. 53) from other critics in his translation of a celebrated text of Parmenides. Perhaps it may be well, however, to refer to ZeUer's note (vol. 1. p. 414), since, though probably settling the matter, it is not mentioned by Mr. Lewes.* Aristotle, no doubt, quotes the text in question as relevant to the subject of the relativity of jiidgments of sensation : and it is certainly very natiiral to quote an Eleatic as arguing against sense or non-being. But surely Mr. Lewes introduces quite a new idea when he conceives Parmenides to have in mind the dependence of thought on organization. Refen-ing to the varj^g opinions of man- kind, Parmenides says, as is the mixture of the two ele- * But see now Edn, 4, p. 54, voL i. of Lis book. 362 ANNOTATIONS. ments (the warm and the cold) in men, so is their thought (knowledge), with the obvious inference that Sofa, sensu- ous opinion, is not trustworthy. It is not the modern con- ception of organization then that Parmenides has in mind, but simply the variety of our actual states, and as ex- plained by variety of intermixtui-e in his two elements. With this interpretation it is quite in harmony that Par- menides should have conceived, even after disappearance of the warm element, sensation to remain in the corpse, though only of the cold and dark ; but will such concep- tion harmonize with the idea of organization, with the idea of thought as resultant from organization ? It is a bold statement, then, this, that Parmenides ' had as dis- tinct a conception of this celebrated theoiy as any of his successors,' and it seems unnatural to propose for the simple words t6 yap irXiov iarl porjfxa (for the more is the thought), a translation so cumbrous as this, ' the highest degi-ee of organization gives the highest degree of thought.' It is very improbable that any such conception ever occurred to Parmenides. Zeller accepts (and Hegel, by quoting and translating the whole passage, ah-eady coun- tenanced him in advance) the equivalent of Theophrastus for TO iv\iou, rb inrep^aXXov namely, and interprets the clause itself thus : — ' The preponderating element of the two is thought, occasions and determines the ideas ; ' that is, as is the preponderating element (the warm or the cold) so is the state of mind. In short, the more is the thought is the linguistic equivalent of the time, for accord- ing to the more is the thought.^ Sir. Lewes, further, in prosecution of the same view, translates and explains in his own way (vol. L p. 56), the celebrated verses of Par- menides that seem to assert the identity of being and thought. (They will be found at page 346, vol. i. of Bui- lex's Lectures, translated by the Editor.) Hegel, too, (Oesch. d. Phil. P. i. p. 274), translates the same verses, and adds his interpretation. It is almost amusing to see the difference : while Mr. Lewes conceives that what is referred to is ' the identity of human thought and sensa- tion, both of these being merely transitory modes of exist- ence,' Hegel boldly exclaims, 'That is the main thought : thought produces itself, and what is produced is a thought ; thought is therefore identical with its being, for there is nothing besides being, that grand afiBrmation.' Hegel also adds from Plotinus, — ' Parmenides adopted this con- ception inasmuch as he placed not Being in sensuous ' See Preface, p. xi. THE ELEATICS. 363 things ; for identifying being with thought, he maintained it to be immutable.' In this view of the identity in question, thought plainly is no mere transitory mode of existence, but, like Being itself, immutable. As we have seen, indeed, to Plato and to Hegel it is Being. Mr. Grote, too, is worth quoting on this identity of being and thought. At p. 23, vol. i. of his ' Plato,' he says : ' Though he and others talk of this Something as an Ab- solute (i.e. apart from or independent of his own think- ing mkid), yet he also uses some juster language (rd -yap aiirb poe^v icrrlv re Kal ehai), showing that it is really rela- tive.' Mr. Grote implies here that the meaning of Par- menides is, not that being and thinking are identical, but that the ehai, the object, depends on, or is relative to, the voelv, the subject. The bold nonchalant air of a mat- ter of course with which, though knowing all the relative opuiions, he thus assumes his own as the only one, is striking, and reminds of Mr. Buckle. The learned Editor of Professor Butler's Lectures {vol. i. p. 348, note) is disposed to assert for Xenophanes not Pantheism, but pm-e Monotheism ; and no one who gives the interpretation to the words of Xenophanes, which is natural to us, can fail to sympathize with him. But the other opinion must, I apprehend, be deferred to. The notion of Xenophanes was doubtless developed from the object of perception before him ; it was a reduction of the phenomenal world, as it were, to a vis naturce, to a natural power, not to an extra-mundane spirit in relation to whom that phenomenal world were but as accident of his might. Then the natural character of the Greek gods, and the physical nature of all preceding philosophy must be considered. This view, indeed, seems to have been that of the various ancient authorities, Hegel says (Op. c'lt. p. 263), ' We know of God as a spirit ;' and he proceeds to designate the i^osition of Xenophanes ' as an immense step in advance ... for Greeks who had before them only the world of the senses, and these gods of phantasy.' Schwegler's statement of the Zenonic antinomies is easy and sufficient. Mr. Lewes, while vindicating its own fairness for the third argument of Zeno in reference to motion, pronounces it nevertheless a fallacy, and even in- deed supposes himself to demonstrate it as no less. ' The original fallacy,' he says, 'is in the supposition that Motion is a thing superadded, whereas, as Zeno dearlv 304 ANNOTATIONS. saw, it is only a condition. In a falling stone there is not the "stone," and a thing called "motion;" otherwise there would be also another thing called "rest." But both motion and rest are names given to express condi- tions of the stone.' And what of that ? It is not pro- liable that Zeno could have blinded himself to the problem that pressed by so simple an expedient as ' motion is a condition, not a thing.' Call it a condition if you like, he might have said, all that I say is, that it is a condition, the notion of which involves a contradiction. And cer- tainly !Mr. Lewes's allusion to a stone now at rest and now in motion does not remove the contradiction, or even — any more, that is, than the walking of Diogenes, which Mr. Lewes himself di-ives out of court — apply to it. Nay, in the very next sentences, Mr. Lewes would seem to accept what under the name of a fallacy he leads us to suppose he has just rejected. ' But both motion and rest are names given to express conditions of the stone (or of Diogenes !) Even rest is a positive exertion of force. Eest is force, resisting an equivalent and opposing force. Motion is force triumphant. It follows that matter is always in motion ; which amounts to the same as Zeno's saying, there is no such thing as motion.' Mr. Lewes's conclusion we see then is, that there is no such thing as rest, that matter is alwaj^s in motion. That is to him a substantial truth, and he admits that Zeno's saying amounts to it ; j-et his single object all the time has been to expose the 'original fallacy.' Perhaps a 'fallacy' on the 'subjective method,' is qow 'a fact' on the 'objec- tive method ? ' But why then did Mr. Lewes resist the latter method at the hands, or rather at tlie legs of Diogenes ? Then, apart from this, it does not at all assist the matter that the category of motion should be trans- ferred to the category of force, for the question recurs then again. What is force ? In fact, what is not only motion, or rest, or force, or condition, but what is even ' a tiling,^ what a thousand other interests the like, the Logic of which would be specially useful to us, and which is to be foimd in Hegel alone ? A similar conceptive mode of thought attends us, not only in regard to what Mr. Lewes says further, but in regard to what he cites from Mr. Mill. Mr. Mdl, as- signing to Hobbes the credit of the original distinction, would solve the ' Achilles ' fallacy by pointing out that Zeno has confounded in it ^length of time^ with ' num- THE ELEATICS. 365 her of svbdivisions in time,'' or * an infinite time ' with ' a time which is infinitely divisible.^ Mr. Lewes hereupon very properly remarks (not without debt, possibly to Hegel or some commentator of Hegel *) that Aristotle had named the same distinction when he opposed the actually finite to ihe potentially infinite. It is not, then, with reference to the substantial correctness of the dis- tinction (for Aristotle's distinction is certainly correct, while those of Hobbes and Mr. Mill are essentially iden- tical with it), but with respect to that absence of the due logical terms which give not only the true names, but the true precision of notion, or simply the true notion, that we refer to the desirableness of an in- creased knowledge of Hegel's Logic in England. In this reference, indeed, we can see already the superiority of the answer of Aristotle to that of Mr, Mill. To oppose potentiality to aetpxility, namely, is, so far as generaliza- tion or its language is concerned, a great advance on the opposing of subdivisions of time to length of time. Aristotle, in other words, has reached the notion in its abstraction ; while Mr. Mill (though perfectly successful in effect) has reached the notion only in — so to speak — its sensuous concretion (figurative conception). Con- sultation of Hegel, however, would still very much im- prove intelligence here, not only for the hght he brings to the position of Aristotle, but for that he brings also to the position in general. It is to Hegel, indeed, that we must look for the true light on all the paradoxes of Zeno, and it is to be hoped that the reader will not neglect him. Meantime, explaining that the general procedure of Hegel is to oppose the concrete to the 065- tract, we may summarize the special relative details not too incorrectly perhaps thus : — Quantity is a necessary notion of reason, and it occurs deduced in its own place in the science of abstract reason or logic. Now, it is the very nature of quantity, and as deduced, that it should have two moments, one of discretion (Mr. Mill's ' subdivision ') and one of continuity (Mr. Mill's ' length^). Any dis- cretuvi is, as quantitative, a continuum, but, as a con- tinuum, it contains again a possibility of discretion, and again of continuuy, and so on endlessly. This and so on endlessly constitutes the spurious infinite, an infinite that only seems infinite, or only is infinite to sensuous opinion which is bhnd to its own procedure. That is, if I see • See the Secret of Hegel, voL i. Pref. p. lii. vol. ii. pp. 269-271 ; but ' commentator of Hegel ' must now be gladly withdrawn (see Mr. Lewes, i. i>. 04, Ith edu. ). _ 2 B 3G6 ANNOTATIONS. only continuitj% and again only discretion, and yet again only continuity, and so on, pause there is none. But why should I thus vainly alternate the two momenta and deceive myself? The whole relation is there once for all before me. Quantity is there once for all before me full-summed in its two moments. It is but self-deception when I take the two moments after one another, now this explicit, that implicit, and again that exjilicit, this implicit. The spurious infinite is quite gratuitous then, the true infinite, the whole, is present and summed in the notion quantity. As regards the problems of Zeno in point, then, we oppose the concrete to the abstract. Quantity implies, we say, in its very notion (a notion duly deduced in place), discretion and continuity. In the 'AchiUes,' while the continuity is presupposed or implicit, the discretion is alone exposed or explicit; hence the difficulty. The solution, then, is: we are not limited to any one moment, but may set quantity imder either. Motion, unable to escape from quantity, readily traverses the quantum. Hegel, then, as we see, answers Zeno by showing that he was cor- rect, but one-sided ; while Mr. Mill, on the other hand, answers for his part by simply advancing the opposite one-sidedness : he does not, like Hegel, prince of thinkers as he was, bring the whole, and in its place. I may observe that it is not different Vidth the general Eleatic problem before us. The whole Eleatic difficulty is the separation of the two inseparables, identity and differ- ence. Mr. Lewes is a great stickler for the principium identitatis, and believes, as Sir William Hamilton does, that Hegel confounds logic when he talks of identity and difference in the same breath. But it requires simply consideration to see that to explain is not to say, identity is identity, but difference is identity. Mr. Grote, while very luminously stating the Zenonic arguments, appears to me very unsatisfactory both as regards special points and the general position. It adds to the unsatisfactormess, indeed, that, taken in detail, Mr. Grote's assertions are for the most part correct. Hegel states the general position thus : — ' That there is motion, that there is such a manifestation, — that is not the ques- tion. That there is motion is as sensuously certain as that there aie elephants. In that sense it never occurred to Zeno to deny motion. (So far there is no difference in Mr. Grote ; but the imsatisfactory element is that be THE ELEATICS. SC7 does not aimounce himself to the same effect as follows.) The question rather is of the truth of motion, or motion, indeed, is to be held untrue (in Zeno's view, that is), be- cause the notion of it involves a contradiction ; and by this he means to say that veritable being cannot be predi- cated of it.' If for motion here vre read plurality, we shall imderstand clearly that the general object of Zen* was to retort on the opponents of the Eleatic unity, no less difficulties than those they objected to it. Mr. Grote — to notice a by-point — uses for the Being or the One the term Ens. Now, in the fii'st place, does not this uncouth term mislead ? Does it not distort, or impregnate with a chimera, the quite homely thought of the Eleatics ? Is not, indeed, what I maj' call the humanity of the position quite lost in it ? This humanity is, as I say, the quite homely thought that this great imiverse must be a One, of which consequently only affirmation can be predicated, while negation must be denied. With this idea of a single life, of a single being before them, what is, they thought, cannot be this coming and this going that sense apprehends ; there must be that which is, in the midst of it all, and it alone is. Surely this very natural concep- tion does not naturally house in so strange a monster as Ens. Does it not transport us to the quiddities of the schoolmen rather, or to the ten sons and Ens their father in Milton ? But — retm-ning — what Zeno says generally then is this : — The changeableness and plurahty of the everyday world is supposed to contradict the conception of the imiverse as a single unchangeable being ; and I admit that both cannot be correct. Parmenides, however, has, for his part, established the reasonableness of the supposition of unity, and I will now, for my part, prove to you that these elements, change and plurality, involve contradictions, and are therefore incoiTect, or untrue to reason. Now the main peculiarity of ilr. Grote is sug- gested here. The opponents of the Eleatics are repre- sented in the above to be those who, in Ish:. Grote's own phrase, regarded the hypothesis of Parmenides as * obvi- ously inconsistent with the movement and variety of the phenomenal world.' Now this inconsistency is certainly, somewhat perplexingly, an ingredient with Mr. Grote too, but still he holds the adversaries of Zeno to be ' advocates of absolute plurality and discontrnuousness,' to be ' those who maintained the plurality of absolute substances, each for itself, with absolute attributes, apart from the fact of 368 ANNOTATIONS. sense, and independent of any sensuous subject.' It must be said, however, that in this opinion Mr. Grote stands alone. Mr. Grote himself mentions Tennemann as disagreeing with him ; and of all the authorities, English or German, mentioned in these notes, not one supposes ' the reasoning of Zeno' to have been otherwise directed than, as Tennemann holds, ' against the world of sense.' The general conception of the Eleatic position in this reference is, in the words of Erdmann, that ' cognition of sense is deceptive ;' and Mr. Grote seems to share it in regard to all the Eleatics, Zeno alone excepted. Nay, what was the meaning of the promenade of Diogenes, and was not he an opponent of Zeno? Surely he at least took Zeno to deny the truth of sensuous motion. It is with this view in his mind, however, that Mr. Grote says, in reference to the millet which, sonorous in the bushel, is insonorous in the grain, that Zeno is not rea- soning about ' facts of sense, phenomenal and relative, but about things in themselves, absolute and ultra- phenomenal realities.' Yet, again, is not this self -con- tradictory? What, then, is motion? And, in the immediate case, what is sound ? Can we suppose that Zeno, when he argued about motion, referred to some- thing ' absolute and ultra-phenomenal,' and not to what was only sensuously distinguishable ? Or that the soimd he had in view was not the special one knowledge pecu- liar to the ear, but soimd in itself, sound absolute and ultra-phenomenal ? The truth is that what Zeno wants to point out in reference to the mdlet, as everywhere else, is simply the contradiction which the fact of sense involves or seems to involve, or, as Erdmann says, that the senses cannot keep up with reason. So it was under- stood by Aristotle, whose answer to Zeno (in regard to vibrations, impressibility, etc.) is, on that understanding, as Mr. Grote himself admits, perfectly valid. Though one man cannot lift a ton, a hundred men may, and each man wUl lend his own impulse. As with these, then, so with the millet. One gi-ain when it falls is not heard, a bushel is, but each grain of the bushel contributed its own share to the general vibration. Nor is the truth here, though in reference to a sensuous fact, relative, but absolute — absolute by the absoluteness of an analytic or identical proposition. If the fall of the thousand grains produced a certain vibration, it is absolutely certain that each grain was there for its own. It is this relativity, THE ELEATICS. 369 however, •which Mr. Grote has alone in mind, and we shall take it up by itself as a whole presently. Here we see that the resolution on the part of Mr. Grote to find Zeno arguing for this relativity in the modern sense has led him not only to convert Zeno's opponents into abso- lutists, but to be very gratuitously unjust to Aristotle. Zeno's proof of contradiction in the facts of sense that related to the millet held good only so long as the con- tradiction was not explained ; Aristotle exjjlained it ; but Mr. Grote rejects the explanation because, alone of all mankuad, he believes Zeno not to have been reasoning against the world of sense. But hostility to the solutions of Aristotle is not, on the part of Mr. Grote, limited to the millet problem : it is repeated in the rest. P. 100, Mr. Grote says in a note, — ' These four arguments against absolute motion caused embarrassment to Ai'is- totle and his contemporaries ; ' but that is more than the sentence he quotes from Aristotle warrants. The predi- cate ' absolute,' attached to ' motion,' is Mr. Grote's own, while the sentence itseK gives no warrant whatever to the supposition that the ' embarrassment ' ivas not re- solved.* P. 103, Mr. Grote says: — 'But the purport of Zeno's reasoning is mistaken, when he is conceived as one who wishes to delude his hearers by proving both sides of a contradictory proposition. His contradictory conclusions are elicited with the express purpose of dis- proving the premisses from which they are derived. For these premisses Zeno himself is not to be held respon- sible, since he borrows them fi-om his opponents : a cir- cumstance which Aristotle forgets, when he censures the Zenonian arguments as paralogisms, because they assume the Continua, Space and Time, to be discontinuous or divided into many distinct parts. Now this absolute discontinuousness of matter, space, and time was not ad- vanced by Zeno as a doctrine of his own, but is the veiy doctrine of his opponents, taken up by him for the pur- pose of showing that it led to contradictory consequences, and thus of indirectly refuting it. The sentence of Aris- totle is thus really in Zeno's favour, though apparently adverse to him.' Opposite this, in the margin, we have the words, 'Mistake of supposing Zqmo's reductiones ad ahsurdum of an opponent's doctrine to be contradictions of data generalized from experience.' We have here the gratuitous conversion of Zeno's opponents into absolutists, and unfairness to Aristotle clearly expressed. No one * Aristotle only says : — ' There are foux arguments of Zeno's about Motion wliich bring difliculties to tt.ose resolving them {Kvovcrw).' — See Siinnlinins mmd Zellcr fi. 502. 3d EdiL) 370 ANNOTATIONS. attributes to Zeno any * wish to delude his hearerb hy proving both sides of a contradictory proposition.' The sensuous phenomenon was simply generally supposed to contradict the Eleatic noumenon, and Zeno merely sought to show in defence that it contradicted itself. Properly, then, his ' conclusions ' are not elicited for ' disproving ' any 'premisses,' but to demonstrate incongruities in the sensuous facts objected to him. Zeno, certainly, is not to be held responsible for the facts of sense which were the only premises lie borrowed from his opponents ; but quite as certainly Aristotle forgot nothing when he ob- jected to Zeno that he assumed space and time to be infinitely divided ; for that was the very thing that Zeno did assume. In very truth ' the absolute discoutinu- ousness of matter, space, and time,' was ' advanced by Zeno as a doctrine of his own,' and it precisely was not ' a doctrine of his opponents.' At least, unless Mr. Grote can disprove it, the historical fact is, that Zeno is the first who signalized what is called the ' infinite divisi- bility,' and he was led to it in the search of arguments that would throw doubt on the sensuous change and the sensuous plurality of the world of sense. The infinite divisibility was his property then, and not that of his opponents ; that of his opponents, on the contrary, was the finite divisibility, the simple motion of sense. But what are we to imderstand as Mr. Grote's own belief in regard to the infinite divisibility ? Are we to suppose him to believe, as he seems to say, that leading to con- tradictory consequences it indirectly refutes itself? A few years ago there was no dearer toy in the hands of the Aufklarung than the mathematical proof of infinite divisibility ; are we to suppose that the adherents of that movement have authoritatively issued their de par le vol that the infinite divisibility is now refuted and aban- doned ? I fear there wiU be a good many grumblers in camp, for the mathematical proof is still there, however much 'relativity' would seek to ignore all proof what- ever, even perhaps its o'wn. This is a point on which the Aufklarung will find itself obliged to make up its mind, and in so doing it will be led into the realms of truth at last. What Zeno wished to reduce to absurdity, then, was the fact of motion as ' generalized from experience,' and not the infinite divisibility as doctrine of his opjjon- ents. Nay, this doctrine was expressly his, and it was expressly opposed to the generalization from experience. HERACLITUS. 371 Aristotle's sentence, then, was really adverse to Zeno, and not even apparently in Lis favour. Aristotle, in truth, has very fairly met the general argumentation of Zeno. De Quincey and Sir William Hamilton, excellent Germans, excellent Grecians, both failed to see this in Aristotle, but it escaped not the iron tenacity of Hegel, whom, as we have seen, Mr. Lewes shows good sense in following. Before concluding this note, I may observe that in Bayle's argument against Aristotle's Zenonic solution (See Hegel, Gesch. d. Phil. L p. 291), there is a circum- stance that does not come readily to the sm-face. Bayle attributes to motion the power of actual infinite divi- sion : ' Car le mouvement est une chose, qui a ki m§me vertu que la division; il touche une jjartie de I'espace sans toucher I'autre, et il touche toutes les unes aprSs les autres ; n'est-ce pas les distinguer actuellement ?' At first sight this is quite as puzzling as the proof of the geo- metrician ; solution is impossible indeed to any position but that of Hegel. The very language of Bayle, indeed, names a miracle ; finite motion is capable of infinite touch, infinite division ! VII. — Heraclltas. OF terms here, perhaps the only one that requires a word is becoming. ' This is the only word in our lan- guage,' says Terrier, ' which corresponds to the yLyvS/xemv (or yiyveadai) of the Greeks, but it is an imfortunate word in being both inexpressive and ambiguous. It often stands for the proper, the decent. Of course that is not the sense in which it is here used. It is used in some sort of antithetical relation to Being, a relation which we must endeavour to determine. For in these two words, ^irri and yiyveTai, dp and yiyvbixevov, centres the most car- dinal distinction in the Greek philosophy, a distinction corresponding in some degree to our substantial and phenomenal.' For 460, 500 B.C. is probably preferable as the date when Heraclitus flourished (not was born, as Mr. Lewes Bays — evidently by a slip of the pen). Mr. Lewes is origi- nal, but not er viably so, in representing Heraclitus to regard ' the senses as the sources of all true knowledge.' The truth, on universal authority, would seem to be com- 372 ANNOTATIONS. pletely the reverse. Mr. Ferrier corrects jSIr, Lewes's statement on this point, and gives otherwise a very suc- cessful account of the philosophy of Heraclitus. ZeUer says, that ' the stories told by Diogenes of the misanthropy of Heraclitus are worthless, to say nothing of the salt-less phrase, that while Democritus laughed at all, Heraclitus wept at aU.' The schoolboy conceit of the deep Heraclitus and the universal Democritus being the one the crying and the other the laughing philosopher, is surely picturesque to nobody now ; surely it is (as ZeUer says) uncommonly ' salt-less.' Mr. Grote gives a very fiiU, accurate, and, as usual, felicitous summary of all that is known as regards the doctrines of Heraclitus ; but he seems, on the whole, to remain, as it were, outside in his case, and to refuse to accept his lesson (as regards universal reason) in the way it is accepted by the most and the best. Hegel ascribes to Cicero the attribution to Heraclitus of intentional ob- scurity ('Cicero, Nat. Deor. i. 26, etc., has a mauvaise id6e, as is often the case with him, etc.') ; and Mr. Grote says something similar to this ; but the attribution is not restricted to Cicero ; it is to be found at least repeated in Diogenes Laertius. VIIT. — Empedocles. COMPARISON with the other historians will demon- strate the excellent taste and judgment of Schweg- ler in this section. About the place of Empedocles, his value, the position of his philosophy, etc., there are many disputes, and we have little but these to read anywhere else under his name. But Schwegler avoids all that, and assigns quietly what is at once reasonable and correct. Hegel, though following the usual order in his lectures, was in the habit of characterizing Empedocles as the pre- cursor of Anaxagoras ; his reason being that there was in Empedocles a certain ' stammer,' as Aristotle said, of the idea of design. Michelet, then, in editing Hegel's History of Philosophy, actually places Empedocles im- mediately before Anaxagoras, assigning (ingeniously) as additional reason that Empedocles, vacillating between the one of Heraclitus and the many of Leucippus and adopting both as his presuppositions, constitutes in this very vacillation and adoption the transition to the causal uuity of Anaxagoras. Hegel is very short on Empedocles EMPEDOCLES.—THE AT0MI8TS. 373 but lie is led to use several i)lirases that throw welcome light on his own views. Erdmann finds in Empedocles a synthesis of all the philosophers that preceded him from Thales to Heraclitus without exclusion of a single link. Mr. Grote does Empedocles full justice. Mr. Lewes has once again a position of unenviable singularity here ; placing Empedocles even after Anaxagoras. But Burely Hegel's understanding of Aristotle, both as regards the time when Anaxagoras wrote, and the mere approach on the part of Empedocles to the great conception of design, cannot well be resisted. Zeller too (i. p. 707), accepts the interpretation of Hegel, and gives (i. 558, 4) reasons for the position usually assigned to Empedocles which one can hardly refuse. In truth Zeller and Hegel, and in connexion with Aristotle and Plato, are quite irre- sistible. Erdmann, too, supports the same view, as also — a name we may mention to Mr. Lewes — Thomas Taylor. One recurs again with satisfaction to the simplicity, yet competent fulness, of Schwegler. IX. The A tomists. MR. LEWES holds Hegel to regard Democritus 'as the successor of Heraclitus, and the predecessor of Anaxagoras.' This, however, is not more correct than a preceding allegation, that the same Hegel held Empe- docles to be * the precursor of the Atomists. ' The state- ments are self-discrepant, and if correct, would rest only on the formality of external arrangement. Hegel directly names Empedocles ' a Pythagorean Italic that incHned to the Ionics,' and, as we have seen, he preferred to con- sider his doctrines directly before those of Anaxagoras. Then whatever external place be assigned to Leucippus and Democritus, Hegel says of these that, ' in continuing the Eleatic school, they incline to the Italics.' Mr. Lewes differs in a more important respect from Hegel's view of Atomism, when he seems to regard it, as he did that of Heraclitiis, as a sensational system. ' Ideality of sense,' Hegel calls the main feature in Atomism : the ' atom and the nothing ' appear to him ' ideal principles,' and surely with reason. It is a harder saying of Hegel when he describes Atomism as ' showing universal quality or transition to the universal ; ' but this is a deeply meaning characterisation of the fact that tht 374 ANNOTATIONS. Atomistic jirinciple was a universal with transition to the particular, or that the universal atom was adequate to explain all particular manifestations. Hegel asserts, in ojjposition to Tennemann who represents atomism to be * recognition of the empirical world as the only objec- tively real world,' that ' the atom and the void are not empii'ical things : Leucippus says, it is not by the senses that we know the true ; and thereby he originated an idealism in the higher sense, not a merely subjective one.' The difference of Hegel from all the others is that he not only reports, but thinks what he reports ; and thus his history has a value to which that of all the others is in- significant. Space fails here, however, for any further exemplification of his strangely meaning writing, of which the section before us is fulh Mr. Lewes says, — 'The Atomism of Democritus has not been sufficiently appreciated as a speculation. Leib- nitz, many centuries afterwards, was led to a doctrine essentially similar ; his celebrated " Monadologie" is but Atomism with a new terminology.' Section xxxiii. will show to the reader how very groundless this statement essentially is. Again : ' Not only did these thinkers concur in their doctrine of atomism, but also, as we have seen, in their doctrine of the origin of knowledge : a co- incidence which gives weight to the supposition that in both minds one doctrine was dependent on the other.' Mr. Lewes ascribes to the Atomists a quite Lockian theory of knowledge : are we to suppose then that Leib- nitz also participated in such a theory ? Mr. Grote's statement of the Atomists is faithful, full, and well-an-anged. Modern relativity, however, is the only philosojihical position of which he still indicates ap- probation. Hegel attributes it as 'a great merit ' to Leucippus that he ' distinguished between the universal and the sensible, the primary and the secondary, the essential and the inessential qualities.' Mr. Grote is of another way of thinking : ' Theophrastus,' he says, ' denies this distinction altogether : and denies it with the best reason : not many of his criticisms on Democri- tus are so just and pertinent as this oue.' A distinction entertained by such thinkers as Kant and Hegel is not to be so summarily dismissed, though plainly the absolute- ness of the primary qualities will not suit the taste of a Relati\Tst. AXAXJOORAS. 375 X. — Anaxarjoras. FROM the axiom that only ' like can act upon like,^ Anaxagoras, we are told by Mr. Lewes (i. p. 101), formed his homceomerice. This is diflficult to reconcile with Mr. Grote's statement from Theophrastus that Anaxa- goras explained sensation by the action of unllhe upon unlike. This latter, indeed, and not the former, has been universally regarded as his special principle — (see Zeller vol. i. p. 699). Surely, too, ]\Ir. Lewes is very iinhappy in assuming Aristotle to have regarded the system of Anaxa- goras as inferior to that of Empedocles. Aristotle (see Zeller, vol. i. 558, 4) almost uniformly depreciated Empe- docles, while everybody knows that Anaxagoras, in com- parison with the rest, struck him as a sober man among random babblers. Socrates, too, similarly expresses himself in the Phcedo, and by all the latest and best German authorities Anaxagoras is represented as the initiator of that transference of the problem from matter to mind which directly introduced the subjective theories of the Sophists, and the objective philosophies of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. Mr. Lewes protests against the application by Hegel of such a name as eclectic to Anaxa- goras. Hegel, as with such reality and depth of know- ledge was alone possible to him, places and characterizes Anaxagoras as I have indicated. In fact, if he saw 'land' in Heraclitus, in Anaxagoras he sees 'light ;' and he assigns to the latter an influence at once original and aupereminent. It is possible, for all that, that he may have used the word eclectic in reference to Anaxagoras, but, if so, I know not where. Mr. Lewes attributes to Anaxagoras the distinction that ' the senses perceive phenomena, but do not and cannot observe noumena,' and this distinction he calls ' an anticipation of the gi-eatest discovery of psychology, thoiigh seen dimly and confus- edly by Anaxagoras.' Are we to understand, then, that the greatest discovery of psycholgy is, that the senses cannot find quality in the unqualified, taste in the taste- less, sound in the soundless, colour in the colourless, etc. ? Is it so certain that dimness to such an insight would be inferiority ? Many other points one might discuss with Mr. Lewes, but for the sake of space they' must be omitted. We may remark, however, that at page 79 he seems to agree 370 ANNOTATIONS. witli Mr. Giote's low estimate of the Noi.s, while at page 83 he quotes Simplicius in such a manner as to restore that principle to all its pristine dignity. To Mr. Grote's estimate allucled to we now pass. There is nothing in the fragments of Anaxagoras now remaining, Mr. Grote says, to justify the belief that the author himself proposed the Nous ' (according to Ai'istotle's expression) as the cause of all that was good in the worhl, assigning other agencies as the causes of all evil (Mr. Grote's reference is Aristotle's well-known loeus that characterizes Anaxa- goras as a sober man among babblers, because he had seen that neither material principles nor a mere moving force could account for the beauty and adaptation of the course and structure of the universe, and had accordingly proposed in room of these a thinking being, an intelli- gence ; as for Anaxagoras "assigning other agencies,"etc., I can see no hint of this in Ai-istotle, who, indeed (Metaph. xii. 10), actually blames Anaxagoras for not having made a contrary to the good, etc. Mr. Grote proceeds :) It is not characterized by him as a person — not so much as the Love and Enmity of Empedocles. It is not one but multitudinous, and aU its separate manifestations are alike, differing only as greater or less. It is in fact identical with the soul, the vital principle or vitaUty, belonging not only to aU men and animals, but to all plants also. It is one substance, or form of matter among the rest, but thinner than aU of them (thinner than even fire or air), and distinguished by the peculiar characteristic of being absolutely unmixed. It has mov- ing power and knowledge, like the Air of Diogenes the ApoUoniate : it initiates movement, and it knows about all the things which either pass into or pass out of com- bination. It disposes or puts in order all things that were, are, or will be ; but it efifects this only by acting as a fermenting principle. . . . Anaxagoras appears to conceive his Nous as one among numerous other real agents in Nature, material like the rest, yet differing from the rest. . . . (He agi-ees with ZeUer) that the Anaxagorean Nous is not conceived as having either im- materiality or personality.' This, then, evidently is a very low estimate of the Nous. Despite the express cause assigned by Aristotle for his selecting of Anaxa- goras, the principle of this Anaxagoras shall be but a material one among the rest ! How differently Anaxa- goras himself seems to speak ! Nous to him is infinite^ ANAXAG0RA8. 377 absolute, mixed with nothing, alone by itself, the purest and subtlest of aU things ; it is omniscient and omni- potent ; it is dominant especially in what has soul, whether gi-eater or less ; it has disposed all things into a world ; nothing is separated from another but Nous ; all Nous is similar, both the greater and the less ; but no other thing is similar to another. That is how Anaxagoras himself expresses himseU. Then surely it is quite evident from what Socrates says in the Phcedo that the understanding of the countrymen of Anaxa- goras was that his principle was a designing mind. Nor does Ai-istotle dissent from this, but, on the con- trary, he confirms it by a hundred expressions. The voice of antiquity in general, indeed, is wholly to the same effect. So with the modems — so with Hegel in particular, who in Anaxagoras sees ' light ' at last, and the immediate transition to the subjective thought of Pro- tagoras and the objective thought of Socrates. Mj*. Grote stands alone — alone against the world — unsupported, as we shall presently see, even by Zeller. But a theo- logical principle re-appearing in Anaxagoras after so many philosophers, and even in the almost scientific age of Diogenes and Democritus, would not have been to the mind of Auguste Comte, and so neither is it to the mind of Mr. Grote. Theology, Metaphysics, Illumination, that is the course of things in which Mr. Grote believes m general, and that is the course of things which ISIr. Grote would see in Greece. Socrates is the most en- lightened of Greeks, and to him the transition must be influences of information only, not Anaxagoras with his disturbing Nous, but Diogenes, Democritus, Zeno, and Gorgias the Leontine. Sui-ely, however, no one can honestly weigh even the very erudition of the notes of the Germans — say of Zeller alone — and entertain any doubt as to what the nature of his belief should be. It is unnecessary to follow Mr. Grote into aU the particulars of what I hold to be his general distortion of the principle of Anaxagoras. With one or two of the main props the whole fabric falls. Any one reading Mr. Grote alone would go away ^vith the belief that Zeller denied the immateriality and the personality of the Nous ; but this would — really — be a mistake, and I do not believe any one would be more discontented with it than Zeller him- self. Yet Zeller uses the words — in such a context, how- ever, as converts them into something very different from 378 ANNOTATIONS. what they seem in the note of Mr. Grote. Zeller's de- scription of the Nous is to this effect : — ' It (vol. i. p. 679) is a thinking being, a spirit, the ordering and moving force that from the homceomeric materials creates the world. The Anaxagorean fragments do not in any general manner declare the reasons of this assumption, but these are implied in the qualities which distinguish the Nous from the materials. These qualities are three, unity, power, and knowledge. The Nous is alone, un- mixed with anything, separate from all, for only in free- dom from any foreign element can it have power over all. It is of all things the finest and purest, . . . Absolute power over matter, further, belongs to the Nous, from which proceeds all movement of matter. Unlimited knowledge finally it must possess, for only so will it be able to order aU for the best. The Nous, consequently, must be simple, as otherwise it could not be omnipotent and omniscient, and it must be these to be the fashioner of the world ; the fundamental feature of the doctrine of the Nous, and the one to which the ancients give the greatest prominence, lies in the notion of the world- forming power. We must assume therefore that this is essentially the point from which Anaxagoras was led to his doctrine. He was unable to explain motion from mere matter, and still less the motion under law of the beautiful and designful universe, nor would he appeal to unintelligible necessity or to chance, and so he assumed an incorporeal being, the source of movement and arrange- ment.' ZeUer further admits Anaxagoras to have had in mind the analogy of the human intelligence, and so far to have conceived his Nous as in some sort personal (fur- x'lchseimdes, erlcennendes Wesen) ; but he does not beheve at the same time Anaxagoras to have possessed quite pure conceptions either of the immateriality or of the personality of the Nous. There can be no doubt that Anaxagoras had immateriality in his eye despite the de fects which he (Zeller) signalizes. These defects are that the Nous is described imperfectly in general, and in par- ticular as only a finer matter, and i)articipant of the extension of things. But in a note ZeUer tells us that these objections are founded partly on 'the words the finest of all things, partly and particularly on what is said of the existence of the Nous in things.' Now, neither objection has any weight. People believe now-a-days that the soul is immaterial, and yet many, so believing, ANAXAGOBAS. 379 would not hesitate to talk of it as tlie finest or subtlest thing of all. Why, the word here for finest is literally the most free from husk, a metaphor surely very much in place in reference to what was incorporeal. As for the presence of the Xous in things in such manner that these might appear to possess parts of it, and that * greater or less Nous ' might be spoken of in their reference, a precisely similar mode of speech might legitimately be used by any modern Theist. God is, and God is reason, and all things, equally participant in reason, do in a cer- tain sort at the same time exhibit it unequally. Against the personality of the Nous, ZeUer brings forward no other objections. In fact the whole negative of Zeller is merely the charge of imperfection, and, only supported as it is, must be pronounced a very small one. A similar negative he indicates as possible in the case of Aristotle, and yet he urges it not, but refers to this very possibility as pleading for Anaxagoras. Nay, as regards the passage quoted by !Mr. Grote, Zeller says in the note that he has not the smallest reason for denying a theistic element in the doctrine of Anaxagoras, and it is incorrect that he has denied it : ' this only I have maintained, and maintain, that the breach between spirit and nature was begun but not completed by Anaxagoras, that the Nous was not conceived as a subject actually independent of nature, but, if on one side as incorporeal and intelligent, stUl on another side as an element distributed to the indi\adual beings, and operative in the manner of a natm-al power.' Apart from the slightness of Zeller's own supporting grounds, and apart from all that can be urged for the purely intellectual character of the Nous from Plato, Aristotle, and elsewhere, it is evident that we might still accept Zeller's general conclusion without being untrue to the universal conviction on the subject. In short, Zeller's position will now be understood, as well as the impossibility of his sjonpathizing in the smallest degree with the general description of ^Ir. Grote in reference to a Nous that is not so personal as the Empedoclean Love f:\\A Hate, that is a matter among the rest, that has only kuowledge, etc., as the Air of Diogenes, that acts only as a fermenting principle, that simply ' stirs up ' rotatory motion, that is one among numerous other real agents, etc. Neither do I think that ZeUer would j udge other. ■«Tse than Plato, Aristotle, and Hegel judged of Anaxa- goras' ' application ' of his principle, that it was one. 3S0 ANNOTATIONS. namely, that went pretty much 'into the air.' But though he could not apply it, Anaxagoras certainly pro- posed the principle, and it was a universal and prepon- derating principle, and no mere equal among many equals, in the application of all of which Anaxagoras was quite ' consistent ' according to Mr, Grote, and quite free from the known charges of Plato and Aristotle, to an opposite effect. The conclusion of the whole matter is that of Schwegler, that the Nous was an immaterial principle, but still physically conditioned. XI.— TAe Sophists. THE attention of the reader is particularly solicited to this section, and to the transition to Socrates ; for it is here that we begin to get a clear view of the lesson of philosophy — the distinction, namely, between subjec- tivity and objectivity, and our consequent duty. There are many passages in Schwegler which leave us without difficulty as to how the subjective side is to be imderstood. In section xxiii., for example, he speaks thus : — ' The feeling that philosophy must be emanci- pated from its previous state of pupilage and servitude strengthened ; a struggle towards greater independency of research awoke ; and though none durst turn as yet against the church itself, attempts were made,' etc. . . . ' It originated in a scientific interest, and awoke conse- quently the spirit of free inquiry and a love of know- ledge ; it converted objects of faith into objects of thought ; raised men from the sphere of unconditional belief into the sphere of doubt, of search, of understand- ing.' . . . ' Another principle was thus brought into the world, the authority of reason, the principle of intellect,' . . . ' the spirit of inquuy, the longing for light, the advancing intelligence of the time,' . . . ' the longing on the part of consciousness for autonomy, for freedom from the fetters of authority,' . . . ' a ruptm-e of thought with authority, a protest against the shackles of the positive, a return of consciousness from its self -alienation into self,' . . . ' nature and the moral laws of nature, humanity as such, one's own heart, one's own conscience, subjective conviction, in short, the rights of the subject began at last to assume some value.' . . . ' Scientific inquiry not only destroyed a variety of transmitted errors and prejudices, THE SOPHISTS. S81 but, what was iiiglily importaut, it turued tlie thoughts and attention of men to the mnndane, to the actual ; fos- tering and encouraging the habit of reflection, the feeling of self-dependence, the awakened spirit of scrutiny and doubt : the position of a science of observation and ex- periment presupposes an iudependent self -consciousness on the part of the individual, a wresting of himself loose from authority and the creed of authority, — in a word, it presupposes scepticism : hence the originators of modern philosophy, Bacon and Descartes, began with scepticism.' Tn reading these phrases, would not every one fancy that it was Mr. Buckle wrote them, and not Schwegler ? They strike, indeed, the very key-note of the central thought of Buckle, and, from end to end, I know not that there is anything else to be found in Buckle. That ' awakened spirit of scrutiny and doubt ' is the very voice of him. It is not a voice restricted to Mr. Buckle, however, but belongs to Mr. Grote as well. What it insists on, then, is wholly the 'rights of the subject.' These rights the reader will probably perfectly understand from the quotations made for him : he will do weU, however, to read the whole section, as well as those on Socrates, Plato, the French Illumiuation, the German Illuminatiori, and probably others that may of themselves occur to him. Generally as regards the Sojihists, I presume I may hold it as established fact that Mr. Grote's vindication of them foimds on their ' advanced thinking,' and particularly on their supposed defence of the rights of the sxibject. It was Hegel who began this vindication of the Sophists, and Mr. Grote's reason was Hegel's reason. Hegel has been followed in this by every German historian of weight who has written after him. Brandis and Bitter, it is true, take a somewhat darker view of the indivi- duals concerned, but Zeller, Schwegler, Erdmann, etc., all literally follow Hegel. Mr. Grote, then, is evidently right so far. But this so far is only one half. Defence of the rights of the subject, this is one half of the action of the Sophists, and in this they are defensible, justifiable, laudable. Denial of the rights of the object, again, this is the other half of the action of the Sophists, and in that they are indefensible, unjustifiable, and positively censur- able. Now Hegel and the rest see this latter half quite as clearly, and fail not to make it quite as prominent as the other one. Nay, the English historians to whom we are in the habit of referring in these notes, havey 382 A NNO TA TIONS. one and all of them, though only perhaps more oi less imperfectly, given name to this same half, — one and all of them, except Mr. Grote. Mr. Grote alone accentuates the rights of the subject and a warranted relativity: Mr. Grote alone forgets, knows not, or names not, the rights of the object and a warranted ii-relativity. But surely in these days, when M. Comte himself, with the appro- bation of Mr. Mill and Mr. Lewes, insists on the one sole duty of affirmation and construction, it is out of place and an anachronism, for Mr. Grote to insist only on the duty of the negative, on the Aufkldrung, pure and simple, as it existed a hundred years ago, and as — with only a change for the weaker and the worse — it has been revived by Mr. Buckle. Surely it is time to leave these unhappy Priests alone ; surely, in these days of agitation against Decalogues and Confessions of Faith, the sin of the Priests is no longer that of unpliancy to the A-ufkliirung ! But, as is evident, space for discussion fails, and it must sufBce to oppose to Schwegler's expression of the rights of the sub- ject, the same authority's expression of the rights of the object. We can only select, indeed, a few phi-ases from the section on the Sophists as follows : — 'The Sophists introduced, in the fonn of a general religious and political Aufkldrung (illumination) the principle of subjectivity, though at first oiJy negatively, or as destroyer of all that was established in the opinions of existing society ; and this continued till Socrates opposed to this principle of empii'ical subjectivity that of absolute subjectiAaty, or intelligence in the form of a free moral avlU, and asserted, as against the world of sense, thought to be the positively higher principle, and the truth of all reality.' . . . 'The right of the Sophists is the right of subjectivity, of self- consciousness (that is to say, the demand that all that is to be acknowledged by me shall establish itself as reason- able to my consciousness) ; its unright is the regarding of this subjectivity as only finite, empirical, egoistic subjec- tivity (that is to say, the demand that my contingent ■will and personal opinion shall have the decision of what is reasonable) ; its right is to have established the principle of frce-wiU, of self -conviction ; its unright is to have set upon the throne the contingent will and judgment of the indi- \ddual.' . . . 'To win a veritable world of objective thought, an absolute import, to set in the place of empirical subjec- tivity, absolute or ideal siibjectivity, objective will, and rational thought, —this now was the task which Socrates THE SOPHISTS. 383 undertook and achieved.' For conviction it would be necessary to quote the whole passage (pp. 37, 38), but these phrases will sti>ike the key-note, and induce the reader to inquire further for himself into what is meant by 'objective thought,' ' universalitj'^, universal validity, in a word, objectivity.' What Hegel writes in this connexion is the original of aU this, of aU that concerns the Sophists under both aspects, and it is something singularly deep- working, exhaustive, and true. Gladly would we trans- late, gladly would we follow up with quotations fiom Erdmann and Zeller, but space forbids, and we must be content with reference. ISIr. Grote leaves us in no doubt as to his position here, even without consideration of his exjM-ess chapter on the Sophists in his History of Greece. In a note to his Plato (vol. ii. p. 361) we read as follows : — ' This is the objection (Subjectivism) taken by Schwegler, Prantl, and other German thinkers, against the Pro- tagorean doctrine. . . . These authors both say that the Protagorean canon, properly understood, is riglit, but that Protagoras laid it down wrongly. They admit the principle of Subjectivity as an essential aspect of the case in regard to truth ; but they say that Protagoras was wrong in appealing to individual, empii'ical, accidental subjectivity of each man at every varying moment, whereas he ought to have appealed to an ideal or luu- versal subjectivity. "What ought to be held true, right, good, etc." (says Schwegler), " must be decided doubtless by me, but by me so far forth as a rational and thinking being. Now, my thinking, my reason, is not something specially belonging to me, but something common to all rational beings, something universal ; so far therefore as I proceed as a rational and thinking person, my subjectivity is an universal subjectivity. Every thinking person has the consciousness that what he regards as right, duty, good, evil, etc., presents itself not merely to him as such, but also to every rational person, and that, consequently, his judgment possesses the character of universality, universal validity ; in one word, Objectivity." Here it is explicitly asserted that, wherever a number of individual men employ their reason, the specialties of each disappear, and they arrive at the same conclusions — Reason being a guide imper- sonal as well as infallible. And this same view is ex- pressed by Prantl in other language, when he reforms the Protagorean doctrine by saying, " Das Denken ist der 384 A NNO TA TIONS. Mass der Dinge." To me this assertion appears so dis- tinctly at variance with notorious facts, that I am sur- prised when I find it advanced bj^ learned historians of philosophy, who recount the very facts which contradict it. Can it really be necessary to repeat that the reason of one man differs most materially from that of another — and the reason of the same person from itself, at dif- ferent times — in respect of the arguments accepted, the authorities obeyed, the conclusions embraced ? The impersonal Reason is a mere fiction ; the universal Rea- son is an abstraction, belonging alike to all particular rea- soners, consentient or dissentient, sound or imsound, etc. Schwegler admits the Protagorean canon only under a reserve which nullifies its meaning. To say that the Universal Reason is the measure of truth is to assign no measure at all. The Universal Reason can only make itself known through an interpreter. The interpreters are dissentient ; and which of them is to hold the privi- lege of infallibility ? Neither Schwegler nor Prantl is forward to specify who the interpreter is who is entitled to put dissentients to silence ; both of them keep in the safe obscurity of an abstraction — " Das Denken " — the Universal Reason. Protagoras recognises in each dissen- tient an equal right to exercise his own reason, and to judge for himself. In order to show how thoroughly incorrect the language of Schwegler and Prantl is, when they talk about the Universal Reason as unanimous and unerring, I transcribe from another eminent historian of philosophy a description of what philosophy has been (" Une multitude d'hypoth?ises . . . une diversite d' opin- ions . . , des sectes, des partis meme, des disputes inter- minables, des speculations steriles, des erreurs," etc. etc.), from ancient times down to the present.' We shall not in detail criticise these deliverances (in which Schwegler's reader will of himself perceive errors as regards Protagoras, italics, etc.) ; but a word will prove useful on the question at stake. The tei-ms subjective and objective have acquired now so many shades of meaning that they often perplex. The universal English sense as yet is. That that is subjective which belongs to a cognizing subject, and that objective which belongs to a cognized object. The cognized object, again, if itself mental, is subjectivo-objective ; if not mental, but (at least relatively) material, it is objectivo-objective. These are not the important German senses, however, and they THE SOPHISTS. 385 are not those of the citation from Schwegler. Subjec- tivity, as there used, is what is inine, and mine only ; it is not yours, it is not his ; it is mine, and distinctive of me. Objectivity, again, as used in the same citation, is neither mine, nor yours, nor his, and yet mine, and yours, and his ; it is not proper and peculiar to any single one of us in his own separate and individual personahty or originality — it is common to us all in our uni- versal humanity. In short, the one is accidens individui, the other differentia generis. The element of subjec- tivity, now, being restricted to A as A, to B as B, etc., can only exist as subjectivities, a chaos of miscellanies, of individual xinits, of infinite differences. These differ- ences must remain for ever different, disjunct, isolated, beside one another ; for they have nothing in common. It is otherwise with the element of objectivity. "WTiLle subjectivities are insusceptible of comparison, objectivity may be compared with objectivity, and so at length a system formed in which we all meet. What is subjective, then, as incapable of comparison and communication, is, for humanity as humanity, valueless ; while objectivity, on the contrary, as capable of both, is, in that respect, alone valuable, and invaluable. Subjective truth, then, is truth for this subject, or that subject. Objective truth is truth for this subject and that subject. EWdentlj^ then, objective truth is independent of the subject as subject. The object is his filling, his contents ; it is truly he. He, apart from that object, is empty, nothing ; but still it is independent of him. He rather is depen- dent on it. As a subject his only right with reference to the object, is that he should find it his, that it should be brought home to his subjective conviction. That is the oulj' truth or right of the principle of subjectivity. The truth or right of the principle of objectiWty again is an absolute truth or right : it is binding on every subject — on every subject whose right of subjectivity has been adequately respected. For these ideas it is im- possible to fiod better expression than that of Schwegler (xi. 6), as referred to by Mr. Grote. Now, on the prac- tical side, this is the best outcome of Kant and Hegel ; this is the outcome of German philosophy ; all else there is but its a])plication. When we consider that it is this thai is in question in the citation from Schwegler, is not the naive astonishment of Mr. Grote at such a doctrine posi- tively amusing? Relativity, according to Mr. Grote, im- 386 ANNO TA TIOKS. parts, in view of their equal right, universal beuignaucy towards all opinions. Here, however, Mr. Grote's feelings are too much for him. He is forced to declare his ' surprise ' at an assertion ' so distinctly at variance with notorious facts ; ' and he cannot help exclaiming, with the air of a shocked, stunned, but still authoritative preceptor, ' Can it really be necessary to repeat?' What Mr. Grote repeats is, that ' the reason of one man differs most materially from that of another ;' l)ut have not the Germans an eqiial right to exclaim to Mr. Grote, ' Can it really be necessary to repeat that the reason of one man does not differ most materially from that of another, but, on the contrary, the reason of one man is essentially identical with that of another ?'* It is due to Mr. Grote, however, to examine his position, as contained in the overlying text on the Thesetetus more at large. From this we soon learn that Mr. Grote's general philosophical creed is that which has been named of Relativity. One's first difficulty is what is meant by the term. Relativists in England are now-a-days spoken of with awe. They have inscribed on the universe the great principle of relativity, we hear. When we ask what this great principle is, however, we are referred to the appearance of the skin under a microscope, or to the variety of existent and non-existent opinions, perhaps — in fact, we are left at last with the word Relativity, and an empirical example or two. We should like to know what relativity is, where it begins, how it works itself out, where it ends, etc., but no one can show us that — no one thinks of showing us that. This, however, ought not to be so difficult — Hegel's system is that. An Abso- lute is impossible without — is only through and for, a Relative. Tlte Absolute, then, will be the Relativity — or the System of all existent relativities or relations. Instead of giving us this complete relati^^ty — relativity as it is and works — the bones and skeleton of a imiverse — Mr. Grote gives us this bare phrase only, The implica- tion of Subject and Object. There can be no object with- out a subject, says Mr. Grote, and therefore relativity is the whole and sole philosophy. If the pkrase without the thing relativity dissatisfied, here we are perplexed with the reason for the general doctrine itself. Surely it is a commonplace that cognition is impossible without the coincidence of an object and a subject. So far as I know, no human being ever denied that. Mr. Grote • Mr. Grote forgot Heraclitus : — Mo Sel eVeo-Sai Tt? furcp' roi \6yov ie eofTO? ivvov iu>ov(Ti.v ot ttoAAoi (is tSiVv exoi'Tef tppoyrjinu ; aud also BextUS : — o 6e av 'l.S^a<7licatinij subjectivity, Mr. Grote has only been correspondently implicating objectivity. That is a natural dialectic which 390 ANNOTATIONS. may be recommended to the attention of every Ptelativist, Proofs of this correspondent implication of objectivity exist, as said, in every sentence of Mr. Grote that — con- sciously — has no aim but to explicate subjectivity. We can only take an example or two. ' Comparisons and contrasts,' he says, p. 341, 'gradiially multiplied between one consciousness and another lead us to distinguish,' etc. There is, then, necessarily, an element capable of com- parison and communication in us, and the result of this process can only be a body of generalized distinctions. But this element is not possibly the subjective element : we cannot possibly compare even our smells or our tastes ; what we can possibly compare are only our thoughts : the 47th proposition of Euclid is the same for all of us. P. 349, ' It is for the reader to judge how far my reasons are satisfactory to his mind ; ' what does that appeal amount to ? Why, to this, that both writer and reader may meet in judgment, that there is a common gi-ound between them, and that the writer hopes he has been true to it. Mr. Grote admits (p. 352) aU men not to be equally vrise ; but is it possible to talk so without the admission of a standard ? He only who can feel heat qua heat knows the degrees of it, and so of wisdom. In fact, the moment you say not equally the principle of sub- jective relativity is vii'tually abandoned, a new test, a new criterion, a new standard, is introduced ; it is no longer / for myself, but another for me, and that because he possesses not only subjective wisdom but objective wisdom. That is, the moment we say not equally we have left subjectivity, and entered ob- jectivity. Page 351, Mr. Grote says, that though the dog, the horse, the new-born child, the lunatic, etc., is a measure of trath each to himself, it is not declared that ' either of them is a measm-e of truth to me, to you, or to any ordinary bystander. ' This, explicitly, is the hope- less tautology ah'eady signalized, each is each, and the standard of truth is the individual. As many individuals, so many standards of truth ; no judge, therefore, and conseqiiently no sentence. This is the explication, but the implication is, there is a standard of truth. Each is a measure of truth to himself, but he is net a measure of truth to me, etc. (Is this thing to which Mr. Grote ex- plicitly refers a measure of truth at all ? It were a strange standard that were a standard only to one ; very Btrange standards these where each has his own !) Im- THE SOPHISTS. 391 plicitly, then, a standard, a measure, that is, a comvion standard, a common measure, is, re vera, referred to. What is it ? The measure for me, for you, for any ordi- nary bystander, it is precisely that measure that is alone truth, that is alone wanted. That the particular senti- ency is only in the particular sentient is a truism, but it is not, in this reference, truth. The truth, really, ia not that what I feel I feel ; that is subjectivity pure and simple ; my feeling, if only my feeling is worthless, is as good as a nonens. Truth begins only when what I feel, another feels, when what I think, another thinks. Then, and then onlj', as said, have we entered objectivity. Until the dog, the horse, etc., can introduce us to this region, we may very well leave them alone. In point of fact, does the universe allow this measure of truth that the dog is to himself, the horse to himself, the limatic to himself, etc. ? No ; dog, horse, lunatic, have to become, each in his place, representatives of the measure of reason. And, as for the child, what is it, that is at aU seen in it, at aU honoured in it? Why, reason, universal reason, man as man. Why is that squalling struggling impotence held at the font, amid the awe-struck faces of grown men and grown women, with all the solemnity of cere- mony, with all the sanctity of religion ? Possibly these grown men, and women, and all concerned, may seem fools to Mr. Grote. But the one fact present is, that that squalling impotence is implicitly a man, is implicitly reason. For that cause is all the gravity of the solem- nity ; and for this cause, that the child ia not a. measure of truth even for itself, do fathers and mothers, and godfathers and godmothers there take vows to replace its unreason with their reason till, in the ripeness of time, it is itself, in reason, a freeman of the universe. How differently the general i)roblem woiild have seemed to Mr. Grote had he but made both terms of the relation, and equally so, explicit ! Did it never occur to Mr. Grote to question what I have called the Gorgojiization of the object on the part of the subject? This Gorgoniza- tion, it is to be admitted, is the belief of all subjective idealism — (the object can only be known in me, in the subject, and therefore it is subjective, and, if subjective, ideal) — but stiU it is capable of question. Does it not seem absurd to say, that by interposition of mind, by which alone knowledge is possible, knowledge is at the same time impossible ? What alone renders something 392 ANNOTATIONS. possible, alone renders it impossible ! I know, but, be- cause I know, I do not know ! I see, but, because I see, I do not see ! Is it a fact, tlien, that, because both — subject and object — are present in cognition, the one must be destroyed by the other, and not that cognition may be made true, but that it may be made false ? In a word, is it not worth while to consider the whole antithesis : an object is known because there is a subject to know it ; an object is not known because there is a subject to know it ? But here we can only suggest. If it is quite true, then, as Mr. Grote says, that the auto- nomy of each individual mind, the right of private judg- ment, or as we phrase it, the right of subjectivity, is the basis of philosophy and the centre of appeal, we must bear in mind that it is still only a half truth, and that it is a whole truth only when complemented with the right of objectivity. A being possessed of reason is not to be subjected — unless as a last resource — to mechanical force : his conviction is to be addressed and carried with us. This, doubtless, hes in the very fact of the cross-exami- nation of Socrates (to refer to another argument of Mr. Grote's), but in that fact there lies also more. The maieu- tic art of the son of PhjBuarete the midwife was for a birth — the second birth — the birth of the object out of the subject. That is the end of aU true maieutics, elimi- nation of the position of Mr. Grote, and establishment of that of Socrates — the authority of the universal. Into the service of the universal, the individual must harness himself. Though, then, it is my right that I should be present with my own conviction to whatever truth is pro- posed, it is the right of this truth also, so to speak, that it should not be a mere subjectivity, a mere singularity, a mere peculiarity in a single individual ; it is the right of this truth that it should be objective — in Mr. Grote's own language, it is the right of this truth that it should be reasoned iruth. By this phrase, which occurs very commonly in Mr. Grote, he imj)lkUly abandons the whole position of subjectivity. Truth to be truth at aU must be reasoned truth. Mr. Grote has still the difficulty, in- deed — who is to dictate this reasoned truth ? But in the case of reasoned truth is any dictator required ? Reason is a common possession, and we either aU already do meet in reason, or we aU shall meet. Mr. Grote's surprise at opposition on the part of Schwegler and Prantl to ' noto- rious facts,' was, as we have seen, the naive avowal of a THE SOPHISTS. 393 like insight at bottom. JSTotorious facts, reasoned truth — that is objectivity. When Mr. Grote considers only the infinitely different colours of the infinitely different subjects, he has before him a world of infinitely different objects also. But the difference in which we part must not blind us to the identity in which we meet. The world is not an evershifting chaos of countless particulars only. There are laws in the world-system. The daily life of the univei'se and the daily life of man pass, so to speak, in a maze and mist of the contingent, the relative ; particular clashes with particular, individual with individual, and the entanglement seems hopeless. Nevertheless, there is within the maze and mist a solid core which is universal, and not particular, necessary and not contingent, abso- lute and not relative. This core, this system, is, in ulti- mate name, reason ; and it is to this reason, as the com- mon possession of humanity, that Prantl and Schwegler appeal. As common possession, it is universal identity certainly, but as possession of humanity it can hardly be called impersonal. With reference to the universe, in general, indeed, this reason cannot be called impcFSonal, for it is a life ; neither can it be called infallible, if in- fallible means fixed, for a life is progress. But, for reasoned truth, whether dictators be required or not, do we not possess them ? What are books for example ? (The Book, let us only suggest.) The Organon of Aristotle is, in very truth, not the particular sub- ject Aristotle ; it is an object — an object received, per- fected, transmitted : the Organon of Aristotle is therefore objective incorporation with us. Books ! and who again is to interpret your books ? Is that, then, really so diffi- cult ? Do we not all learn our astronomy and mathe- matics contentedly enough ? Even in other sciences is the difficulty a want of interpreters ? But, books apart, and let it be contained where it may, there really is knowledge objective and common to us aU. It is the very purpose of the Thesetetus to point out this know- ledge. ISIr. Grote ignores this, and will have it that the Thesetetus has only a negative result. We can trust Schwegler, however, and on his authority believe the Thesetetus to be a demonstration of the fact of objective knowledge. To the contributions of the senses from without there are additions from the faculties within, and these additions, comparable the one with the other, are the same in each of us and alike for us all. These addi- 394 ANNOTATIONS. tions have in modern times been called categories, and mucli has already been done towards their discovery and summation. Space is not exactly a category, but as con- ceived by Kant, it will iUastrate these. The contribu- tions of special sense, Kant holds to receive their dispo- sitions in space, as it were by a projection from within. In space we all agree — even conceive it actually external — it is an example of an objective truth. So time, so quantity, etc. But the true answer to Mr. Grote's ques- tion about a judge, an interpreter, a dictator, etc., is — the State. Where can you get a better proof of relativity than the State ? — it is never a year the same ! As a life, as pro- gress, the State must change ; nevertheless it is the true authority. Even Socrates had to leave all abstract defi- nition of justice and appeal to the State. Instead of the State, Mr. Grote seems to advocate individual authority. This is the only provision for agreement — for approach to a universal — which I can find in Mr. Grote. 1 may try to get others to accept my views ; and so a certain esti- mation on the part of others, a certain authority in their e3'^es, becomes possible for me. StiU Mr. Grote speaks of this authority as something merely subjective ; as some- thing dependent on the good-pleasure of others. Is it good-pleasure, then, and not reason that leads me to pre- fer the better physician, or even the better baker ? Mr. Grote talks of this tendency in us towards rational autho- rity, quite in the manner of the Aufklarung, as if it were a mere subjective tendency, a mere predisijosition in us. It is in this way that Mr. Buckle talks of our superstitious, our received opinions, our prejudices. Still, what could be the only ultimate result of this process, even if merely subjective, as Mr. Grote seems to believe ? Why, this is Hobbes's helium omnium in omnes, and its result is — the State. But this result has left that helium long behind it, and it were an anachronism to return to it. That helium, indeed, was but the initial state of nature. That we have been delivered from the tyranny of such mere subjective opinion, and sucli mere subjective authority — for this we have to thank the State. The State has a right of coercion, and in this right, Mr. Grote will recognise an objective element, a universal in which we all agree, or which is capable of being brought home to the subjective conviction of each of us. There is a period in the history of the State wheu THE SOPHISTS. 395 people live in tradition ; that is a period of unreflected Sittlkhkeit, or natural observance. Then there comes a time when the observances are questioned, and when the right or truth they involve is reflected into the subject. This is a period of Aufkliirung, and for Sittliclikeit there is substituted Moralitdt, subjective morality : the sub- ject will approve nought but what he finds inwardly true to himself, to his conscience. In this period, then, all is subjective ; what is holy and authoritative is the spirit of the subject, and of the subject as independent individual. But then, evidently, there is no guarantee for the correctness of the spirit ; each refers to his owii spirit, and subject may differ from subject indefinitely, — agreement there may be none. But Society cannot exist so ; a system of observances again results, and this time of reflected observances, that is, of such observances as approve themselves to the consciousness of every com- petent subject. The subject now is not, as under Mora- litdt, shut into his own self, but has the enjoyment of himself objectively, outwardly, as realised in actual ob- servances, institutions, etc. There is now a reign of objective reason. Here is a triplet, then, of substantial worth, in contrast with which the triplet of Comte cannot conceal how much it is but French precipitate and super- ficial theorizing. It is referred to here, however, to make credible how it is that the State may, in its laws and institutions, in its arts and sciences, in its customs and manners, constitute the arbiter and dictator of what is objectively true, objectively right. "What stadium Mr. Grote occupies in it will be readily perceived. It is this stadium that prescribes the whole general position of Mr. Grote, as in his account of the pre-Socratic philo- sophy, where he disposes all (not without a little corn- pressure in passing to the reason of Heraclitus, the Nous of Anaxagoras, or the argumentation and place of Zeno) into the due series that stretches from ancient religious superstition to modern physical enlightenment, enforcing always the single duty of the negative to those ' early doses, ' which we all ' swallow, ' ' of authoritative dogmas and proofs dictated by our teachers.' On all points, I have been able to say only a tithe of what I wished to say. I have done no more, indeed, than indicate. I trust, however, that regard as I may the objective pro- duct of Mr. Grote, I have neither been unjust to it, nor failed in admiration of his own great subjective ability. 306 ANNOTA TIONS. XII. — Socrates. IN passing from the first (the Pre-Socratic) to the second (the Socratic) period of the history of an- cient philosophy there is room for a moment's retro- spect. In looking back, then, we see that the Ionics began the philosophical, as in contrast to the mytho- logical, explanation of existence by the proposal of a material principle (water, air, etc.) as unity and source of all things. The Pythagoreans proposed nextly (in numerical ratios) a formal principle ; and were followed, in their turn, by the Eleatics, who, in the necessary afl&rmative substrate that was conceived to underlie the negative contingency of existence, sought to replace both material and formal principles by an intelligible one. As a truer basis of the all of things, Heraclitus set up, in lieu of the simple afl&rmative of Being, the negativo- aflBrmative of Becoming. Becoming was no concrete principle, however, but simply the abstraction of process, of change, as such. However true a characteristic of things, it was a naming merely, and not an explaining. Passing over Empedocles, who was but an imperfect step in the same direction as, and only partially suggestive to, Anaxagoras, it was the Atomists now who returned to an attempt at concrete explana.tio7i. Their materials, the atoms, were certainly an ingenious machinery in inter- pretation of the being of things. Anaxagoras saw, how- ever, that the becoming of things, evidently subjected to law and order, could only be unsatisfactorily accounted for by mechanical necessity and chance, and he pro- posed, instead, the agency of a designing mind. One can see, then, that Anaxagoras constituted the completion of a circle of thought, the completion of an intellectual era,- ■which, in Hegelian language, may be regarded as corre- sponding to the moment of simple apprehension. The next logical moment, then, was plainly that of judgment, and it was initiated by the Sophists. The Sophists, namely, were thrown back from the thought that was pointed to in the universe by Anaxagoras to the thought as thought that existed in themselves. To that thought, subjective thought, aU things, whether in nature or society, were now submitted with the necessary result of a complete AufUdrung, the Grecian Illumination. It is here that Socrates comes in. His moral purity revolted SOCRA TES. 397 at the instability and insecurity to which all rules of conduct were reduced by the principle of the Sophists. So influenced, Socrates sought a standard of conduct. This standard he conceived himself to find in what we may call scientific generalization. Let us but know, he thought, the universal or generic notion of any duty, antl then we shall know all forms of that duty, and of neces- sity practise them. Through generalization, each duty was, to Socrates, knowable, teachable, and (with all its forms) 07ie. In support of the doctrine of objectivity as against subjectivity and ISIr. Grote, contained in the • Transition to Socrates,' I may quote Hegel, who, in the sections (Hist, of Fhil.) on Socrates and the Sophists, speaks often thus : — 'True thought is such that its import is not sub- jective but objective, objectivity having the sense hero of substantial universality, and not of external objectivity; what mind thus produces from its own self must be produced from it as active in a universal manner, not from its passions, private interests, and selfish motives ; man as thinking and as giving himself a universal im- port, man in his rational nature and universal substan- tiality, not every man in his particular speciality as this contingent individual man, is the required measure.' From Erdmann, too, I may quote this : — ' All truth lies in the subject, but only so far as he is universal ; not vas dpdpuTTos, as with Protagoras, but 6 dwdpuiros, as with Socrates, is tlie measure of all things, the one being but ij 5s, the other 6 'beds ; according to Protagoras, on the theoretical side, that is true which to me is true, and ou the practical, that good which to me is good ; but in such subjectivism, all objective, universally valid prin- ciples lose their meaning, objectivity disappears, in short, .ind the subject is left free to turn all as he pleases.' A.S regards what is said of Hegel's view of the fate of Socrates, I may remark that this is, perhaps, imworthy of Schwegler, who, as in a preceding case, while indebted to Hegel for every word he uses, seeks to give himself an air of originality by a slight turn in the application of the word. The position of Hegel and the position of Schwegler, despite the apparent opposition of the latter, are essentially the same. It is to Hegel, in short, that we owe the deep and perfect exposition of the whole situation, nor is it quite certatu, indeed, that Schwegler b on the level of it. The respective intercalation wiU 2 D 398 ANN OTA TIONS. be found to contain, it is hoped, a satisfactory elucidation of the vast, vital, and all-important Hegelian distinction between Moralitdl and S'Mlichkeit. XllL— Plato. THERE is but little here that calls for explanatioiL. The term protrepiic, for example, is now not un- known to dictionaries ; and both it and the earlier par- enetic may be varied by exhortative. Thetic, again, is also to be found in dictionaries, and refers to demon- strations that are not negative or indirect, but, on the contrary, direct and positive. The phrase non-being may sometimes appear perplexing, but it means simply negation — negation that assumes, so to speak, a positive virtue, when in relation to the affirmation to which it is opposed. Cold and darkness, for example, are so related to heat and light. This is what is alluded to in the words pairs and counterparts, which I have intercalated into the parenthesis at the top of page 66. Given light, its counterpart, darkness, is also given ; and such ideas as motion, rest, heat, cold, likeness, itnlikeness, identity, difference, discretion, continuity, etc., are similarly situated. Non-being, the idea of negation, is essential to any distinction, to any life, to any concrete. Any affirmation in this universe is only through negation. My ego, your ego, any ego, possesses its present affirma- tion only through preceding negation ; it is by virtue of what it was, by virtue, that is, of what it is not. The affirmation of the universe itself is kept ahve, so to speak, only by means of a process of incessant negation. This introduces us, then, to the same element that we possess in Hegel, the Logic of whom may be regarded as, in a certain sort, a completion of — what is only piece- meal and partial in Plato — the exposition of the ideas. Plato's main object is to extend and complete the work of Socrates ; that is, to discover the generic notions, not only of all moral or practical things (duties), but of all things whatever, theoretic and {esthetic as well as prac- tical. The phrase the idea is often used in a collective manner for this system of all ideas. It is the ' diamond net' which underlies and supports the contingent, — the element of Eleatic Being as against that of Heraclitic Becoming. The secret of Plato, then, is, in a sort, AlilSTOrLE. 399 simply generalization, and what is meant by Plato's ideas, Plato's ideal theory, etc., is now perfectly intel- ligible. His main error was to liypostasize the ideas, and see them only in isolation and separation from the con- crete. Opinion [S6^a, Meinung, Vorstellung) has a pecu- liar meaning with the Greeks and Germans ; it is probably sufBciently explained by the parenthesis attached to it at the foot of page 71. To the peculiar German term substantial, which is analogous to Sittlich, I have added, on page 89, similar exjilanatory paren- theses. In Germany, the discussion of the order, dates, and authenticity of the Platonic dialogues still con- tinues ; Schwegler's relative ruling (though not original to him) is exceedingly satisfactory, and all debate will probably in the end settle into it.i How much the state- ments of Schwegler are, on all points, conditioned by the labours of Hegel before him, and how little he de- sires to conceal this, may be understood from the fact that what I have marked as a quotation at the foot of page 60 is not so marked by Schwegler, and yet it occurs verbatim, page 152 of Hegel's second part of the Historij of Philosophy. XIV. —Aristotle. THE philosophy of Aristotle is evidently conditioned by effort to remedy the defects which he himself signalizes in the philosophy of Plato. In the latter, noumenon and phenomenon idly confronted each other — movement there was none : addition of that element, then, shaU now convert the universe into an explained unit3\ Aristotle's expedient for this conversion is, in the main, the single conception of development. Development, how- ever, is but a more concrete form of the Becoming of Heraclitus ; and thus it is that, if Plato was Eleatic, Aristotle is in turn Heraclitic. To Aristotle it appears the very nature of what is to pass from potentiality into actuahty. What is, as potential, is matter ; as actual, form. The universe, then, is but a gradation between these extremes. The higher extreme, again, is identical with the Platonic ideal element, with reason, with the Good. In this way we see that to Aristotle there is no disjunction ; the higher element is immanent in the lower ; the ideas are converted into entelechies, into the 1 Sec Preface, p xii. 400 A NNO TA TIONS. ends and notions, into tlie Bestimmungen (in the double sense of determinations and destinations), that constitute the life and very being of things. Thus it is that Aris- totle, if on one side an absolute empiricist, is, on the other, an absolute idealist; and it is quite a similar general tendency of thought that will be found to condi- tion his further modification of the Platonic teaching in the concrete spheres of ethics, physics, the state, etc. In a certain way, then, the Aristotelian philosophy may be regarded as but an amplication of the Platonic principle to the concrete ; and it is the distinction of potentiality and actuality (identical with matter and form) that, on the whole, constitutes its characteristic. Evidently, then, as Hegel was not without debt to Plato, so neither is he without perhaps a greater debt to Aristotle. To give the first example that suggests itself, reference to the 'notion of development' and that of the 'concrete' at pages 33 and 35 of the first part of the History of Philosophy will clearly demonstrate this. Such phrases (in Schwegler's text) as 'thought the absolute reality of matter,' the 'iromanence of the universal in the singular,' a 'being that is eternally being produced,' ' a goal that is in every instant attained by the movement of the in-itself to the for-itself,' etc., are not less Hegelian than Aristotelian. Hegel indeed substituted a Heraclitic for an Eleatic element in the ideas of Plato ; he gave them movement : issuing the one from the other they constitute in him but a single process. In this way he but completed the work of both the Greeks. At page 94 will be found a peculiar German use of the term i^sychological. By a parenthesis I have represented it to mean indicative of human motive. In his Philoso- phy of History, pp. 39, 40, the word will be found so used by Hegel. He defines there this psychological mode of view, and proceeds : — ' These psychologues apply themselves in particular to the peculiarities of great historical figures as individuals. A man must eat and drink, stands in connexion vnth friends and acquain- tances, has feelings and ebullitions of the moment. No man is a hero to his valet-de-chambre, is a common pro- verb ; I added to it — and Goethe repeated the addition ten years later — not because the hero is not a hero, but because the valet is a valet. By such psychological valets,' etc. The word in this sense is not uncommon io later German writers. ARISTOILE. 401 At page 98, metaphysics, as tlie science of being, ■will be found to be distinguished from the other sciences in such a manner as explains the antithesis of finite and infinite thought, so common in Sch-sregl,r ar.d the other modern Germans. The ordinary sciences, ramely, have each its own sphere, its own laws and princ ])les. They are thus the business of finite thought. The result, in their regard, is only complete within the concrete pre- supi>ositions of each. Result is beside result, and none is the universal result. But suppose we can account for being as being, explain how there should be such a fact as existence at all, and demonstrate the course it will take, then plainly we are occupied with that which is all- embracing and infinite. Schelling is reported, at page 805, to liold, 'that speculation is tlie •whole, — vision, contemplation, that is, of everything in God ; science itself is valuable only so far as it is speculative, bo far as it is contemplation of God as he is.' Speculative thought has the same sense as infinite thoiight : it is that thought which considers being as being, or all things in God. Spinoza's phrase, suh specie aternitatis, has the same refer- ence. That Aristotle shotild have called his first philo- sophy theology, then, is now not difficult to understand. The si)eculative of Hegel is also clear ; it is what explana- torily sublates all things into the unity of God ; or, in gene- ral, that is speculative, that sublates a many into one (or vice versa). A speculative philosophy, consequently, must be a chain of mutually sublating counterparts. This will explain the censure to which, on page 100, Aristotle is subjected, for having ' supplied in his logic only a natural history of finite thought.' Aristotle, that is, has only analysed the general forms in or through which each empirical subject thinks things ; he has separated things and thoughts, which, limited the one by the other, are both thus finite ; he has not evolved those great forms of thought, which, ap])licable to the universe as a whole, constitute a universal logic. Aristotle's logic is but empirically taken up in reference to the thought of the subject, not speculatively in reference to the thought of God ; and thus it is finite, and not infinite.*' Common modern logic has gone beyond Aristotle, indeed, for it has sought to divorce things (or matter) altogether from thoughts (or form). The addition of the fourth figure, I may remark, by the bye, is regarded neither by Kant nor Hegel as any inii^rovement on Aristotle (see die faUche * Nevertheless the distinction in question is precisely Aristotle's : he sees a thing in two relations ; \st, as aiScov ; and 2d, as Trpds n; or uaines it now in the language of the gods, and now in the language of men. 402 A XXO TA TIOXS. Spitzfindighelt der vler syllogktischen Figuren of the one, and section 187 of the Encyclopaedia of the other). On page 102, the phrase ' the finite import,' as the paren- thesis attempts to point out, refers to the identity of the idea and the sensuous thing, when what import consti- tutes each is considered. They have, in short, the same import, only the one is called ideal, and the other real. On page 108, the word Entelechie may prove troublesome : it refepe, however, to what Hegel calls idea, a concrete which materially realizes a formal notion or purpose. Life is an idea, an entelechie ; in it the body is the material realization of the soul or subject which is the formal element ; they mutually interpenetrate and give actuality the one to the other. Still relatively to the body, the soul is eminently the entelechie ; the body is only for it, it is the true actuality. The word patho- logical, page 116, is one in frequent use now; it refers to the element of instinctive feeling, of instinctive sensa- tional motive. Any other passages, or words, likely to prove difficult, I know not in this section, which consti- tutes, with the preceding one, perhaps the most perfect portion of the whole book. XV. — The Post- Aristotelian Philosophy. THERE is little to be said here, for no explanation seems wanted. I would only call attention to the excellence of the description of the fall of Greece (pp. 120-3), for the importance of the lesson it extends to ourselves. We, too, seem to live at a very similar re- lative epoch : ' the simple trust of the subject in the given world is completely at an end.' In the Post- Aristotelian philosophy, however, there is still a gain for the spirit of man. This gain is the Roman element ; the individual is free, respected for himself, a subject on his own account, a person. Nor in our modern world is there any want of a similar element. The error now rather is that the principle of subjecti^nty is in excess, and requires to be restored to the control of the universal If subjec- tivity has just emptied itself, in morals, politics, and religion, of an tmreflected objectivity, it must now refill itself (in all these interests) with a reflected objectivity. Perhaps it is hardly worth remarking that, though Schwegler's excellence is synopsis, reduction, still his TRA N SIT ION TO MODERN PHIL OSOPH Y. 40:j fault is that of — occasionally — keeping up the note too long, or of a turn too many. Glimpses of this, I think, we can catch in Stoicism. In these sections, I find no room for explanation ; reserving criticism also with a view to space, I pass on to XVI. — Transition to Modern Philosophy. ENGLISH readers will be apt to think Schwegler unjust to Bacon here, and, perhaps, to some extent, not without reason. It is useless to endeavour to depose Bacon from his position at the head of modern philosophy : he certainly first clearly and consciously mooted the emanci- pating thoughts which are our constitutive element now. Probably, however, Englishmen place their countryman, in himself, too high. It is impossible to find a more careful, more exhaustive, more impartial estimate than that of Erdmann, and his result is not much higher than that of Schwegler. The account of Ueberweg is a very excellent one, and it is to the same efifect. Then, as for Hegel, though he must be allowed to do Bacon great justice on the whole, he is to be found also speaking thus : — ' As Bacon has always had the praise of the man who directed knowledge to its true source, experience, so is he in efifect the special leader and representative of what in England has been called Philosophy, and beyond which Englishmen have not yet quite advanced ; for they seem to constitute that people in Europe, which, limited to understanding of actuality, is destined, like the huckster and workman class in the State, to live always immersed in matter, with daily fact for their object, but not reason.' It is from Hegel, too, that the gibe about mottoes comes. I may remark also that Hegel supports himself with reference to Bacon by a quotation from an English article [Quarterly Review, vol. xvi., April 1817, p. 53), which is really striking. In deprecation of the ordinary censure of Bacon's character on two points, Erdmann writes thus : — ' The complete want of fortune, doubly painful from his high connexions, the mass of debts, the three-and-twenty years of expectations (perpetually renewed and perpetually disappointed) of becoming a salaried, instead of an unsalaried official, would probably have made, even in a stronger character, the love of money a habit : the severity with which Bacon has been 404 ANNOTATIONS. blamed for acting as counsel against his fallen patron Essex, and afterwards publishing a report of the process justifying the Queen, appears unjust to him who knows how Bacon laboured to bring the Earl to reason and the Queen to mercy, and reflects, besides, that what the latter committed to him, he was obliged to execute by virtue of his oflBce.' Erdmann has a ser\dce also to Bacon in his eye, when he quotes the fallen man's exclamation on his own sentence : ' Never was there a sentence juster, and yet never before me had England so honest a Lord Chancellor.' I would also bespeak attention for what is said in this section of Jacob Bbhm. We have here the first note of what is specially and peculiarly German philosophy. This note is heard in such phrases as, ' width without end, stands in need of a straitness in which it may mani- fest itself,' etc. What is alluded to, then, is the element of negativity in God, or the necessity of an absolute difference even for the realization of his absolute identity ; and it is perhaps not easy to find any better expression than that for the main thought of Hegeh XYll.— Descartes. ERDMANN (even in his Grundriss of the History of Philosophy) gives a much fuller account of Carte- sianism and Descartes than Schwegler does. Ueberweg also is both full and clear. Hegel's statement is hardly so full as that of either, but he brings to it, as usual, the singular depth and concentration of his own thought. For perfection of elaboration, comprehensiveness, and lucidity at once, Erdmann's exposition is, perhaps, to be preferred to all of them. From it, however, I shall borrow only one sentence, referring to Descartes on the passions : ' The soul being possessed of ability to evoke ideas, and through these give direction to the animal spirits, has it in its power indirectly to conquer the passions, as, for example, to neutralize the fear of danger through the hope of victory.' This seems a hint prac- tically useful, and yet we read that the philosopher him- self was, on the death of an illegitimate daughter who died while a child, unable to console himself. Ueberweg introduces some acute objections to the main positions DESCARTES. 405 of Descartes. Thus lie conceives the argumentation con- nected with the cogito-sum to involve the assumption without proof of the notion of substance, as well as of the iudi\'iduality of the ego, or of its self-identity and dififer- ence from all else. He also objects to this, the first position of Descartes, that peculiar view of Kant in refer- ence to an inner sense over which poor Mr. Buckle has so stumbled, this, namely, that knowing our own inner like oiir outer, only sensuously, we know it not as it is, but as it seems. Hegel, as against Kant, may be referred to on the other side. A better objection of Ueberweg's is the relativity of the subjective criterion of truth (the clearness and certainty with which, etc.) : ' the truth of my clear sensuous perception — of the sky, for example — may be modified and removed by a clear intellectual insight.' Other objections of Ueberweg are, the negation that after all lies in the notion of the infinite, the vicious circle of inferring the existence of God from a knowledge that depends on him, the destruction of the pineal gland not necessarily followed bj' the loss of life or of thought, the soul's capability of independent existence not to follow from my clear and distinct idea of its capa- bility of independent thought, etc. He adduces also the question of Gassendi, How can extended perceptions have place in what is inextended? Gassendi, too, is said by Ueberweg not to have used the amhido-sum uni- versally attributed to him ; it appears that Descartes himself, in replying to the objection of actions in general, put into the mouth of Gassendi this action in particular. Another objection of Ueberweg is : — ' In efi'ect we become conscious of our existence through reflection on our will earlier than through reflection on our thought.' But in the identity of will and thought, this objection cannot avail much. The most important of all the objections of Ueberweg relates to the ontological argument (or to the inference of the being from the thought of God), even in its psychological form that points to the antithesis of the perfection of the thought and the imperfection of the thinker. He says (Orimdriss, iii. p. 51) : — 'Descartes commits here the same error as Anselm, to neglect the condition of every categorical argument from the defini- tion, namely, that the position of the subject must be otherwise certain. . . . Descartes' premises lead logically only to the unmeaning conclusion, that if God is, existence accrues to him, and if God is feigned, he must be feigned 40r, ANNOTA TIONS. as existent. Moreover tlie Cartesian form of the ontolo* gical argument has a defect from which that of Anselm is free,' — the one uses heing as a predicate beside other predicates, the other as a particular kind of being. Hegel, in his section on Descartes, as everywhere else, is always forward to defend the metaphysical arguments for the existence of God, and certainly it is always to be borne in mind that God is different from all other sub- jects ; that this difference, indeed, is, that he cannot be thought as inexistent, that the very notion of him in- volves existence. 'Kant,' says Hegel {Hist, of Phil. iii. p. 309) ' has objected that beiny is not contained in thinking, that it is different fi-om thinking. That is true, but still they are inseparable or constitute a single identity ; their unity is not to the prejudice of their difference.' P. 317, 'We find this highest idea in us. If we ask now whether this idea exist, why this is the idea, that existence is given with it, and to say it is only a thought, is to contradict the very meaning of the thought.' P. 321, 'An objection to this identity is now old, Kantian too : that from the notion of the most per- fect being, there follows no more than that in thought existence and the most perfect being are conjoined, but not out (outside) of thought. But the very notion of existence is this negative of self -consciousness, not cut of thought, but the thought of — the out of thought.' In another reference, I may quote (p. 311), ' It is absurd to suppose that the soul has thinking in one pocket, and seeing, willing, etc., in others. • . . Willing, seeing, hear- ing, walking, etc., are further modifications. . . . Only when I accentuate that ego is in these as thought, does it imply being ; for only with the universal is being united.' Hegel objects, however, to the method and march of Descartes as being but conceptive, and containing presuppositions. Throwing light on his own industry, he says (p. 310) : — ' In Descartes the necessity is not yet present, to develop the differences from the "I think ;" Fichte was the first to go that far, out of this point of absolute certainty to derive all determinations;' and p. 328, 'speculative cognition, the derivation from the notion, the free self-dependent development of the element itself, was first introduced by Fichte.' ' So now,' p. 312, 'philosophy has got its own ground, thought proceeds, starts from thought, as what is certain in itself, not from something external, not from something given, not from MALEBRANCHE. 407 an authority, but directly from tliis freedom that is con- tained in the " I think.'" 'X.YUl.—Malebranche. ERDMANN'S ' Malebranche ' oceupiea considerable space, that of Ueberweg but little. The former remarks of Malebranche that 'it must have been the self -righteousness of the redeemed Christian which caused his so rigorous damnation of Spinoza, in whose pan- theism spirits are modifications of infinite thought, in the same manner as bodies, with Malebranche, are limitations of extension : and yet he himself borders very close on what revolts him in the writings of that " miserable" ' Ueberweg, in the doctrine of Malebranche, regards that operation of God ' as itself absolutely incomprehensible. ' Hegel has always a very warm side for Malebranche, and we may remember some of his happiest criticisms in the Logic in that reference. The main thought of Male- branche, says Hegel, is, that 'the soul cannot get its ideas, notions, from external things.' 'God is i\ie place of spirits, the universal of the spirit, as space is the universal, the place of bodies.' * The soul, consequently, recognises in God what is in him, bodies so far as he conceives created beings, because all this is spiritual, intellectual, and present to the soul.' 'When we would think of anything particular, we think first of the uni- versal ; it is the basis of the particular, as space to things : all essentiality is before our particular ideas, and this essentiality is the first. ' ' We have a clear idea of God, of the universal ; we can have it only through unio7i with him, for this idea is not a created one, but in and for itself : it is as with Spinoza, the one universal is God, and, so far as it is determined, it is the particular ; this particular we see only in the universal, as bodies in s])ace.' ' The spirit perceives all in the infinite ; so little is this a confused perception of many particular things, that rather all particular perceptions are only participa- tions of the universal idea of the infinite : just as God receives not his being from finite creatures, but, on the contrary, all creatures only subsist through him.' ' Thought is only in the union with God.' ' This rela- tion, this union of our spirit with the Word (verbe) of God, and of our will with his love, is, that we are made 408 A KKO TA TI OKS. in the image of God, and iu liis likeness.' Hegel thus accentuates expressions of Malebranche, which are pro bably more or less assonant to his own views. XIX. — Spinoza. ALL the authorities make a primate of Spinoza, Erdmann gives as complete and exhaustive an internal synthesis of the whole system as is well con- ceivable, and Ueberweg, who is quite overwhelming in his notice of the relative literature, complements it (Erdmann's statement) bj' an equally complete and ex- haustive external analysis. Hegel impregnates, most interestingly and instructively, the philosophy of Spinoza with his own. Erdmann's work here, in particular, however, is, as all but always, a miracle of labour, and of harnessed expression ; but what specially and peculiarly distinguishes him beyond all others, on this occasion, is that he has, probably, very fairly detected the secret of Spinoza. That secret is a particular mathematical image that underlies all the apparent philosophical generaliza- tions of Spinoza. I shall take the liberty of working out this image in my own way, and demonstrate how the main constituents of the system naturally rise out of it. Spinoza says. What is, is ; and that is extension and thought. These two are all that is, and besides these there is nought. But these two are one : they are attri- butes of the single substance — God, in whom, then, all Individual things, and all individual ideas (modi of ex- tension those, of thought these) are comprehended and bave place. (Spinoza, indeed, does at first speak of in- finite attribiites, but he is found in the end virtually to assume but two.) Now to Spinoza extension is as geometrical surface, taken quite generally. But geometrical surface contains impliciter all possible geometrical infiguration, with all its possible ideal consequences. With (geometrical) sur« face, extension, then, there is (geometrical) intelligence, thought. These two attributes meet in a substantial one (the whole), and involve an accidental many, the modi, the particulars of the contained infiguration. These modi, lastly, result the one from the other; or it is its own limitation by the rest that makes each. God, then, is as a vast and slumbering whole, whose SPINOZA. 409 infmite suriace is fretted into infinite shapes, which are the outward bodies that reflect themselves into the inward ideas. But, further now this infinite surface is not continuous, but a congeries of atomic movement. The atoms, the smallest geometrical figures, are various proportions of motion and rest, and they have their reflected or ideal counterparts within. But, besides simple figures, there are compound ones (a larger por- tion of surface being taken), and such is the body of man, to which, therefore, the correspondent inner ideas will constitute a mind. Mind and body, again, though correspondent, are independent ; each is its own world ; extension can only act on extension, idea on idea. This, now, is the Spinozistic ground-plan. The under- lying conception is a mathematical one, in which ex- tension and thought (^S'e^rt and Denken, elvai and voeiv^ reahty and ideality) are essentially one. The example of mathematical figures, indeed, let hs remark in passing, ought to realize the possibility of this scouted union — which is besides the omnipresent fact. Though obliged to introduce motion (assumed as deduced from extension), in order to obtain — what he found a neces- sity — individuals in mutual Limitation, Spinoza's con- ception of causality is mathematical and not dynamicaL His causes are pre-existent reasons, his efifects the neces- sary logical consequences. The prime cause is simply to him the prime condition, extension namely, over which hangs, or under which floats, reflected from it, the con- sequences, the thoughts that are in it. Unbroken ex- tension, unbroken thought — that is God. Amongst the interdependent, interacting modi, which are the inter- secting colours of this heaving life, Man is, in body and in soul, a result of necessity Like the rest. AU specifications and particularizations, in truth, will be found to flow naturaUy from the few fundamental materials. Thus God, further, is the immanent, and not the transient, or transcendent, cause of all things. He is not personal either, or possessed of wiU, or of love to man ; nor free, unless in his own necessity, not acting, therefore, on design. As the cogitatio infinita, his thought is not an understanding even, but is an idea rather than ideas. Man, again, is partly immortal (in that his basis, namely, must be an original part and parcel of the divine substance — so much of the original surface), and partly mortal, for his personal and individual existence passes. His soul is 410 ANNOTATIONS. but a knowledge of the states of liis body ; be is a thing among things, that strives to self-preservation against the obstruction of the rest ; hence the joy of success, the grief of failure, hence fear and hope, hence love and hate, hence good and evil. Each, then, seeks his own advan- tage ; this is his natural right, which falls together, therefore, with bis natural might. But man, after all, is to man the greatest commodity, and the necessity of mutual intercourse leads to the resignation of all individual rights under power of the State. Wrong, now, is what the State forbids, right what it commands. Of States, too, the rights are identical with the mights, and treaties bind only as they profit. The State must not attempt what it cannot compel ; there should be liberty of con- science, therefore, but with all outward subjection. The State, then, should be independent of the convictions of the individual citizens, and in itself good, whatever they be. Men are the same as they always have been, and always will be. The State is they who govern, nor can these do injustice, but they must stop where threats and promises cease to avail ; a State's worst enemies are its own subjects. Political revolutions, nevertheless, can bring but ruin. Of governments, an aristocratic republic, with numerous corporations, is to Spinoza the best. The few, however, are independent of the State — ■ in intellectual freedom. This is acquired through the the acquisition of adequate ideas, on which follows, of necessity, and in ratio of the adequacy, intelligent submission to what is once for all so. Such submission, again, product of intelligence, is necessarily accompanied by the idea of God, by love to God ; and that is the blessedness which virtue not only offers as reward, but is. For the attainment of this consummation, then, the single duty is the emendatio intellectiis, and in thia alone is freedom. The philosophy of Spinoza, then, is, on the whole, a clumsy metaphor ; but it is not without thoughts. These Hegel certainly shows at the clearest, at the same time that he demonstrates as well the associated fatal defects. The objections of Ueberweg also are sharply con- ceived and distinctly stat^ed. Both Hegel and Ueber- weg, however, understand Spinoza rather dynamically than mathematically. Hence, on the latter imderstand- ing, both their praise and their blame seem to fall wide. Into the views as well of Hegel as of Ueberweg I HOBBES. 411 was prepared to enter at some length, but must, for the sake of space, forbear. In the statement above, extension, as figurable, implies ideas : Erdmann sees these as lent to, not in substance, but he names parallelism of modi later. Spinoza's Ethic has, doubtless, deeply influenced the progress of philosophy, especially since Jacobi recalled attention to it in Germany ; but after aU, perhaps, his work of the greatest historical import- ance, is the Tractatus Theoloyico-Politicus. The latter work has constituted the very arsenal of the A uf kid- rung, whether French or German. Voltaire's wit, and the erudition of the theological critics of the Fatherland, are alike indebted to it. XX. — Hdbhes. THOMAS nOBBES (1588-1679) was educated at Oxford, became tutor in the Cavendish family, and travelled on the Continent. As a man, he is said to nave suffered from a constitutional timidity. He was in personal relations with Charles ii.. Bacon, Descartes, Gassendi, etc. He published a multitude of works, of which the De Cive and the Leviathan are the chief. His principal views run thus : — Philosophy is knowledge obtained from a consideration of causes and effects. Religion, therefore, as knowledge obtained from revela- tion, is excluded from philosophy. Faith and reason must not be confounded. The Bible is not given to instruct us as regards nature and an earthly State, but to teach us the way to a kingdom that is not of this world. The origin of our knowledge lies in the impres- sions of sense, and these must depend on certain motions. Only the subjective state (idea) is known by us, and not its objective antecedent. The affection of sense continues after the impression has passed, constituting memory and imagination. Memory is the seat of ex- perience, and experience leads to expectation. Hence prudence. In behoof of memory, marks are invented, which become signs of communication or words. Words as signs become representative of many, and lead to generalization. To correlate sign and signification is to understand, but to correlate sign with sign is to calcu- late, to think, and to reason. A congruous correlation is truth ; an incongruous, falsehood. Accurate definition of 112 ANNOTATIONS. words, then, is tlie first problem, the first philosophy ; and hence the consideration which follows next, of Time and Space, Cause and Effect, Substance and Acci- dent, etc. Time and space are, to Hobbes, subjective. Cause and effect depend on motion, as also accidents, which are resultant affections of sense. Motion, then, is the main consideration ; and philosophy is secluded to the corporeal world as what alone exists. Spirits, in- corporeal substances, are but square circles. God is au object of philosophy only so far as some good men have ascribed to Him a corporeal nature. Philosophy, then, being confined to what is corporeal, considers, first, natural, and second, artificial bodies ; or is in the one case natural, and in the other civil, philosophy. Or philosophy may be more conveniently divided into First Philosophy (philosophia prima, as just noticed). Physics, Anthropology, and Politics. Physics include Mathematics, Astronomy, Physiology, Optics, etc. An- thropology considers cognition, and the invention of words, as already noticed, and then passes to man in his ethical capacity. Theory is only for Practice, and gene- ral utility is the single aim. The value of geometry even is its application to machinery. The practical capacity of man is the result of a reaction towards the attainment of pleasure and the avoidance of pain, which accompanies sensation generally. The degrees in this re- action yield the various desires. Deliberation on these leads to choice and will. The will, as last act of the movement, is not free, but a passive result of the in- fluences exerted by impressions, or by signs and words. The object of desire is good, of aversion evil. Bomim, jucundum, pulchrmn, utile, mean the same thing, and are but varying relations of what is desu-able. Bonum simpliciter did non potest. Self-preservation is the supreme good, death the supreme evil. To promote the one and prevent the other is the first law of nature. Men, then, at first, each being capable of inflicting this greatest evil (death) on the other, were pretty well equal, and all alike free to do what they would. Mutual fear was the universal condition, Bellum omnium contra omnes, or Homo homini lupus. But self-preservation must lead in the end to a treaty of peace, which brings with it various conditions. Each renounces freedom on the understanding tha.t all renounce it. This compact is no result, then, of social instinct or benevolence, but JOHN LOCKE. f'.S of selfisliness and fear. But this compact can be realized only through the subjection of all to one who wiE deter from injury. And in this way, we pass to Politics, or the State. The sovereign of a State is not its heart, but its soul. He is the State. The rest are but subjects. They are by express compact powerless, he is the Leviathan who swallows them all, the mortal god who sways all at his will, and is the source of peace and security. Now only have meum and tiium place, and right and wrong. Eight is what the sovereign commands ; wrong, what he forbids. Custom is an authority only in submission to him. Sovereignty can be exercised by a majority, by few, or by one ; and the State, accordingly, is a Demo- cracy, an Aristocracy, or a Monarchy. The first was the first in time. But the answer to the question, Which is the best? is, the actually existent one. There must be no attempt to change ; obedience to the sovereign power must be absolute and unconditional ; else relapse to the state of nature were the inevitable result. War is a remnant of the state of nature. The natural rights of peoples and persons are the same. A State is a moral person. In respect of the sovereign, the sub- ject is without rights of any kind, and the former is under no control of law. The sovereign is alone the people. No error so dangei'ous as a belief in conscience that might lead to disobedience of the sovereign. Conscience must preserve the primal con- tract, and who commands is alone responsible. There is only one case where disobedience is legitimate ; self- preservation is the object of the State, and no one is obliged to commit sxxicide. Hobbes now proceeds at great length to refer to the Bible, and in such a way aa recalls Antonio's 'Mark you this, Bassanio, The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose. This epitome from Erdmann will suggest, perhaps, the value of the original study. XXI. — John Locke ri'lHEIlE'is one point herein regard to which the differ- X ence between the German and the English mind is placed in the most glaring relief. It is Locke's account of 2 E 414 ANNOTATIOXS. substance. This notion, because it is not derived from without, and yet really exists without, appears to the Ger- mans to be assumed as prescribed by the mind to the ex- ternal world, which latter then is, in that respect, subject to the mind, if in all others this latter (in experience) is subject to it. In Erdmann's language, ' It is a manifest self-contradiction to expect the mind to subject itself to a world already in subjection to laws which are its own (the mind's) product.' Schwegler, pp. 181, 182, expresses himself quite similarly. This contradiction does not seem to have occiirred either to Locke himself or any other Englishman. The notion was an obscure one, they thought, but it undoubtedly corresponded to an outer fact, the knowledge of which, if obscurely acquired, was still actually acquired by inference from experience. Even to Hume the idea of the Germans seems never to have occurred : his way of it was simply that the mental notion was unsupported by any basis of fact. The con- ceptions of the Germans may not the less on that account be well founded. Erdmann adds to the account of Locke's theoretical, a very satisfactory statement of his moral, political, and religious contributions. Ueberweg, who otherwise correctly characterizes Hegel's difference from Locke, complains that he (Hegel) has 'taken up Locke's philosophy, as well as Kant's criticism, wrong ; ' but it win be difficult to establish either statement. Things may look strange to us in the light of Hegel, but that light is not necessarily on that account false. Per- haps no man wiU ever imderstand Kant as deeply as Hegel did, and I think that he perfectly understands the position of Locke, even while he objects to it. Hegel is perfectly just to the advance on the i)ositions of Descartes, Malebranche, and Spinoza, which that of Locke involves. What Locke required in their regard he also completely approves. He even grants the correctness of the principle of experience, so far as it goes. It is absurd to him to say otherwise than that experience is the beginning in time. He only points out that the derivation of the ideas from experience is no explanation, no verification, either of them or of it. Locke's procedure, then, is to him a step to philosophy, but it is not yet philosophy. ' It is no matter whether the mind or whether experience be the source; the question is, is this import in itself true?' ' Are these general ideas true in and for themselves, and v/hence come they, not only into my consciousness, "mto DAVID HUME. 415 my minfi, out into the things themselves ? ' The Hegelian stand-point is accurately indicated in these questions, nor less the defect of that of Locke. Ueberweg's objec- tions to Hegel here, then, I must hold to be unfounded. To Schwegler's list of English moralists we may add these : Henry More (1614-1687), Ralph Cudworth (1617- 1688), Bernard Mandeville (1670-1733), Bishop Butler (1692-1752), David Hartley (1704-1757), Abraham Tuckrr (1705-74), Joseph Priestley (1733-1804), Richard Price (1723-1791), William Paley (1743-1805). Peter Brown was the Irish Bishop Brown. All the Germans omit any mention of Paley — one of the most masculine and truly English of thinkers and writers ! I have spent a considerable time in collecting materials for the cha- racterization of the English moralists, but find that to do justice to the theme would involve an enlargement of the Handbook beyond aU legitimate limits. I pass, there- fore, at once to XXII. — David Hume. OF all the statements of Schwegler, I find this the most meagre and unsatisfactory. It is a mistake to represent the influence of Hume on German philosophy as limited to the relation of causality : it extends, on the contrary, to almost all other cardinal points of philosophy, as weU practical as theoretical. Kant's very illustration about the Copernican notion is suggested by Hume, and it is this latter's distinction between matters of fact and relations of ideas that lies at the bottom of the whole German philosophical movement. I shall ti'anscribe here a few of the salient expressions of Hegel. ' The progress as regards thought is this : Berkeley lets all the ideas stand as they are ; in Hume, the anti- thesis of the sensuous and the universal element has cleared and more sharply expressed itself, sense being pronounced by him void of imiversality. Berkeley does not make the distinction as to whether there is necessary connexion in his sensations or not.' ... * Hume com- pleted Lockeanism by drawing attention to this, that on that stind-point experience is, indeed, the foundation of what is known, or perception contains aU that happens ; but, nevertheless, universality and necessity are not con- tained in, nor given us, by experience.' . . . ' Custom 416 ANXOTA TIOXS. obtains as well in our percejition as iu reference to laio and morality. These, namely, rest on an instinct, a sub- jective, but very often deceptive, moral feeling.' . . . 'We have the custom to regard one tiling as just and moral : others have other customs. If, then, truth de- pends on experience, the element of universality, of objectivity, comes from elsewhere, or is not verified by experience. Hume has accordingly declared this species of universality and necessity to be only subjectively, not objectively, existing ; for custom is just such a subjective universality. This is an important and acute obsez'vation in regard to experience as the source of knowledge ; and it is from this point that the reflection of Kant begins.' To the representatives of the Scottish philosophy men- tioned by Schwegler, we may add Lord Kames (1696- 1782), Adam Smith (1723-1790), Adam Ferguson (1724- 1816), Thomas Brown (1778-1820), and Sir WiUiam Hamilton (1788-1856). Professor Ferrier belongs to an era of thought that was inaugiu-ated by Thomas Carlyle. On all these men, I was also prepared to speak at large ; but the limits of the book preclude justice either to them or to me. Short, but excellent articles under the name of each wiU be found in the Encyclopcedia BrUannica and others. A word on Sir W. Hamilton will be found in the note on Jacobi. Erdmann, in his first edition, was hardly satisfactory on the Scottish school, and such a writer as he cannot afl'ord to be unsatisfactory anywhere ; for the danger is that he may be doubted even when at his best. In the second edition of the Orundriss much of this has been amended, though a Scot might, perhaps, still wish more space for the Scots. Schwegler reckons Hutcheson among the English moralists : he is generally put at the head of the Scottish school. He is a great writer, and does more than he gets credit for.- To mention one example, the maimer in which Kant's best distinctions in regard to taste are anticipated by him ia very striking. Some of Schwegler's happiest feats of expression will be found in his brief paragraphs on the French Illumination. XXIII. — Leibnitz. SCHWEGLER'S statement here is a very excellent one. Erdmann's is fuller and perfectly satisfactory. The student who knows both may justly consider him- BERKELEY. 417 self instruit. With respect to the Calculus, we may ex- tract from Ueberweg that Newton, inventing in 1665, published in 1687, while Leibnitz, inventing in 1675, published in 1684, but that the invention of the latter i3 in many respects preferable. Leibnitz's verdict on the findings of Locke, Ueberweg states thus : — ' In Locke certain special truths are not badly expounded ; but on the main point he has wandered far from correctness, and he has not attained to a knowledge of the nature of spirit or of truth. Had he duly weighed the difference between necessary truths, or those dependent on demon- stration, and those to which we reach in a certain degree by means of induction, he would have perceived that necessary truths are capable of proof only through principles implanted in the mind itself, the so-called in- nate ideas, because the senses inform us indeed of what happens, but not of what necessarily happens. He has not observed, likewise, that the ideas of the beent, of substance, of identity, of the true and the good, are in- nate in the mind, because the mind itself is innate to itself, or comprehends all these in itself. Nihil est in intellectu, quod nonfuerit in sensu, nisi ipse intelleotus.* The student of philosophy will find helps to Hegel in the Monads, and Best of all Possible Worlds, of Leibnitz. This world is not to Hegel the product of an arbitrary fancy, a subjective conceit, a momentary caprice ; it is to him a necessary result of reason, and, taken in its entirety, the whole, and the only possible residt, of reason. It does not follow from that, however, that the per- sonality of God 13 an untenable conception : the infinite, the universal monad, is as necessary as the finite and particular. The same student will find much that is said under Wolff useful, which want of space forbids me to signalize. XXTV.— Berkeley. SCHWEGLER is very short on Berkeley, but, to my mind, he is perfectly accurate. Even when he says ' only spirits exist,' he is surely not j« accurate. For spirits alone have life ; ideas have no life of their own, they are only /or spirits. At p. 193, however, Schwegler had already said, ' There are only spirits (souls), and the thoughts of spirits (ideas).' Using a certain double- entendre, Berkeley sought to claim for his doctrine the 418 ANNOTATIONS. support of vulgar opiuiou and of what is called commoB sense. Those of his followers, tlierefore, who accept this douhle-entendre, may fastidiously demur to the correctness of Schwegler's statement of Berkeley, because, though he expressly admits that Berkeley's theory does not, for Berkeley himself, ' deny to objects a reality independent of us,' he yet uses in its regard such phrases as ' a material external world does not exist,' 'complete denial of matter,' etc. Schwegler has as much right, however, to assert that Berkeley denies, as they to assert that Berkeley affirms, matter. Nay, Schwegler has more right, and, properly speaking, his opponents have, on their side, no right at all ; for the former uses the word matter in the sense of noumenal matter — a sense attached to it by man- kind generally, while the latter use the same word in the sense of phenomenal matter — a sense attached to it only by themselves. The little check to free discussion offered by the gratuitous interposition of this double-entendre, then, causes but a jolt. At the same time, it is to be admitted, that it may be said, that what the vulgar beUeve in, is only phenomenal matter. This, however, is only a 7nay be said, and concerns a subject that cannot be introduced into any philosophical arena — the vulgar, namely. On that head each philosopher has his own equal warrant to represent the vulgar, while none but Berkeleiau philosophers — and only some of these — attach to it any such belief (as that in a phenomenal matter), a belief that will be denied to be natural, we may permit ourselves to say, by all but all readers. The principle of Berkeley, indeed, is so simple and intelhgible, that but few readers can have any difficulty in inspecting the general position for themselves. It was presented in a word or two when speaking of subjective gorgonization at page 391 : * the object can only be known in me, in the subject, and therefore it is subjective, and, if subjective, ideal.' The moment we are made to perceive, in fact, that what we know of an external woi'ld is sensations, and that sensations are necessarily within, we are made possessors also of the whole of what is current as Berke- leianism. What yo\i perceive, say the Berkeleians de rigueur, is a ^'^ewomeHaZ object, and you have no right to infer a noumenal one. That essentially amounts to the mentioned gorgonization. I can only perceive an outer object by perceiving it : am T to suppose an outer object for ever denied me, then, by the very medium and BERKELEY. 419 means by wbicli alone it can be given me ? That I per- ceive = that I do not perceive! Berkeley is perfectly aware of the simplicity of his own position, and, as Reid points out [Works, p. 283), apologizes for his own pro- lixity : ' to what purpose is it to dilate upon that which may be demonstrated, with the utmost evidence, in a line or two, to any one who ia capable of the least reflection ?' We can see, then, that the reply of Hamilton, and the whole school of natural realism, was very natural. Given a mind, and given an outer object, the latter can be known to the former only through perception ; but the mediation which alone effects the knowledge cannot also exclude it : I am such that I do perceive a real, outer, independent object. We may suppose this also to be said by Hamilton, quite irrespective of the ingenious theory of perception by which he supported it. Indeed we have only for the nonce to identify ourselves witli this position of Hamilton, and to feel as he felt there, to sympathize even with his cry about the veracity of con- sciousness. Hegel's reply to Berkeley (See Secret of Hegel, vol. i. p. 425, and vol. ii. p. 165) is quite beside the reply of Hamilton, and insists only on the ignavia, the idleness, of the position maintained. Without is within, says Berkeley. Let it be so, says Hegel, and philosophy has stiU to begin. The same things that were called without or noumenal are now called within or phenomenal, but, call them as you may, it is their syste- matic explanation that is wanted. Such systematic expla- nation, embracing man and the entire round of his ex- periences, sensuous, intellectual, moral, religious, aesthetic, political, etc., is alone philosophy, and to that no repe- tition of without is within, or matter is phenomenal, will ever prove adequate. Hegel, indeed, returns a score of times to the utter inefficiency of subjective ideahsm ; and that is subjective idealism which converts the ex- ternal world into an experience within the subject alone. The Germans, it is true, since Kant, call Berkeleianism the dogmatic ideahsm, in allusion to its generally asser- toric procedure in the transference, as Schwegler saya (p. 212), of all reality to conception (mental experience). That the idealism of Kant himself was called the critical or the transcendental idealism depends on this, that it was the result of a critical inquiry into our faculties, which inquiry supposed itself to demonstrate in experi- ence as such the presence of what it called a transccn- 420 A ^^X0 TA TIOKS. dental element — an element, that is, that lay In us bi;t still came to us in experience. The idealism of Fichte again, that reduced all to, or deduced all from, the ego was, par excellence, the subjective idealism. Then Schel- ling, who gave to the object an equal basis beside the subject, but still under an idealistic point of view, is said to have given rise to the objective idealism ; while Hegel, lastly, because he subordinated all to thought alone, is styled the founder of the absolute idealism. Even in England, the stand-point of Berkeley has for some time been replaced by what is perhaps a simpler one. That is contained in the works of Carlyle and Emerson ; and amounts to this, that relatively there is an external world, but not absolutely; sttU that this external world is not given to me from moment to moment by God himself, but that He, from the first, has so created me that such a world, from my own very nature, hangs ever before me. In a religious sense, it is to be said that this, and the general position of Ber- keleian or English idealism, has, quite apart from the critique of Hegel, a value all its own. In regard to aU the great spiritual interests, as the existence of God, the freedom of the wUl, and the immortality of the soul, it is of immense consequence to get quit of matter (of course as ordinarily understood), and with it of materialism. We may say, indeed, that in the present disintegration of religion around us, the idealism of Berkeley, of Car- lyle, and of Emerson, has been to many a man the focus of a creed, of a fervent and sincere and influen- tial faith. It is this that makes Berkeley and idealism in general so interesting now. Berkeley, indeed, is, in every point of view, a grand and great historical figure. Grand and great in himself — one of the purest and most beautiful souls that ever lived — he is grand and great also in his consequences. Hamann — an authority of weight — declares that ' without Berkeley there had been no Hume, as without Hume no Kant ; ' and this is partly the truth. To the impulse of Berkeley partly, then, it is that we owe German philosophy ! And great as is this service, it is to the majority of English and American thinkers much less great than that which they owe to Berkeley himself, either directly or indirectly (through Carlyle and Emerson) — especially in the religious reference already alluded to. When we add to these considerations, that also of Berkeley's BERKELEY. 421 mastery of expression, and of his general fascination na a writer, it is impossible to think of him to whom Pope attributes ' every virtue under heaven,' without that veneration with which the ancients regarded their Plato, their Democritus, and their Eleatic Parmenides, of which last, perhaps, the sublimity, purity, and earnest- ness of character approach nearest to those of the character of Berkeley. It is no wonder, then, that interest has partially revived of late in the philosophy of Berkeley, and that we look forward with so much expectation to that complete edition of his works which has so long occupied the attention of the eminently- competent Professor Fraser.^ In the same connection we may allude to the many Berkeleian elements that obtain in the writings of Professor Ferrier. Having omitted aU notice of Bishop Berkeley in the Secret of Hegel, I felt that I could do no less than repair that omission here, in a work which, bearing so directly on German philosophy, owed so much of its materials to him. I may add, too, that, apart even from the in- fluence of his earlier writings, there attaches now, in the present situation of the study of the history of philo- sophy, a peculiar value to his expressions relative to the philosophies of the ancients in what may be called his latest work, Siris. Here Berkeley displays such an extensive and correct acquaintance with the philosophy of the Greeks as must prove surprising to every one who has had his attention recalled of late to the same sub- ject. To Mr. Grote we may point out, for instance, that he says (section 309), 'To understand and to be, are, according to Parmenides, the same thing ; ' and (section 320), 'According to Anaxagoras, there was a confused mass of all things in one chaos, but mind supervening, fireXdwv, distinguished and divided them ; ' and to Mr. Lewes, as in reference to philosophy, that he opines (sec- tion 350) that ' He who hath not much meditated upon God, the human mind and the summum boiiuvi, may possibly make a thriving earthworm, but will most in- dubitably make a sorry patriot and a sorry statesman.' Nay, even vrith a reference to later philosophy, there are expressions in this work which equally surprise. Berke- ley says there of space, for example (section 318), 'If vre consider that it is no intellectual notion, nor yet per- 1 This very perfect edition we now jiossess, and the Editor has mora than satisfied iu it every expectation. 422 A liXO TA TIOKS. ceived by any of our senses ; ' and this is, virtually, all that, on the same subject, was afterwards said by Kant. Hegel himself is not unrepresented here, as sections 359-365 will testify. There the English Bishop gives some hints towards that speculative founding or ground- ing of the doctrine of the Trinity ou which the German Professor laid afterwards so mucli stress. In all these references Berkeley will be found peculiarly admirable for the spirit of candour and love which he manifests. For systems, flippantly characterized nowadays as Pan- theistic or Atheistic, for example, he grudges not, in the sweetness of his own simple, sincere nature, to vin- dicate Theism. Altogether, one gets to admire Berkeley almost more here than elsewhere. The learning, the candour, and the depth of reflection, are all alike strik- ing. As compared with Hume, in especial, it is here that Berkeley is superior ; and tliat not only with reference to the learning, but with reference to the spirit of faith and gravity, as opposed to the spirit of doubt and levity. The most valuable ingredient in Berkeley is, after all, that he is a Christian. XXY.—Kant. BY him who compares the translation with the original, it will be found that something has been done in thia section (by parentheses or slight modifications) as well to provide a correct statement of the views of Kant, as to secure the understanding of them on the part of the student. Much explanatory illustration does not seem called for, then ; but, carefuUy reading the text, I shall set down here such remarks as may naturally suggest themselves. The modifications alluded to will be foimd chiefly on pages 210, 211, 213, 218, 219, 220, 221, 222, 223, 224, and concern what I have spoken of as Kant's theory of perception. Much light into this theory is extended by simply substituting perception for cognition, the word which is generally used by others in translating Kant in this reference. A con- siderable amount of light lies> too, in the substitution of perception for intuition. The sensations of the various special senses, received into the universal a priori forms of space and time, are reduced into perceptive objects, connected together in a synthesis of experience, by the categories. These are the broad outlines of the theory KANT. 423 named ; but Kaut goes into the construction or realiza- tion of this theory with great minuteness. This realization or construction is scarcely represented in the statement of Schwegler, and constitutes that deduction of the cate- gories (and deduction does not mean derivation but justi- fication — a justifying exposition or construction), which Is at once the central and the most difficult portion of the work of Kant. It is here that we have the various syntheses of imagination, apperception, etc. It is this deduction, in fact, which puts meaning into that scheme of categories which, as it stands in Schwegler, is hardly either intelligible or credible. Kant has often been charged with mere empiricism in deriving his categories from formal logic ; but the objectors have mostly ignored that a priori and demonstrated nature of formal logic on which Kant always insists so much, and to which I allude in a parenthetic addition on page 221. Page 215, in the series of the gi'eat works of Kant, I shall be found to have substituted the Kritik of Judgment for the work on Religion within the bounds of Pure Reason. Page 217, Schwegler says that the Kritik of Pure Reason is the inventarium of all our possessions through pure reason. This is an error, as I have pointed out elsewhere, and I have substituted for inventarium the word ground-plan. Page 225, Kant speaks of the necessity of a ' whole or nature of things ;' this strikes the key-note of the great difference between the Germans and the Positivists in their modes of viewing existence. The former demand an intelligible necessary context or synthesis of things ; the latter admit only an unintelligible conjunction of bare consequents and bare antecedents that is co-exten- sive with experience alone. On pages 212 and 216, one gets a clear glimpse of the difference between the pro- cedures of Kant and criticism, and those of Hume and scepticism. Kant would honestly investigate and tabu- late the source, nature, and extent of all those aporias, which Hume only summons up as spectres for the con- fusion of faith. Kant's Copernican allusion was probably suggested by a passage that occurs in the last paragraph but two of the first section of Hume's Enquiry concerning Human Understanding. It is of great importance that the reader should not misunderstand the state of Kant's conviction in regard to the moral postulates, that is, to the existence of God, the immortality of the soul, and the freedom of the will. Coleridge, it is known, 424 A NNO TA TIONS. doubted Kant's sincerity in their regard. Very un- fortunately for himself, however, for such a doubt is a conviction of ignorance. The moral scheme of Kant is by far the purest that any philosopher has ever broached. In an act of moral volition, he wiU have no pathological element whatever present ; our rational will shall be absolutely free and autonomous, and obey no law but its own. Now, if this position be whoUy based on one of the postulates, so rigorous is it, that it finds, though in a peculiar indirect manner, the other two to tend against it. Let the existence of God be once for all absolutely certain, let the immor- tality of the soul be once for all absolutely certaiu, then fear and hope — pathological elements — cannot be pre- vented from intruding into moral motive, and the purity of the categorical imperative is vitiated. The immor- tality of the soul and the existence of God are indeed for Kant absolutely necessary consequences of our moral constitution itself, still it is not without satisfaction that he finds our cognitive faculty, as he thinks, whoUy incompetent to prove these principles. We cannot prove these principles, he says, but neither can the enemy disprove them ; and meantime they have morally pre- cisely that support and no more which coheres with their essential interests. Were this support greater, were they, once for all, certainties of knowledge, then the moral law, which is either categorical or naught, were for ever paralysed. Kant positively hails with satisfaction, then, as a special and express provision of God himself, this theoretical uncertainty of the postu- lates that compels us to take refuge in the practical world, in the world of morals. Besides the great bene- fit — ^the freedom of the moral law — he sees in this arrangement a discipline also which is to secure us on one side from irreligious self-abandonment, and on the other from superstitious fanaticism. It is pleasant to perceive, however, the warm affection that Kant has at heart for the argument from design ; he cannot help availing himself, so far as he can, of the support it yields ; and it is important to know that it is not after all the moral, but the intellectual, interest that compels him to doubt it. To Kant, namely, all that we know is from within — subjective sensational states (due certainly to external antecedents which; neverthe- less, are absolutely xinknown) realized into an objective KANT. 425 aystem of experience by subjective intellectual faculties — evidently, then, in such a world there is no room for the action on it of a God from without. Could we know the external world, then, if God has made it according to design and according to heauty, we should be able to know both of these also; but internal sensations syn- thesized by internal intellections can give no knowledge of outer things themselves, let alone their design and beauty. Plainly, then, in these respects, Kant must, in regard of his theoretical world, whatever was the situation of his moral one, have found himself pecidiarly hampered. Hence the Krlt'ik of Judgment. It was precisely on this Kantian condition of knowledge that Hegel broke in with his very fiercest wrath. AVhat ! the truth is never possible for us, we must know but delusions and appearances only ; and of what we do know, we are only to say we know what has received filling from impressions of sense ? Great is Hegel's scorn here, and very grim his laugh at the inability of poor Kant to believe in the substantiality of the ego, because it was not a thing, a sensuous thing. It is at page 227 that Schwegler reports on this matter. There we see that the ego was to Kant nothing but the simple reflection *I am,' or 'I think;' 'the "I think,"' we hear, ' is neither perception nor notion, but a mere con- sciousness, etc. . . . falsely converted into a thing.' What, in this reference, Hegel blew into annihilation with a breath of his scorn, Coleridge fell down before and worshipped. Kant's ' I think,' which was neither perception nor notion, nothing biit a bare consciousness, was to Coleridge the infinite / Am, in whom we live, move, and have our being ! A great portion of the Logic of Hegel is taken iip with a criticism of the elements of Kant, and never was there a criticism more imsparing or more absolutely exhaustive. The para- logisms that are to subvert the ego, the cosmological antinomies, the objections to the arguments for the existence of God, are all subjected bj^ Hegel to a sifting, to a closeness of scrutiny never before paralleled, and with satisfactory results for the spiritualist on all hands. I may allude also to Hegel's statement of Kant in the Encyclopcedla as perhaps the most powerful and successfid analytic objective synthesis at present in existence. At page 239, we find Kant's view of the Irinity, a very different one from that of Hegel, to 4'26 ANNO TA TIONS. whom that doctrine was the essential basis of religion. At page 246, we have Kant's approaches to, but failure fairly to seize, the notion of immanent adaptation, or ol that intuitive vmderstanding which would recognise in the umversal the particular. The phrase intuitive under- standing conveyed to Hegel that conception of the all of things according to which thought and perception were one — thought not only was in itself (the universal, the noumenon), but in realization also (the particular, the phenomenon). XXNl.—JacoU. IN the very clear exposition here, room for explanation there is none. It is a pleasure to see such an authority as Jacobi able to do fall justice to the Kantian transformation of the ideas of theoretical, into the postu- lates of practical, reason. In reading this section, the competent student cannot fail to be impressed by a sense of how much Sir William Hamilton owes to Jacobi, especially as regards the intuition of belief. Jacobi is an admirable stylist ; so it is that stylist hung on stylist, and that Hamilton drew so much of his knowledge of the Germans from this source. It must be matter of regret, indeed, that such a trenchant subjective intellect as Hamilton's allowed itself, in its own natural im- patience and impetuosity, to know of the great masters of German speculation only, for the most part, what exote- ric writers told him. Hence the undigested fragments which, now no honour to him, might through labour have been replaced by what would have given stimulus and support to thousands. Hamilton's * Conditioned' is an unfortunate and perverted echo from the same influences. Nor do I think that either his additions to logic or his doctrine of common sense will sustain inquiry. His psychology, however, is not without genuine materials. He is, perhaps, the only Scottish psychologist of any veritable historical value since Brown. But, generally, let Hamilton's objective product be what it may, we must not forget his great and real subjective ability. No man that ever lived could draw a distinction to a sharper edge than Hamilton could ; he has the style of genius, the temperament of genius, and, with all his faults, he is, perhaps, a bigger man in the field of mental FICU TE. ATI p'lilosopliy than any man that has followed hiin in Great Britain (though Ferrier is finer perhaps). It is to be borne in mind, too, that the above criticism concerns only what may be called Hamilton's ultimate result as an original philosopher, and that there is no intention to undervalue his writings in other respects. These, indeed, are always brilliant, forcible, clear, and, where informa- tion is concerned, both entertaining and instructive. XXVll.—Fkhte. THE student, it may be, will find greater difficulty here than elsewhere in Schwegler. The unsubstan- tiality, the airiness of the deduction in general, and of what concerns contraposition in particular, will probably be found the source of this. On the first head, indeed, it is impossible not to wonder, as Kant did, at the busy, eager, never-doubting Fichte, who will develop the world from a process, so to speak, of in and in. Only when he gets to a wholly concrete sphere is it that he becomes at all satisfactory. Then his method becomes simply &form that lays out the (concrete) matter clearly before us. This is seen in the practical sphere, and is there really valuable. As regards contraposition, the key-note has been akeady struck when it was said, that, given a posi- tive, its negative counterpart is also given, as cold in reference to heat, etc. The quotation from Professor Ferrier, already given (p. 360), ' Whatever epithet or predicate is applied to one of the terms of the antithesis, the counter-predicate must be applied to the other term,' has this reference. Schwegler's language is, ' Whatever belongs to the ego, the counterpart of that must, by virtue of simple contraposition, belong to the non-ego ; ' and again, * As many parts of reality as the ego deter- mines in itself, so many parts of negation does it de- termine in the non-ego, and conversely.' I fancy that the historical value of the method of Fichte wUl shrink, in the end, to its influence on Hegel. Without the method of the Wissenscliaftslehre, there never would have been the method of the Logic. When it is said, on p. 260, that Kant took his categories from experience, I have added 'in a manner,' referring to the demonstrated and a priori nature of formal logic as insisted on by Kant, and already alluded to. What is said (p. 261) about the / 428 ANNOTATIONS. universal ego, as substituted in fhe deduction for the empirical ego, is not satisfactory. Let us generalize as mucli as we please, we still know no ego but the empiri- cal ego, and can refer to none other. That, in the fragment of the first sonnet, for the sake of uniformity, I have substituted the second person for the first, will probably not be taken ill. XXNllL—Herhart. THERE is certainly a great deal in this section that is striking and ingenious, but in view of the fantastic and incredible nature of much else, probably our con- clusion will be the same as that of Schwegler. The sup- position of these ' reals' is the destruction of philosophy. How can unity, philosophy, be possible if the basis of all be an underived, heterogeneous, and really unknown many ? Philosophy is possible only on the supposition of a single principle that possesses within itself the capability of transition into all existent variety and varieties. Then consider the absurdity of such questions as ' A body is coloured, but not without light ; how then about this quality in the dark ?' There is a look of depth here that may take with some, but I know no parallel to such a question unless the household mystery of. Where was Adam when the light went out ? To suppose some- thing present when its very constituent conditions are absent, is a return to the noumenon that is without a quality. Erdmann is incisively clear on Herbart, and Ueberweg extends us a very satisfactory relative breadth. 'KXlX.—SchelUng. THERE is little to be said here, and any difficulty occurs only in the latest paragraphs. One likes the genial glances of Schelling, but one dislikes his incessant changes. A human being leaping in such a variety of directions, according to the latest goad, is not an edifying spectacle. His best contributions are pro- bably those in analogy with Bohm ; his worst, where he conceals what he misunderstood in Hegel in vast, vague, mythological forms that have no merit but such as an Ossian miglit claim. The exposition of these last, how- ever, is an addition independent of Schwegler. HEGEL. 429 "What followed here in previous editions is now un- necessary, the last sentence on p. 311 being modilied, as well as the footnote. The eighth German edition, in omitting the comma after das, made the sentence plain; and, p. 290, vol. xi. of Schelling's works will be found to confirm this. The potential subject, — A, has the "first" claim to being ; but + ^, as potential spirit, has the " high- est," while the potential object, -)- A, the firj 6i>, has none at all. Kostlin's part in the exposition of Schelling is, in point of fact, clear, penetrating, complete, and quite worthy of the rest of the book. .Sch weglcr died before Schelling's relative work appeared. It is to be noted that ^h.^ is object iu respect of — A, and subject in respect of-}- A. XXX. — Hegel. THE comjietent reader, who keeps the origiual before him, will probably feel pleased with any little turn or modification which he may find in the translation of this section. In iii. 2. (b.) (2), for example, he will perceive that, to make the text consistent and intelligible, I was obliged to refer to Hegel himself. When it is considered that the life and works of Hegel present themselves, as they appear on the library shelves, iu no less than twenty -two good-sized volumes, it will be readily understood that Schwegler's twenty-eight pages can do but scant justice to 80 large an amount of matter. Accordingly they can be regarded occasionally as only extended contents. (This is more especially the case, perhaps, with what we have under the ' absolute spirit.') Nevertheless, I regard this state- ment of Schwegler's as, on the whole, not un.successful in giving a glimpse as M'ell of the matter as the form of Hegel. The 'logic,' though shortened or fore-shortened into what, I fear, must seem to the unacquainted reader only caricature, is really in itself, however inadequate as a complete exposition, a spirited sketch. The four pages on ' the objective spirit' again, though representative of two volumes, ' the philosophy of right,' and ' the philo- sophy of history' (the latter need hardly be mentioned, however), I positivelj' like, and expect more good from, whether as regards Hegel or as regards the public, than from all the rest. The little hint of Schwegler's against this part of the philosophy of Hegel as a ' State-philo- sophy,' I would not have the reader to take altogether 2 F 430 A XXO TA TIOXS. au pied de la lettre. By far the best lesson the Germans can give us lies in the ethical works of Kant, and the ethical and political ones of Hegel. It is these, however (with the religious), that, in the case of Hegel, have excited the shneks of the German radicals and free- thinkers. What disheartens the student of Hegel is, firstly, the impossibility of reading in Hegel ; and, secondly, the difficulty of attaining, in his regard, to a general conclu- sion. The curious peculiarity, too, on the first head, is that, open where we may in Hegel, we find him always engaged in saying pretty well the same thing. Open where we may, in short, it is always the dialectic we encounter, and that dialectic is always the same, what- ever element it may be in act to transform. Nay, there is also a peculiar dialect to which this dialectic has led, and which renders it impossible for Hegel to escape into general and current speech, even when employed on matters that are not esoteric. This is to be seen even in the ' philosophy of history,' which, of all the representations of Hegel, is perhaps the easiest. That per|ietual abstract alone, as, for instance, Rome's absfracte Herrschaft, must have irritated most readers. Not only that, however, but Hegel seems to have brought from very nature a tendency to griibeln, to grub and grope and burrow like a mole in the ground. We see this in the earliest papers we possess from him ; in those, for example, that relate to his theological studies when a tutor in Switzerland. Specimens of these we have in the life by Rosenkranz, and they seem scarcely human ; they seem constructed for an understanding that moves only in the interior. Hegel, at his ripest and best, has attained to a broad homely Suabian Doric, that, racy with hits, is not im- kindly, or that, 'stubborned with iron,' can annihilate rougUy with a laugh — to a speech, then, at once force- ful, plain, and clear ; but he was not, probably, by gift of nature a stylist. Hodden -grey at his finest, there was a tendency in him — early in life an efi"ort even — to get muffled and uncouth, and lost from sight in the hopelessly baroque. Something of this we see at page 320, in the quotation from the Phenomenology. The figures in which Hegel would there find air for himself are big and mouthing and confused ; and he makes no scruple to stride a cross metaphor. Let it have been as it may, however, with the style or natural speech of Hegel, tbo HEGEL. 431 impossibility of reading in him is due mainly to hia dialectic and consequent dialect. What is this dialectic, then, we naturally ask, on which the whole problem hinges ? Let us but know that, and we shall have a key to the dialect, and thence to the whole. The usual ex}>lanation of this dialectic is what we find in Schwegler, as in reference to the 'absolute method' 'that advances from notion to notion through negation,' etc. (see pp. 317, 323, 324). Now, as discussed elsewhere, I hold this and all such explanations to be external merely, and to miss the main point. That point ia the notion, the concrete notion, and in its derivation from Kant ; and that is the 'secret of Hegel.' Hegel, undoubtedlj'-, was not without debts to Schelling; but I know not that it was 'from reflection on the onesidedness of Schelling that the Hegelian philosophy arose.' SchcUing's 'nature,' and his 'absolute,' and his reference to Bohm, did much, it is true, for Hegel, but the form of Fichte, and certainly the matter of Kant did much more. In short, it comes to this, inspired by their example, Hegel soughtthe one idealistic principle to which he might reduce all. To be in earnest with idealism, Hegel said to himself, is to find aU things whatever but forms of thought. But how is that possible without a standard — without a form of thought, that, in application to things, will reduce them to itself? What, in fact, is thought — what is its ultimate, its prin- ciple, its radical? These questions led to the result that what was peculiar to thoiight, what characterized the function of thought, what constituted the special nerve of thought, was a triple nisus, the movement of which corresponded in its successive steps or moments to what is named in logic simple apprehension, judgment, and reason. Simple ai)prehension, judgment, and reason, do indeed constitute chapters in a book, but they collapse in man into a single force, faculty, or virtue, that has these three sides. That is the ultimate pulse of thought — that is the ultimate virtue into which man himself retracts. Let me but be able then, thought Hegel, to apj)ly this standard to all things in such manner as shall demonstrate its presence in them, as shall demon- strate it to be their nerve also, as shall reduce all things into its identity, and I shaU have accomplished the one universal problem. All things shall then be demon- stratively resolved into thought, and idealism — absolute idealism — definitively established. This is the secret ^J05/henomenal inquiry would vanish into mere phraseology. It is to be admitted at the same time that explanation by such categories as causality and reciprocity is confined only to the physical field, and that final explanation must resort to a higher principle. This final method, however, remains as yet shut up in the books of a single mdividual, and cannot find exposition here. Such, then, is the result of o\vc analysis of the merits that are claimed for M. Comte. It is impossible to attri- bute value, or even originality, to any of them. If ninety-nine people out of the hundred, asked to examine a child in geogi-aphy, grammar, arithmetic, Latin, French, etc., would say. Let us hegiii with the most elementary branches, what pretence is there for claiming for Comte any unusual merit in resorting to so common and natural an expedient, so poorly and imperfectly applied too ? His so-called law of evolution, again, exists not as named and considered by him, and is but a fragmentary reflexion — where it has any truth, as when it asserts philosophy to be preceded by mythology, monotheism by polythe- ism, fetichism, etc. — from the vast generalizations of Hegel. His xjrinciple, lastly, of restriction to phenomena is but the finicality of formalism itself, and tends to make us walk on aii-, while we are emptied of the filling of our concrete humanity. But neither things nor ourselves, fortunately, are convertible into mere out- sides. Besides the main merits of M. Comte, however, there are other particular ones which now demand a word. In relation to his arrangement of the sciences, for example, there is not only his ' Logic ' of these, but his creation of an alleged new science, that of Sociology ; while, in re- lation to his law of evolution, there is its application into a Philosophy of History. On the first head, unfortun- ately, Mr. Mill, though he finds here M. Comte's very greatest achievement, does not enable \is to say much. SUPPLEMENTARY NOTES. 461 We conclude, however, that what it involves is no Logic of the sciences in an Hegelian sense, but an enlightened generalization of the resources of empirical investigation in a Baconian sense. We may cordially allow every re- lative merit claimed without prejudice to our general position. As regards Sociology again, it will be found, as Mr. MiU admits, that the only important part of this alleged new science must, under the name of Statics, be resigned to Aristotle and others, while that part of it that is named Dynamics seems to refer to httle more than the already discussed law of evolution. How M. Comte was led to a different treatment here (referring to man historically, and not psychologically) will readily appear by looking to his principle. How could he get the point of view of bare phenomena and bare rela- tions otherwise ? From any other point of view man was too noumenal a being to suit his objects. As regards, lastly, the philosophy of history, Mr. Mill, to whom this is Comte's second greatest achievement, supplies us with more information. Nevertheless, though the relative survey of historical facts contain miich, doubtless, that is enlightened, ingenious, and interesting, we gather from it no reason to alter the main conclusion. Rather we see in it much to confirm it. The method, for example, is ])lainly that of ordinary rahonnement : with a 2^'i'obable here and a natural there, the hardest facts are expected to resolve themselves and flow for us. On the whole, how- ever, we may allow the merits claimed for M. Comte with reference to all the heads here without departing from our general position. That Comte was a man of ability and acquirement there is no wish to deny. Mathematical and scientific accomplishments he certainly possessed ; and many excellent ideas, many large, liberal, tolerant views, he must be cordially acknowledged to express in detail. Still, nevertheless, even in Mr. Mill's eyes the negative of Comte must be named a large one. One-haK of the work of Comte he seems, indeed, totally to reject, while in the other half he certainly finds faults enow. He signalizes deficiency, incompleteness, unsuccess, in the classification of the sciences, failures no less in the institution of Sociology, and many errors of detail with regard to the law of evolution, while he dis- putes his originality in regard to the very principle of Positivism. Both Mr. Mill and Mr. Lewes find further much in M. Comte generally that is exaggerated, inaccu- 2 II 462 ANNOTATIONS. rate, extravagant, arbitrary, absiu-d, and ridicidous, au.-l ■with this, what is said of his life and character seems verj- excellently to cohere. He was a delicate Jad, that stood apart from the games of his comrades ; but insurgent and indocile, he tired out his teachers by his pertinacity of argu- mentativeness and egotism. His married life was a single scene of French bickering. Madame did not understand the cordes intimes of Monsieur, nor Monsieur Madame's. Egotism is always unequally yoked. It may appear cruel to allude to Comte's actual attacks of insanity, but they are still elements in the calcidation. Lastly, we may refer to his exquisitely French Platonic passion for Madame de Vaux, that ended in his exaltation into the intensely self-confident Pontiflf of an extravagant and ridiculous new religion, with its stupid catechisms, calen- dars, and what not. As is evident, we have only space to indicate, but whoever will take the trouble to read what Mr. Mill and Mr. Lewes write of Comte, will find all that is indicated amply illustrated and con- firmed. Professor Fen-ier quotes Mr. Morell to this eflfect : — ' No one, for example, who compares the philosophic method of Schelling with the "Philosophie positive" of Auguste Comte, can have the slightest hesitation as to the source from which the latter virtually sprang.' Comte's fundamental idea is then asserted to be ' precisely the same as that of Schelling,' in whom is found also ' the whole conception of the affiliation of the sciences in the order of their relative simplicity, and the expansion of the same law of development so as to include the ex- position of human nature and the course of social pro- gress.' These assertions of Mr. Morell are perhaps too sweeping, but there can be no doubt that in the Germans v^ho preceded M. Comte much matter is to be foimd which might have proved suggestive to him. We have already seen how analogous to the triplets of Hegel were even the fundamental triplets of Comte, Theology, Philo- sophy, Positivism ; Fetichism, Polytheism, Monotheism, etc. ; but many other Hegelian indications are not want- ing even in the short summary of Mr. Mill. Here, for example, are a few eminently Hegelian traits: — 'The human beings themselves, on the laws of whose nature the facts of history depend, are not abstract or universal, but historical human beings, already shaped, and made what they are, by human society : ' ' the vulgar mode of SUPPLEMENTARY NOTES. 403 usiug history, by lookiag in it for parallel cases, as if any cases were 2^(i>'allel ;^ 'the state of every part of the social whole at any time, is intimately connected with the contemporaneous state of all the others ; religious belief, philosophy, science, the fine arts, the industrial arts, commerce, navigation, government, aU are in close natural dependence,' etc. ; ' M. Comte confines himself to the main stream of human progress, looking only at the races and nations that led the van, and regarding as the szcccessoi's of a people not their actual descendants, but those vjho took up the thread of progress after them ;' ' the vul- gar mistake of supposing that the course of history haj no tendencies of its own, and that great events usually proceed from small causes,' etc. etc. Then with Comte as with Hegel, the main object of philosophy at present is a reconstruction of human society, and on those objec- tive principles, too, which are not always pleasing to the rather negatively and wholly subjectively disposed rela- tiA-ists, such as Mr. Mill and Mr. Grote. Thus the teaching of Comte on the family, women, marriage, etc., is essentially the same as that of Hegel, and in its objective necessity aU but directly opposed to the sub- jective freedom of the Aifiddrung. Then Comte plainly sees and reprobates the modern atomism of which we hear so much in Hegel, and is quite as anxious as he to co- articulate it again under the xmiversal. He talks of the great productions of art which we might expect from such objective reconstruction, 'when one hannonioiis vein of sentiment shall oucc more thrill through the whole of society, as in the days of Homer, of ^schylus, of Phidias, and even of Dante.' It is admirably charac- teristic also of the German influence on Comte that he is wholly opposed to what is ' merely negative and destruc- tive,' and for that reason excludes from the seats of honour the philosophes of the French Aufklanxng. Many other Hegelian analogies in Concte will be found at pp. 379-382 of Mr. Mill's essay. In short, when we consider that Comte's titles to fame consist in his classification and logic of the sciences, in his socio- logical generalizations, and historical analysis, we have no difficulty in deciding that the praises in these references, so copiously heaped on Comte as the first and only, will yet in the end be transferred to the entire quarry of these and a thousand completer ex- cellences more — Hegel. Comtianism, in fact, bears to 464 A NXO TA TIOKS. Hegelianism a relation very similar to that of Mahome- tanism to Christianity. Rapid as is the spread of the one when compared with the other, its reign, neverthe- less, will, in view of its incomplete, flushed, fragmentary nature, prove but short-lived and partial. Nor need we regret its advent in England : it will always prove intro- ductory, and we have nothing to fear from it, now that its atheism and materialism have been by Mr. Mill almost formally withdrawn. That a knowledge of Comte should precede a knowledge of the earlier Hegel, cannot in the circumstances surprise. Comte evidently writes heavily, but he writes at the same time in French, and exoterically. Even to his own countrymen, Hegel, for the most part, remains still a sealed book. Comtianism will probably be in full leaf in England when Hegelianism has done little more than broken ground. Hegel, how- ever, is all that Comte only aims at, and it is time that he should be known. How one shivers for their own shame, when one hears, in reference to Hegel, the crude propos of such intelligences as Mr. Mill and Mr. Lewes! These we have not space to exemplify. Mr. Mill, we may say, however, talks somewhere of Germany making convulsive eiforts to wrest itself from the groove of the false metaphysical method : are we then in advance of Germany ? is Germany in any respect behind tis ? Is not the truth rather this, that at this moment Germany leads the whole world even in empirical science ? Can any empirical science be named, indeed, for which Ger- many writes not the text-books ? Is it not the dis- coveries of her inquirers that are alone bruited among us ? And to what is this superiority owing ? Why, to nothing else than the superior faculties, the superior ideas, and the superior terms, which have resulted from the hard discipline of German philosophy. Mr. Mill talks too as if Hegel were an example of metaphysics, as this term is understood by Corate ; and at the same time seems, with Mr. Lewes, to regard his method as subjec- tive and a priori. There cannot be a greater mistake ; nay, the reverse is the truth, and Herbart even reproaches Hegel with empiricism. As said, the latter is as adverse as Comte himself to the impregnation of nature and the things of nature with metaphysical creatures : very far from that, he would reduce all to the simple notion. Hismethod is not properly named a priori, however. No, if syn- thetic, it is no less analytic, and has always empirical SUPPLEMENTARY NOTES. 465 fact below it. It may be described, indeed, as tlie ex- haustive deduction of a single, actually existent principle that has been inductively acquired. The preceding induc- tion is but superseded by the universality of the deduc- tion ; or to attain the analysis, we have but to reverse the synthesis. The peculiar objective analysis, however, that conducts and, in completeness and correctness, guarantees the deduction, ia, in fact, the foundation of a new method, which yet awaits, I may say, verification, and it were much to be wished that the faculty of Mr. Mill were available here. In the meantime, we may say this : Hegel, aU consideration of his principle and method apart, has produced on all human interests, theoretical, practical, and aesthetic, a body of generalized knowledge, which, for comprehensiveness and accuracy, for power of penetration and power of reduction, has never been approached. Nor, after Kant, who, instigated by Hume on all the fields, set the example, is this a wonder. It is impossible here to do any justice to the theme, but there is another phase of the Hegelian philosophy to which I should like to call the attention of most modern philosophers. To Comte, and I suppose almost every- body at present, the imiverse is a vast magazine of un- accountable facts. Whence or how they came, these facts, we know not ; our business is to inquire into them as they are, and adapt ourselves accordingly. This ia pretty well the position of Mr. Mill. It is not necessary to suppose either that things wiU always remain as they are : the relations of things may vary in nature ; they may vary, they do vary, in a sociological aspect ; it m enough for us, at any time, to know them as they are. and follow the conserpient expediency. Possibly even elsewhere in space, things and relations may be quitf; different. We must trust our acquired necessities of thought only so long as the facts that led to them re- main beneath them ; for any necessity but what habit begets on experience exists not. In such a world, then, it is the business of society to leave the individual to th«5 unfettered exercise of his highest faculties. It is not the business of society to dictate to this individual his beliefs ; it is a question of the greatest delicacy, indeed, if, and how, and how far, it may interfere even to assist him ; or it is best, perhaps, not to interfere at all. This, as said, is pretty well the position of Mr. MiU ; 468 ANNOTATIONS. and while it contains some elements that do not preclude a junction in the end with the results of Hegel, it cer- tainly contains others that render such junction for ever hopeless. These latter concern what I may call !Mr. Mill's absolute relativity ; that the nature of things can- not be depended on, that it may vary in space, it may vary in time, and that we have simjjly to know it — its succession and co-existence of antecedents and conse- quents — here and noio. If there be in effect, namely, no nature of things, that is, no i^rinciple of reason that underlies and permeates them, or if Mr. Mill's invaria- bility of co-existence and succession be one that is valid only here and now (and Mr. Mill hardly allows to either a validity and breadth coincident with general human experience) — if there be no nature, no reason, no neces- sary and absolute invariability of the relations of things, then, for Mr. Mill any junction with Hegel must for ever remain impossible. But, these apart, there are other elements in Mr. Mill not hostile to a junction with Hegel. Mr. Mill still msiats on the thinking of things. Now, things and thinking — observe the etj^mological con- nexion — are all that exists. There is nothing but under- standing andseosation, or thought andsense. Explanation, then, which is the need of unity, would reduce the one side to the other, and Mr. Mill's thinking of things would have precisely this result, were but things in their relations supposed invariable. On that supposition, indeed, such thinking could only result in a system of thought which would be the true nature of these things, these things in truth, or the truth of the.se things. Now that truth, the want of Mr. !Mill, is the sole want of Hegel also. As it might residt to Mr. Mill it were a posterius, but this posterius being alone the truth of things, were evidently in fact the prius of them. That prius, then, however arrived at, is the sj'stem of Hegel ; and it is to Hegel's attitude here that attention is specially invited. That sensible without he believes to be identical with this intelligible within : both meet and coincide in that systematic and necessary prius, which is reason and the system of reason. Id fact, the one is outside, the other is inside, and reason is the name of the whole. Existence, that is, is but the evolution of reason. To Hegel, then, there is not in nature, as there is to Mr. Lewes, ' a Fatality which must be accei)ted :' that fatality itself he would explain, he wotUd reduce to S UPPLEMENTA R Y NO TES. 4C 7 reason. It is with the same thought in his mind as Mr. Lewes that Mr. Mill says : ' If the universe had a begin- ning, its beginning by the very conditions of the case, was supematui-al ; the laws of nature cannot account for their own origin.' The arbitrariness, the caprice Avhich Mr. Mill feigns here as the origin of things is precisely what Hegel resists : necessity of reason that origin must have been, place it where you may. Hegel, in short, believes — with all its differences before him — in the iden- tity (unity) of reason, and, so believing, he has subjected all things to the test of reason, and has exhibited to us for result, not only the philosophy of the universe as in space, but the philosophy of the universe as in time also. From which last element it is, in particular, that the in- terests of natural and revealed religion are the closing verities of the entire system. But this must suffice. [Since writing the above with reference to Comte, 1 have had an opportunity of consulting the six volumes of his Cours de Philosophie Positive. I have said (p. 464) 'Comte evidently writes heavily.' This is the only phrase I would, on the whole, withdraw. M. Comte certainly indulges in sentences that, for a Frenchman, are sometimes both loaded and long; nevertheless, hig works must be pronounced throughout lucid. For the rest, I am disposed, in general, to stand by the original finding. As we have seen, Mr. Mill and Mr. Lewes place the merit of M. Comte in what we may call his form — in his classification of the sciences, his law des trois etats, and his abstract phenomenalism (positivism), namely. In this I cannot agree with them : to me Comte's form is valueless, and what value he possesses depends on his matter. In regard to the whole of that matter, I am not an expert, and will not judge. It is for a Sir WiUiam Thomson and others to tell us whether Comte has made any contributions to Mathematics, Astronomy, Physics, Chemistry, and Biology, or not. On the merits of M. Comte's additions to a knowledge of Sociology, I have abeady given the opinion of Mr. MiU. My own conclusion here is this : — I find M. Comte, in the first place, very French. He excites our imaginations by the most enormous promises of new marvels, unheard of glories ; and, for the most part, like the thimblerigger, he only covers a pea. In the second place, I should say that M. Comte occupies too individual, 4G8 ANNOTATIONS. too imperfectly-prepared a place to be able to give us a system of SociologJ^ But, in the third place, I must avow, that for the student of the principles of pohtica at present, there are in the phi/siqiie sociale of M. Comte many suggestions of unquestionable importance.] 11. 3fr. Leioes's acaisation of Atheism against Hegel} IN reference to the following paragraph contained in the new edition of Mr. Lewes's History of Philosophy (vol. ii. p. 545'), I wish to con-ect a mistake, which any tyro in general (not necessarily Hegelian) German could correct quite as well as myself. This mistake has now stood before the world, in the pages of Mr. Lewes, more than twenty years ; it is at once singularly iuaccurate and signally unjust, and it is high time to correct it. The paragraph in question runs thus : — ' Hegel admits the proposition (being and non-being are the same) to be somewhat paradoxical, and is fully aware of its openness to ridicule ; but he is not a man to be scared by a paradox, to be shaken by a sarcasm. He is aware that stupid common sense wiU ask, " Whether it is the same if my house, my property, the air I breathe, this town, sun, the law, mind, or God, exist or not?" Certainly a very pertinent question ; how does he answer it? "In such examples," he says, "particular ends, — utility, for instance, — are understood, and then it is asked if it is indifferent to me whether these useful things exist or not ? But, in truth, philosophy is precisely the doc- trine which is to free man from innumerable finite aims and ends, and to make him so indifferent to them that it is really all the same whether such things exist or not." Here we trace the Alexandrian influence ; except that Plotinus would never have had the audacity to say that philosophy was to make us indifferent to whether God existed or not ; and it must have been a slip of the pen which made Hegel include God in the examples ; a slip of the pen, or else " the rigour of his pitiless logic," of which his disciples talk.' This is a tolerably fair example of the treatment of Hegel, not by Mr. Lewes alone, but by everybody else 1 Already published in the British Controversialist for Nov. 1S67, this note is retained here, not as properly pertinent now to Mr. Lewes, but lor its general usefulness. SUPPLEMENTARY NOTES. 409 who does not tinderstand him. If Hegel is supposed, on the grounds alleged, to have said that it was ' indifferent whether God existed or not,' then there is the same authority for supposing him to have said, that it was in- different whether law (Recht) existed or not, and whether the mind {Geist) existed or not. Had this occurred to Mr. Lewes, surely he would have looked again before committing himself to so hazardous an assertion ; for even to him we may assume it as certain that Hegel could not have been indifferent as to whether Recht ex- isted or not, or as to whether Geist existed or not. There are in Hegel even external placards which assert the objective existence of Recht, and the absolute existence of Geist, at all events. There is here, then, an anterior improbability so strong that of itself it is quite enough to refute Mr. Lewes's assertion in advance. It will be only fair to Mr. Lewes, however, to allow that — apparently at least — there must be some excuse for his mistake ; for it is a mistake that has also been committed by A. Gratry, Prfitre de I'Oratoire de I'lmmaculge Conception,' and it is a mistake that, on occasion of this Gratry, has not been accurately corrected, even by such a man as Rosen- kranz, who, as all the world knows, is the ' Hegelianer 2'>ar excellence^ It will clear the issues to quote at once from Rosenkranz in reference to M. Gratry's work (Logique, Paris, 1855, 2 tomes), as follows : — ' This French priest wishes to prove, that, according to Hegel, philosophy seeks to take from man all interest for right, for his soul, naj"^, for God himself, and reduce him to indifference towards these. I. 194, he exclaims, " Comprenez-le, nous sommes ici k I'origine m6me de I'esprit de sophisme ; disons mieux, nous sommes ici an fond de I'ablme, 5, la naissance de I'esprit des tenfebres. L'esprit de sophisme est un mot trop faible, qui nomme peu son objet ; I'esprit des tgnfebres est le vrai mot. Ce mot th^ologique devient ici rigoureusement philosophique et scientifique. L'origine de I'esprit des tgnebres est done ceUe-ci : tuer I'^me ; la rendre absolument indiffer- ente i I'existence, ou §, la non-existence du monde, de la justice, de la v6rit6, de I'^me eUe-mfime, de Dieu ! Lui 6ter, comme le dit Hegel, tout int^rgt en ces choses ; la ddlivrer de I'int^rfit de la raison pratique dont parle Kant, cet int^rSt d'amour pour la j ustice et pour la v6rit^, qui est, nous I'avons d4montr6, le ressort mgme du precede dialectique, selon Platon et tons les philosophes. Quand 470 AJS NOTATIONS. le ressort est bris^, quand r9,me est morte, il n'y a plus de procgde dialectique ; la raisou pure, Isolde, abstraite, d^racinge, devient de fait, comma le veut Hegel, indiff^r- ente k I'dtre et au ngant, etc." For these fearful conse- quences M. Gratry cites from Hegel's Works (vi. 172) the following passage : "It needs no great expenditure of wit to make the proposition, that being and nothing are the same, ridiculous, or rather to bring forward absurdities, with the untrue declaration that they are consequences and applications of that proposition ; as, for example, that it is consequently the same thing, whether my house, my means, the air we breathe, this town, the sun, right, spirit, God, exist or not. ... In effect, philosophy is just this doctrine to free man from an infinite number of finite ends and aims, and to make him so indif- ferent to them that it is quite the same to him whether such things exist or not." M. Gratry translates this pass- age, and, at the end of the citation, full of indignation, he italicises the words, "qu'il soit absolument indifferent, que ces choses soient ou ne soient pas." Every one who understands German will be able to refer the words, "such things," only to the preceding "number of finite ends and aims ;" the priest of the Oratory of the Imma- culate Conception understands as amongst these the soiU, right, God. Are they not the things named directly previously? Of course, no one will call finite (t?ifinite?) ends and aims things ; at the same time a certain plau- sibility remains, because those objects are mentioned shortly before. But does not Hegel himself say, that it is an untrue consequence to infer from the proposition of the identity of the notions being and nothing, that it is quite the same whether the sun, right, spirit, God, exist or not ? Does he not expressly reject, therefore, the consequence which M. Gratry da-aws in order to secure his damnation ? Does not the accusation, theu, fall to pieces of itself ? But, dear reader, do you not observe these points in the midst of M. Gratry's citation from Hegel ? What must they denote ? An omission. And in Hegel how is the omission suppUed ? Thus : "In such examples there are assumed partly particular ends, as the use, perhaps, which something has for me, and then it is asked if it is indifferent to me whether what is useful exist or not." Here, then, now do we not at last see how it is that Hegel comes to speak of finite ends and aims, towards the existence or non-existence of which SUPPLEMENTARY NOTES. 471 philosophy has to render humanity indifferent? Why has M. Gratry desired to exchide that seatence? Evi- dently because otherwise he would not have been able to draw his inferences ; because he as a priest of the Christian religion, would have been obliged to remember that it belongs to the Christian also to raise himseK above the finitude of the mere useful, and to exclaim with the Holy Singer, " If I have thee. Lord, what need I ask more of heaven or earth ! " Wei-e such an accusation to be made in ordinary life, and in another sphere, it would certainly be branded as falsehood and calumny.'— (Uosenkrauz, Metaphysik, pref., xxiii.) The agreement, then, between M. Gratry and Mr. Lewes is so striking, that they probably both owe their information to the same source, — possibly M. Ott. I am not satisfied with the solution of Rosenkranz, however, and think he might have explained the matter much more easily and convincingly, had he biit looked more closely at his text. Let the reader observe the quotation from Hegel, the beginning of which runs, ' In such examples there are assumed partly {zum theil) particular ends, as the use, perhaps,' etc. Now, it is the touch of that partly that shall resolve for us the whole difficulty. Under the regimen of that partly, namely, there is included all that concerns finite references, while under the regimen of a second partly (zum theil) there is included all that con- cerns infinite references. Nay, the termination of the discussion of the finite, and the transition to that of the infinite references are made unescapably prominent by a dash. Of the objects imder the regimen of the second partly, Hegel now speaks thus : ' Partly, however, it is ends essential in themselves, absolute existences and ideas, which are assumed under tha category of being or non-being ; such concrete objects are something quite else than only existent or non-existent, etc., . . . these categories are quite inadequate to the nature of such objects, etc' There can be no doubt, then, that Hegel perfectly well knew the nature of his own examjiles, discussing them under two categories, of which the former applied to finite ends and aims, such as 'my house,' 'my means,' etc., and the latter only to 'essential aims,' 'absolute existences and ideas,' such as 'right,' • soul,' ' God.' Any just reader, then, that looked only to the spirit of the passage, would, as Rosenkranz argues, never for a moment have imagined that Hegel meant to 472 ANNOTATIONS. enumerate law, the soul, God, as among those thinga which philosophy was to render us indifi'erent to. But Hegel, as Eosenkranz has failed to point out, does not trust himself to correctness of spirit and kindly inter- pretation on the part of his reader; no, by absolute accuracy of letter, he renders himself independent of his reader, and sets misconstruction at defiance. What has been said is probably enough ; but luckily we have a light wholly irresistible in the passage itself, as it occurs in the first edition of the ' Encyclopaedie.' This passage i shall now translate, and bo set the matter definitively beyond dispute. In reference to the question, then, ♦ whether it is the same if my house, my property, the air I breathe, this town, sun, the law, mind, or God, exist or not,' we are to understand the answer of Hegel in \n& first edition to run thus : — ' Here, then, are assumed partly {zum theil) particular ends, as the use which something has for me, and then it is asked whether it is indifferent to me that what is useful should exist or notl In effect philosophy is just this doctrine, to free man from an infinite number of finite ends and aims, and render him so indifferent to them, that it is quite the same to him whether such things exist or not. Further, as regards the air, su7i, or law, God, it is mere want of thought to consider such essential ends, absolute existences and ideas, under the category of being. Such concrete objects are something quite else than only existent or non-existent. Meagi-e abstractions, like being and nothing, — and they are, being but the categories of the beginning, the most meagre abstractions possible, — are inadequate to express the nature of the objects alluded to.' One sees that the important word for the right under- standing of the passage from Hegel is that partly, which quite trenchantly and unmistakably discriminates between essential and inessential existences ; the essential exist- ences being not only God, law, the soul, etc., but even (only in the first edition, however) the sun and the air. What one likes least in Mr. Lewes, then, is that he has omitted this all-important partly. By this omission he has certainly rendered himself as obnoxious to all the hard things said by Eosenkranz as the priest of the immaculate conception himself. We, however, shall not say these hard things of Mr. Lewes ; Mr. Lewes is a perfectly open, unaffected gentleman, and one of the SUPPLEMENTARY NOTES. 473 clearest, most ■widely-Informed, and consequently use- fulest writers whom we now possess ; and we will simply believe that he failed to perceive the importance of the word, and, so failing, omitted it for the sake of the greater simplicity and clearness of the sentence. In conclusion, when it is considered that what is con- cerned is an accusation of such a doctrine as atheism, by such a man as Mr. Lewes, against such a man as Hegel, and in a work that has gone through three editions, and been for more than twenty years, probably, the most popular English history of philosophy, perhaj^s I shall be held excused for seeking in this manner to contradict and correct. For the rest, as has been demonstrated already, F^gel is not only a Theist, but a Christian. III. Pantheism and Paganism. THE heresy of the German critics is, perhaps, quite as active in England at present as the positivism of C'omte, and may excuse a word. So far as I know, however, this lieresy is not represented here by any direct disciple of the school, but only by one or two men of genius, who seem to draw their inspiration from the semi-French Heine and the wholly French Hugo. The leading trait of these Englishmen is an air of brusque bravery that seems to say, ' Pah ! it is cowardly to whine over our lost immortality, let us go out into the air and enjoy life!' It will be enough here, however, to mention them and this ; it is a phase of mind suiBcieutly incomplex, and may be left for the present to take on of itseK the inevi- table 'pale cast of thought.' I shall confine myself to a few remarks on the German movement in which they indirectly root. Pantheism and Paganism are the best terms for it. All the essentials of religion, namely, are for it void : personal God, there is none ; immortality, there is none. ^Vhat is, is the idea — thought that has realized itself in nature and in man, and so realizes itself for ever. There is one grand life, that, dumb, yet speaks ; that has its accents in the perishable individual; that, nought, is all. It is this alone we are to see and honour ! it is for this we are cheerfully to live, it is for this we are cheerfully to die, secm-e in this that it must live, and that in our OM'U death, loss there ia 474 ANNOTATIONS. none, for it alone is truth. This, so far as I can make it out, is what may be called the religious core of the Ger- man critics. This, however, is not their true support. Their true support, ather, is the simple conviction of subjective superiority, and the consequent equally sim- ple spirit of battle. What could support a Diderot or a D'Holbach but indignation at the darkness, at the miser- able ignorance of those around them, and the resolution to dispel it ? As with them, so with the heretical Ger- man critics. Blind to all but their propagandism, they rush to the front to enlighten us; they never linger be- hind to enhghten themselves. It might be worth their while, however, to put to themselves the question. Is ' Humanismus,' is humanity, is man at all possible without a belief in the immortality of the soul and the existence of God ? Truly, we are on the brink of the most fearful crisis in the whole world's history. Knowledge is to be all in all. And what is that knowledge ? Wty, that as water is contained in a sponge, thought is contained in the material universe and perpetually recreates it ! Mau's duty is to know this, and, knowing this, to work. That is all : let the German critics have their own way, and I do not see anything else they could add. I do not know that they could add science even ; for anything Baconian they declare to be beneath them. Then work ? Millions of the most pallid and undeniable slaves of both sexes, shut up in sickly factories and bakeries for the world's back and the world's belly, with no consolation but that so they keep alive — the Idea ! This idea is simply monstrous — a Moloch of the most insatiable maw. Result there can be none — unless Europeans are capable of returning to an Egyptian bondage under a Pharaoh again — but the suicide of the race. It is really scarcely intelligible that a Ruge should be eloquent about science and philosophy, and liberty and humanity, and aU for service under a blind, dumb, invisible idol, whose only function is to victimize everything, to gorge upon all. If it is not a person, but only a something that is to go on living and growing in this world, then it is of no con- sequence whether that something be called ideal or be called material. It is but a thing under either name ; and that its necessary realization should only be in suc- cessive generations of millions of individual men makes the matter not a whit better, conceive them even working per/ectli/. SUPPLEMENTARY NOTES. 475 TLe great source of this despair of the German critics — for it is evndently but despair, and the whitest that ever fell — is, as I have said already, not Hegel, but only their o-mi obstinately self-willed rejection of Hegel. Hegel, himself, has, in the most open manner, professing adhesion to an enlightened and progressive conservatism in politics, conducted his whole system into the sanctuary of the Christian Religion. Nor is this denied ; it is only rejected. But why should it be rejected? To me it ajipears that it is precisely this part of his work that should evoke for Hegel a heartfelt and irresistible io triumphe ! No doubt, in many respects, Hegel's Logic is his capital achievement. It is to be borne in mind, however, that, though containing much that is of material importance, it is still principally formal. Its first note, after all is said, will never ring quite true ; existence of some kind and existence of no kind are not the same, even should we see that existence of no kind is a non-ens, and not in rerum natura, and consequently that, so far as matter (Tnhalt) is concerned, it is the same supposition, the same ultimate generalization that existence of any kind, existence in general, is. But if the start be but an artifice and a convenience, is it at aU ascertained yet that the means of progress, the dialectic, is in any re- spect better ? I confess, for my part, that I have more satisfaction in the Philosophy of the Spirit, in the Moral and Political Philosophy, and in the History of Philo- sophy than in the Logic. Nay, of the Logic itself, its value to me consists only in its ministrations to spiritu- alism. I cannot give myself up simpliciter to the Ent- wickelung, and I distrust the transcendental rapture with which many Germans discuss both Plato and Hegel in this connexion. The former's idea, it will be remem- bered, for example, I have described on the whole as only the formal vaA\eTsa\{das Foi-mell-Allgemeine), only a generic notion, though it may be admitted that there are in Plato partial eS"orts towards a single plastic element or energy, a single all of thoiight, whose distinctions were constitutive pairs of fluent notions. Then, as said, the success of the Logic, which would precisely realize and complete these efforts of Plato, is not yet certain, and the general principle remains still to be verified. Here, however, it is that Hegel, if ever anywhere, is unduly mfluenced by the ancients, and lays a misleading stress on the abstract universal. Not but that he is in a mea- 476 ANNOTA TIONS. sure compelled to this by the very nature of the abstract logical sphere in which for the time he moves. Concrete spirit, nevertheless, must be seen to be something more than abstract logic ; which latter, indeed, is only valuable as leading to the former. To transfix matter with logical categories till it disappears (should that be possible), is not to me a great work in itself, as it is to Ruge, but in its consequences — in its support, that is, to all the great interests of religion. Neither gods nor men are in very truth logical categories. And so it is, that should the Logic, or any other part of the work of Hegel fail us here, we are not, for a moment, to suppose that our hopes are — therefore — at term. No man is final ; neither Plato, nor Aristotle, nor Kant, nor Hegel. Existence is here within us, there without us, for us as it was for them : we too may turn to read the countenance of our common mother. An idealism that only, so to speak, strikes seed- matter into seed-thought, were but materialism; could even such materialism as this, then, be proved of Kant and Hegel, we should not allow it to appal us. No ; let the pre- tensions of these men be what they may, let their dark- nesses be what they may, we shall never allow the former to declare the latter final. But, happily, there is no need for this ; Kant and Hegel are the very truest supports that philosophy has ever yet extended to the rehgioua interests of humanity. Pantheism and Paganism, then, are not, on any account, terrors to us, and most sincerely do we wish the German critics a prosperous deliverance from the blank whiteness of their own most horrible despair. INDEX. Abbt, 208. Abelard, 146. Absolute, 65, 138, 139, 315, 316, 323, 363, 368, 386, 433, 442. Abstract, 365, 366. Abstraction, 6, 11, 15. Academics, 101. Academy, 93, 94, 139. Accident, 829. Achilles (the), 19, 364, 365, 366. Acroamatic, 95. Actuality, 101, 102, 108, 109, 328, 365, 399, 400. Actus Purus, 193. Adaptation, 245. .ainesidemus. 135, 137. iE.sthetic (Transcendental!, 218, 220. .aisthetics, 285, 297. Agreeable (the), 242. Asrrippa, 137. Air, 11, 376, 379, 396. Albertus Magnus, 349. Aleibiades, 44. Alcibiades (the), 63. Ale.-fander (the Great), 98, 121, 131, 143. Alteiistein, 258. America, 150. Ammonius Saccas, 138. Amyntas, 94. Analogies of experience, 224. Analysis, 7, 350. Analytic, aesthetic, 241. practical, 233. teleological, 244. transcendental, 221. Anaxagoras, his life, 27 ; relations to predecessors, 28 ; his principle of roO?, 28 ; as close of Pre-Socratic Philosophy, 30 ; Note on, 375-380 ; mentioned, 4, 8, 26, 39, 111, 351, 352, 371, 373, 395, 396, 421, 455, 460. Anaximander, 10, 351, 354, 453. Anaximenes, 10, 21, 351, 352, 354, 453, 455. Anniceris, 55. Annotations (these\ 845. AnseLm, 144, 145, 405, 406. Anstoss, 268, 269. Anthropology, 335, 336. Anthropomorp'hism, 16, 81. Anticipations of sensation, 224. Antigonus, 123. Antinomies, 75 ; Kant's, 213, 227, 258 Zeno's, 363, 364. Antiphon, 35. Antisthenes, 53-55. Antithesis, 20, 21, 74, 76 163, 360. Anytus, 43, 44. Apathy, 135, 137. Apodictic, 100. Apologists, 144. Aporias, 101, 423. Appearances, 212, 220, 320. A priori, 71, 210, 217-226. Arabians (the), 145. ArcesUaus, 136. ■ApOT, 10. Archelaus. 39, 351. Architectonic, 450, 451. Architecture, 342. Archytas, 12. Aristippus, 53, 55, 56, 132. Ariston, 68. Aristophanes, 37, 40, 42, 43, 44. Aristotle, his life and writings, 94 ; character and classification of his philosophy, 95 ; his Logic and Meta- physics, 98 ; his critique jf Plato, 101 ; his four causes and the relation of form and matter, 105 ; potentiality and actuality, 108 ; the ab.solute, divine spirit, 109 ; the Physics, 111 ; the Ethics, 115 ; the summum bo- num, 116 ; notion of virtue, 118 ; the State, 119 ; the Peripatetic school, 120 ; Transition to the Post- Aristotelian PhOosophy, 120 ; Note on, 399-402 ; mentioned, 4, 5, 6, 9, 12, 13, 17, 19, 21, 27, 29, 39, 48, 50, 51, 55, 61, 68, 77, 93, 12r). 130, 131, 132, 2 I 478 INDEX. 134, I3S, 145, 147, 14S, 194, 205, 221, 252, 323, 851, 353, 355, 356, 357, 358, 361, 365, 368, 369, 370-3S0, 393, 453, 460, 461, 476. Arrow (tlie flying), 19. Art, 341, 342. Asjiects (contingent), 282. Assistance (the divine), 164. Association, 183. Ast, 346. Atheism, 26, ISS, 189, 100, 191, 192, 202, 468-473. Athens, 27. Atoms, 25, 283. Atomistic, 7. Atomists, its founders, 25 ; the atoms, 25 ; the plenum and the vacuum, 25 ; necessity, 26 ; their position, 26 ; Note on, 373 ; mentioned, 4, 7, 8, 22, 28, 352, 396. Attic prose, 35. Attraction, 325. Attribute, 171, 172, 173, 408, 433. Auildarung, 8, 31, 42, 346, 370, 381, 332, 394, 395, 396, 411, 437, 403. Autonomous, 233. Averroes, 145. Avicenna, 145. Axioms of Intuition, 224. B.iCON, 150-153, 156, 381, 403, 404, 411, 453, 464. Banquet (the), S9, 41, 42, 67. Jiardili, 247. Basedow, 208. Baumeister, 207. Baumgarten, 207. Bayle, 371. Beattie, 184. Beautv, 241, 425. Becl:, 247. Becker, 310. Becoming, 7, 19-23, 60, 72, 324, 360, 371, 396, 398. Beent, Pref., 16, 17, 359. Begrifr, 50, 353. See also Notion. Being, 7, 14-19, 22, 23, 26, 65, 72-74, 98, 324, 347, 359, 360-367, 371, 396, 398, 401, 406. Being-for-self, 325. Beings (four classes of), 83. Belief, 231, 247, 251. Berkeley, 193, 201-203, 389, 415, 417-422. Cessarion, 148, Bilflnger, 207. Bindegewebe, 359. Bohm, 153-156, 194, 287, 306, 404, 428. Books, 393. Bouterweck, 247. Bow and L^Te, 21. Jirandis, 345, 346, 357, 381. Braniss, 346. Blown (Bishor), 181, 415. Brown (Thomas), 416, 428. Brucker, 346. Bruno, 152, 153. Buckle, 363, 381, 382, 394, 405, 436, 450. 459. Buhle, 346. Butler (Bishop), 415. Butler's Lectures, 345, 346, 351, 357. 362, 863. Calculus (the), 417. Campanella, 152. Canonic, 131. Cardan, 152. Carlyle, 416, 420. Canieades, 137. Categories, 99, 100, 212, 221, 280, 323, 394, 423. Categorical Imperative, 214, 233. Causalitv, 182, 183, 205, 212, 224, 26(i, 282, 329, 409, 455. Causes (Aristotle's four), 105-108. Certainty (moral), 231. ChalylisBus, 346. Chance, 26. Chaos, 10. Channides, 58. Charmides (the), 63. Chemism, 331. Christianitv, 139, 143, 144, 209, 277, 301, 302, 314, "315, 343, 350, 355, 433, 440, 444, 475. Chrysippus, 12."^, 131. Church, 238, 239, 443. Cicero, 24, 124, 135, 136, 138, 372. Citizen (a good), 441. Clarke, 181. Classes (in Plato's stnte), 92. Classiflcation, 450, 451, 452. Cleanthes, 123, 127. Cleon, 42. Clouds (the) 40, 42. Cogito-sum, 405. Cognition, 35, 65, 113, 114, \2i, 1,»«. 210, 253, 331, 374, 393, 424. Cold, 10, 17. Coleridge, 423, 425. Columbus, 438. Common sense, 184, 418. Complexions, 25, 26. Composition, 23, 28 Comte, 346, 377, 332, 395, 440-467, 468 Conception, 50, 70, 71, 364, 365, 406. Concrete, 365, 866 Condensation, 9, 11. Condillac, 184, 185, 454. Conduct (standard of), 397. Consciousness, 163, 284. Consequent, 327. Constitutive, 231, 240, 245, 348. Contingency, 328. Continuity,"325, 365, 366. Contract, 337. INDEX. 479 Contradiction, 99, 101, 200, 205, 2S0 327. Contraposition, 427. Contraries, 10. Contrariety, 20, 21, 327. Copernican notion, 216, 415, 423. Copernicus, 150. Cosmical principles, 140. Cosmogony, 82, 306. Cosmological, 109, 205, 213, 227. Cosmosophy, 350. Counterparts, 66, 398. Courage, 84. Cousin, 310. Crantor, 93, 94. Crates (the Academic), 93. Crates (the Cj-nic), 123. Criterion, 124, 158, 405. Critias, 37, 44, 58. Criticism, 138, 216, 260, 279. Critics (the German), 436, 441, 473-476. Critolaus, 137. CrcBsus, 9, 10. Cudworth, 415. CjTiic, 53, 54, 55, 57, 87, 95, 128, 133. Cynosarges, 54, 95. Cyrenaic, 53, 55, 56, 57, 86, 132, 133. D'Alembert, 188 Damon, 39. Darwin, 354. Death, 133, 199. Deduction, 423. Definition, 48, 50, 101. Degree, 325. Demiurgus, 79, 82, 83. Democritus, 25, 132, 283, 372, 373, 374, 377, 421, 455. Demonic element in Socrates, 41. Deontology, 129. De Quince'y, 371. Descartes, his life, 156 ; his philosophy, 157 ; his doubt, 157 ; his proposition, 157, 158 ; our spiritual nature, 158 ; his criterion, 158 ; the idea of God, 159 ; the veracity of God, 161 ; his substances, 161 ; the seat of the soul, 162 ; his principles recapitulated and criticised, 163, 164 ; Note on, 404-407 ; mentioned, 144, 150, 165, 166, 167, 168, 169, 172, 173, 176, 381, 411, 414, 454. Design, 8, 81, 241, 245, 279, 372, 373, 396, 421, 424. Deus ex niacMna, 8, 29, 81, 164, 199. Development, 354, 399, 400. Diagoras, 26. Dialectic, 18, 19, 30, 64, 66-69, 72, 75, 76, 98, 100, 226, 236, 324, 430-433, 445, 475. Diamond net, 323, 347, 359, 393. Diderot, 188-190, 474. Difference, 65, 71, S54. 355, 359, 366, 404, 434. Diogenes of Apollonla, 351, 352, 376, 377, 379. Diogenes Laertius, 351, 372. Diogenes of Sinope, 54, 55, 364, 368. Diogenes the Stoic, 138. Dion, 60. Dionysiua (the elder), 60. Diouysius (the younger). 60. Dionysodonis, 33. Discipline (true), 356. Discretion, 325, 365, 366 Diversity, 327. Divisibility, 365, 369, 370, 371. Division (philosophical), 67, 98. Dogmatism, 259. Donaldson, Dr., 349. Dorism, 44, 58. Double-entendre (Berkeley's), 418. Doubt, 157, 279. Dress, 356. Dualism, 15, 19, 80, 87, 121, 125, 13S> 164. Duboe, 441. Duns Scotus, 145, 349. Duties, 129, 272, 273, 274, 397, 410. Dynamical sublime, 243. Earth, 11, 17. East Indies, 150. Eclectic, 24, 138, 352, 375. Economics, 205. Ecstasy, 139. Ego, 183, 220, 247, 248, 259-277, 280, 283, 284, 285, 2S7, 425. Eleatics, 4, 6, 7, 14-19, 22-27, 30, 36, 5;}, 57, 62, 64, 67, 73, 75, 357-371, 87S, 396, 398, 399, 400, 453. Elements (the four), 23, 82. Em.anation, 141. Emerson, 420. Empedocles, 7, 8, 10, 22-24, 25-28, 30, 372. 373, 375, 376, 379, 396, 453. Empirical, 449. Empiricism, 125, 152, 153, 187, 210, 253. Encyclopaedia, 188. Encyclopaedists, 1, 33, 188. Engel, 208. English (the), 403. Enneads, 139. Ens, 367. Entelechie, 105, 108, 113, 399, 402. Epicureanism, 122, 131-134, 135, 138, 139. Epicurus, 57, 131-134. Epochs (historical), 5, 6. Erasmus, 148. Erdmann, Pref., 345, 346, 349, 350-352, 357, 368, 373, 381, SSS, .397, 403, 404, 407, 408, 411, 413, 414, 416, 446. Eristic, 57, 122. Eros, 39, 67, 85. Eschenmayer, 306. Esse-percipi, 202. 480 INDEX. Essence, 325. Essential, 326. Ethics, 14, 22, 35, 47-52, 55, 66-69, 85-92, 9S, 115-120, 124, 131-134, 205, 285, 444, Ethics (Aristotle's), 95. Euclid, 53, 56-58, 59. Eudnemonism, 55, 210. See also Happi- ness, Felicity, Virtue, etc. Eudemus, 120. Eugene (Prince), 104. Euripides, 27, 33, 42. Eurytus, 12. Euthydemus, 33. Euthvdemus (the), 37. Evil, "126, 133. Evolution (Law of), 447, 452 Exertion, 328. Existence, 328, 359, 434. Exoteric, 95. Experience, 151, 210. 212, 253, 278, 414, 415, 416. Explanation, 366. Explicit, 366. Extension, 161, 403, 409, External Worid, 202. Externality, 348. Faculties, Kanf s three, 217. EamOy (the), 339. Fanaticism, Pythagorean, 14. Fate of Socrates, 897. Fathers (the), 144. Fear and Hope, 238. Feeling, 247, 251, 285. Felicity, 234, 236. Female (the), 111. Ferguson, 416. Ferrier, 345, 846-9, 350, 352, 353, S57, 360, 371, 372, 416, 421, 427, 462. Fouerbach, 436. Ficinu.s, 148. Fichte, his life, 255-259 ; his philosophy — earlier form, 259-275; later form, 276 ; his practical philosophv, 270 ; Note on, 427 ; mentioned, 220, 247, 254, 278, 286, 287, 288, 290, 296, 298, 305, 315, 317, 321, 322, 323, 360, 406, 420, 432, 444, 445. Final Cause, 105-108. Fire, 11, 17, 21, 126. Flux, perpetual, 20, 30. Forberg, 257. Force, 328. Forces, 23. Form, 101 102, 105-108, 323, 354, 399, 400. Eraser, Professor, 421. Frauenstadt, 311. Freewill, 233, 336. French Revolution, 187. Illumination, 187-192. Friendship, 133. Fries, 247, 346. Frogs (the). 42. Galileo, 150. Garve, 208. Gassendi, 158, 405, 411. Gedanke, 353. Generalization, 397. Geology, 333. German Philosophy, 404, 420. Geuliax, 164-166. Gnosology, 259-270. Gnostics, 287. TvSiBi. treavToi', 47. God, the notion of, etc., 16, 80, 81, 99, 101, 109, 110, 111, 125, 126, 142, 154, 155, 156, 158, l.=i9, 160, 167, 1(18, 169, 175. 185, 188, 189, 190, 191, 192, 198, 201, 202, 208, 209, 213, 214, 229, 230, 237, 254, 274, 275, 306-315, 361, 362, 363, 879, 401, 404-409, 417, 434, 438, 439, 473-476. Gods, their vices, etc., 16, 26, 35, 134. Goethe, 257. 355. Good (the), 57, 63, 64, 67, 69, 80. 87,115, 127, 174, 201, 242. Gorgias, 33, 86, 53, 377. Gorgias (the), 36, 63, 64, 65, 86. Gorgonization, 387, 391, 392, 418. Graces, the three, of Socrates, 39. Gratry, 469. Gravity, 332. Greece, Fall of, 402. Greek Fugitives (the), 148. Grimm, 190. Grote, Mr., 345, 346, 350-352, 363, 366 397, 421, 463. Ground, 205, 327. Hamank, 247, 420. Hamilton, Sir W., 366, 371, 416, 41&, 426. 427. Happiness, 55, 64, 67, 86, 116-118, 127 135, 172, 175. Harmony, the Pre-established, 196-10& Hartley, 415. Hate, 8, 10, 23 Haureau, 349. Heait, 84. Heaven, 112. Hedonism, 57, 86. Hedonists, 133. Hegel, Transition to, 315 ; his life, 321 ; his work.s and system, 322 ; the Logic, 323; doctrine of Being, 324; of Essence, 326; of the Notion, 329; philosophy of Nature, 332; of Spirit, 834 ; subjective Spirit, 334 ; objective Spirit, 3.36 ; abso- lute Spirit, 341; Note on, 429-445; mentioned, 2, 3, 4, 26, 43, 45, 48, 248, 278, 280, 286, 310, 345-366, 371-375, 877, 379, 381, 882, 885, 387, 397-410, 414, 415, 417, 419, 420, 422, 425. 426, INDEX. 481 427, 446, 449, 450-454, 457, 459, 461- 468, 473-476. Hegesius, 56. Heine, 436, 473. Hell, 209. Helvetius, 186, 187, 190. Heraclitus, his hi.storical relation, 19 ; his characteristics, 20 ; his principle, 20 ; fire, 21 ; transition from, 22 ; Note on, 371 ; mentioned, 4, 7, 8, 23- 27, 30, 35, 66, 73, 77, 125, 126, 280. 360, 357, 371-373, 375, 395, 396, 398, 399, 400, 455. 460. Herbart, his life, 278 ; his philosophy, 278 ; his basis, 278 ; his procedure, 279 ; his metaphysics, 279 ; his reals, 280 ; his psychology, 283 ; his ethics, 285 ; Note on, 428 ; mentioned, 247, 360, 428, 464. Herder, 217. Hernieias, 94, 95. Herodotus, 314. Herpyllis, 95. Hesiod, 9, 16, 91. Heteronomous, 234. Hippasus, 351. Hippias, 33, 36, 37. Flippias minor (the), 63. Hippo, 352. Histories of Philosophy, 345, 346. History, m, 340, 341, 348. flobbes, 177, 364, 365, 394, 411-413. Hiilderlin, 286. Elolbach, 190, 474. Homer, 9, 16, 91. llomoeonieries, 29, 375. Hope, 238. Ruber, 349. Hufeland, 257. Hugo, 473. Humboldt, 257. Hume, 181-1S4, 210, 212, 216, 251, 414- 416, 420. 422. 423, 454. 455, 456, 465 Hutcheson, 181, 416, 444. Hyle, 79. HylicLsts, 6, 13, 21, 23, 30, 32. Hypostasis, 80. Iamblichus, 12, 139. Idaeus, 352. Idea, 76, 77-89, 102-105, 108, 316, 329, 331, 398, 402. Ideal, 89, 227, 229. Idealism, 125, 176, 192-209. 210, 212, 217, 244, 248, 251, 253, 259, 287, 291, 294-298, 299-304, 316, 374, 391, 419, 420, 431, 435, 476. Ideality, 315-316, Ideas, 51, 64-68, 70, 72-89, 101-105, 177- 179, 202, 359, 398, 399. Ideation confused, 193. Identity, 65, 71, 327, 355, 359, 366, 404, 434. Illumination, 8, 31, 187-192, 207-209, 210, 381, 416. Immaterial principle, 30. Immediacy, 329. Immortality, 10, 67, 84, 439, 440. Imperative, categorical, 214, 233, 424. Implicit, 366. Import finite, 402. Induction, 48, 50, 151. Infinite, 10, 365, 366, 401. Inherence, 280, 2S1. In-itself, 299. Inner, 328. Intellect, 8, 10. Intellectus, 145. Intelligible, principle, 7, 396. Intuition, 224, 247, 261. Intuitive understanding, 426. Ionics, 4, 6, 7, 9-11, 23, 350, 352, 373, 396, 453, 459. Irony, Socratic, 49. Isocrates, 35. Italics, 11, 373. Jacobi, 247-265, 267, 286, 306, 411, 4115, 426, 427. John, St., 277, 315. Judgment, 330. Judgment, Kritik of, 215, 217, 24C 246. Judgment, .Esthetic, 241. Judgment, Teleological, 241, 244. Judgments of explanation (analytic), 213. Judgments of extension (synthetic), 213. Judgments of sensation, 301. Kames, Lord, 416. Kant, Transition to, 209 ; life, 214 ; Kritik of Pure Reason, 217 ; the Transcendental jEsthetic, 218 ; the Transcendental Analytic, 221 ; the Transcendental Dialectic, 226 ; the Ideas of Reason, 226 ; Psychological Idea, 227 ; Cosmological Idea and Antinomies, 228 ; Theological Idea, or Ideal of Pure Reason, 229 ; the Kritik of Practical Reason, 232 ; Prac- tical Analytic, 233 ; Practical Dia- lectic, 236 ; Religion within the limits of Pure Reason, 238 ; Kritik of Judgment, 240; iEsthetic Critique, 241 ; Teleological Critique, 244 ; Note on, 422-426 ; menti,-)ned, 100, 249, 251, 253-262, 266, 267, 275, 278, 285, 286, 288, 290, 295, 323, 347, 374, 385, 394, 401, 405, 406, 414-416, 419, 422- 426, 427, 430, 431, 434, 439, 444, 450, 451, 454, 456, 466, 476. Kepler, 150. Klopstock, 256. Knights (the), 42. 482 INDEX. Knowledge, 51, 57, 64, 199, 249, 251, 259-270. See also Cognition. Kritik of Pure Reason, 210, 215, 216, 217-232. Kritik of Practical Reason, 214, 215, 217 232-233 Kritik of Judgment, 215, 217, 240-24G. Krug, 247, 441. Laches (the), 63. La Grange, 190. LaMettrie, 188, 189, 190, 193. Laurie, Mr., 444. Laws (the), 88, 91. Legality, 235. Leibnitz, his life, 192 ; the monads, 194 ; pre-established harmony, 196 ; idea of God, 198 ; soul and body, 198 ; theory of knowledge, 199 ; the ThSo- dic6e, 200 ; Note on, 416 ; mentioned, 190, 191, 201, 202, 203, 204, 207, 210, 283, 285, 287, 322, 359, 374, 454. Leueippus, 24, 272-274. Lewes, Mr., Pref., 345-347, 350-353, 358, 360-365, 371-375, 382, 421, 439, 446, 447, 454, 457, 461, 462, 464, 466- 473. Life, 331. Locke, his life, 177 ; innate ideas, 177 ; origin of ideas, 179 ; his followers, 181; Note on, 413-415; mentioned, 181-186, 192, 199, 210, 211, 374, 417, 454. Locomotion, 113, 114. Logic, 67-69, 98-101, 124, 131, 132, 221, 323. Love, 8, 10, 23, 376, 379. Lucretius, 138. Lyceum, 96. Lycon, 43. Lysis (the), 63. Magnitude, 205, 325. Maieutics, 49, 392. Male (the). 111. Malebranche, 164-168, 407-408, 414. Man, 31, 35, 113-115, 409. Mandeville, 415. Manifestation, 327. Many, 19, 325. Marbach, 346. JIarcus, 304. Jlarriage, 339. Materialism, 12.5, 184, 188-192, 210. Mathematics, 68, 69, 98. Matter, 6, 76, 79, 82, 101, 102, 105-108, 164, 166, 167, 171-173, 288, 298, 328, 354, 355, 399, 400, 418. Matters of fact, 415. Maurice, Mr., 345, 346. Maxims of volition, 234. Mayer, 169. Means competent, 117. Measure, 325. Mechanical explanation, 23, 27. Mechanics, 331, 332. Medici (the), 148. Megarics, 53, 56-58, 59, 64, 65, 87, 122. Meier, 207. Melanchthon, 148. Meli.ssu3, 15, 357, 358, 361. Melitus, 43. Mendelssohn, 208, 249. Meno (the), 44. Metaphysic, 98-111, 205, 218, 226, 279, 401, 453. Metaphysics (Aristotle's), 95, 99, 101. Method, 49, 262, 316-318, 323, 431, 434. Michelet, 346, 372. Mill, Mr., 346, 364-366, 382, 446-448, 450-467. Millet (problem), 368, 369. Milton, 367. Mind, 8. 28-30, 164. 166, 167, 171-173, 288-298, 375, 396, 421. Modes, 179. Modus, 173, 408, 433. Monads, 194-196, 281, 282, 374. Monism, 15, 19, 138, 144. Monotheism, 363. Moralitat, 48, 337, 395, 398. Moral awe, 235, 238. Moral law, 233. Moral proof for God's existence, 237. Morals, 52. See also Ethics. More, Henry, 415. Morell, Dr., '462. Motion, 112, 205, 363-371, 378. Motives, 233, 234. Movement in matter, 10, 17, 18. 22, 23, 26, 28. Mu.sic, 342. Mutation, 280, 282. Mysticism, 153, 304. Mythical cosmogonies, 5, 9. Mythological explanation, 396. Mj-thology, 306-315. Natctealism, 26. Nature, 81, 113, 2S8, 331, 332, 348. Nature, works on, 20, 23, 28, 36. Necessity, 8, 26, 328, 415. Negation, 317, 324, 398. Negative, 327. Negativity, 404. Neo-Platonism, 6, 12, 122, 138-144, 276, 287, 304. Newton, 181, 417, 459. Nicomachus, 94, 95. Niethammer, 257, 288. Nihil est in intellectu, etc., 114, 181, 184, 417. Nominalism, 145-147. N6/jL(o, 36. Non-being, 26, 65, 66, 72-74, 398. Nothing, 25, 324. INDEX. 483 Notion, 48, SO, 51, 64, 65, 69, 103-105, 145, 317, 329, 396, 431, 434, 442, 443, 445. Ncumenal, 225, 375, 418, 457. Nous, 28, 376-380, 395. Novalis, 258. Number, 6, 11, 82, 325, 352, 354, 355, 396. Nutrition, 113, 114. Oath of the God.'J, 356. Objectivity, 8, 37, 38, 65, 66, 120-123, 212, 329, 330, 380-396, 397, 402. Objects, a proce.ss, 359. Obstetrics, spiritual, 40. Occam, 146. Occasionalism, 165. Oceanus, 9. Octave, tlie musical, 83. Omnis determinatio, etc., 170. One, 15 16, 19, 65, 66, 75, 76, 87, 325, 352, 359-361, 367, 372. Ontological, 205, 405, 406. Opiuion, 69, 71, 366, 399 Optimism, 201. Organics, 333. Organon (the), 99, 393. Origination, 106, 325. Ossian, 428. Oswald, 184. Ott, 471. Ovid, 356. Paganism, 473-476. Painting, 342. Paley, 415. Panfetius, 122. Paracelsus, 154. Paradoxes of Zeno, 365. Paralogisms of Pure Reason, 227. Parenetic, 37, 398. i'armenides, 8, 15, 16-18, 20, 22-24, 26, 75, 77, 78, 280, 283, 357, 358, 361, 3*^12, 367, 421, 455. Parmenides (the), 65, 66, 68, 73, 75-77. Participation, 78. Particular, 354. Passions (the) 404. Pathological, 402, 424. Paulus, 286, 311. Pausanias, 39. Penalty, 337. Perception, theory of, 422. of Reason, 252. Periods, philosophical, 6. Peripatetic, 95, 120. Personality, 336, 402. Peter, St., 315. Petrus LombarduR, 144. Pliasdi (the), 12, 14, 67, 72, 79, 85, 103, 375 377. riia;dxus (the), 34, 47, 62, fi3, 67, 85. Phaeuarete, SO, 49, 396\ Phenomenal world, etc., 7, 15, 66,76, 78, 101, 225, 432. Phenomenology (the), 318-321, 335, 336. Pherecydes, 352. Philebus (the), 36, 67, 73, 86. Philolaus, 12. Philosopher, 353. Philosophy, 39, 69, 86, 93, 96, 97, 98, 131, 174, 204, 205, 341, 343, 347-S49, 403, 406, 414, 428. — — Anaxagorean, 8, 27. Atomistic, 7, 25. Commencement of, 5, 396. Divisions of, 204-205. Eleatic, 6, 14. Empedoclean, 7, 22. First, 98. German, 404, 420. Hcraclitic, 7, 19. Histories of, 345, 346. History of (General Idea of the), 1-5, 347-349. Ionic, 6, 9. Modem (Transition to], 145-156, 403. Oriental, 5, 349. Post-Aristotelian, 120-137, 402. Post-Kantian (Transition to), 246. Practical, 14, 22, 35, 67, 98, 174, 205, 214, 232, 270, 285, 336, 444. Pre-Socratic, 6-39, 396. Pythagorean, 6, 11. Scholastic, 5, 144-148, 349. Scottish, 184, 416. Second, 98. Sophistic, 8, 30. Theoretical, 67, 98, 204. •tuVei, 36. Physios, 12, 14, 66-69, 81, 98, 111-115, 124, 125, 131, 132, 333. Pineal gland, 162, 405. Plato, his life, 58 ; development of his writings, etc., 61 ; division of his system, 67 ; his dialectics, 69 ; lii.s physics, 81 ; his ethics, 86 ; retro- spect, 93 ; Note on, 398-399 ; men- tioned, 4, 6, 12, 14, 19, 25, 29, 31, 32, 34, 86, 37, 39, 42, 44, 46, 47, 49, 51, 57, 94, 96-98, 101-105, 106, 108, 115, 118-121, 125, 131, 136, 138, 144, 145, 148, 287, 475, 470. Pleasure, 86, 133. Plenum, 25, 26. Pliny, 134. Plotinus, 138, 139-141, 362, 443, 468, Plurality, 65, 66. Plutarch, 60. Poetry, 342. Polemo, 93. Politics, 96, 205, 271, 278. Pol us, 37. Polj'gnotus, 123. Polymath, io, io, o7,.lW. 484 INDEX. Pompey, 124. Pomponatius, 147. Pope, 421. Porch or Portico, 123. Porphyry, 12, 139. Posidonius, 124. Position absolute, 2S0, 281, 282. Positive, 327. Positivism, 423, 447-467. Possibility, 204, 205, 323. Post-Aristotelian philosophy, 120-137, 402. Post-Kantian philosophy, 246. fostulates of empirical thought, 225. Postulates, practical, 214, 237, 247, 423, 424, 426, 444. Potentiality, 101, 102, 108, 109, 365, 399, 400. Practical philosophy, 14, 22, 35, 67, 98, 174, 205, 214. 232, 270, 285, 336, 444 Piantl, 349, 383, 384, 392, 393. Prayer, 444. Pre-Socratic philosophy, 6-39, 396. Presupposition, 163. Price, 415. Priestley, 415. Primal matter, 10, 106. Printing press, 148. Principle of morals, 234, 273, 424. Principles, material, formal, and intel- ligible, 396. Probability, 137. Proclus, 139. Prodicus, 33, 34, 37, 39. Properties, 328. Property, 337. Proposition of Descartes, 115, Propositions, 99. Protagoras, 31, 33-36, 44, 53, 70, 71, 377, 382, 383, 384, 388, 397. Protagoras (the), 36, 63, 64, 66. Protreptic, 62, 398. Prytanes, 44. Psyche, 85, 304. Psychology, and psychological, 66, 205, 206, 213, 217, 226, 283, 335, 336, 375, 389, 400, 405. Ptolemaic system, 83. Pyramids, 353. Pyrrho, 134-136. Pythagoras, 11, 15. Pythagoreans, 4, 6, 11-15, 59, 60, 62, 64, 66, 67, 73, 85, 93, 94, 131, 352, 353, 356, 357, 360, 296, 438, 453, 455, 459. Pythias, 94, 95. QUADRUPLICITT, 87. Qualities, primary, etc., 374. Quality, 324. Quantity, 325, 365, 366. Quantum, 18, 325. Raison suffisante, 198^ Raisoiuiemenl, 93. Ramus, 147. Rarefaction, 9, 11. Rationalism, 437. Realism, 30, 47, 145-147, 176 192, 209, 210, 244, 251, 299-304, 316. Reality, 315, 316, 325. Reals, 280-285, 428. Reason, 28-31, 127, 140-142, 232, 372, 379, 383, 384, 395, 417, 442. Ideas of, 213, 226-232, 237, 247, 253. Reciprocity, 225, 266, 329. Reflection, 179. Reflexion, 326. Reformation, 145, 148, 149. Regiilative, 230, 240, 245, 348. Reid, 184, 419, 444, 454. Reimarus, 208, 209. Reinhold, 247, 261. Reuchlin, 148. Reuss, 215. Relations of ideas, 415. Relativity, 63, 65, 70, 368-370, 371, 330- 396. ReUgion, 238, 240, 341, 343, 438. Republic (the), 31, 60, 67, 68, 85, &7r3(i. Repulsion, 325. Reserve, 135, 136, 137. Revelation, 306-315. Revival of letters, 148. Right, 270-273, 336. Ritter, 346, 351, 381. Rixner, 346. Romans, the, 137, 138, 402. Roscelinus, 145. Roseukranz, 322, 430, 469-472. Rousseau, 182, 209, 215. Ruge, 436, 445, 474, 476. Rulers ought to be philosophers, 6C, 91. Sage (the), 54, 55, 129, 130. Salto mortale, 251. Scepsis, 279. Scepticism, 8, 30, 31, 37, 57, 122, IS-*, 139, 150, 202. Scepticism, Elder, 134. Later, 137. ychelling, his life, 286 ; his philosophy, first period, 287 ; second period, 2y6 ; philosophy of nature, 291 ; transcen- dental philosophy, 294 ; philosophy of art, 297 ; third period, 299 ; fourth period, 304 ; fifth period, 306 ; Note on, 428 ; mentioned, 156, 248, 254, 255, 276, 278, 315, 316, 318, 321, 343, 401, 420, 428, 429, 431, 434, 462. Schema, Transcendental, etc., 222. SchiUer, 235, 246, 257. Schlegel, 257, 258. Schleiermacher, 56, 258, 346, 351, 352, Scholasticism, 5, 143-147, 349. School, the Peripatetic, 120. Schoolmen, 453. INDEX. •485 Schopenhauer, 437. Schulze, 247. Schwegler, his life, xi. ; works, xii. ; character, xiii. ; death, xiv. ; men- tioned, Pref., 345, 346-352, 360, 363, 372, 373, 3S0-3S5, 392, 393, 397, 399, 401-404, 414-418, 423, 425, 427. Science, 69, 72, 77 ; natui-al, 149, 150. Sciences, the classification of, 447, seq. Scipio, 124. iScotus Erigena, 144. Sculpture, 342. Secret of Hegel, 365, 419, 433 Seelj'e, Pref. Self, 1S3. SeU'-love, 1S6, 1S7, 192, 234. Seeming, 17. Seneca, 13S. Sengler, 310. Sensation, 35, 70, 71, 113, 114, 179, 185. Sensations, 202. Sense, common, 184. Sense, inner, 405. Senses (the), 371, 373, 374, 375. Sensualism, 125, 184, 186, 187. Sentences of Lombard, 144. Seven Sages (the), 9. Sextus Empiricus, C7, 137, 353. Shaftesbury, 177. Show (Schein), 65, 66, 73. Sight, 202. Sigwart, 346. Silence 356. SillograpUst, 134. Simplicius, 357, 376. Sittlichkeit, 48, 338, 395, 398, 399. Smith, Adam, 416. Sociology, 460. Socrates, transition to, 37 ; his jierson- ality, 39 ; Socrates and Aristophanes, 42 ; condemnation of Socrates, 43 ; sources of his philosophy, 46; its general character, 47 ; the Soeratic method, 49 ; doctrine of virtue, 51 ; Note on, 396 ; mentioned, 4, 6, 8, 12, 20, 28, 29, 34, 36, 53-59, 61-67, 73, 77, 85. 87, 93, 94, 104, 115, 116, 118, 136, 375, 377, 380-3S2, 392, 394, 398, 438, 453, 460. Socratics, the incomplete, 53. Solger, 322. Solon, 9. Sophist (the), 05, 66, 73, 74. Sophistic, 100. Sophists, their relation to predecessors, 30 ; to the general life of the time, 31; their tendencies, 33; their his- torical significance, 34; the indi- vidual Sophists, 35 ; Note on, 380 ; mentioned, 4, 6, 8, 37. 38, 39, 47, 48, 51. 56; 62, 63. 64, 73, SO, 121, 122, 352. 375, 396, 337. Sophroniscus, 39. Soul, 14, 17. 62. 79, 83, 85, 114, 162, 185, 188-192, 198, 208, 209. Sound, 368. Space, 112, 205, 211, 218, 220, 253, 282, 283, 369, 370, 394, 421. Speculative, 353, 401, 406. Speusippus, 93. Sphairos, 23. Spinoza, his life, 16S ; substance, 169 ; the attributes, 171 ; the modi, 173 ; his practical philosophy, 174 ; Note on, 408 ; mentioned, 150, 249, 251, 255, 267, 287, 298-304, 316, 401, 407, 414, 454. Spirit, 331 ; the absolute divine, 1C9, 110, 111. Stagira, 94. Stahl, 310. Star-worship, 94. State, 67, 86-93, 119, 120, 272, 337,339, 340, 394, 395, 410. State (So-ness). 325. State-philosophy, 429. Statesman (the), 60, 65. Steinbart, 203. 2Tep7)