SCHWEGLER'S HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY HANDBOOK OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY BY DR. ALBERT SCHWEGLER. TRANSLATED AND ANNOTATED BY JAMES HUTCHISON STIRLING, LL.D. AUTUOK OF 'THE SECRET OP HEGEL,' ETC. ' My highest wish is to find within, The God whom I n'ud everywhere without.' KEPLER. EDINBURGH : OLIVER AND BOYD, TWEEDDALE COURT. LONDON: S1MPKIN, MARSHALL, AND CO. $84 PRINTED BY OLIVER AND BOYD, EDINBURGH CONTENTS. PACK TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE, . . . . , ii ' E TO THE TIIIKD EDITION, . . . XI SKETCH OF THE LIFE OF 8CHWEGLKK, . . .XV /. GENERAL IDEA OF THE HISTORY OF PHILO- sorin . .1 ii. DIVISION UK Tin: SUBJECT, . . 5 HI. \V OF PRE-80CRATIC I'HII "SOPHY, . . 6 -V. ; :: luNIC PHILObuPHLKS, . 9 j \. Tin: PYTH.uiui; ... 11 VI. THE ELEATIC8, ... 14 VII. IIEHACLITUB, 19 III. I:M1T.I>"CLE8, .... 22' IX. THE ATOMISTS, .... 25 X. ANAXAGORAS, . . 27 xi. Tin: BQPE . 30 X XII. SOCRATES, ..... 39 xni. Tin: iNcuMi-i.! ;ics, . . 53 \ IV. -PLATO, ..... 58 Till: OLDER ACADEMY. ... 93 YVI.- MMSIYVTf .V, ..... 94 xvn. . . . . .123 \VIII EPICUREANISM, . . . .131 SCKrTICl>M AM) Till: LATER ACADEMY, . 134 xx. THI .... 137 XXL_ . . . .138 XXII. CHRISTIANITY AND SCHOLASTICISM, . 143 \\III.-TRANSITIONTOMODERNriIILOSOPHY, . 146 XXIV. -DESCARTES, ... .156 / *~\ Cs (\ C vi CONTENTS. PAGE XXV. GEULINX AND MALEBRANCHE, . . 164 XXVI. SPINOZA, ..... 168 XXVH. IDEALISM AND REALISM, . . , 176 XXVIII, LOCKE, ..... 177 XXIX. HUME, . . 181 XXX. CONDILLAC, . . , .184 XXXI. HELVETIUS, .... 186 XXXII. FRENCH ILLUMINATION AND MATERIALISM, 187 XXXIII. LEIBNITZ, ..... 192 XXXIV. BERKELEY, . . . .201 XXXV. WOLFF, ..... 203 XXXVI. THE GERMAN ILLUMINATION, . . 207 XXXVII. TRANSITION TO KANT, . . .209 XXXVIII. KANT, ..... 214 XXXIX. TRANSITION TO THE POST-KANTIAN PHILO- SOPHY, ..... 246 XL. JACOBI, ..... 248 XLL FICHTE, ..... 255 XLIL HERB ART, ..... 278 XLIII. SCHELLING, .... 286 XLIV. TRANSITION TO HEGEL, . . .315 XLV. HEGEL, ..... 321 ANNOTATIONS, . . . . 345 I. GENERAL IDEA OF THE HISTORY OF PHILO- SOPHY, ..... 347 II. AND III. DIVISION AND PRELIMINARY VIEW, . 349 IV. THE EARLIER IONIC PHILOSOPHERS, . 350 V. THE PYTHAGOREANS, . . .352 VI. THE ELEATICS, .... 357 VII. HERACLITUS, . . . .371 VIII. EMPEDOCLES, . . . .372 IX. THE ATOMISTS, .... 373 X. ANAXAGORAS, . . . .375 XI. THE SOPHISTS, . . . .380 XII. SOCRATES, ..... 396 XIII. PLATO, ..... 398 XIV. ARISTOTLE, . . . .399 XV. THE POST-ARISTOTELIAN PHILOSOPHY, 402 CONTENTS. vii PAGE XVI.- TRANSITION TO MODERN PHILOSOPHY, . 403 XVII. DESCARTES, ..... 404 XVm. MALEBRANCHE, . . . .407 XIX. SPINOZA, ..... 408 XX. HOBBES, ..... 411 XXI. JOHN LOCKE, .... 413 XXII. DAVID HUME, . . . .415 XXm. LED3NITZ, ..... 416 XXIV. BERKELEY, . . . . .417 XXV. KANT, ..... 422 xxvi. JACOBI, ..... 426 xxvn. FICHTE, ..... 427 XXVm. HERBART, ..... 428 XXIX. SCHELLINO, ..... 428 XXX. HEGEL, ..... 429 SUPPLEMENTARY NOTES I. WHY THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY ENDS WITH HEGEL, AND NOT WITH COMTE, . 446 II. MR. LEWES'S ACCUSATION OP ATHEISM AGAINST HEGEL, . . . .468 III. PANTHEISM AND PAGANISM, , 473 nn>BX, . 477 TKANSLATOK'S PKEFACE. 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 first German edition, * whilst the present 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 country has, for such works (as we have seen), been unexampled ; and we learn from Professor Erdmann (Preface to his Grundriss 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 betnt; 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 believe to be the only coinage, however, and it will be found fully explained in the note on the Eleatics at page 359. EDINBURGH, September 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 Philosophy, is inserted in the third volume of Schwegler's Roman History. EDINBURGH, February 1868. PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION. A DVANTAGE has been taken of the present oppor. JL\. 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, aa itself Gothic, seeing that, in English, dome means cupola, and there is no such thing in Gothic archi- tecture. My reply ia 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 the English dome into the German Dom, domus, to say nothing of StD/m, being, presumably, tho 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. Tho 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 of misunderstanding, on the part of the translator, of one of Kant's most common and salient dicta. The Greek phrase translated at page 362 by ' the more is the thouyht? perhaps scarcely bears the addition of the article (' the ') to the noun ' thought,' 1 vurj^a in the original xii PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION. being without a TO, and Zeller 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 Whewell, 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. Kbstlin, whose various additions are so felicitously conceived and conveyed in 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-countrymen, 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 TiriKD 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 refers 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 Philosophy.' 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 plainneta 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 full 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 curious, 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, Hegel. EUINBUBOH, May 187 L SKETCH OF THE LIFE OF BOHWBGLEB A! IT 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 mean*, did his best for his family, 1>egan 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 Indent 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 P.crlin, in the hope not only of scientific but of pecu- niary profit. In this ho was disappointed, and, visiting Holland, 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 privntim docens in 1843) to spend months in Italy, principally at Rome. On his return in 1847, ho r< a appointment of a Libra- 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 Ger- man, and the 'latest Johannine Literature' in the Theological Year-books. In this last periodical ho 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 tho Eusebian 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 Publicists. 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 SCHWEQLER. X vii lence of the work itself (a work not final in its sphere, however), bespeaks that ' iron 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' Zeller tells us 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 Jtoman History, however, that has most attracted the admiration of experts an admiration all 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,' Bays Zeller, 'to which distinct ideas were a necessity, could as little dispense with the terra firma 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 analysis for his penetration and sagacity. His power of comprehen- sive survey 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 disclosure. 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-hour 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 ilit ! HANDBOOK OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. UIIVIRSITT HANDBOOK OF THE HISTOKY OF PHILOSOPHY. 1. General Ufa of the History of Philosophy. "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 which to our senses seems but a something given 2 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. this its character of independency, individualness, 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 empirical 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 tendency 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 enunciate 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 will, as the notion of contingency, or of a cer- tain existent unreason. Hegel holds the succession of the systems in history 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- TERAL 11 3 lion, and 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 1'lay 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 init sub- jecti 1 . iat consequently, therefore, is directly incommensurable. ! -Q aa we may the indi- vidual under the influence of the universal, in the form of his time, his circumstances, his nationality, etc., to alue of a mere cipher, no free-will < iced. ry, generally, is no school-sum to be exactly cast up ; 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 exa: to any ready-made logical schema. If at all to stand a d investigation, what is given in experience nm.-t be taken as given, as handed to us ; and then the rational connexion of this that is so given must be refen analysis. The speculative idea can be expected at best and only for the- scientific arrangement of the given rd but a i Another point of \ con- ception is this: til- ::ent id all ahv.r. r ex- anij'l' .vas the desire of ] :;uid; while logically, ui tin- 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 cou- , that of the history of philosophy is almost always a descent from the concrete to the abstract, from sense ought, a freeing of the abstract inner from the concrete outer of the general forms of civilisation, and of vial conditions in which he who would philosophize finds himself placed. The m of philosophy proceeds synthetically ; it3 history 4 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. the history of thought analytically. With greater justice we may maintain the exact contrary of the Hegelian thesis, and assert that what is first in itself ia 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 simply 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, psychological, 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 principle, 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 without 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 attempts 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 would 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 after the Eleatics and the Atomists. In short, he would 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 unfrequently 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 unalterable, regularly recurrent laws of nature ; history, as the domain of free-will, 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 suffice. 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 philosophically 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 much 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 (Grseco-Roman) and modern philosophy. The inner relations of both epochs will (a preliminary com- 6 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. parative charactemation being impossible without givi rise to repetitions) be noticed later, on occasion of t transition from the one to the other. The first epoch separates again into three period 1. The Pre-Socratic philosophy (Thales to the Sophis inclusive); 2. Socrates, Plato, Aristotle; 3. The Poi Aristotelian philosophy (to Neo-Platonism inclusive). III. A Preliminary View of Pre-Socratic Philosophy THE general tendency of Pre-Socratic philosophy this, to find a principle of the explanation of natui Nature it was that which is most immediately pi sent to us, that which lies nearest the eye, that whii is palpablest that first attracted the spirit of inquir Under its changeful forms, its multiplex phenomen there must lie, it was thought, a first and permane fundamental principle. What is this principle ? Whs it was asked, is the primitive ground of things ? Or, mo precisely, what natural element is the basal elemen An answer to this question constituted the problem the earlier Ionic natural philosophers or Hylicists. Oi suggested water, another air, and a third a chaotic prii eval matter. 2. A higher solution of the problem was attempted 1 the Pythagoreans. Not matter in its sensuous concr tion, but matter in its formal relations and dimensior appeared to them to contain the explanatory ground existence. As their principle, accordingly, they adopti numbers, the signs of relation. ' Number is the essen of all things,' this was their thesis. Number is a midcl terra between pure thought and the immediate things sense. Number and proportion, indeed, have to do wi matter only so far as it is extended and divided in tir and space ; but still without matter, without somethii to be seen, there is no counting, no measuring. Tt advance beyond, or elevation over, matter, which is y at the same time a cleaving to matter, constitutes tl nature and the position of the Pythagorean principle. 3. Absolutely transcending the given and factual, e tirely abstracting from everything material, the Eleati enunciated as principle this very abstraction, the neg tion of any material dividedness in space and time, th is, pure being. Instead of the sensuous principle of tl PRE-SOCRA TIC PHIL OSOPH Y. 7 lonicB, or of the' quantitative principle of the Pytha- goreans, they proposed, consequently, unintelligible prin- ciple. 4. And thus there was completed the first or analytic l>eriod 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 should explain the becomi existence, was left but the more urgent. 7 then, ap- peared now* with his solution, and asserted for absolute principle the unity of being and non-being, becoming. Accor.din.n 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 Her.-u-litic principle was by the A tomists consciously sundered. Heraclitus, namely, had without doubt enunciated the principle of becoming, l>ut only as fact of experience ; he had only named, but not explained, the law of becoming: the point 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 Ejnj-cdoclea matter became the principle of being, fixed and permanent being, while force became the principle of movement. We have here 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 mundane process, A naxagoras 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 philosophy, 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 deua 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 words, the Sophists introduced, in the form of a general religious and political Avfklarung (illumination), the principle of subjectivity, though at first only nega- tively, or as destroyer of all that was established in the opinions of existing society. -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 reality. With the Sophists, as character- 7.1 /,'/. IER IONIC PHILOSOPHERS. 9 istic of the dissolution of the earliest philosophy, our first period is closed. IV. 77 /Writer Ionic Philosopfurs. fTl 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 Cropsus and Solon. The proposition to which he owes hia place in the history of philosophy is this: 'The principle (the/r^, the primitive ground) of all things is water ; all comes from water, and to water all returns/ This assumption, however, in d 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 hypo- 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-popsessing 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 ractical understanding. It is reported of him, for Mat he was the first to calculate an eclipse of 10 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 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- point. 2. ANAXIMANDER. Anaximandcr 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 (&px"ti)> *& 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 certainly 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 sundered into its individual elements, the prius in time, the chemical indifference of our modern elementary contraries. In this respect, such primitive matter is doubtless ' unlimited ' and ' indefi- nite,' or neither qualitatively defined nor quantitatively limited. It is by no means on that account," Tib we ver, to be regarded as a pure dynamical principle, as, for in- stance, the friendship and hatred of Empedocles, but only as a more philosophical expression for the thought which the ancients endeavoured to represent by the supposition of chaos. Accordingly, Anaximander conceives the original contraries of heat and cold (as bases of the ele- ments and of life) to separate from his primitive matter by virtue of an eternal movement immanent in it ; and in this way it is clearly proved that his primitive matter ;s only the undeveloped, undivided potential being of these elemental contraries. 3. ANAXIMENES. Anaximenes, a disciple or a contem- oorarv of Anaximander, returned in some desree, to the THE PYTHAGOREANS. 11 fundamental views of Thales, in so far as he conceived the principle of the universe to be the * unlimited, all- embracing, ever-moving air,' from which by rarefaction (fire) and condensation (water, earth, stone), everything else is formed. The fact of the air surrounding the whole world, and of the breath being the condition of life, seems to have led him to this hypothesis. 4. RETROSPECT. The three earliest Ionic philosophers have thus, and to this their entire philosophy reduces it- self, (a) sought the universal primitive matter of existence in general ; (b) found this in a material substrate ; and (c) given some intimations in regard to the derivation from this primitive matter of the fundamental forma of nature. V. The Pythagoreans. T\ 1 1 : POSITION OP TIILS SCHOOL. The Ionic philosophy, as we have seen, developed a tendency to abstract the immediately given, individual quality of matter. the same abstraction, but on a higher when the sensuous concretion of matter m general is looked away from ; wtan attention is turned no longer haracter of matter, as water, air, etc., but to its quantitative character, its quantitative measure and relations ; when reflection is directed, not to the material, l>ut to the form and order of things as exist in space. But the specific nature of quantity is wholly expressed in numbers, or, as we may also term it, in the cipher. Now this is the principle and the position of the Pythagoreans. BB, The numerical system in question i raa of Samoa, who is said to have flourished between the years 540 and 500 B.C. The later years of his life, however, were passed at '.in, in Or; ' here, with a view to the tical regeneration of the cities of Lower Italy, disturbed at that time by the strifes of parties, ho founded a society, the inemU-rs of which bound them- urity and piety of life, to the closest reciprocal .itiou in maintaining the mora- lity and discipline, tho order and harmony, of the whole \Vhat is l.ai.d- d down to us concerning it, his travels, his political influence in Souther- -roughly interwoven with 12 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. traditions, legends, and palpable fables, that on no point are we certain of having historical ground beneath us. Nor is this unintelligible when we consider, not only the partiality of the Pythagoreans themselves for the myste- rious and the esoteric, but especially the fact that his Neo-Platonic biographers, Porphyry and lamblichus, have written his life in the manner of an historico-philosophi- cal romance. The same uncertainty obtains as regards his doctrine, and specially his share in the number- theory ; which is nowhere attributed by Aristotle to him specially, but only to the Pythagoreans in general ; from which we may suppose that it had received its comple- tion only within the entire society. The accounts with reference to his school acquire some degree of security only towards the time of Socrates, or a hundred years after his own death. To the few points of light in this connexion belong the Pythagoreans, Philolaus and Archytas, the latter a contemporary of Plato, and the former mentioned in the Phcedo. We possess the doctrine of the school also only in the shape into which it has been brought by these, and by Eurytus ; for none of their predecessors has left anything in writ- ing. 3. THE PYTHAGOREAN PRINCIPLE. The fundamental thought of the Pythagoreans was that of proportion and harmony : this idea is to them, as well the principle of practical life, as the supreme law of the universe. Their cosmology regarded the world as a symmetrically arranged whole, that united in harmony within itself all the varieties and contrarieties of existence. This view especially announces itself in the doctrine that all the spheres of the universe (the earth among them), move in prescribed paths around a common focus, the central fire, from which light, heat, and life radiate into the whole world. This idea, that the world is, in definite forms and proportion, an harmoniously articulated whole, has for its metaphysical foundation and support the Pythagorean number-theory. It is through numbers that the quantitative relations of things, as extension, magnitude, figure (triangle, square, cube, etc.), distance, combination, etc., properly receive each its own indi- vidual quality. All forms and proportions of things are referred at last to number. So, then, it was concluded, as there exists nothing whatever without form and measure, number is necessarily the principle of things THE PYTHAOOMMAl 13 themselves, as well as of the order which they exhibit in the world. The accounts of the ancients are not agreed as to whether number was considered by the Pythago- reans an actually material or a in- ! principle, that is, a primitive form, according to which all had been ordered and disposed. Even the relative statements of Aristotle seem mutually contradictory. Sometimes he speaks in the one sense, and sometimes in the other. Later writers have supp that the theory had undergone rma of de\ . and that, 'lingly, there had been 1'vthagoreans of opinions, now that iiumi material substances, and now that they were only I of things. "We have a hint in Aii.-totlo too, tftstr indicates how we may unite the two opinions. Originally the Pythago- , without doubt, held number to be the stuff, the inherent essence and substance of things ; and so it L* that, in this r. inks them with the UylieUts or Ionic physicists, and roundly says of t. ' They held things to be numbers ' | , tj). But, i, as these Hylicists identified not their 0X17, their moferiu water, f Of example directly with any particular individual of actual sense, but looked at it only as the materia prima, or p: . eral individual things, so num'. .ng regarded as similar prototypes, and Aristotle, in that reference, might justly say of the Pythagoreans: 'They held numbers to be more adequate prototypes of existence than water, air, etc.' Should there still appear to remain, nevertheless, any uncertainty in the expressions of Aristotle in regard to th< of the 1'ythagorean uuniber-theor. source can only lie in this, that the Pytl them- B had not made the di- tineti-.n : .1 and a material principle, but had < with n that number was the principle of s, that all was number. 4. : ix OPERATION. From the nature of the principle, we readily expect that its application in explanation of the various real spheres will end in amere empty, barren symbolism. In discriminating number, \ample, into its two kinds of odd and even, as into its inherent antithesis of limited and unlimited, and then in applying these distinctions to astronomy, music, psy- chology, ethics, etc., there arose such combinations as the point, two the line, three the plane. 14 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. four the solid, five the quality, etc., or the soul is a har- mony, and equally so virtue, etc. Not only philosophi- cal, but even historical interest disappears here ; and it is intelligible how unavoidably the ancients themselves have, in the case of such arbitrary combinations, furnished us with the most discrepant accounts. Thus we hear that justice was to the Pythagoreans now three, now four, now five, and now nine. Naturally, in the case of so loose and arbitrary a mode of philosophizing, a great diversity of individual views will arise earlier than in other schools; some preferring one interpretation of a given mathematical form,' and some another. What alone has any truth 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 the movements assigned to the earth and stars, there is but little of scientific merit in the physics of the Pythagoreans. Their ethics, too, are deficient. What has been transmitted to us in that respect is characteristic rather of the life and discipline of their peculiar society, 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. Their 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 ol the severe penalties of the other world, their prescript that man should regard 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. VI. The Eleatics. "[3 ELATION OF THE ELEATIC PRINCIPLE TO THE J[\/ PYTHAGOREAN. If the Pythagoreans made mate- rial substance, so far as it is quantitative, multiplex, and consistent of parts, the basis of their philosophy, THE ELEATICS. 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 principle ;i total abstraction from every finite particular, from all change, from all vicissitude of existence. If the Pythagoreans still held fast by the form of space and time, the negation of this, the nega- tion, that is, of all dividedness in space and successive- 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 teing that is contained in becoming, but being with exclusion of all becoming, being that is pure being and only to be comprehended in thon 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 ground 9 f pure being. The phenomenal world, though explained to be only inessential null show, still is ; there must be left to it (sensuous perception refusing to be got out of the way), the right of existence at least hypothetically ; there must be procured for it, if even under protest and proviso, a genetic explanation. This contradiction of an unreconciled dualism between pure and phenomenal being is the point where the Eleatic philosophy 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 t)uly in course of time ; running through three successive periods, which distribute themselves to three successive generations. The foundation of the Mli-atic school belongs to Xenophanes, its systematic development to Panneiiides, 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 Minor, but who had emigrated to the Phocaeau 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 his 16 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. regards to the world as a whole, says Aristotle, he called God the one. The Eleatic 'One and All' (tv K al 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 fiiiitude, and establishing his unity and immutableness, he enunciated at the same time this his true nature as the highest philosophical principle without however negatively carrying it out, by polemically turn- ing it against finite being. 3. PAKMKNIDES. The special head of the Eleatic school is Parmeuides of Elea, a disciple, or at all events an adherent, of Xenophanes. However little has been transmitted to us for certain of the circumstances of hia life, yet all 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 Xenophanes before him, gave his philosophy to the world in the shape of an epic poem, of which some considerable fragments are still preserved to us. It is divided into two parts. In the first part Parmenides discusses the notion of being. Raising him- self far above the unreasoned conception of Xenophanes, he directly opposes this notion, pure simple being, to all that is niultiplex and mutable, as to what is non-beeiit and consequently unthinkable ; and excludes from being not only all origination and decease, but also all elements of time and space, and all divisibility, diversity, and movement. This being he declares to be unbecome and imperishable, whole and sole, immutable and illimitable, imlivisibly 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) thoticht : ' being and thought are' to him Till-: K LEA TICS. 17 'one and the same.' In contrast to the deceptive and illusory ideas of multiplicity and change in the pheno- mena of the pure thought that is ,'} true and infallible knov, and as illusion what mortals consider truth, namely origin ish.-ible existence, multiplicity and diver- sity, change of place, and nl quality. urainst taking the one of >-nides foi- -uiity of all that is. rannenidean \ \ in its negative and i I, we naturally follows now a second part whi'-h occupies itself liy h the \ and physical del : the non-1. that is, of the : \\ il world. Though linnly con- vinced that, in truth and reason, only the one is, Far- mem Me to escape the recognition of a pi i! and mutable complex. ! re, mpellrd l>y sensuous perception, he passes t tl. cussion of the phenomenal world, this second part, with tin- remark, that truth's discourse and thought are now ended, and lu-nceforth it is only mortal opinion that is to be Co. Unfortunately this second part has . down to us very incomplete. (This much may be gath .plains the phenomena of nature by the mixture of two immutable elements, designated by Aristotle as heat and cold, lire and earth., Of these Aristotle remarks further, he collocates the hot with the bee'nt, the with the non-becnt. All things are made up of these so much the more being, life, consciousness ; the more cold and immobility, .so much the more lifelessiiess. The principle of the unity of all - is only preserved in this way, that in man the enritive and i iy and soul DBS. It i ', that between the two of this philosophy. M of being and the ; c inward connexion has What in the first part I'anm-iii.K's directly denies, and : bein^ spoken, the non- . the multiplex and mutable, this he grants in the :it least existent in human conception But it i.s clear that the non-bei ; nt could not exist even 18 , HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. in conception, if it existed not altogether and through- out ; and that the attempt to explain a non-beent of conception completely contradicts any exclusive acknow- ledgment of the beent. This contradiction, the undemon- strated collocation of the beent and the non-beent, of the one and the many, was attempted to be surmounted by the disciple of Parmenides, Zeno, who sought, supported by the notion of being, dialectically to eliminate sensuous knowledge and the world consequently of the non-beent. 4. ZENO. 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 method, through demonstration of the contradictions in which the ordinary beliefs of the phenomenal world become 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) is 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 quanta. But a self-dependent quantum is only what has itself magnitude, and is separated from other quanta by- something again that has also magnitude (as otherwise it would 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, therefore, is separated 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 multiple 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 IIEKACLITUS. 19 is always, again, a third (a tertiiu/i quid, meaning the necessarily inferred separating quantum], and so on ad injinitiun. (2.) A moving body must before reaching term, accomplish 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 ; consequently there ia 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, ;it rest means to be in one and the same place. If we divide thu time, then, during which an arrow flies into moments (each a noic), 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 apparent. On account of these arguments, which first directed attention and at least in part justly to certain diffi- culties and antinomies involved in the infinite divisibi- lity of matter, space, and time, Zeno ia named by Aris- totle the originator of dialectic. By Zeuo, 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- 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 sid- to oppose to it a doctrine which destroys the possibility of the false existence itself. VII. Heraditu*. ELATION OF THE HERACLITIO TO THE ELEATIO PRINCIPLE. Pure being and phenomenal being, the one and the many, fall, in the Eleatic principle, t trm each other: the attempted monism results in an ill-concealed dualism. Hcraclitus reconciles this contradiction by enunciating as the truth of being and , of the one and the many, the at once of both, becoming. If the Eleatics persist in the dilemma, tho 20 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. world is either beent or non-beent, Heraclitus answers, It is neither of them, because it is both of them. 2. HISTORICAL CHARACTERISTICS. Heraclitus of Ephe- by his successors surnamed the Dark, flourished about the year 500 B.C., or later than Xenophanes, 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- tus himself, perhaps also by the antiquatedness of the earliest prose, became, for its unintelligibleness, very soon proverbial. Socrates said of it, ' that what he understood 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 OP BECOMING. As principle of Heraclitus, 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-out.' 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, that 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 distinguished from each other, which oppose each other, partly driving off and siipplantmg one another, partly attracting and supplementing, and flowing over into one another, all HER ACL IT US. 21 uiality and life would cease mid decease. Heuce tin- two familiar dicta 'Strife is tin- father of things,' and * The one, sundering from itself, coalesces with itself, like the harmony of the bow and the lyre.' That is, tin world only so far as the life of the W"i-ld parts into antitheses, in the conjunction and con- ciliation of which, unity consists. ipposrs duality, hai attraction ivpulsion, and only \>y the one ifl :i together,' runs another of his y this that jire, this ivstless, all-consuming, all-transmut- ing, and equally (in heat) all-vi\ represents d alteration and transfor- maliofl5"HHFiioti in the most vivid and energetic night name fire in the Heraclitic sense as a symbol or manifestation of the becoming, if it were m>t also A' same time substrate of the move- 1 is tn say, the means of which the power of motion, that is to all matter, avails itself for the production of th- livim: ]>rocess of thin-.-'. Hn-acli- tus then explains the multiplicity of thin rrest- ment and part : thi- !in-, in consequence of which . If into material elements, first air, then water, tl But this lire acquires !y a train the pi-. r these obstructions, ami rekindles it These two processes of extinc- n in this tire-power, alternate, according ' rotation with each other; and , that in sta*-d pi-ri>d.s the world 22 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. resolves itself into the primal fire, in order to re-create 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 pure from all grosser and duller elements. The practical philosophy of Heraclitus requires that we 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 antithesis to each other. If Heraclitus resolves all permanent existence into an absolutely fluent becoming, Parmenides resolves all becoming into an absolutely permanent 1 being, and even the senses, eye and ear, to which the 1 former imputes the error of transmuting the fleeting be- coining 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, that 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 principle of the being, is the posi- tion and the problem of the philosophy of Empedoclea and of the Atomists. VIII. Empedocles. ENEPvAL 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 440 B.C., was conse tiMPEDOOL&S. 23 quently later than Parinenides and Heraclitus, and wrote a poem on nature, which is preserved to us in pretty lar^e fragments. His philosophical system may be briefly characterized as an attempt at a combination be- tween Eleatic being and Heraclitic becoming. Proceed- ing from the Eleatic thought, that neither what had previously not been could become, nor what was perish, lie assumed, as imperishable being, four eternal, self- subslstent, mutually inderivative, but divisible primal matters (pur own four elements). But, at the same time, o'tnliiiiin. i feraclitic principle of process in nature, he conceives his four elements to be mingled and moulded l>y two moving forces, the uniting one of friend- ship, and tlie disuniting one of strife. At first the four elements existed together, absolutely one with each other, and immovable in the Sphairoa, that is, in the pure and perfect globe-shaped divine primitive world, where flrimdlkip maintained them in unity, till gradually strife, penetrating from the periphery into the inner of the Xjihfilros, that is, attaining to a disintegrating power, broke up the unity, whereby the world of contrarieties in which we live began to form itself. "2. Tin: F.M.-I: III IMKNTS. With his doctrine of the four lements, Kmpedoc -Irs 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 four, as originator of which he is pointedly designated by the nts. He distinguishes himself from the old Hylicists m<>re 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, rests 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 nature.) :*. THE TWO Fonc'Ks. 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 Elcatics, nor placed it, like Heraclitus, as an immanent principle in matter, there remained 24 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. nothing for him but to set beside matter a moving force. But, again, the antithesis of one and many attaching to his predecessors (and which called for an explanation) 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. Tf Parmenides, now, with his principle of unity, so to speak, had adopted love for principle, and if Heraclitus, with his principle of the many, had selected strife, Empedocles makes here also, as principle of his own philosophy, 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 Empedocles 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, in such a movement as becoming, any thorough disunion of a separating and a uniting force, is an impossible abs- traction. 4. RELATION" or THE PHILOSOPHY or EMPEDOCLES TO THOSE OF THE ELEATICS AND OF HERACLITCS. 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, into what is not, and of what is not, into what is ; with Heraclitus he has an equal interest in the explanation of change. From the former source he takes the permanent immutable being of his primitive matters ; from the latter, the principle of a moving force. With the Eleatics, finally, he places true being in origi- nal undistinguished unity as Sphairos ; with Heraclitus, again, he conceives the world 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 Atomists. rPHE FOUNDERS. Like Empedocles, the Atomists, J_ Leudppus 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 460 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 quality, were un- like iu 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 Kin i >edocles, 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. THE PLENUM AND TIIE VACUUM. The atoms, to be atoms, that is, simple and impenetrable units, must be reciprocally bounded off 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 space, or, more particularly, the spaces existent between the atoms, and by which they are kept asunder. The atoms, as something beent ami 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 PHILOSOPH Y. 4. NECESSITY. With Democritus, aswitli Empedocles, and even more, there occurs the question as to the whence of mutation and movement. What is the reason that the atoms take on these multiform combinations, and produce the wealth of the inorganic and organic worlds ? Democritus finds this in the nature of the atoms them- selves, to which the vacuum affords room for their alter- nate conjunctions and disjunctions. The atoms, vari ously heavy, and afloat in empty 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 complexions, 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 series, 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 J>ovs, reason, of Anaxagoras), only absolute pre- destination or necessity (dvdyKTj), which, as in contrast to the final causes of Anaxagoras, he is said to have named Ti>xn, 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 or THE AT^MISTS. Hegel characterizes this position thus : ' In the .atic philosophy, being and non- being are as in mut 1 contradiction, only being is, non- being is not. In tne 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 plenum and the vacuum. As the abstract 1 universal, 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 this, that, under presupposition of these ANAXAGORAS. 27 individual unqualified substances, there be explained the possibility of mutation. To that end, the side which is averse from the Eleatic principle, that of non-being or the void, is formed and perfected with no less 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, for example, are, on the one hand, in their indivisible oneness, Eleatic, lout, on the other, in their composite plurality, Heraclitic. Their absolute filledness, 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 J ,'is latter fault, common as yet to all the systems, which the next system, that of Anaxagoras, begins, by its doctrine of a designing intelligence, to re- X. A naxat, . ~". T)EE,SONAL. Anaxagoras, bora. -'-i Clazomense about \_ the year 500, scion of a rich ana' 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 there, 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 culture. By his personal relations also, espe- cially with Pericles, Euripides, aud other men of mark, he 28 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. exercised 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 presuppositions of his predecessors, and is simply another attempt to solve the problem which they had set up. Like Empedocles and the Atomists, Anaxagoras, too, denies becoming in the proper 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 rrfoving 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, they 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- lutely separated and free from matter, and that acted on design. 3. THE PRINCIPLE OF vovs. 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 vovs, leaves no doubt of the dis- tinctly idealistic 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 presuppositions of his principle. It was only the necessity of a moving cause, possessed at the same ANAXAOORAS. 29 time of designing activity, that had brought him to the idea of an immaterial principle. His vovs 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 character of his doctrine. Socrates relates in Plato's Phcedo that, in the hope of being brought beyond merely occasional or secondary 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 principle of things, but, in explanation of existent phenomena, sought its aid only as deus ex mackina, there, that is, where he was unable to deduce their neces- sity from any natural causes. Anaxagoras thus, then, has rather postulated than demonstrated mind as the power in nature, as the truth and reality of material existence. Side by side with the voOs, and equally original with it, there stands, according to Anaxagoras, the mass of the primitive constituents of things : ' all things were to- gether, infinitely numerous, infinitely little ; then came the vovs and. set them in order.' These primitive con- stituents are not general elements, like those of Empe- docles, fire, air, water, earth (which to Anaxagoras are already compound and not simple materials) ; but they are the identical, infinitely complex materials, constitu- tive of the individual existent things (stone, gold, bone- stuff, etc., and hence, by succeeding writers, called 6fj.oiOfji.epTj or 6/j.oiofji.tpeiai, like parts, parts, that is, like to their wholes), ' the germs of all things,' pre-existent there, 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 together, not however, to the complete exclusion of all intermixture 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-moviog vovs, which, as animating soul, is immanent in all living beings (plants, animals, men), but in different degrees of amount and D 30 IllSTOliY OF PHILOSOPHY. power. In this way we see that it is the business of the vovs 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 vovs, with the acqui- sition of an immaterial principle, the realistic period of early Greek philosophy concludes. Anaxagoras brings all preceding 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 homoeomeries 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. XL The Sophists. TJ ELATION OF THE SOPHISTS TO THE EARLIER PHILO- _LX 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 things is the source of our knowledge. In tiiejLo_phists a new principle appears, the principle of snb--~ jectivity ; the view, namely, that things are as they seem to us, and that any universal truth exists not. The way M*as 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 higher 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 vuli- THE SOPHISTS. 31 dity when opposed to the objective world, when opposed, particularly, to the laws 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 iUu~ mmotefiUfltiy itself, and makes rtthe_pbject oi_a spjecialjreatise ; but he~~omlts 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 HISTOR Y OF PH1LOSOPH Y. 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 results 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 Metaphysics is a creation of the Aristo- telian commentators. Plato's word for it was Dialectics, and Aristotle uses instead of it the phrase ' 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 applies 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 for 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, usually 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 (vn. 17), and of the theory of ideas (xm. 5), logical investiga- tion ; as he seeks to establish at full 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 (in. 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. (&.) 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 syllogisms 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 the 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- iatione '), 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 their principles, and arranged according to their premises. The first (prior) Analytics contain in two books the 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 ElenchV Further details of the Aristotelian 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 backwards), 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 all scientific foundation and derivation must at the 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 and relations of formal thought, and persists in this position within the logic of the understanding simply, though he declares ARISTOTLE. 101 the syllogism 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.) Metaphysics. 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 chief 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 (ill.) ; (3.) The principle of contradiction (iv.) ; (4.) The definitions (v.) ; (5.) A discussion of the notion of substance (oMa), and of logical essence (the rl 1jv elvai), or of the notions matter (CX??), form (eTSos), and of the composite thing (e as little separated from the particular exemplification q^ it in sense, as form from matter ; and essence or sub- _stance (ovaiai in its strictest senwls" tor him only that "whlcbTis not predicated of anything else, but of which all else is predicated whatever, namely, is a this thing (r65e ri), an individual thing, a special unit, not a universal, (bb.) The four Aristotelian principles or causes, and 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 (eI5os) and matter (CX??). 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 are 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 the 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 efficient, or first cause, is equally identical with the final cause or end, for this (the end) is the motive of all becoming and of all 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 (ev^pyeia). 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 ause 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 anything 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 ARISTOTLE. 107 As matter with potentiality, so form coincides with ac- ~*~ tuality. It is that which converts undistinguished, inde- terminate matter into a definite, a this (r68e rt), an actual ; it is the specific virtue, the completed activity, the soul of everything. What Aristotle calls form, then, is not to be confoxinded with what is to us perhaps/ofon. An am- putated hand, for example, has still the external shape of a hand, but to Aristotle it is only a hand in matter, not in form ; an actual hand, a hand in form, is only what can fulfil the special function of a hand. Pure form is what, without matter, in truth w (r6 rl fy elvat], or the notion of true being, the pure notion. Such pure form exists not, however, in the kingdom of definite being : every given being, every individual substance (ovvla), everything that is a this, is a compound rather of matter and form, a vuvo- \ov. Matter, then, it is that prevents the existent from ,- being pure form, pure notion ; it is the ground of the O 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 (eTSos elSous), it is matter. In this way, the totality of existence must constitute a gra- duated scale, of which the lowest degree will be a first ; matter (Trpum) v\i)) 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 i 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, 108 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 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). Potentiality and Actuality (5tW/us and frtpyeia). The relation of matter to form has, logically taken, mani- fested itself as the relation of potentiality to actuality. 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 thus 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- fer is reason in process of becoming, then the antithesis between idea and world of sense is at least in principle or potentially surmounted, 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 actuality or entele- chie, in its connexion, that is, with the movement of becoming, there lies 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, the goal that is in every instant attained by Jf the movement of the in-itself (potentiality) to fhefor-it- self (actuality), not a fabricated and finished being, but such as is eternally being produced. (dd. ) The absolu te, divine spirit. A ristotle has attempted, from various points of view, but especially in connexion with the relation of potentiality and actuality, 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 through 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.) Ontological form. 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 (irptlrrrj tfXr?) postulates that of an absolutely matterless form (irpurov eI5os) at the other extreme. And since the I 110 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. notion of form divides into the three fundamental dis- tinctions of the efficient, the notional, and the final cause, the eternal Being is also, similarly, absolute efficient principle (first-mover, irpwrov KWOVV), absolute notion (purely intelligible, pure rl fy clvac), and absolute end (primitive good). All 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- cipant of matter. He is immovable and immutable, as otherwise he were not possibly the absolute mover, the cause of all process. ZlAs 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 intelligence, 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- tiality. Hence Aristotle's famous definition of the abso- lute, that it is the thought of thought (v6f](ns vofoews), the personal unity of thinking and thought, of knowing 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 still 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, nmst 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 in a relation of action and re- action with what is moved. On the whole, Aristotle has not, as already 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, all 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 divine spirit and the incognisable in-itsdf (potentiality) of matter. The objections which Aristotle makes to the god of Anaxagoras apply in part to his own. 4. THE ARISTOTELIAN PHYSICS. The physics 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. All 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. Whatever 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 arises from this that the procreating man, as formative principle, possessed not strength enough. In comparisdn 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 full consciousness, these imperfect and incompetent formations of nature, these failures, were inexplicable ; but she is an artist thai 112 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 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, space, 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 actuality. 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. (6.) 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-complete, 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, and 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 divine than man. Under the sphere of the fixed stars, comes the lower sphere of the planets, among which Aristotle 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 opposite direction, and in oblique courses. It, too, possesses its divine 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 rdle of receiving movement. (c.) Nature in the stricter sense, 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 universe 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 soul is the entelechie of an organic 1 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. Tn 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, is 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, seDsation 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 eute- 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 soul 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 (vovs), 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 possibility, 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. And it might seem from this as if thought were only a result of sensation, as if the intelligence were only pas- sively determined, nay, 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 intelkctu, 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 universal notions within 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 unaffected 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 j 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 different from the divine 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.) delation of the ethics to the physics. 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 universe, 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 etherealization, spiritualization of 116 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 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 by 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 sensations, inclinations, and appetites of the soul, 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 of knowledge, according to him, but throiigh 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 virtuous will ; nay, it is rather conditioned by 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. (b.) The summum bonum. All action has an end in view ; but every end cannot be only again means to 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 absolutely, 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 constitutes 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 unobstructed, successfully continued exercise of that 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 dependenpe 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 Aristotelian 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 neither for virtue and rational action nor for external fortune, because fact testifies to the condi- tionedness 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 unless 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 determine 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 yet 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 and it can be demonstrated in all of them that 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. Aristotle derives the notions of his virtues from current speech rather than from the realization of any classifying principle ; his specification of the virtues of practical life remains in particular destitute of any systematic deduc- tion and arrangement. 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, Scapia, is what is best and noblest ; and life in it, philosophy, the supreme degree of felicity. But precisely in this class of virtues the criterion of a mean is found to be inapplicable ; they stand quite unconnectedly beside each other, in the same dualistic manner in which reason stands to the other faculties of the soul. (d.) 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 ; he 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. With 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 virtue, humanity, shall become as universal as possible, as well as that political power 120 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. shall remain in the hands of the virtuous citizens. Of the various political forms, Aristotle gives 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 political 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, climatical, geographical, economical, intellectual, and moral relations. Thus here, too, he is true to the character of his entire philosophy critically 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 view 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 want 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), all-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 life 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 Sophists, 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 political, 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- telian 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 afford truth for life itself, which is to be creed, dogma, conviction, by which the subject shall consistently determine 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 aimed 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 dualism of the Platonico-Aristotelian philosophy, and finally solve the problem of the reduction of all the differences and con- trarieties of existence, subject and object, spirit and 122 IIIJSTOJR Y OF PHILOSOPHY. matter, to a single ultimate ground. Philosophy shall explain all ; nowhere shall there be left any hiatus, any uncertainty, any halfiiess. On the other hand, again, there fails even so to the Post-Aristotelian philosophy, all simple scientific devotion to the object ; it is a dog- matism that demands truth only for the subject, and is 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 realization 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 all-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 undisturbedness 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, Neo-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-Platonism 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. XVII. Stoicism. nnHE founder of the Stoic School is Zeno, born in JL Citium, a town of Cyprus, about the year 340, not of pure Greek, but of Phoenician extraction. Deprived of his property by shipwreck, but impelled as well 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 philosophy, he opened, in an arcade at Athens, a school of his own. This arcade was named, from the paintings 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 faithful follower of the tenets of his master. Cleanthes was succeeded by Ckrysippus, who was born at Soli in Cilicia, and died about the year 208 ; he was so pre- 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, 124 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. and to support it by a vast number of extracts from other works, especially those of the poets, by way of testi- monies and examples. But of aU 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 wisdom, 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 conviction, 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 physics, 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 corporeal, anything spiritual on anything material, or conversely. What things mutually act must be of like substance ; spirit, divinity, the soul consequently is a body, but only of another sort than matter and the outward body. The immediate consequence of this effort of the Stoics to abolish all dualism between the spiritual 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 v 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 (faov), the rational soul of which is God. 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 Heraclitus, they are the sworn foes of all individual self- will. This principle of the unity of all being, brought them into connexion with Heraclitus in another respect ; like him they conceived the being of God, already (as said) corporeal to them, as the fiery, heat-giving power, I which, as such, is life in the world, but equally resumes all life into itself, in order to give it forth again, and so j ; on ad infinitum (compare vn. 4). They called God, / j , now the spiritual breath that permeates nature, now the art -subserving fire that forms or creates the uni- verse, and now the aether, which, however, was not different to them from 'the principle 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 universal STOICISM. 127 nature, and asserting the supreme 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 principle 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- inglyand 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 thou 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 principle, 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 something of this severity, in allowing it to be regarded as in accordance with nature or even as a good, they still maintained that it possessed no moral worth, and was no end of nature, that it was something only accidentally connected with the due arid 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 suppTyTiim with a counterpoise to the contingencies and obstructions of external life. It follows, 128 HISTOXY OF PHILOSOPHY. in simple consequence from this, 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 soul ; 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 preferableness, 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 when the Stoics affirmed that really faultless moral action is only possible through the possession of entire 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 consequently 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 that 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 virtue, without having 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 pursiiit of all that agrees and avoidance of all that disagrees with nature and reason. The latter concern the relations of individuals 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 tJie wise 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 virtue 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 humanity. 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 individual. 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 their 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 one 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- quirements he may. The wise man is without fault or failing, as he always uses reason, and thinks 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 \inder 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 qualification, for action and of all true happiness, 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, inapplicable to life, proves that its supporters had only one-sidedly adopted for principle the universality of subjectivity. The sub- ject, that is, if formerly only an accident of the state, is now to be absolute. But just so his reality disappears EPICUREANISM. 131 into the mist and vapour of an abstract ideal. The merit of the Stoic philosophy, 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. XVIII. Epicureanism. NEARLY 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, he 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 the 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 Bty 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 hia 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 ethics. 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 others being but of small scientific interest, and the physics especially, while very incomplete and incoherent in themselves, being nothing 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 pleasure. Virtue, he declares, can have no value in itself, but only so far as it offers us something an agreeable life. The question now, then, is the more exact defini- tion of pleasure, and here Epicurus differs in essential points from his predecessors the Cyrenaics (compare xm. 3). (a.) While Aristippus viewed the pleasure of the moment as the object of human 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 him, though held by the Cyrenaiea 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. He 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 Cynic : he will enjoy wherever he can harmlessly enjoy ; he will also endeavour to procure himself the means of living with decency and comfort. Still the wise man can dispense with these finer enjoyments, 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. which 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 the 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 peace 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 yet imstable forms, these bodies which are not bodies, do, indeed, fit in but poorly with the rest of the system ; still it is the happiness of y*nan 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. HHHE conclusion of all these subjective tendencies is seep- JL 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 older sceptics is Pyrrho of Elis, a contemporary of Aristotle. Our chief informant in regard to Pyrrho's opinions, 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- sophy up to that time). The tendency of these sceptical 'SCEPTICISM AND THE LATER ACADEMY. 135 philosophers was, like that of the Stoics and Epicureans, proximately a practical one : philosophy shall conduct us to happiness. But to live happy, we must know how things are, and how, consequently, we must relate our- selves to them. They answered the first question in this way : What things really are, lies beyond the sphere of our knowledge, since we perceive 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 possible ; and hence, in regard to one and the same thing, the contradictory views of men in general, and of professed philosophers in particular. In this impossibility 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, difference there is none in this sheer antithesis, Pyrrho is under- 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 grounds were shallow, and appear to be partly 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 Tiinon, but by JEnesidemus, 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 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. mental diversities of men, by reason of which things ap- pear different 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 oar different bodily and mental states j 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, but all only through some extraneous medium (air, etc.) ; (7.) to the varying 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, religious 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 disputed 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 thought, be certain of it. It was in this sense that he said, * We can know nothing, not even this itself, 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 follow the course of probability, that course namely that showed for itself the most and the best reasons : so we should act rightly and be happy, 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 philosophical probability which should determine the various grades of it ; 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. LATEE SCEPTICISM. Scepticism proper was once more revived at the time of the total decline of Greek philosophy. Of this period the most important sceptics, or at least promoters of scepticism, are ^Enesidemus, Agrippa (later than uSEnesidemus, and who principally insisted on the necessity of leaving nothing without proof, at the same time that the proof itself demanded again proof, and so on usque ad injinitum), and Sextus Empiri- cus (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 Hypotypose* in three books, and his work Adversus Mathematicos in nine), in which he has expounded at full all that ancient scepticism could contrive to bring forward against certainty in knowledge. XX. The Bomans. 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 Rome, on the part of Athens, of the three distinguished representatives of Attic culture and elo- quence, Crrneades the Academic, Critolaus the Peripa- 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 culture 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 philosophies (compare xvi. 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 itself 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 Plotinus of Lycopolis in Egypt. He was a disciple of Ammonius Saccas, who taught Platonic philosophy at Alexandria in the begin- ning of the third century, but left behind him nothing in writing. Plotinus (205-270 A.D.) taught philosophy at NEO-PLATONISM. 139 Rome from the age of forty. He explained his views in a series of hastily written, 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 fourth century, to Athens, where it established itself in the Academy. Among the Neo- Platonists of the fourth century, Porphyry's disciple lamblichus, 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 whole of the Neo- Platonic philosophers 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 as 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-Platonism. we confine ourselves more particularly to Plotinus. (a.) THE SUBJECTIVE CONDITION 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, should absolutely satisfy. This longing for absolute tmth 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 within 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 own self ; it is not we who have vision of reason, but reason that has vision of its own self j in no other manner can fruition of it be reached. Nay, even this vision of reason, within which subject and object are still opposed 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 principle 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, despises henceforth even that pure thought which he formerly loved, because it was still after all only a movement, and presupposed a difference 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. (&.) 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 principle, 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 xiv. 4. f), what stands above the beent (the beent disappears for him into NEO-PLATONISM. 141 an accessory notion of reason, and forms, united with reason, in the 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 j 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 beiug can be attributed to it; all other negative determinations are incompetent 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 assume and to think his first prin- ciple, in its relation to the second, as a creative or gene- rative one. (c.) THE NEO-PLATONIO 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 perfection, permits to ema- nate from itself what is equally everlasting and next itself the best, reason, whic,h 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 ono loses nothing and nowise weakens itself. After the one, reason possesses the greatest per- fection. It contains within itself the world of ideas, the all 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 true 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 true 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 ascesis. 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 principle, from which all 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 philosophy. XXII. Christianity and Scholasticism. mHE CHRISTIAN IDEA. The character of Greek intellec- JL tual lif e at the time of its fairest bloom was the direct dependence of the subject on the object (nature, the state, etc.) The breach between 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 alien and remote ; and a feeling of un- happiness, of unappeasable 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, annulment 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 ineroly negative action of asccsls). From this 144 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. it is that nTrmiHna_Jhn.H 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 pEilbsopliy, 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 Erigcna, at a combination with Neo- Platonism. But it was only in the second half of the middle ages, or from the eleventh century downwards, that there developed itself in the proper sense a Chris- tian philosophy, the so-called Scholasticism. The character of Scholasticism is conciliation between dogma and thought, betw son. 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 Churcli the form of a scientific system. Of such systems the first is that of Pctrus Lombardus (d. 1164) in his four books of Sen- ?, 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 beginne~and foun- der of Scholasticism (born about 1035, Archbishop of Canterbury from 1093), was the watch word of the whole movement. In the resolution of its problem, Scholasti- cism applied, indeed, the most brilliant, 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 stndy 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 (Avicejina and Averroes), sup- plied 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 Duns 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 will (voluntass) ; both through this antithesis of the theoretical a"hd 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 fell to the ground, and the whole foundation of Scholastic metaphysics was in principle abandoned, the moment Duns^ Scotus transferred the problenjupf theology to the practi- cal sphere. With the separaJpn of theory and practice, and still more with the sepj/ation in nominalism (see 3) of thought and tiling, philosophy became divided from theology, reason from faith : rcnso'i took position above faith, above authority (^lodern Philosophy), and the re- ligious consciousness broke -with the traditional dogma (the Reformation). 3. NOMINALISM AND REALISM. Hand in hand with the development of Scholasticism iii 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 (tinircrtttUn) to be mere names, flatus vocis, empty con- ceptions without reality. With nominalism, 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 th.- reality of the univer- sals (nmwrsalia ante. res). The antithesis of these opinions took form first as between Roseelinus and Anselm, the for- mer as nominalist, the latter as realist ; and it continues henceforth throughout the whole course of Scholasticism. . 146 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. There began, however, as early as Abelard (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 rebus). 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 syllogistic ally proved has exactly the same constitution in actuality that it has in logical thought. If this presupposition 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 Ockam (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 Modern 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 applicability of scientific demon- stration to the matter of revelation, was broken up, the entire structure, as already remarked, fell helplessly to the ground. The conception directly opposed to the principle of scholasticism, that it was possible for the same thing to be at once true to the dogma and false or TRANSITION TO MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 147 at least indemonstrable to reason, a point of view applied by the Aristotelian Pomponatius (1462-1530) to the im- mortality of the soul, 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- guished here was Petrus Ramus, 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 sfiiejitificinterfist, and awoke consequently tEespirit 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_j}rijiciple of intellect, the self- consciousuesa 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 sultilitics, must be attributed to a rational principle, to the spirit of inquiry, the longing for light, which, oppressed 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 spirit. 148 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 3. THE REVIVAL OF LETTERS. A chief instrument of 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. All sense for beauty of form or taste in expression had died out. Of the spirit of classical lif e 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 Fidnus (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, universal, thinking spirit of antiquity was born afresh. Classical studies found a fruitful soil in Germany also. Reuchlin (b. 1455), Melanchthon, and Erasmus were their advocates ; and the humanistic party, 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 struggle 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 still 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 subject 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 accomplished ; 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 Protestantism 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 GROWTH OP 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. tion 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 province 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 Co&xniGus (d. 1543), and Ke^kr (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 feeling 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 all 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 OP VERULAM. The philosopher who, for TRANSITION 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. 1626 a man not without weaknesses of character). The sciences, says Bacon, have hitherto found them- selves in a most deplorable condition. Philosophy, 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 Romans 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 thorough 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 science. 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 actual 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- V ciple of empirical science, of a thinking exploration of 1 nature, this is his merit. But still only in the proposing of this principle 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 Scientiarum), 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, Nature '), and secondly, in their devotion to the ancient systems of philosophy. The best known of them are these : Cardan (1501-1575), CampaneUa (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 persecuted 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 world. 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. Bfuno 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 f onnable, 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, Bjjhni Jjejspeaks 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 Reformation and the various Protestant elements at that time iu 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 Gb'rlitz, 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 Gb'rlitz ; and finally, having accomplished his travels as journeyman, he settled down, in 1594, at Gbr* 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, Bbhm 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 painful 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, Bohm fell into trouble with the rector at Gorlitz, Gregorius Bichter, who publicly denounced the book from the pulpit, and even reviled the person of its author. He was prohibited by the magistrates from the writing of books, an interdict which he observed for years, till at length the edict of the spirit became all too strong in him, and he resumed composition. Bohm was a plain, quiet, gentle, and modest man. He died in 1 624. It is exceedingly difficult to give in a few words any statement of the theosophy of Bohm, inasmuch as Bohm 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 writings a twilight, so to speak, as in a Gothic dome, 1 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 dircmption, is the essential charac- ter of spirit, and consequently of God, so far as God is to be conceived as spirit. To Bohm 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 a 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. Bohm is exhaustless in metaphors to render intelligible this nega- i See Preface, p. 3d. TRANSITION TO MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 155 tivity in Gcpd, this self -differentiation and self-externali- zation of God into a world. Vast width without end, he sayss stands in need of a straitness and confmingness in which it may manifest itself ; for in width without con- finement manifestation were impossible : there 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 itself, as into that out of which it originally went, nothing is known to it of its primal being. Bb'hm 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 all 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 in cognisable in Himself, and in Him there were nojoyorupliftingness, 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 tha it may be two ; neither can it feel itself in oneness, but in twoness it feels itself. In short, without difference, without antithesis, without duality, there is, according to Bb'hm, 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 differentiated itself, with the doctrine of the Trinity ; and the trinitarian schema accordingly, in many an application and illustration, underlies Bohm's 156 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. conception of the divine life and differentiating process. Schelling afterwards took up anew these ideas of Bbhm's, and philosophically reconstructed them. Were we to assign to the theosophy of Bohm a place in the history of the development of later philosophy correspondent to the inner worth of its principle, 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. originator and father of modern philosophy 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 Bohm and the con- temporary Italians, given expression to philosophical glances without methodic foundation j 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 tlie originator, its inner fruitfulness the founder of modern philosophy. Rene" Descartes (Renatus Cartesius), was born in 1596 at La Haye in Touraine. Already 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 henceforward 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 volunteer 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 unknown 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, till in 1649, 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- position and assumption to which from our childhood we may have been accustomed, in a word, we must doubt all 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. (&.) In thus assuming everything as false, in regard to which any doubt can be at all entertained, there is one thing, nevertheless, that we cannot deny : this truth, namely, that we ourselves, we who so think, exist. Precisely from this'ratlier; that I assume all things as false, that I doubt all things, there evidently 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 (Cogito, 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 all things for false that are different from us, we see clearly that, without destroying our personality, we can think away from ourselves everything that belongs to us, except our thought alone. Thought jpersists, even when it denies all else. There cannot oelong any extension, therefore, any figure, or anything else that the body may possess, to our true nature : to that there can belong thought only. I am, then, essentially a thinking being, or thinking being simply, that is to say, spirit, soul, in- telligence, reason. Tojhink is my substance. The mind, then, can be perfectly and clearly 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. (d.) 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 that gives me the certainty of this proposition ? Evi- dently nothing else than the clear perception that it is impossible for any one to think and not be. From this, then, 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 knowledge of the body of truth. We DESCARTES. 150 review, therefore, under application of the rule, all our thoughts or ideas, in order to discover something that shaH.he objectively true. V But our idea^iire partly in- nat^/ partly contributed from withoutf>artly formed by ourselves. Amongst them all we find that of God eminent and first. The question occurs, Whence do we get this idea ? Evidently not from ourselves : this idea 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 nature actual! ;i 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 I am a substance, the same reason would dispossess me of the idea of infinite substance, as I am only finite substance. Such an idea as infinite substance can be produced in me only by an actually infinite substance. And let it not ~b"e 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 idcajjf God has come to me, only to investigate in \\ ' r~Tt has come. It cannot possibly have been '.& senses, whether consciously or unconsciously ; i\>v i-.lcas of sense originate in external 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 frciu without, and if it is not formed by myself, it must be innate just as the idea of my own self is innate. The \ 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 ther^ 7nu<-t !>' a cause. Further, I infer 160 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. the existence of God from my own imperfection, and, in particular, 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, like all the rest, the possibility of existence, that is, con- tingent existence, but that it likewise involves necessary existence. 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. !N6~oTiEer idea that I possess involves necessary existence, but from this idea of the Supreme Being, necessary existence is, without con- tradiction, inseparable. It is onjy our prejudices that prevent us from seeing this. Because we are accustomed, namely, in the case of all other things, to separate the notion 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, we may legi- timately predicate existence of God. In the idea of the DESCARTES. 161 most perfect being necessary existence is involved, not because of any fiction of our 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 nature 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 will 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 Js substance Avhich_reojLurgs,Jfi.r_ita existence the existence of nothing else. In this (highest) sense only 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, thinking 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 definition, that they are things requiring for their existence^ only the co-operation of Grou. " Jblacn, of these two substanceiTTas 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, similarly, 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 each 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. (7i.) 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 unless 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 provided, 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 scat of the soul, and the locm 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 all 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 begius, 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 well 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 / defect that Descartes isolates the two sides of the antithesis, thought and being, in their mutual relation. He makes both, ' subshuiccs ; ' elements, that is, which mutually exclude aud 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 aelf-includedness. They stand opposed to each other like centrifugal and centripetal forces. But with such a conception of spirit and matter any internal assi- milation of them becomes impossible; where the two sides meet and unite, as in man, this jiey-are enabled to do only by a forcible act of creation, only-fey 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 dualism 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 I ex machina, in order to bring about the unity of the ego u 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 systems that follow. XXV. Geulinx and Malebranche. DESCARTES 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 opposed 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 OEULINX AND MALEBRANCHE. 165 sible for the volitions of the soul to act on the body ? It was at this point that the Cartesian Arnold Oeulinx (born 1625 at Antwerp, died 1669 as Professor of Philo- sophy at Leyden), took up the system of Descartesrin 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 very 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 Go"d the means "oTuniting 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 soul, 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. When I. exercise volifTdn^ consequently, it is not from my will, but from the will 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 will also, and he has so united together 166 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. these most diverse things, material motion and men- tal volition, that, when my will 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 produced 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 Malebranclie (born at Paris 1638 ; en- tered, at the age of twenty-two, the congregation de Pora- 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 things, to be present in spirit ; or the soul cannot have the thing itself, but only an idea of it, the thing itself remaining without the soul. The soul can derive 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 does not on that account actually exist, and. what actually exists depends not for its existence and apprehension on the goodwill of the soul ; the ideas of things are given to us, they are no pro- GEUL1NX AND MALEBRANCHE. 167 duction of our own thought. But 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 numerous and complex impressions would, in impinging on one another, reciprocally derange and destroy one another. The soul, then, there is no other resource, must se.e things iu a third something that is' above the 'a: !:at 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 call 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 all things in God, dem<- 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, 168 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. they 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-subsistent, but only the one subsVaft^God. God only has real being ; whatever being attaches to finite things is unsubstantial, and they themselves are but accidents of the one true 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 e^uncj.a^3jbhi^onclu.sio^of the qgcidentality of the finite and the exclusive substantiality of God. His system, then, is the truth and completion of that of Descartes. XXVI. Spinoza. BARUCH SPINOZA was born in Amsterdam on the 24th of November 1632. His parents, Jews of Portuguese extraction, were well-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 Leyden, 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, with the promise of complete liberty of opinion ; but Spinoza declined it. Delicate by nature, suffering from ill-health for years, Spinoza "died of con- sumption on the 21st 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 with little, master of his passions, never immoderately sad or glad, gentle and benevolent, of a character admirably pure, he faithfully followed the SPINOZA. 169 doctrines of his philosophy, even in his daily life. His chief 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 notiongjyre 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 one were indistinguishable from the other. A plurality of substances, as assumed 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 j 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 virtue 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 tlie 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. As is self-evident, then, we must leave out of view here 170 HIST OR Y OF PHILOSOPH Y. 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, springs 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- s instantiation 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 provisory, 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, vere opposed to it. Thus there are left only such positive expressions as enunciate its absolute relation to its o i- , ii 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 apeak of the eternal qualities of figure?, Spinoza applies SPINOZA. 171 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 unexhausted by any such specialties (if 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 impliciter possesses an infinitude of attributes. That is to say, all possible attributes, not limitations, may be assumed for substance. It is only the human understanding 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 thought, then, considered under the 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 spiritual 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 and 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 atj- 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 tiling, 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 in a variety of forms, even after subjection primarily 4o one or other of the forms of the attributes. The various things exist, like 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, idealiter reflects SPINOZA. 173 itself. The world were not 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 the 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 feeling 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. But any influence of the one on the other does not for this very reason exist j 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 life 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, modus. 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 productive 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 life gives itself specific forms, and they bear the stamp of finitude in that they are sub- 174 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. jected, without will, without resistance, to the causal chain that pervades this world. The divine substance ia free only in the inner essence of its own nature, but 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 matffpfo^positions follow of necessity from the metaphysical principles which we have just seen. And for first example we have the iuaduaissibleuess of what is called free-will. I For, man being only modus, what is applicable to the others is applicable to him j 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 by 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 individual would be regarded as imper- fect, and as in disagreement with its own nature. j3in, then,thebad, is only relative, and not positive, for nothing happens contrary to the will 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. What, then, are good and bad ? That is good which is useful ~ SPINOZA. 175 good. That, again, is useful which procures us greater reality, which preserves and 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 and 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 and joy, the bliss of the soul : it gives us peace in the thought of the eternal necessity of all things ; it delivers us from all dis- cord and discontent, from all fruitless struggling against the finitude of our own being ; it raises us from life in sense to that life in intellect, which, freed from all the troubles and the trials of the perishable, is occupied only with itself and with the eternal. Felicity, then, is not the reward of virtue, it is virtue itself. What is true and great in the philosophy of Spinoza is, that everything individual, as" finite, is merged by it iu the gulf of substance. With regard immovably directed 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 tru^y fo CO"VPJ* +1j nppp+i'v frn1 f into the frrrn. firmn. nf pnHfiV fi P.viaJ-.Pm-.ft fl.ni^ np.t.nn.1 Tifc. ' 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 ; any 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 unity 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 can * Schwegler says "none," not " few." " Few" stultifies Spinoza'a 176 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. possibly be conceived. It is not by accident, then, that Spinoza, a Jew, has, in explanation of the universe, once more revived the idea of its absolute 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 ill 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- selves were there a true unity of both. That they are in substance one avails them little, for to substance itself \ they are indifferent, 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 have LOCKE. 177 divided the intellectual world since, that, namely, of Idealism one-sidedly on the one hand, and that of Realism (empiricism, sensualism, materialism), equally one-sidedly on the other. XXVIII. Locke. 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 Hobbes (1588-1679) ; whom, however, we merely mention in this place, as his in- iluence 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 bxisiness, 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 the 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 information 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 our knowledge springs from experience. Many are of opinion, says Locke, that there are innate 178 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. ideas, received into the soul 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 spectacle of the various nations, and at the various periods of their history, teaches us that there is no moral rule observable by all. Not in the theoretical w.orld, 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 implanted 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 allegation 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, they 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 L0( 179 what she has not implanted. nnate ideas, consequently, whether theorc , is an assumption as much to be rejected r.? tl existence of arts and sciences, TJ> the soul) is in itself a tabula ra page on which nothing has be How, then, does the inind ;i due to experience, on which a' on which, indeed, as its princi] Experience, however, is in itse perception of the external ol senses, in which case it is nauic'l ' perception of the internal oper; case it is named the internal sense, or, V>, t Sensation and reflection furnish th all its ideas. These faculties are to 1" rega; single window by which the light of the ide. the camera obscura of the mind. The extern supply the ideas of sensible qualities : the internal o again, the life of the soul, sup operations. The problem of of Locke, then, is to derive and explain /illy, by a reference to these two sources. first place, into the simple and i ^deas are such as the mind receives from elsewhere, in tiv manner as a mirror receiyes the images of t presented to it. They are partly & '. 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 contribui- several senses, as the ideas, for instance, of extension and motion, which are due to the sight combined ; partly such as are derived from reflection, as the ideas of thought, and of \vl < such, finally, as spring from sensation and n .ogether, .. ideas, for example, of power, unity, succession. These simple ideas constitute the materials, as it the letters, of all our knowled; nguage no means of various combinations of the single letters., syllables and words, so the mind, by means of various combinations of the simple ide;* A, forms the compo : complex ideas. These maybe <:luced to tl. to ideas, namely, of modes, of The ideas of the first class con space (distance, linear measure, inmv 180 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. etc.), of time (duration, eternity), of thought (perception* memory, abstraction), of number, and so on. In parti- cular, Locke subjee'3 to a strict examination the notion of 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 unknown something which is thought 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 all the other com- plex ide'^,3, 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 glace whenever the mind jo 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 our knowledge 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 obvious 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 without 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 intellectu, quod non fuerit 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 Newton, 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 Wollaston (1659-1724), the Earl of Shaftesbury (1671- 17 13), Francis Hutcheson (1695-1747); and even oppo-. nents of Locke, as Peter Brown (d. 1735). XXIX. Hume. T OCKE, as just remarked, was neither consistent nor | j successful in the completion and realization of em- piricism. 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 subjective 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 182 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. rationality. In 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 i 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 teust be also declared a merely subjective conception, an arbi- 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 world ; 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 afterwards 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 causality. Locke had already expressed tHe~tlrought 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 I 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 v from the cause, the former cannot be discovered in the lat- ter ; and experience, again, exhibits to us only a sequence of two event's 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 causality. In this i 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 might 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 known 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 experience 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. All notions expressive of a relation of necessity, all sup- posed cognitions of an objective connexion in things, rest at last, consequently, only on the association of ideas. >~fc 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 reality 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 !>y us soul, self, or ego. The self or ego, therefore, rests wholly on an illusion. In the case of such pre- 184 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. suppositions, there cannot be any talk naturally of the 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 ultimate 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, Seattle, 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 spoke out the secret of every- body, is, in this connexion, familiarly known. The sensualism of the Abb de Condillac stands closest to the empiricism of Locke. Condillac 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 1768, he died in 1780. His collected writings, which bespeak moral earnestness and religious feeling, compose twenty- three volumes. Condillac, in agreement with Locke, began from the proposition, that all 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 Condillac'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, therefore, 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 soul. These, the ultimate consequences of sensualism, were taken by others after him ; and they lie sufficiently on the surface. For if sensualism maintains, that truth, or what 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 is no being but material being. 186 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. XXXL Helvetius. THE moral consequences of the sensualistic position were drawn by Helvetius. Let theoretic sensual- ism declare, that all our 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 famous book De V Esprit 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 persecution, especially from the priests. Helvetius must have thought it fortunate, 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 Germany, 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 written 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. This 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. 187 and dare to proclaim as its principle the 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 realized 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, dualistic 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. All substance and worth, then, having disappeared from the spiritual world, there was left nothing but nature ; in the form, too, of an unspiritualized mass, of matter; and an object for man only as it was subservient 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 polished 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 unquestioned^ this if unable to justify its existence in the sight of reason they strove to shake in the belief of the world 188 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. at the 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 disintegrated 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 every 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 their autonomy this, of these men, is the imperishable glory. 2. The most brilliant and influential spokesman of this period is Voltaire (1694-1778). 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 as 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 spiritualism. 3. Markedly more sceptical is the relation of the Encyclopedists to the principles and presuppositions of spiritualism. The philosophical Encyclopsedia 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 FRENCH ILLUMINATION. 189 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 accurately 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-l 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 I of materialism, Diderot, however, refused to accept : I from that he was rescued by his moral earnestness. 4. The last word of materialism, nevertheless, was, with unhesitating hardihood, spoken out by Diderot's contem- porary, the physician LaMettrie (1709-1751). Anything spiritual, namely, is now a delusion, and physical enjoy- ment is the chief eiid 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 materialism. All the observa- 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. Immortality is an absurdity. The 190 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. soul, 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 with 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 appeared pseudonymously 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 beaux 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 tedious. 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 multiplicity, 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. If 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 indivis- ible, nnextended, invisible, etc. But how are we to find anything definite or cpnceivable 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 their body, only distinguish their brain from their body. Thought is only a modification of the brain, as will is but another modification of the same corporeal organ, (b.) On a par with this duplication of himself into soul and body, 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, suffering, 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 theory 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, and yet, by means of a mass of aegative attributes, it would, at the very same moment, distinguish 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 power in nature, then, certainly, a single Atheist cannot possibly exist, unless he were a fool. But if by_ Atheist i is.. underjiood e~ofa _ one that denies the existence~ofan immaterial arfoemg whose imaginary qualities can pjiljiuiisturb man- kind, 'tu^TT,"ln'thaTr 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 believe 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 things 192 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. of nature. Like them, he 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 endures 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 consequently also true morality. This consistent dogmatic materialism of the Systlme 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 already intimated (xxvu.), the other or idealistic series which runs parallel with the realistic one. And at its head is Leibnitz. XXXIIL Leibnitz. IF empiricism was animated by a desire to subordinate mind to matter, to materialize mind, idealism will seek, on the contrary, to spiritualize matter, or so to con- LEIBNITZ. 193 strue the idea of spirit, that matter shall be subsumed under it. If to the former, spirit was nothing but a finer matter, matter to the latter will prove itself, con- 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- wise, 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. One-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, in ideal grounds, or teleologically. 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-established 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 Wilhelm Leibnitz was born in 1646 at Leipsic, where his father held a professor's chair. Having chosen Law for his profession, he entered the university in 1661 ; he defended, in 1663, for the degree of Doctor of Philo- sophy, his dissertation JDe 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 was em- 194 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. ployed in the most multiform affairs, diplomatic and other. In the year 1672 he went to Paris, charged in effect with a commission to persuade Louis xrv. to attempt the conquest 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 life, 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 savants of the period, and for whom Leibnitz, at her own instigation, had undertaken the composition of his Theodicee. His pro- posal for the institution 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 in 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 Bb'hm, he is the first important philosopher whom we Germans can claim. Through him philosophy was naturalized among us. Unfortunately, partly 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 whole. His views are chiefly set out only in short occasional papers, or in letters, and generally in French. For this reason an inwardly coherent summary of his philosophy is by no means easy, 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 substance the single positive element in existence. Leib- LEIBNITZ. 195 nitz, too, takes the notion of substance for the founda- tion of his philosophy, 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 withaS&vni. That active force constitutes the quality of substance, is a proposition 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 further 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 plurality 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 personality, 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 mona,d 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 fundamental being of the whole physical and spiritual universe. 2. THE EXACTER SPECIFICATION 01? THE MONADS is the next consideration. The monads of Leibnitz are, in general, similar to the Greek atoms. Like t'ue 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 ; tach is a special world apart; none is like the other. To Leibnitz, no two things in the world are quite alike. Secondly, the atoms, as extended, are divisible; the monads, on the contrary, are actual (indivisible) points, metaphysical points. In order not to be repelled by this proposition (for it is natural to object that no aggregate of inextended 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 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. living spiritual being, a soul. In the atomists there is nothing whatever of this idea j but with Leibnitz it plays a very important part. Everywhere in the world, there is to Leibnitz life, living individuality, and living con- nexion of individualities. The monads are not dead, as mere extended matter is ; they are self-subsistent, 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 unconscious, 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 (b.) 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, all that in 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 ; all, 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 fish-pond, the component parts of which live, though it cannot be said that the pond 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, LEIBNITZ. 197 that is the substantial element, but its constituent parts. There is no such thing as matter in 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 monade 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. Those are higher monads in which thought is formative vitality, 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 case in the animal 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 deus. 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 unity, 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 HISTO&Y OF PHILOSOPHY. respect also the universe is a system of harmony. Since the monads act not on one another, and each follows 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 universe, 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 suffisante) 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 presuppositions 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 admits of a par- ticular explanation with reference to the pre-established harmony. On the presuppositions of the Monadologie, this relation might easily appear enigmatic. If one monad cannot act on another, how is it possible for the Vsoul 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 iu LEIBNITZ. 199 independence of the other, the laws of its own being, the body, laws that are mechanical ; the soul, laws that are ends. But God has instituted so harmonious an agreement 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 Deux 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 always 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 occasionalistic view) ; and finally, by a third assumption, 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. ON THE THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE the consequences of the Monadologic 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 the human understanding interested Leib- nitz without satisfying him ; and, in his Nouveaux Essais, he set on foot, therefore, a counter inquiry, in which he was led to defend innate 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 expliciter 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 (principium contradictionis), and the proposition of the sufficient reason (principium rationis sufficientis). To these, as a proposition of the second rank, he adds the principium indiscernibilium, 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 weakest book, and stands only in a very loose connexion with his remaining philosophy. Originating in the re- quest of a lady, it belies this origin neither in its form nor in it's matter. Not in its form, for in its striv- ing to popularity of statement it becomes diffuse and unscientific. Not in its matter, for it carries further its accommodation to the positive dogma and the presuppo- sitions of theology than the scientific principles of the system permit. 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 all possible -worlds, according to which any more per- fect world than the existent world is impossible. But BERKELEY. 201 how, then ? Does 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 evil. Metaphysical evil, or the imperfec- tion and finitude of things, is as inseparable from finite existence, and therefore unconditionally willed 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 evil, 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 plays 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 harmony 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. XXXIV. Berkeley. TDEALTSM in Leibnitz has not yet reached its ultimate JL 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 contrary, 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 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. quite broken with realism. To have declared corporeal existences mere phenomena, mere subjective perceptions or conceptions without foundation of objective reality, or, in other words, entirely to have denied the reality 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 idealism 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- perly, 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 attach the most specially objective character, we are still within our- selves. The proper 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 percipi. 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 failing 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 them from God. God, then, 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, docs not deny to objects a reality independent of ug.; it denies only the possibility of their existing anywhere but in ji 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 nature 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. Wolff. THE idealism of Berkeley remained naturally with- out any further development. The philosophy 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 opposed 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 u. 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, Leibnitio 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 philo- 204 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. sophy, the entire field of knowledge the first who at- tempted to construct again a systematic whole of doc- trine, an encyclopaedia of philosophy in the highest sense of the word. If he has not indeed contributed 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. * Secondly, he again made philosophical 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 platitudinizing 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-self 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 will necessarily make the window wide enough to allow two persons to place themselves conveniently at it q. e. d'), 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 philosophy. As regards the matter and scientific classification of the Wolfian philosophy, the following remarks may suffice. Wolff defines philosophy to be the science of the possible, as such. Possible is what involves no contradiction. Wolff 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 philosophy (an expression, however, WOLFF. 205 which is first employed by his disciples) or metaphysics, and into practical philosophy. Logic precedes both as propaedeutical of the study df philosophy in general. Metaphysics, again, are subdivided into (a.) Ontology, (&.) Cosmology, (c.) Psychology, (d.) Natural Theology ; while the subdivisions of practical philosophy are (a.) Ethics (the object of which is man as man), (&.) 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 Wolff, which looks like a philosophical 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 intelligible 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 arc 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. (b.) 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 incapable of change. Ingredients can 206 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. neither be added to it, nor taken from it. All altera- tions in the world must arise from its own nature. lu tins 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 soul 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 spirit 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 will 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 souls, 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 the human soul is capable of this, and only the human soul, therefore, is immortal, (d.) Natural Theology. Wolff here proves the existence of God by the cosmological argument. God might have created many worlds, but this world he created as the best. This world is called into existence by the will of God. His intention in creating it was the expression of his perfection. The evil in the world springs not from the will of God, but from the limited nature of human things. God permits it only as means to the good. This brief aphoristic exposition of Wolffs metaphysics will show how closely it is related to that of Leibnitz. The latter loses, however, in speculative depth, in con- sequence of the exclusively popular form (form of under- standing proper) which it receives at the hands of Wolff. What with Wolff recedes most into the background is the specific peculiarity of the monadology : his simple beings are not concipient like the monads, but return more to the nature of the atoms : hence in his case numerous in- consistencies and contradictions. His special metaphysi- cal value lies in the ontology, to which he has given a much more accurate development than his predecessors. A multitude of technical terms owe to him their forma- tion and introduction into the language of philosophy. The philosophy of Wolff, clear and readily intelligible as it was, more accessible, moreover, than that of Leib- nitz, in consequence of being composed in German, soon became popular philosophy, and acquired an extensive in- fluence. Among those who have made themselves meri- torious by its scientific extension, are particularly to be mentioned Th&mming (1687-1728), Bilfinger (1693-1750), Baumeister (1708-1785), Baumgarten (of aesthetic renown, 1714-1762), and Meier (1718-1777), the disciple of Baum- garten. XXXVI. The German Illumination. UNDER the influence of the Leibnitz -Wolfian philo- sophy, but without any scientific connexion with it, there arose in Germany, during the second half of the eighteenth century, a popular philosophy of an eclectic nature, the many forms of which have been compre- hended iinder the general name of the German illumina- tion. The importance of this movement consists less in 208 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. its relation to the history of philosophy than in its rela- tion to the history of general culture : for it is at for- mation and information, the intellectual production of people of liberal minds (Basedow], that it aims ; and thus enlightened reflection, intelligent moralization (in solilo- quies, letters, morning meditations, etc.), is the form in which it philosophizes. It is the German counterpart of the French illumination. As the latter closes the realistic series with its own extreme, materialism or objectivity devoid of mind, so the former brings the idealistic series to an end in its tendency to an extreme of subjectivity from which all objectivity has been banished. To people of this way of thinking, the empirical individual ego, as such, ranks as the absolute, as exclusive authority ; for it they forget all else, or rather all else has value for them only in proportion as it relates to the subject, subserves the subject, contributes to the advancement and inter- nal satisfaction of the subject. It is thus that the question of the immortality of the soul is now the chief philosophical problem" (in which reference Mendelssohn, 1729-1786, is particularly to be named as the most im- portant individual in the movement) ; the eternal dura- tion of the soul is the chief object of interest ; the more objective ideas or articles of faith, as the personality of God, for instance, are not by any means questioned, but in general, little interest can be felt in them, for that nothing can be known of God is now a fixed conviction. Both being of subjective interest, scientific attention is bestowed in the second place on moral philosophy (Oarve, 1742-1798, Engel, 1741-1802, AUt, 1738-1766) and aesthetics (particularly Sulzer, .1720-1779). In general the consideration of what is profitable, of the particular end, is what occupies the foreground ; utility is the spe- cial criterion of truth ; what serves not the subject, ad- vances not the interests of the subject, is thrown aside. In harmony with this intellectual tendency is that towards a predominatingly teleological mode of viewing nature (Eei- marus, 1694-1765), as well as the eudsemonistic character of the ethical principles in vogue. The happiness of the individual is regarded as the highest principle, as the supreme end (Basedow, 1723-1790). Reimarus wrote a work on the ' advantages ' of religion, and endeavoured to prove in it that the tendency of religion is not to in- jure earthly enjoyments, but rather to add to them. In the saint way Steinbart (1738-1809) laboured in several TRANSITION TO KANT. 209 works to establish the thesis, that all wisdom consists in the attainment of happiness, that is of enduring pleasure, and that the Christian religion, far from forbidding this, is itself a system of eudaemonism. For the rest, there was entertained towards Christianity only a moderate respect ; any claim, on its part, to an authority that might seem dis- agreeable to the subject (as in the dogma of a Hell) was resisted ; the desire, on the whole, was to replace the posi- tive dogma, so far as possible, by natural religion ; Reiina- rus, for example, the most zealous defender of theism and natural theology, ia the author also of the Woj/enbtUtel Fragments. The new-won consciousness of his own rights was exercised by the subject in criticising the positive and traditional element (the evangelical history), and in ration- alizing the supernatural. Finally, the subjective character of the period reveals itself in the prevalent literary man- nerism of autobiographies, confessions, etc. ; the isolated <-^o is an object to itself of admiring study (Rousseau, 1712-1778, and his Confessions) ; it holds the mirror up to its own particular states, its own sentiments, its own excel-' lent intentions a coquetting with its own self that often rises to morbid sentimentality. From what has been said, then, it will now appear that the extreme of subjectivity constitutes the character of the illumination in Germany. This illumination, therefore, forms the completion and the close of the previous idealistic tendency. XXXVII.- Transition to Kant. TDEALISM and realism, the objects of our attention for some time now, have both ended in one-sided extremes. Instead of reconciling from within, as it were, the contradiction of thought and existence, they have both issued in a denial of the one or the other factor. To realism matter was one^idedly the absolute, to idealism the empirical_ego, extremes both which threat- ened to convert philosophy into unphilosophy. In Ger- many, as in France, indeed, it had sunk to the flattest popular philosophy. But now Kant appeared, and again united in a common bed the two branches that, isolated from each other, seemed on the point of being lost in the sands. Kant is the great restorer of philosophy, again conjoining into unity and totality the one-sided philo- sophical endeavours of those who preceded him. Polemi- 210 , HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. cally or irenically he is related to all of them, to Locke as much as to Hume, to the Scottish philosophers not less than to the earlier English and French moralists, to the Leibnitz-Wolfian philosophy as well as to the materialism of the French, and the eudgemonism of the German illumi- nation. As regards his relation, in particular, to the one-sided realistic and idealistic tendencies, it was consti- tuted as follows. While, on the one hand, empiricism assigned to the ego, in subordination to the'woiid of sense, a r6le of pure passivity, and while idealism, on the other hand, assigned to it, in superiority to the world of sense and in its sufficiency for "its own self, a rdle of pure activity, Kant, for his part, endeavoured to harmonize the pretensions of both. He proclaimed the ego, as prac- tical ego, free and autonomous, the unconditioned arbiter of itself, if as theoretical ego, receptive certainly, and con- ditioned by the world of sense. Further, he proclaimed the existence of both sides in the theoretical ego itself ; for if it is true with empiricism, that experiencjg jjs lift only field of knowledge, that to experience we owe all the matter of knowledge, it is equally true with idealism that there exists in our knowledge, notwithstanding, an a priori factor, that we use notions in experience, inderi- vative from experience, but provided for experience a priori in the mind. In order still further to facilitate a general view of the vast and complicated structures which compose the philo- sophy of Kant, we proceed to add a preliminary ex- planation of its fundamental notions, together with a concise exposition of its chief propositions and chief re- sults. As object of his critical inquiry, Kant took the f unction_of_cognition in man, or, more simply, the origin of our experience. It is as exercising this scrutiny of cognition, that his philosophy is critical, is criticism. Again, it is in consequence of Kant having called his con- sideration of the relation of cognition to the objects of cognition a transcendental reflection that his philosophy has received the further name of transcendental ; and that to Kant is a transcendental (this word is to be dis- tinguished from transcendent), cognition, ' which has to^ do not so much with the objects, as with our knowing of/ the objects, so far as there is any possibility of an a priori \ knowing of them.' The mentioned scrutiny now occurs^ in the Kritik^ of Pure Reason, and yields the following rfebtilts. All cognition is the product of two factors, TRANSITION TO KANT. 211 the cognising subject and the cognised objects. The one factor, jihe external object, contributes the material, the empirical material, of knowledge ; the other factor, the subject, c"o~ntnbutes tne lorrn, tndse notions^namely, by Vh tue -of which alone any connected knowledge, any synthesis of individual perceptions into a whole of ex- perience, is possible. Were there no external world, there were no perceptions ; ai. . j a priori notions, these perceptions were an indefinite plurality * and maniness, without mutual combination, and without . connexion in the unity of an understood whole. In that case there would not be any such thing as experience. Therefore : whilst perceptions without nations are blind, and nojjiojig ^tnthout perceptions are void^ cognition (knowledge) is a union of both, in this way, that it fill s up the frames of the notions with the matter of experi- ence, or disposes the matter of experience into the net of the notions. Nevertheless, we do not know things_as they are in themselves. First, because of the forms native to Hie mind, that i.^'lu'cause of the categories. In adding to the~gi vc u manifold <>f perception, as the matter or cognition, our own notions as its form, we :nppTOrtTrcrsorrre change in the" objects : these objects, evidently, are not thought as they are in themselves, but only as we apprehend them j they appear } to us only as modified by categories. Besides this there is another subjective addition. In the second place, that is, we cognise things not as they are in themselves, because the very perceptions which we embrace in the frames of our notic jiuve and uneoloured,_ but have been equally obliged to traverse a subjective medium, time and space namely, which are the universal forms of all :ts of sense. Space and_tinio are al^o subjective ad- ditions, then, forms ot sensuous perception, and no less native to the mu>d than the a priori notions, the cate- gories themselves. Whatever is to be perceived, must ^ be perceived in time and space ; without them perception .' is impossible. It follows, then, that we only know ap- pearances, not things themselves, in their own true nature, as divested of space and time. If these propositions of Kant be superficially taken, it 3 may appear as if the Kantian criticism were nowise sub- stantially in advance of the empiricism of Locke. Never- theless, it is in advance, even if for nothing else than the investigation of the a priori notions. That the notions 212 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. cause and effect, substance and accident, and others, the like, which the human mind finds itself obliged to think into all perceptions of sense, and under which it really thinks everything that it does think, that these arise not from sensuous experience, this Kant is compelled to acknowledge as well as Hume. For example, when affec- tions reach us from several directions, when we perceive a white colour, a sweet taste, a rough surface, etc., and now speak of a single thing, a piece of sugar perhaps, it is only the manifold of the sensations that is given us from without, while the notion_ of unity cannot come to us through sensation, but is a notion added to the mani- fold, a category. But Kant now, instead of denying the reality of these notions, took a different step, and assigned to the mental activity (which supplies these forms of thought to the matter of experience) a special and pecu- liar province. He demonstrated these forms of thought to be immanent laws of the intellect, necessary principles of action in the itnderstanding that are essential to every experience, and he endeavoured to attain the complete system of them by an analysis of the faculty of thought. (They are twelve in number : unity, plurality, totality ; reality, negation, limitation ; substantiality, causality, reciprocity ; possibility, actuality, necessity.) Kant's philosophy, then, is not empiricism, but idealism. It is not that dogmatic idealism, however, whiclTlransfers all reality to conception, but . rather_a critical subjective idealism that distinguishes in the Conception {perception) an objective and a subjective element,.. ajad..vindicates for/ the latter a place as important in every act_qf jjognjtionj as is that of the former. From what has been said, there result and the one in consequence of the other the three chief propositions under which the Kantian cognitive theory may be com- prehended : 1. We know __only appearances, not things in themselves. The "empmcaT matter ^hat comes to us from wttHouT*is, in consequence of our own subjective addi- tions (for we receive this matter first of all into the sub- jective frames of time and space, and then into the equally subjective forms of the innate notions), so worked up and relatively altered that, like the reflection of a luminous body variously bent and broken by the surface of a mirror, it no longer represents the thing itself, in its original quality, pure and unmixed. 2. Nevertheless, experience alone is our field of knowledge, and any science TRANSITION TO KANT. 213 of the unconditioned does not exist. And naturally so: for as every act of cogmHoD~If*a product of empirical matter and intellectual form, or is founded on the co- operation of sense and understanding, any cognition of things is impossible where the factor of empirical matter fails. Knowledge through intellectual notions alone is illusory, inasnruch as, for the notion of the unconditioned, which understanding sets up, sense is unable to show the unconditioned object which should correspond to it. The question, therefore, which Kant placed at the head of his entire critique, How are synthetic judgments (judgments of extension as m contradistinction to analytic judg- ments7""judgments of explanation), possible a priori? can we, a priori, by thought alone, extend our know- ledge beyond experience of sense ? is knowledge of the supersensuous possible ? must be answered by an un- conditional No. 3. If, nevertheless, human cognition will overstep the limits of experience assigned to it, that is to say, if it will become transcendent, then it can only involve itself in the greatest contradictions. The three ideas of reason namely, (a.) the psychological idea of an absolute subject, that is, of the soul or of the immor- tality ; (6.) the cosmological idea oTThe world as totality of all conditions and phenomena; (c.) the theological idea of an all-perfect being are so much without appli- cation to empirical reality, so much mere fabrications of reason, regulative, not constitutive principles, to which no objective sensuous experience corresponds, that they rather lead if applied to experience, or conceived, that is, as actually existent objects to the most glaring logi- cal errors, to the most striking paralogisms and sophisms. Kant has attempted to demonstrate these errors, whether unavoidable contradictions of reason with its own self, or only subreptions and false conclusions, in the case of all the ideas of reason. By way of example, let us take the cosmological idea. Directly reason, in reference to this idea, in reference to the cosmical whole, proceeds to give utterance to its transcendental dicta, directly it seeks to apply, that is, the forms of the finite to the infinite, it is at once seen, that in all cases the antithesis of the dic-j turn is quite as demonstrable as the thesis. The thesis; The world has limits in space and a commencement in time ; the antithesis, The world has no limits in space and no commencement in time : these propositions are both susceptible of an equal proof. It follows, conse- 214 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. quently, that speculative cosmology is but an assumption of reason. The theological idea, for its part again, rests on mere logical subreptions and vicious conclusions, as (with great acuteness) was proved by Kant in the case of the various arguments hitherto dogmatically proposed for the existence of God. It is impossible, therefore, in the theoretical sphere, and with perfect stringency in all re- spects, to prove and comprehend the existence of the __sxml v as_a_rea^ubject, the existence of the world as a single systemTandthe existence of God as a supreme being : the metaphysical problems proper lie beyond the limits of philosophical knowledge. This is the negative of the Kantian philosophy : its supplementing positive is to be found in the Kritik of Practical Reason. If mind, theoretically or cognitively, 1 is under condition and control of tEe objects of sense I no complete act of knowledge being possible without an element of perception, practically, or as regards action, it directly transcends the given element (the motive ofv sense), it is determined only by^hTcategorical imperative, f by the moral law, by its own self, and is therefore freej and autonomous. The ends it pursues are such as it a moral spirit gives itself. External objects are no] longer arbiters and masters for it ; it has no longer to I adapt itself to them when it would become participant of truth ; it is they now must serve it, mere selfless (uncon- scious) means for the realization of the moral law. If the theoretical spirit was bound to the phenomenal world in its blind obedience to mere necessity, the practical spirit, on the contrary, belongs, through its relation to the abso- lute end, through its own essential freedom, to a purely intelligible, to a supcrsensuous world-. This is Kant's practical idealism, which directly leads to the three (as* theoretical verities previously declared insufficient) prac- tical postulates the immortality of the soul, the freedom ' of the will, and the existence of God. So much by way of introduction : we proceed now to the more systematic exposition of the philosophy of Kant. XXKVIII.Kant. TMMANUEL KANT was born, April 22, 1724, at . L Konigsberg in Prussia. His father, an honest, worthy saddler, and his mother, a woman of piety and intelli- KANT. 215 gence, exercised over him from his earliest years a wholesome influence. In the year 1740 he entered the university as a student of theology, but applied himself by inclination to the study of philosophy, mathematics, and physics. He opened his literary career in his twenty- third year, 1 747, with an essay ' Thoughts on the true Es- timate of Motive Forces.' For several years, he was obliged by circumstances to act as domestic tutor in various families in the neighbourhood of Konigsberg. In the year 1755 he settled at the university as a private lecturer (where he re- mained as such for fifteen years), and gave courses of logic, metaphysics, physics, mathematics, and, at a later period, of morals, anthropology, and physical geography, mostly in the sense of the Wolfian school, though not without an early expression of his doubts with respect to dogmatism. At the same time, after the publication of his first disser- tation, he was indefatigable as an author, although his decisive great book, the Krit'ik of Pure Reason, appeared only in his fifty-seventh year, 1781, and was followed by his Kritik of Practical Reason in 1788, as by his Kritilc of Judgment in 1790. In the year 1770, at the age of forty- six, he became an ordinary professor of logic and meta- physics, the duties of which position he continued actively to carry on till 1797, after which year he was prevented from lecturing by the increasing frailties of age. Calls to Jena, to Erlangen, to Halle, he declined. Soon the noblest as well as the most studious of knowledge thronged from the whole of Germany to Konigsberg, in order to place themselves at the feet of the Prussian sage. One of his admirers, Reuss, professor of philosophy at Wiirz- burg, and who was able to make only a very short stay at Konigsberg, entered the room of Kant with the words : ' He had come no less than 760 miles just to see him and speak to him.' During the last seventeen years of his life he occupied a small house with a garden in a retired part of the town, where he was able to pursue his own quiet and regular mode of life without disturbance: He lived extremely simply, but liked a good table and a com- fortable social meal. Kant was never out of his own pro- vince never as far even as Dantzic. His longest journeys were to neighbouring country houses. Nevertheless he acquired by the reading of descriptions of travels a very accurate knowledge of the surface of the globe, as indeed is specially proved by his lectures on physical geography. He was well acquainted with all Rousseau's works, and the 216 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. Emile, in particular, on its first appearance, prevented him for several days from taking his usual walks. Kant died February 12, 1804, in the eightieth year of his age. He was of middle size, slenderly built, with blue eyes, and always healthy, till in his old age he became childish. He never married. A strict regard for truth, pure in- tegrity, and simple modesty distinguished his character. Though Kant's great, era-making work, the Kritik of Pure Reason, only appeared in 1781, its author had in smaller works long been making efforts in the same direc- tion ; and this was particularly the case with his inaugu- ral dissertation ' On the Form and Principles of the Sen- sible and the Intelligible World,' which was published in 1770. The internal genesis of his critical position was attributed by Kant especially to Hume. ' It was reflec- tion on David Hume that several years ago first broke my dogmatic slumber, and gave a completely new direc- tion to my inquiries in the field of speculative philo- sophy.' The critical idea first developed itself in Kant, then, on the occasion of his abandonment of the dogmatic metaphysical school, the Wolfi an philosophy, in which he had been educated, for the study of empiricism in the sceptical form which had been impressed upon it by Hume. ' Hitherto,' says Kant at the close of his Kritik of Pure Reason, ' there was no choice but to proceed > either dogmatically like Wolff, or sceptically like Hume.j The critical path is the only one that is still open. If the reader has had the courtesy and the patience to travel it thus far in my society he may now contribute his help towards the conversion of this footpath into a high- way, by which, what many centuries were unable to effect, what, indeed, was impossible before the expiration of the present century, there shall be attained complete satisfaction for human reason in that which has always occupied its curiosity, but always hitherto in vain.' Kant, lastly, possessed the clearest consciousness of the relation of_criticism to all preceding philosophy. He compares the revolution effected by himself in philosophy to that effected by Copernicus in astronomy. ' Hitherto the assumption was, that all our knowledge must adapt itself to the objects ; but every attempt to ascertain any- thing in regard to them a priori by notions, in order to extend our knowledge, was by such a presupposition necessarily rendered vain. Suppose we now try, then, whether better success may not attend us in the pro KANT. 217 blems of metaphysics, if we assume objects to be under a necessity of adapting themselves to the-nature of our cognition. The proposal, at all events, evidently harmo- nizes better with the desired possibility of an a priori knowledge which should be able to determine something in regard to objects before they were yet given to us. It is with us here as it was at first with the idea of Copernicus, who, dissatisfied with the theory of the heavens, on the assumption that the starry host circled round the specta- tor, tried whether it would not succeed better, as regarded explanation, if, on the contrary, he supposed the spec- tator to move and the stars to remain at rest.' In these words, the principle of subjective idealism is expressed in the clearest manner and with the most perfect conscious- ness. In the succeeding exposition of the Kantian philosophy we follow, as the most appropriate, the course which has been taken by Kant himself. Kant's principle of division and disposition is a psychological one. All the faculties of the soul, he says, may be reduced to three, which three admit not of being again reduced to any other. They are, cognition, emotion. wilL For all the three the first contains the principles, the regulating laws. So far as cognition contains the principles of its own act, it is theoretical reason. So far again as it contains the prin- ciples of will, it is practical reason. And so far, lastly, as it contains the principles of the emotion of pleasure and pain, it is a faculty of judgment. The Kantian philo- sophy (on its critical side) falls thus into three Kritikeu (critiques) : 1. The Kritik of (pure) Theoretic Reason ; 2. The Kritik of Practical Reason ; and 3. The Kritik of Judgment. I. THE KRITIK OF PURE REASON. The Kritik of Pure Reason, says Kant, is the ground- plan of all our possessions through pure reason (of all that we can know a priori), systematically arranged. What are these possessions ? What is our contribution to the effecting of an act of perception ? With this ob- ject before him, Kant passes under review the two main stadia of our theoretical consciousness, the two main factors of all cognition : sense and understanding. First, then, what is the a priori possession of our perceptive faculty, so far as it is sensuous, and, second, what is the 218 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. a priori possession (applicable in perception) of our under- standing ? The first question is considered in the tran- scendental ^sthetic (a term which is to be taken naturally not in its usuai, but in its etymological import, as ' science of the a priori principles of sense ') ; the second, in the transcendental Logic (specially in the Analytic). Sense and understanding, namely explanatorily to pre- mise this are the two factors of all perceptive cognition, the two stems, as Kant expresses it, of knowledge, which spring, perhaps, from a common but unknown root. Sense is the receptivity, understanding the spontaneity of our cognitive faculty ; by means of sense, which alone affords us intuitions (in the signification of the sensuous perceptive elements), are objects given to us ; by means of understanding, which forms notions, are objects thought (but still in a perceptive reference). Notions without intuitions (perceptive elements strictly sensuous) are empty : without notions such intuitions (or perceptions) are blind. Perceptions (proper) and notions constitute A the mutually complementary constituents of our intel- > lectual activity. What now are the a priori (Tying Kfiady- in ti windT^ fv. a.*'} pHnniplps of our sensuous, what those of .our thinking faculty, in the operation of cognition? The first of these questions is answered, as said, in 1 . The transcendental ^Esthetic. To anticipate at once the answer : the a priori principles of sense, the innate forms of sensuous perception, are space and time. Space, namely, is the form of external sense by means of which objects are given to us as existent without us, and as ex- istent also apart from and beside one another. If we abstract from all that belongs to the matter of sensation (in any perception), there remains behind only space, as the universal form into which all the materials of the ex- ternal sense dispose themselves. If we abstract from all that belongs to the matter of our inner sense, there re- mains the time which the mental movement occupied. Space and time are the ultimate forms of external and v internal sense. That these forms are centained a priori in the human mind, Kant proves, first directly in what he calls the metaphysical exposition, from the nature of the very notions of them, and, second, indirectly, in what he calls the transcendental exposition, by demonstrating that, unless these notions were really a priori, certain sciences of undoubted truth would be altogether impos- KANT. 219 sible. (1.) The metaphysical exposition has to show, (a.) that time and space are given a priori, (6.) that both, nevertheless, belong to sense (to the 'aesthetic,' then), f% and not to the understanding (not to the ' logic '), that is to say, that they are perceptions (proper), and not con- ceptions (notions), (a. ) That space and time are a priori 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, notion. 1 }, 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. Pore mathematics is only possible, if space and time are 'pure ancfnot empirical perceptions. ICant, therefore, placed the whole problem of the tran- scendental aesthetic 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 propositions, however, can never originate in experience ; 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 priori grounds ; and he who would deny this must deny at the same time the possibility of mathematics. But if the foundations of mathematics are a priori pet: ceptiqn.8, it is natural to infer further that there will also be a priori notions, and the possibility consequently of a pure scienceTof metaphysics, consisting as well of the a priori perceptions as of the a priori notions. This is the positive result of the transcendental aesthetic, and with this positive side there is connected, precisely enough, a 220 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. negative one. Perception, or direct, immediate cognition, is possible to us only through sense, the universal forms of which are only space and time. But as these intuitions or perceptions of space and time are not (externally) ob- jective relations, but only subjective forms, a certain subjective element must be held to mingle in all our per- ceptions : we perceive not things as they are in them- selves, but only as they appear to us through this sub jectivo- objective medium of space and time. This is the sense of the Kantian dictum that we know not things in themselves, but only appearances. It were too much to assert, however, that all things are in space and time. This is so only for us, and in such manner too, that all appearances of outer sense are in space as well as in time, whereas all appearances of inner sense are only in time. Kant by no means intends, however, to convey by this, that the world of sense is a mere show. What he main- tains, he says, is, transcendentally, the subjective ideality, ; but, empirically nevertheless, the objective reality of ' space and time. Things without us as certainly exist as we ourselves, or our own states within us : only they exhibit themselves to us not as, independent of space and time, they are in themselves. As regards the thing in jh itself that lies behind the appearance of sense, Kant, in the ^l first edition of his work, expressed himself as if it were possible that it and the ego might be one and the same thinking substance. This thought, which Kant only threw out as a conjecture, has been the source of the whole subsequent evolution of philosophy. That the ego is affected, not by an alien thing in itself, but purely by its own self, this became the leading idea of the system of Fichte. In his second edition, however, Kant ex- punged the conjecture. n,. un-ir- Space and time being discussed, the transcendental aesthetic is at an end : it is now ascertained what is a priori 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- ceptlve reference). The investigation of these a priori notions j or forms of thought, ' lying ready in the understanding from , ' 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}. KANT. 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 has 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 priori 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 ^crdgment. The primitive notions 67 understanding may becompletely 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 arises an equal number of primitive pure notions, the categories, namely, of Quantity. Quality. Relation. Modality. Totality, Reality, Substance and Accident, Possibility and Impossibility, Plurality, Negation, Causality and Dependence, Existence and Non-existence, Unity. * Limitation. Community (reciprocity). Necessity and / Contingency. J From these twelve categories, in combination with each other (or with the pure modi of sense), all the other pure or a priori principles may be derived. The adduced categories having demonstrated themselves to be the a priori possession of the intellect, these two consequences lollow : (1.) These notions are a priori, and possess, / \ therefore, a necessary and universal validity ; (2.) per se j they are empty forms, and obtain filling only by percep- j 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 (AT. of P. R.) makes Einheit first, and Allheit last. Q 222 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. jective synthesis). And here 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 empty intelligible forms (and so made, for the first time, properly objects) ? This subsumption would have no difficulty if objects and notions were homogeneous. But they are not so. The objects, as coming into 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 regard to the manner in which we have to think (perceive) things in correspondence with the categories ? This application 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 such are the two pure perceptions of the transcen- ( dental aesthetic, such are time and space, especially the j former, and such are time and space alone. A quality of/ ~" time, such as siinultaneousness, is, as 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 individual 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 series in time or number, a conception that consists of the successive addition of like unit 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 unity ; 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 quality. 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 pure 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, I call up always a determinate order of things in time. Substan- tiality appears thus as permanence of reality in time, causality as regular sequence in time, reciprocity as regidar 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 v,ith 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, equipped with all the appliances necessary for the subsumption of sensible appearances (phenomena) 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 reducing the objects of sense under a universal form of intellect, and, conse- quently, of bringing unity into cognition. Or with every category there are principles of cognition, a priori 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 regulative of experience, are, in correspondence 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 whole, (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 reality, 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 somo degree, however small; intensive may be independent of extensive magnitude, etc. These principles are the antici- pations of sensation, rules 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 bingent individual perceptions, his connexion is, that amid al in this connexion is, that amid all the changes of pheno- mena, the substance remains the same. Where there is 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 in time is only possible through the relation of causality ; but without a deter- minate succession in time there were no experience ; the causal relation consequently is a principle of all 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 further is, that all co-existent substances are in complete reciprocity ; only what acts in community is de- ' terrain ed as inseparably simultaneous. These three prin- ciples are the awlogj^oji&cp&dence, 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-tkmtght correspond to the categories of modality, (a.) What agrees with the for- mal conditions of experience is possible, or may exist. (b.) 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 understood, 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 principles, 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 their jilting,^ perception provides only appearances (phe- nomena), and the thing in itself is never present in any 226 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. I possible experience ; our knowledge is restricted to plie- I 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 i the first are calculated for nothing else than to deceive, i /N| notions which have the express function to transgress the I ; I bounds of experience, and which therefore may be 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 frq^understanding in the more restricted sense. As the I 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 faculty 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 bounds 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 soulas a think- ing substance (the object of preceding rational psychology). KANT. 227 (2. ) The cosmological idea, the idea of the world as totality of all phenomena (the object of preceding 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 compelled 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 in 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 ou 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 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. only as a discipline which sets insurmountable bounds to speculative 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 may not lose ourselves in the fanaticism of a spiritualism that is inapplicable 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 a hint of reason's own to withdraw our attempts at knowledge from fruitless extravagant specu- lation, and apply them to the all-fruitful practical field. (6.) 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 percep- 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 th e world anything that is simple. (3.) The thesis : Causality 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 j 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. This dia- KANT. 229 lectical conflict of the cosmological ideas demonstrates 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 ontological proof reasons thus : There is possible a being the most real of all. 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 copula, 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 foi 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 who 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 physico- 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 j we have thus, then, only a very perfect being; and for a most perfect being we must have recourse once more to the ontological argument. The teleological argument, then, implies the cosmological j 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 j 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, \ IT 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 hypostasize it withal into a creative absolute intelligence. In truth, however, a supreme being constitutes, so far as the specu- lative exercise of reason is concerned, a mere but fault- less ideal, a notion which is the close and the crown of human knowledge, but whose objective reality, 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 unity. In this way, then, these ideas, if not constitutive principles to extend our knowledge be-i 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 still 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 are still urgently pressed on us by reason, then without 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 rests, 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 world 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 already within the sphere of practical reason. II. THE KRITIK or 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 Aphether pure reason is adequate to an apjriori knowledge fof 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 in 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-' I strate themselves true and certain, in a manner direct I and immanent, without once quitting the limits of self- f 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, that reasUU' ' 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 certain, inasmuch as the actions of men appear conditioned, in the first 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 will follows not mere incentives from without, but obeys in pure freedom a higher practical principle from within. The demonstration of all 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. All 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-will ; 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 will itself, the will in freedom from all sensuous matter of desire, and constituting therefore our very highest law 234 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY, of action. But now there is the 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 pleasure to the subject. All material motives of will come under the principle ol 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 iheteronomous. 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 unpleasant 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 setTip such maxims as universal moral principles. Maxims, nevertheless, though not the supreme prin- ciple of morality, are yet necessary to the autonomy of the will, as without them there were no definite object of action. Only union 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 principle of morals is consequently this : act so that the maxim of your will maybe 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, as only of empirical, sensuous, heteronomous 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 further question now is, what induces the will to act according to this supreme law of reason ? The answer of 1 s 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 estimable. 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. Respect, awe, is the only feeling 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 purism 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 view that duty can only be reluctantly performed. It is this exaggeration that is pointed to in a well-known Xenium of Schiller's. The following scruple of conscience, namely, 1 Willing serve I my friends all, but do it, alas, with affection ; And so gnawa mo my heart, that I'm not virtuous yet Schiller answers thus, 'Help, except this, there is none: you must strive with might u 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 of man, an unconditioned supreme good. What is this summum 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 felicity is united with the 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, like 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 felicity. But, says Kant, an analytic union 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 effect. Practical reason must regard such a relation 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 felicity- 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 j but rational beings, nournenally, 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 aa 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 first 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 morality and felicity. Still we ought to, or we are to endeavour to promote the supreme good. It must be possible therefore. The necessary union of these two moments is consequently postulated, that is to say, the existence of a cause of nature 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 world ; 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- mortality 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 supersensuous founded on categories alone, R 238 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. we should only convert theology into a magic lantern of chimeras. Practical reason, nevertheless, has still pro- cured us certainty as regards the objective reality of these ideas which theoretical reason was obliged to leave in abeyance, and so far therefore the former has the ad- vantage. This respective position of the two faculties has 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 01 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 religi