If Schopenhauer is fond of referring to the agreement of his views with the oldest and most perfect religions, the idea lies in the background that religion,-which springs from the same metaphysical needs as philosophy, and, for the great mult.i.tude, who lack the leisure and the capacity for philosophical thought, takes the place of the former,-as the metaphysics of the people, clothes the same fundamental truths which the philosopher offers in conceptual form and supports by rational grounds in the garb of myth and allegory, and places them under the protection of an external authority. When this character of religion is overlooked, and that which is intended to be symbolical is taken for literal truth (it is not the supernaturalists alone who start with this unjust demand, but the rationalists also, with their minimizing interpretations), it becomes the worst enemy of true philosophy. In Christianity the doctrines of original sin and of redemption are especially congenial to our philosopher, as well as mysticism and asceticism. He declares Mohammedanism the worst religion on account of its optimism and abstract theism, and Buddhism the best, because it is idealistic, pessimistic, and-atheistic.
It was not until after the appearance of the second edition of his chief work that Schopenhauer experienced in increasing measure the satisfaction-which his impatient ambition had expected much earlier-of seeing his philosophy seriously considered. A zealous apostle arose for him in Julius Frauenstadt (died 1878; Letters on the Philosophy of Schopenhauer, 1854; New Letters on the Philosophy of Schopenhauer, 1876), who, originally an Hegelian, endeavored to remove pessimism from the master"s system. Like Eduard von Hartmann, who will be discussed below, Julius Bahnsen (died 1882; The Contradiction in the Knowledge and Being of the World, the Principle and Particular Verification of Real-Dialectic, 1880-81; also, interesting characterological studies) seeks to combine elements from Schopenhauer and Hegel, while K. Peters (Will-world and World-will, 1883) shows in another direction points of contact with the first named thinker. Of the younger members of the school we may name P. Deussen in Kiel (The Elements of Metaphysics, 2d ed., 1890), and Philipp Mainlander (Philosophy of Redemption, 2d ed., 1879). As we have mentioned above, Schopenhauer"s doctrines have exercised an attractive force in artistic circles also. Richard Wagner (1813-83; Collected Writings, 9 vols., 1871-73, vol. x. 1883; 2d ed., 1887-88), whose earlier aesthetic writings (The Art-work of the Future, 1850; Opera and Drama, 1851) had shown the influence of Feuerbach, in his later works (Beethoven, 1870; Religion and Art, in the third volume of the Bayreuther Blatter, 1880) became an adherent of Schopenhauer, after, in the Ring of the Nibelung, he had given poetical expression to a view of the world nearly allied to Schopenhauer"s, though this was previous to his acquaintance with the works of the latter.[1] One of the most thoughtful disciples of the Frankfort philosopher and the Bayreuth dramatist is Fried rich Nietzsche (born 1844). His Unseasonable Reflections, 1873-76,[2] is a summons to return from the errors of modern culture, which, corrupted by the seekers for gain, by the state, by the polite writers and savants, especially by the professors of philosophy, has made men cowardly and false instead of simple and honorable, mere self-satisfied "philistines of culture." In his writings since 1878[3] Nietzsche has exchanged the role of a German Rousseau for that of a follower of Voltaire, to arrive finally at the ideal of the man above men.[4]
[Footnote 1: Cf. on Wagner, Fr. v. Hausegger, Wagner und Schopenhauer, 1878. [English translation of Wagner"s Prose Works by Ellis, vol. i., 1892.-TR.]]
[Footnote 2: "D. Strauss, the Confessor and the Author"; "On the Advantage and Disadvantage of History for Life"; "Schopenhauer as an Educator"; "R. Wagner in Bayreuth."]
[Footnote 3: Human, All-too-human, new ed., 1886; The Dawn, Thoughts on Human Prejudices, 1881; The Merry Science, 1882; So spake Zarathustra, 1883-84; Beyond Good and Evil, 1886; On the Genealogy of Morals, 1887, 2d ed., 1887; The Wagner Affair, 1888, 2d ed., 1892; Gotzendammerung, or How to Philosophize with the Hammer, 1889.]
[Footnote 4: Cf. H. Kaatz, Die Weltanschauung Fr. Nietzsches, I. Kultur und Moral, 1892.]
CHAPTER XV.
PHILOSOPHY OUT OF GERMANY.
1. Italy.
The Cartesian philosophy, which had been widely accepted in Italy, and had still been advocated, in the sense of Malebranche, by Sigismond Gerdil (1718-1802), was opposed as an unhistorical view of the world by Giambattista Vico,[1] the bold and profound creator of the philosophy of history (1668-1744; from 1697 professor of rhetoric in the University of Naples). Vico"s leading ideas are as follows: Man makes himself the criterion of the universe, judges that which is unknown and remote by the known and present. The free will of the individual rests on the judgments, manners, and habits of the people, which have arisen without reflection from a universal human instinct. Uniform ideas among nations unacquainted with one another are motived in a common truth. History is the development of human nature; in it neither chance nor fate rules, but the legislative power of providence, in virtue of which men through their own freedom progressively realize the idea of human nature. The universal course of civilization is that culture transfers its abode from the forests and huts into villages, cities, and, finally, into academies; the nature of the nations is at first rude, then stern, gradually it becomes mild, nay, effeminate, and finally wanton; at first men feel only that which is necessary, later they regard the useful, the convenient, the agreeable and attractive, until the luxury sprung from the sense for the beautiful degenerates into a foolish misuse of things. Vico divides antiquity into three periods: the divine (theocracy), the heroic (aristocracy), and the human (democracy and monarchy). The same course of things repeats itself in the nations of later times: to the patriarchal dominion of the fanciful, myth-making Orient correspond the spiritual states of the migrations; to the old Greek aristocracy, the chivalry and robbery of the period of the Crusades; to the republicanism and the monarchy of later antiquity, the modern period, which gives even the citizens and peasants a share in the universal equality. If European culture had not been transplanted to America, the same three-act drama of human development would there be playing. Vico carries this threefold division into his consideration of manners, laws, languages, character, etc.
[Footnote 1: Vico: Principles of a New Science of the Common Nature of Nations, 1725; Works, in six volumes, edited by G. Ferrari, 1835-37, new ed.. 1853 seq. On Vico cf. K. Werner, 1877 and 1879. [Also Flint"s Vico, Blackwood"s Philosophical Cla.s.sics, 1884.-TR.]]
If Vico antic.i.p.ates the Hegelian view of history, Antonio Genovesi (1712-69), who also taught at the University of Naples, and while the former was still living, shows himself animated by a presentiment of the Kantian criticism.[1] Appreciating Leibnitz and Locke, and appropriating the idea of the monads from the one and the unknowableness of substance from the other, he reaches the conviction-according to statements in his letters-that sense-bodies are nothing but the appearances of intelligible unities; that each being for us is an activity, whose substratum and ground remains unknown to us; that self-consciousness and the knowledge of external impressions yield phenomena alone, through the elaboration of which we produce the intellectual worlds of the sciences. For the rest, Genovesi thus advises his friends: Study the world, devote yourselves to languages and to mathematics, think more about men than about the things above us, and leave metaphysical vagaries to the monks! His countrymen honor in him the man who first included ethics and politics in philosophical instruction, and who used the Italian language both from the desk and in his writings, holding that a nation whose scientific works are not composed in its own tongue is barbarian.
[Footnote 1: In the following account we have made use of a translation of the concluding section of Francesco Florentine"s Handbook of the History of Philosophy, 1879-81, which was most kindly placed at our disposal by Dr. J. Mainzer. Cf. La Filosofia Contemporanea in Italia, 1876, by the same author; further, Bonatelli, Die Philosophic in Italien seit, 1815; Zeitschrift fur Philosophic und philosophische Kritik, vol. liv. 1869, p. 134 seq.; and especially, K. Werner, Die Italienische Philosophic des XIX. Jahrhunderts, 5 vols., 1884-86. [The English reader may be referred to the appendix on Italian philosophy in vol. ii. of the English translation of Ueberweg, by Vincenzo Botta; and to Barzellotti"s "Philosophy in Italy," Mind, vol. in. 1878.-TR.]]
The sensationalism of Condillac, starting from Parma, gained influence over Melchiore Gioja (1767-1828; Statistical Logic, 1803; Ideology, 1822) and Giandomenico Romagnosi (1761-1835; What is the Sound Mind? 1827), but not without experiencing essential modification from both. The importance of these men, moreover, lies more in the sphere of social philosophy than in the sphere of noetics.
Of the three greatest Italian philosophers of this century, Galluppi, Rosmini, and Gioberti, the first named is more in sympathy with the Kantian position than he himself will confess. Pasquale Galluppi[1] (1770-1846; from 1831 professor at Naples) adheres to the principle of experience, but does not conceive experience as that which is sensuously given, but as the elaboration of this through the synthetic relations (rapporti) of ident.i.ty and difference, which proceed from the activity of the mind. Vincenzo de Grazia (Essay on the Reality of Human Knowledge, 1839-42), who holds all relations to be objective, and Ottavio Colecchi (died 1847; Philosophical Investigations, 1843), who holds them all subjective, oppose the view of Galluppi that some are objective and others subjective. According to De Grazia judgment is observation, not connection; it finds out the relations contained in the data of sensation; it discovers, but does not produce them. Colecchi reduces the Kantian categories to two, substance and cause. Testa, Borelli (1824), and, among the younger men, Cantoni, are Kantians; Labriola is an Herbartian.
[Footnote 1: Galluppi: Philosophical Essay on the Critique of Knowledge, 1819 seq.; Lectures on Logic and Metaphysics, 1832 seq.; Philosophy of the Will, 1832 seq.; On the System of Fichte, or Considerations on Transcendental Idealism and Absolute Rationalism, 1841. By the Letters on the History of Philosophy from Descartes to Kant, 1827, in the later editions to Cousin, he became the founder of this discipline in his native land.]
Antonio Rosmini-Serbati[1] (born 1797 at Rovereto, died 1855 at Stresa) regards knowledge as the common product of sensibility and understanding, the former furnishing the matter, the latter the form. The form is one: the Idea of being which precedes all judgment, which does not come from myself, which is innate, and apprehensible by immediate inner perception (essere ideale, ente universale). The pure concepts (substance, cause, unity, necessity) arise when the reflecting reason a.n.a.lyzes this general Idea of being; the mixed Ideas (s.p.a.ce, time, motion; body, spirit), when the understanding applies it to sensuous experience. The universal Idea of being and the particular existences are in their being identical, but in their mode of existence different. In his posthumous Theosophy, 1859 seq., Rosmini no longer makes the universal being receive its determinations from without, but produce them from its own inner nature by means of an a priori development. Vincenzo Gioberti[1] (born 1801 in Turin, died 1852 at Paris) has been compared as a patriot with Fichte, and in his cast of thought with Spinoza. In place of Rosmini"s "psychologism," which was advanced by Descartes and which leads to skepticism, he seeks to subst.i.tute "ontologism," which is alone held capable of reconciling science and the Catholic religion. By immediate intuition (the content of which Gioberti comprehends in the formula "Being creates the existences") we cognize the absolute as the creative ground of two series, the series of thought and the series of reality. The endeavors of Rosmini and Gioberti to bring the reason into harmony with the faith of the Church were fiercely attacked by Giussepe Ferrari (1811-76) and Ausonio Franchi (1853), while Frances...o...b..natelli (Thought and Cognition, 1864) and Terenzio Mamiani (1800-85; Confessions of a Metaphysician, 1865), follow a line of thought akin to the Platonizing views of the first named thinkers. The review Filosofia delle Scuole Italiane, called into life by Mamiani in 1870, has been continued since 1886 under the direction of L. Ferri as the Rivista Italiana di Filosofia.
[Footnote 1: Rosmini: New Essay on the Origin of Ideas, 1830 (English translation, 1883-84); Principles of Moral Science, 1831; Philosophy of Right, 1841.] [Footnote B: Gioberti: Introduction to the Study of Philosophy, 1840; Philosophical Errors of A. Rosmini, 1842; On the Beautiful, 1841; On the Good, 1842; Protology edited by Ma.s.sari, 1857. On both cf. R. Seydel, Zeitschrift fur Philosophie, 1859.]
The Thomistic doctrine has many adherents in Italy, among whom the Jesuit M. Liberatore (1865) may be mentioned. The Hegelian philosophy has also found favor there (especially in Naples), as well as positivism. The former is favored by Vera, Mariano, Ragnisco, and Spaventa (died 1885); the Rivista di Filosofia Scientifica, 1881 seq., founded by Morselli, supports the latter, and E. Caporali"s La Nuova Scienza, 1884, moves in a similar direction. Pietro Siciliani (On the Revival of the Positive Philosophy in Italy, 1871) makes the third, the critical, period of philosophy by which scholasticism is overthrown and the reason made authoritative, commence with Vico, and bases his doctrine on Vico"s formula: The conversion (transposition) of the verum and the factum, and vice versa. Subsequently he inclined to positivism, which he had previously opposed, and among the representatives of which we may mention, further, R. Ardig of Pavia (Psychology as Positive Science, 1870; The Ethics of Positivism, 1885; Philosophical Works, 1883 seq.), and Andrea Angiulli of Naples (died 1890; Philosophy and the Schools, 1889), who explain matter and spirit as two phenomena of the same essence; further, Giuseppe Sergi, Giovanni Cesca, and the psychiatrist, C. Lombroso, the head of the positivistic school of penal law.
2. France.
Among the French philosophers of this century[1] none can compare in far-reaching influence, both at home and abroad, with Auguste Comte,[2] the creator of positivism (born at Montpellier in 1798, died at Paris in 1857), whose chief work, the Course of Positive Philosophy, 6 vols., appeared in 1830 42. [English version, "freely translated and condensed," by Harriet Martineau, 1853.]
[Footnote 1: Accounts of French philosophy in the nineteenth century have been given by Taine (1857, 3d ed., 1867); Janet (La Philosophie Francaise Contemporaine, 2d ed., 1879); A. Franck; Ferraz (3 vols., 1880-89); Felix Ravaisson (2d ed., 1884); the Swede, J. Borelius (Glances at the Present Position of Philosophy in Germany and France, German translation by Jonas, 1887); [and Ribot, Mind, vol. ii., 1877].]
[Footnote 2: On Comte cf. B. Punjer, Jahrbucher fur protestantische Theologie, 1878; R. Eucken, Zur Wurdigung Comtes und des Positivismus, in the Aufsatze zum Zellerjubilaum, 1887; Maxim. Brutt, Der Positivismus, Programme of the Realgymnasium des Johanneums, Hamburg, 1889; [also, besides Mill, p. 560, John Morley, Encyclopedia Britannica, vol. vi. pp. 229-238, and E. Caird, The Social Philosophy and Religion of Comte, 1885.-Tr.]]
The positive philosophy seeks to put an end to the h.o.a.ry error that anything more is open to our knowledge than given facts-phenomena and their relations. We do not know the essence of phenomena, and just as little their first causes and ultimate ends; we know-by means of observation, experiment, and comparison-only the constant relations between phenomena, the relations of succession and of similarity among facts, the uniformities of which we call their laws. All knowledge is, therefore, relative; there is no absolute knowledge, for the inmost essence of facts, and likewise their origin, the way in which they are produced, is for us impenetrable. We know only, and this by experience, that the phenomenon A is invariably connected with the phenomenon B, that the second always follows on the first, and call the constant antecedent of a phenomenon its cause. We know such causes only as are themselves phenomena. The fact that our knowledge is limited to the succession and coexistence of phenomena is not to be lamented as a defect: the only knowledge which is attainable by us is at the same time the only useful knowledge, that which lends us practical power over phenomena. When we inquire into causes we desire to hasten or hinder the effect, or to change it as we wish, or at least to antic.i.p.ate it in order to make our preparations accordingly. Such foresight and control of events can be attained only through a knowledge of their laws, their order of succession, their phenomenal causes. Savoir pour prevoir. But, although the prevision of facts is the only knowledge which we need, men have always sought after another, an "absolute" knowledge, or have even believed that they were in possession of it; the forerunners of the positive philosophy themselves, Bacon and Descartes, have been entangled in this prejudice. A long intellectual development was required to reach the truth, that our knowledge does not extend beyond the cognition of the succession and coexistence of facts; that the same procedure must be extended to abstract speculation which the common mind itself makes use of in its single actions. On the other hand, the positive philosophy, notwithstanding its rejection of metaphysics, is far from giving its sanction to empiricism. Every isolated, empirical observation is useless and uncertain; it obtains value and usefulness only when it is defined and explained by a theory, and combined with other observations into a law-this makes the difference between the observations of the scholar and the layman.
The positive stage of a science, which begins when we learn to explain phenomena by their laws, is preceded by two others: a theological stage, which ascribes phenomena to supposed personal powers, and a metaphysical stage, which ascribes them to abstract natural forces. These three periods denote the childhood, the youth, and the manhood of science.
The earliest view of the world is the theological view, which derives the events of the world from the voluntary acts of supernatural intelligent beings. The crude view of nature sees in each individual thing a being animated like man; later man accustoms himself to think of a whole cla.s.s of objects as governed by one invisible being, by a divinity; finally the mult.i.tude of divinities gives place to a single G.o.d, who creates, maintains, and rules the universe, and by extraordinary acts, by miracles, interferes in the course of events. Thus fetichism (in its highest form, astrolatry), polytheism, and monotheism are the stages in the development of the theological mode of thought. In the second, the metaphysical, period, the acts of divine volition are replaced by ent.i.ties, by abstract concepts, which are regarded as realities, as the true reality back of phenomena. A force, a power, an occult property or essence is made to dwell in things; the mysterious being which directs events is no longer called G.o.d, but "Nature," and invested with certain inclinations, with a horror of a vacuum, an aversion to breaks, a tendency toward the best, a vis medicatrix, etc. Here belong, also, the vegetative soul of Aristotle, the vital force and the plastic impulse of modern investigators. Finally the positive stage is reached, when all such abstractions, which are even yet conceived as half personal and acting voluntarily, are abandoned, and the unalterable and universally valid laws of phenomena established by observation and experiment alone. But to explain the laws of nature themselves transcends, according to Comte, the fixed limits of human knowledge. The beginning of the world lies outside the region of the knowable, atheism is no better grounded than the theistic hypothesis, and if Comte a.s.serts that a blindly acting mechanism is less probable than a world-plan, he is conscious that he is expressing a mere conjecture which can never be raised to the rank of a scientific theory. The origin and the end of things are insoluble problems, in answering which no progress has yet been made in spite of man"s long thought about them. Only that which lies intermediate between the two inscrutable termini of the world is an object of knowledge.
It is not only the human mind in general that exhibits this advance from the theological, through the metaphysical, to the positive mode of thought, but each separate science goes through the same three periods-only that the various disciplines have developed with unequal rapidity. While some have already culminated in the positive method of treatment, others yet remain caught in the theological period of beginnings, and others still are in the metaphysical transition stage. Up to the present all three phases of development exist side by side, and even among the objects of the most highly developed sciences there are some which we continue to regard theologically; these are the ones which we do not yet understand how to calculate, as the changes of the weather or the spread of epidemics. Which science first attained the positive state, and in what order have the others followed? With this criterion Comte constructs his cla.s.sification of the sciences, in which, however, he takes account only of those sciences which he calls abstract, that is, those which treat of "events" in distinction from "objects." The abstract sciences (as biology) investigate the most general laws of nature, valid for all phenomena, from which the particular phenomena which experience presents to us cannot be deduced, but on the basis of which an entirely different world were also possible. The concrete sciences, on the other hand (e.g., botany and zoology), have to do with the actually given combinations of phenomena. The former follow out each separate one of the general laws through all its possible modes of operation, the latter consider only the combination of laws given in an object. Thus oaks and squirrels are the result of very many laws, inasmuch as organisms are dependent not only on biological, but also on physical, chemical, and mathematical laws.
Comte enumerates six of these abstract sciences, and arranges them in such a way that each depends on the truths of the preceding, and adds to these its own special truths, while the first (the most general and simplest) presupposes no earlier laws whatever, but is presupposed by all the later ones. According to this principle of increasing particularity and complexity the following scale results: (i) Mathematics, in which the science of number, as being absolutely without presuppositions, precedes geometry and mechanics; (2) Astronomy; (3) Physics (with five subordinate divisions, in which the first place belongs to the theory of weight, and the last to electrology, while the theory of heat, acoustics, and optics are intermediate); (4) Chemistry; (5) Biology or physiology; (6) Sociology or the science of society. This sequence, which is determined by the increasing complexity and increasing dependence of the objects of the sciences, is the order in which they have historically developed-before the special laws of the more complicated sciences can be ascertained, the general laws of the more simple ones must be accurately known. It is also advisable to follow this same order of increasing complexity and difficulty in the study of the sciences, for acquaintance with the methods of those which are elementary is the best preparation for the pursuit of the higher ones. In arithmetic and geometry we study positivity at its source; in the sociological spirit it finds its completion.
Mathematics entered on its positive stage at quite an early period, chemistry and biology only in recent times, while, in the highest and most complicated science, the metaphysical (negative, liberal, democratic, revolutionary) mode of thought is still battling with the feudalism of the theological mode. To make sociology positive is the mission of the second half of Comte"s work, and to this goal his philosophical activity had been directed from the beginning. Comte rates the efforts of political economy very low, with the exception of the work of Adam Smith, and will not let them pa.s.s as a preparation for scientific sociology, holding that they are based on false abstractions. Psychology, which is absent from the above enumeration, is to form a branch of biology, and exclusively to use the objective method, especially phrenology (to the three faculties of the soul, "heart, character, and intellect," correspond three regions of the brain). Self-observation, so Comte, making an impossibility out of a difficulty, teaches, can at most inform us concerning our feelings and pa.s.sions, and not at all concerning our own thinking, since reflection brings to a stop the process to which it attends, and thus destroys its object. The sole source of knowledge is external sense-perception. In his Positive Polity Comte subsequently added a seventh fundamental science, ethics or anthropology.
Sociology,[1] the elevation of which to the rank of a positive science is the princ.i.p.al aim of our philosopher, uses the same method as the natural sciences, namely, the interrogation and interpretation of experience by means of induction and deduction, only that here the usual relation of these two instruments of knowledge is reversed. Between inorganic and organic philosophy, both of which proceed from the known to the unknown, there is this difference, that in the former the advance is from the elements, as that which alone is directly accessible, to the whole which is composed of them, while in the latter the opposite is the case, since here the whole is better known than the individual parts of which it consists. Hence, in inorganic science the laws of the composite phenomena are obtained by deduction (from the laws of the simple facts inductively discovered) and confirmed by observation; in sociology, on the other hand, the laws are found through (historical) experience, and deductively verified (from the nature of man as established by biology) only in the sequel. Since the phenomena of society are determined not merely by the general laws of human nature, but, above all, by the growing influence of the past, historical studies must form the basis of sociological inquiry.
[Footnote 1: Cf. Krohn: Beitrage zur Kenntniss und Wurdigung der Soziologie, Jahrbucher fur Nationalokonomie und Statistik, New Series, vols. i. and iii., 1880 and 1881.]
Of the two parts of sociology, the Statics, which investigates the equilibrium (the conditions of the existence, the permanence, and the coexistence of social states), and Dynamics, which investigates the movement (the laws of the progress) of social phenomena, the first was in essence established by Aristotle. The fundamental concept of the Statics is the consensus, the harmony, solidarity, or mutual dependence of the members of the social organism. All its parts, science, art, religion, politics, industry, must be considered together; they stand in such intimate harmony and correlation that, for every important change of condition in one of these parts, we may be certain of finding corresponding changes in all the others, as its causes and effects. Besides the selfish propensities, there dwell in man an equally original, but intrinsically weaker, impulse toward a.s.sociation, which instinctively leads him to seek the society of his fellows without reflection on the advantages to be expected therefrom, and a moderate degree of benevolence. As altruism conflicts with egoism, so the reason, together with the impulse to get ahead, which can only be satisfied through labor, is in continual conflict with the inborn disinclination to regulated activity (especially to mental effort). The character of society depends on the strength of the n.o.bler incentives, that is, the social inclinations and intellectual vivacity in opposition to the egoistic impulses and natural inertness. The former nourish the progressive, the latter the conservative spirit. Women are as much superior to men in the stronger development of their sympathy and sociability as they are inferior in insight and reason. Society is a group of families, not of individuals, and domestic life is the foundation, preparation, and pattern for social life, Comte praises the family, the connecting link between the individual and the species, as a school of unselfishness, and approves the strictness of the Catholic Church in regard to the indissolubility of the marriage relation. He remarks the evil consequences of the constantly increasing division of labor, which makes man egoistic and narrow-minded, since it hides rather than reveals the social significance of the employment of the individual and its connection with the welfare of the community, and seeks for a means of checking them. Besides the universal education of youth, he demands the establishment of a spiritual power to bring the general interest continually to the minds of the members of all cla.s.ses and avocations, to direct education, and to enjoy the same authority in moral and intellectual matters as is conceded to the astronomer in the affairs of his department. The function of this power would be to occupy the position heretofore held by the clergy. Comte conceives it as composed of positive philosophers, entirely independent of the secular authorities, but in return cut off from political influence and from wealth. Secular authority, on the other hand, he wishes put into the hands of an aristocracy of capitalists, with the bankers at the head of these governing leaders of industry.
The Dynamics, the science of the temporal succession of social phenomena, makes use of the principle of development. The progress of society, which is to be regarded as a great individual, consists in the growing predominance of the higher, human activities over the lower and animal. The humanity in us, it is true, will never attain complete ascendency over the animality, but we can approach nearer and nearer to the ideal, and it is our duty to aid in this march of civilization. Although the law of progress holds good for all sides of mental life, for art, politics, and morals, as well as for science, nevertheless the most important factor in the evolution of the human race is the development of the intellect as the guiding power in us (though not in itself the strongest). Awakened first by the lower wants, the intellect a.s.sumes in increasing measure the guidance of human operations, and gives a determinate direction to the feelings. The pa.s.sions divide men, and, without the guidance of the speculative faculty, would mutually cripple one another; that which alone unites them into a collection force is a common belief, an idea. Ideas are related to feeling-to quote a comparison from John Stuart Mill"s valuable treatise Auguste Comte and Positivism, 3d ed., 1882, a work of which we have made considerable use-as the steersman who directs the ship is to the steam which drives it forward. Thus the history of humanity has been determined by the history of man"s intellectual convictions, and this in turn by the three familiar stages in the theory of the universe. With the development from the theological to the positive mode of thought is most intimately connected, further, the transition from the military to the industrial mode of life. As the religious spirit prepares the way for the scientific spirit, so without the dominion of the military spirit industry could not have been developed. It was only in the school of war that the earliest societies could learn order; slavery was beneficial in that through it labor was imposed upon the greater part of mankind in spite of their aversion to it. The political preponderance of the legists corresponds to the intermediate, metaphysical stage. The sociological law (discovered by Comte in the year 1822) harmonizes also with the customary division which separates the ancient from the modern world by the Middle Ages.
In his philosophy of history Comte gives the further application of these principles. Here he has won commendation even from his opponents for a sense of justice which merits respect and for his comprehensive view. The outlooks and proposals for the future here interspersed were in later writings[1] worked out into a comprehensive theory of the regeneration of society; the extravagant character of which has given occasion to his critics to make a complete division between the second, "subjective or sentimental," period of his thinking, in which the philosopher is said to be transformed into the high priest of a new religion, and the first, the positivistic period, although the major part of the qualities pointed out as characteristic of the former are only intensifications of some which may be shown to have been present in the latter. Beneath the surface of the most sober inquiry mystical and dictatorial tendencies pulsate in Comte from the beginning, and science was for him simply a means to human happiness. But now he no longer demands the independent pursuit of science in order to the attainment of this end, but only the believing acceptance of its results. The intellect is to be placed under the dominion of the heart, and only such use made of it as promises a direct advantage for humanity; the determination of what problems are most important at a given time belongs to the priesthood. The systematic unity or harmony of the mind demands this dominion of the feelings over thought. The religion of positivism, which has "love for its principle, order for its basis, and progress for its end," is a religion without G.o.d, and without any other immortality than a continuance of existence in the grateful memory of posterity. The dogmas of the positivist religion are scientific principles. Its public cultus with nine sacraments and a large number of annual festivals, is paid to the Grand etre "Humanity" (which is not omnipotent, but, on account of its composite character, most dependent, yet infinitely superior to any of its parts); and, besides this, s.p.a.ce, the earth, the universe, and great men of the past are objects of reverence. Private devotion consists in the adoration of living or dead women as our guardian angels. The ethics of the future declares the good of others to be the sole moral motive to action (altruism). Comte"s last work, the Philosophy of Mathematics, 1856, indulges in a most remarkable numerical mysticism. The historical influence exercised by Comte through his later writings is extremely small in comparison with that of his chief work. Besides Blignieres and Robinet, E. Littre, the well-known author of the Dictionnaire de la Langue Francaise (1863 seq.) who was the most eminent of Comte"s disciples and the editor of his Collected Works (1867 seq.), has written on the life and work of the master. Comte"s school divided into two groups-the apostates, with Littre (1801-81) at their head, who reject the subjective phase and hold fast to the earlier doctrine, and the faithful, who until 1877, when a new division between strict and liberal Comteans took place within this group, gathered about P. Laffitte (born 1823).[2] The leader of the English positivists is Frederic Harrison (born 1831). Positivistic societies exist also in Sweden, Brazil, Chili, and elsewhere. Positivism has been developed in an independent spirit by J.S. Mill and Herbert Spencer.
[Footnote 1: Positivist Catechism, 1852 [English translation by Congreve, 1858, 2d ed., 1883]; System of Positive Polity, 4 vols., 1851-54 [English translation, 1875-77]. Cf. Punjer, A. Comtes "Religion der Menschheit" in the Jahrbucher fur protestantische Theologie, 1882.]
[Footnote 2: On this division cf. E. Caro, M. Littre et le Positivisme, 1883, and Herm. Gruber (S.J.), Der Positivismus vom Tode Comtes bis auf unsere Tage, 1891.]
The following brief remarks on the course of French philosophy may also be added. Against the sensationalism of Condillac as continued by Cabanis, Destutt de Tracy (see above, pp. 259-260), and various physiologists, a twofold reaction a.s.serted itself. One manifestation of this proceeded from the theological school, represented by the "traditionalists" Victor de Bonald (1818), Joseph de Maistre (1753-1821; St. Petersburg Soirees, 1821), and F. de Lamennais (1782-1854), who, however, after his break with the Church (Words of a Believer, 1834) developed in his Sketch of a Philosophy, 1841 seq., an ontological system after Italian and German models. The other came from the spiritualistic school, at whose head stood Maine de Biran[1] (1766-1824; On the Foundations of Psychology; his Works have been edited by Cousin, 1841, Naville, 1859, and Bertrand) and Royer Collard (1763-1845). Their pupil Victor Cousin (1792-1867; Works, 1846-50), who admired Hegel also, became the head of the eclectic school. Cousin will neither deny metaphysics with the Scotch, nor construe metaphysics a priori with the Germans, but with Descartes bases it on psychology. For a time an idealist of the Hegelian type (infinite and finite, G.o.d and the world, are mutually inseparable; the Ideas reveal themselves in history, in the nations, in great men), he gradually sank back to the position of common sense. His adherents, among whom Theodore Jouffroy (died 1842) was the most eminent, have done special service in the history of philosophy. From Cousin"s school, which was opposed by P. Leroux and J. Reynaud, have come Ravaisson, Saisset, Jules Simon, P. Janet (born 1823),[2] and E. Caro (born 1826; The Philosophy of Goethe, 1866). Kant has influenced Charles Renouvier (born 1817; Essays in General Criticism, 4 vols., 1854-64) and E. Vacherot (born 1809; Metaphysics and Science, 1858, 2d ed., 1863; Science and Consciousness, 1872).
[Footnote 1: Cf. E. Konig in Philosophische Monatshefte, vol. xxv. 1889, p.160 seq.]
[Footnote 2: Janet: History of Political Science in its Relations to Morals, 1858, 3d ed., 1887; German Materialism of the Present Day, 1864, English translation by Ma.s.son, 1866: The Family, 1855; The Philosophy of Happiness, 1862; The Brain and Thought, 1867; Elements of Morals, 1869 [English translation by Corson, 1884]; The Theory of Morals, 1874 [English translation by Mary Chapman, 1883]; Final Causes, 1876 [English translation by Affleck, with a preface by Flint, new ed., 1883].]
Among other thinkers of reputation we may mention the socialist Henri de Saint-Simon (1760-1825; Selected Works, 1859), the physiologist Claude Bernard (1813-78), the positivist H. Taine (1828-93; The Philosophy of Art, English translation by Durand, 2d ed., 1873; On Intelligence, 1872, English translation by Haye, 1871), E. Renan (1823-92; The Life of Jesus, 1863, English translation by Wilbour, Philosophical Dialogues and Fragments-English, 1883), the writer on aesthetics and ethics J.M. Guyau (The Problems of Contemporary Aesthetics, 1884; Sketch of an Ethic without Obligation or Sanction, 1885; The Irreligion of the Future, 1887), Alfred Fouillee (The Future of Metaphysics founded on Experience, 1889; Morals, Art, and Religion according to Guyau, 1889; The Evolutionism of the Idea-Forces, 1890), and the psychologist Th. Ribot,[1] editor of the Revue Philosophique (from 1876).
[Footnote 1: Ribot: Heredity, 2d ed., 1882 [English translation, 1875]; The Diseases of Memory, 1881 [English translation, 1882]; The Diseases of the Will, 1883 [English. 1884]; The Diseases of Personality, 1885 [English, 1887]; The Psychology of Attention, 1889 [English, 1890]; German Psychology of To-day, 2d ed., 1885 [English translation by Baldwin, 1886].]
3. Great Britain and America.
Prominent among the British philosophers of the nineteenth century[1] are Hamilton, Bentham, J.S. Mill, and Spencer. Hamilton is the leading representative of the Scottish School; Bentham is known as the advocate of utilitarianism; Mill, an exponent of the traditional empiricism of English thinking, develops the theory of induction and the principle of utility; Spencer combines an agnostic doctrine of the absolute and thoroughgoing evolution in the phenomenal world into a comprehensive philosophical system.[2] In recent years there has been a reaction against empirical doctrines on the basis of neo-Kantian and neo-Hegelian principles. Foremost among the leaders of this movement we may mention T.H. Green.
[Footnote 1: Cf. Harald Hoffding, Einleitung in die englische Philosophie unserer Zeit (Danish, 1874), German (with alterations and additions by the author) by H. Kurella, 1889; David Ma.s.son, Recent British Philosophy, 1865, 3d ed., 1877; Ribot, La Psychologie Anglaise Contemporaine, 1870, 2d ed., 1875 [English, 1874] Guyau, La Morale Anglaise Contemporaine, 1879 [Morris, British Thought and Thinkers, 1880; Porter, "On English and American Philosophy," Ueberweg"s History, English translation, vol. ii. pp. 348-460; O. Pfleiderer, Development of Theology, 1890, book iv.-TR.]]
[Footnote 2: Cf. on Mill and Spencer, Bernh. Punjer, Jahrbucher fur protestantische Theologie, 1878.]
The Scottish philosophy has been continued in the nineteenth century by James Mackintosh (Dissertation on the Progress of Ethical Philosophy, 1830, 3d ed., 1863), and William Whewell (History of the Inductive Sciences, 3d ed., 1857; Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences, 1840, 3d ed., 1858-60). Its most important representative is Sir William Hamilton[1] of Edinburgh (1788-1856), who, like Whewell, is influenced by Kant. Hamilton bases philosophy on the facts of consciousness, but, in ant.i.thesis to the a.s.sociational psychology, emphasizes the mental activity of discrimination and judgment. Our knowledge is relative, and relations its only object. Consciousness can never transcend itself, it is bound to the ant.i.thesis of subject and object, and conceives the existent under relations of s.p.a.ce and time. Hence the unconditioned is inaccessible to knowledge and attainable by faith alone. Among Hamilton"s followers belong Mansel (Metaphysics, 3d. ed., 1875; Limits of Religions Thought, 5th ed., 1870) and Veitch. The Scottish doctrine was vigorously opposed by J.F. Ferrier (1808-64; Inst.i.tutes of Metaphysics, 2d ed., 1856), who himself developed an idealistic standpoint.
[Footnote 1: Hamilton: Discussions on Philosophy and Literature, 1852, 3d ed., 1866; Lectures on Metaphysics, 2d ed., 1860, and on Logic, 2d ed., 1866, edited by his pupils, Mansel and Veitch; Reid"s Works, with notes and dissertations, 1846, 7th ed., 1872. On Hamilton cf. Veitch, 1882, 1883 [Monck, 1881].]
In the United States the Scottish philosophy has exercised a wide influence. In recent times it has been strenuously advocated, chiefly in the spirit of Reid, by James McCosh (a native of Scotland, but since 1868 in America; The Intuitions of the Mind, 3d ed., 1872; The Laws of Discursive Thought, new ed., 1891; First and Fundamental Truths, 1889); while in Noah Porter (died 1892; The Human Intellect, new ed., 1876; The Elements of Moral Science, 1885) it appears modified by elements from German thinking.
Jeremy Bentham[1] (1748-1832) is noteworthy for his attempt to revive Epicureanism in modern form. Virtue is the surest means to pleasure, and pleasure the only self-evident good. Every man strives after happiness, but not every one in the right way. The honest man calculates correctly, the criminal falsely; hence a careful calculation of the value of the various pleasures, and a prudent use of the means to happiness, is the first condition of virtue; in this the easily attainable minor joys, whose summation amounts to a considerable quantum, must not be neglected. The value of a pleasure is measured by its intensity, duration, certainty, propinquity, fecundity in the production of further pleasure, purity or freedom from admixture of consequent pain, and extent to the greatest possible number of persons. Every virtuous action results in a balance of pleasure. Inflict no evil on thyself or others from which a balance of good will not result. The end of morality is the "greatest happiness of the greatest number," in the production of which each has first to care for his own welfare: whoever injures himself more than he serves others acts immorally, for he diminishes the sum of happiness in the world; the interest of the individual coincides with the interest of society. The two cla.s.ses of virtues are prudence and benevolence. The latter is a natural, though not a disinterested affection: happiness enjoyed with others is greater than happiness enjoyed alone. Love is a pleasure-giving extension of the individual; we serve others to be served by them.
[Footnote 1: Bentham: Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, 1789; new ed., 1823, reprinted 1876; Deontology, 1834, edited by Bowring, who also edited the Works, 1838-43. The Principles of Civil and Criminal Legislation, edited in French from Bentham"s ma.n.u.scripts by his pupil Etienne Dumont (1801, 2d ed., 1820; English by Hildreth, 5th ed., 1887), was translated into German with notes by F.E. Beneke, 1830.]