Zeno, of Cittium, a city of Cyprus, an elder contemporary of Antigonus Gonatas, king of Macedon, is generally given as the founder of the Stoical school. Deprived of his property by shipwreck, he took refuge in philosophy, incited also by an inner bias to such pursuits. He at first became a disciple of the Cynic Crateas, then of Stilpo, one of the Megarians, and lastly he betook himself to the Academy, where he heard the lessons of Xenocrates and Polemo. Hence the eclectic character of his teaching. It has in fact been charged against him, that differing but little if at all from the earlier schools, he attempted to form a school of his own, with a system wherein he had changed nothing but names. He opened a school at Athens, in the “variegated porch,” so called from the paintings of Polygnotus, with which it was adorned, whence his adherents received the name of “philosophers of the porch” (Stoics). Zeno is said to have presided over his school for fifty-eight years, and at a very advancedage to have put an end to his existence. He is praised for the temperance and the austerity of his habits, while his abstemiousness is proverbial. The monument in his honor, erected after his death by the Athenians, at the instance of Antigonus, bore the high but simple eulogium that his life had been in unison with his philosophy.Cleantheswas the successor of Zeno in the Stoic school, and faithfully carried out the method of his master. Cleanthes was succeeded byChrysippus, who died about 208 B. C. He has been regarded as the chief prop of this school, in which respect it was said of him, that without a Chrysippus there would never have been a Porch. At all events, as Chrysippus was an object of the greatest veneration, and of almost undisputed authority with the later Stoics, he ought to be considered as the principal founder of the school. He was a writer so voluminous, that his works have been said to amount to seven hundred and five, among which, however, were repeated treatises upon the same propositions, and citations without measure from poets and historians, given to prove and illustrate his opinions. Not one of all his writings has come down to us. Chrysippus closes the series of the philosophers who founded the Porch. The later heads of the school, asPanætius, the friend of the younger Scipio (his famous work De Officiis, Cicero has elaborated in his treatise of the same name), andPosidonius, may be classed with Cicero, Pompeius, and others, and were eclectic in their teachings. The Stoics have connected philosophy most intimately with the duties of practical life. Philosophy is with them the practice of wisdom, the exercise of virtue. Virtue and science are with them one, in so far at least that they divide virtue in reference to philosophy into physical, ethical, and logical. But though they go on according to this threefold division, and treat of logic and physics, and though they even rank physics higher than either of the other sciences, regarding it as the mother of the ethical and the science of the Divine, yet do we find their characteristic standpoint most prominently in their theory of morals.
1.Logic.—We have already said that it is the breach betweensubject and object, which forms the basis of all post-Aristotelian philosophy. The beginning of this philosophy of subjectivity is found with the Stoics. The feature most worthy of notice in their logic, is the striving after a subjective criterion of the truth, by which they might distinguish the true representation from the false. Since they limited all scientific knowledge to the knowledge of the senses, they found this criterion in that which was evident in the sensuous impression. They conceived that they had answered the whole problem, in affirming that the true or conceivable representation reveals not only itself, but also its object: it, they said, is nothing else than a representation which is produced by a present object in a manner like itself.
2.Physics.—In their physics, where they follow for the most part Heraclitus, the Stoics are distinguished from their predecessors, especially from Plato and Aristotle, by their thoroughly carried out proposition that nothing uncorporeal exists, that every thing essential is corporeal (just as in their logic they had sought to derive all knowledge from the sensuous perception). This sensualism or materialism of the Stoics which, as we have seen in their logic, lies at the basis of their theory of knowledge, might seem foreign to all their moral and idealistic tendencies, but is clearly explained from their subjective standpoint, for, when the thought has become so intensely engrossed in the subject, the objective world can only be regarded as a corporeal and material existence. The most immediate consequence of such a view is their pantheism. Aristotle before them had separated the Divine Being from the world, as the pure and eternal form from the eternal matter; but so far as this separation implied a distinction which was not simply logical, but actual and real, the Stoics would not admit it. It seemed to them impossible to dissever God from matter, and they therefore considered God and the world as power and its manifestation, and thus as one. Matter is the passive ground of things, the original substratum for the divine activity: God is the active and formative energy of matter dwelling within it, and essentially united to it: the world is the body of God, and God is the soul of the world. The Stoics, therefore, consideredGod and matter as one identical substance, which, on the side of its passive and changeable capacity they call matter, and on the side of its active and changeless energy, God. But since they, as already remarked, considered the world as ensouled by God in the light of a living and rational being, they were obliged to treat the conception of God not only in a physical but also in its ethical aspect. God is not only in the world as the ruling and living energy of this great ζῷον (animal), but he is also the universal reason which rules the whole world and penetrates all matter; he is the gracious Providence which cares for the individual and the whole; he is wise, and is the ground of that natural law which commands the good and forbids the evil; he punishes and rewards; he possesses a perfect and blessed life. But accustomed to regard every thing spiritual only in a sensuous way, the Stoics were obliged to clothe this ideal conception of God in a material form, apprehending it as the vital warmth or an original fire, analogous to the view of the earlier natural philosophers, who held that the soul, and even reason itself, consisted in the vital warmth. The Stoics express this thought in different ways. At one time they call God the rational breath which passes through all nature; at another, the artistic fire which fashions or begets the universe; and still again the ether; which, however, they hardly distinguish from the artistic fire. From these varying views, we see that it did not belong to the Stoics to represent the conception of God in any determinate kind of existence. They availed themselves of these expressions only to indicate that God, as the universal animating energy in the world, could not be disconnected from a corporeal agency. This identification of God and the world, according to which the Stoics regarded the whole formation of the universe as but a period in the development of God, renders their remaining doctrine concerning the world very simple. Every thing in the world seemed to them to be permeated by the divine life, and was regarded as but the flowing out of this most perfect life through certain channels, until it returned in a necessary circle back again to itself. It is not necessary here to speak more closely of the physics of this school.
3.The Ethics.—The ethics of the Stoics is most closely connected with their physics. In the physics we saw the rational order of the universe as it existed through the divine thought. In the ethics, the highest law of human action, and thus the whole moral legality of life is dependent upon this rational order and conformity to law in universal nature, and the highest good or the highest end of our strivings is to shape our life according to this universal law, to live in conformity with the harmony of the world or with nature. “Follow nature,” or “live in harmony with nature,” is the moral maxim of the Stoics. More accurately: live in harmony with thy rational nature so far as this has not been distorted nor refined by art, but is held in its natural simplicity.
From this moral principle, in which we have also the Stoic conception of virtue, the peculiarities of their theory of morals follow with logical necessity.
(1.)Respecting the Relation of Virtue to Pleasure.—When the demand is made that the life should be in conformity with nature, the individual becomes wholly subjected to the universal, and every personal end is excluded. Hence pleasure, which of all ends is the most individual, must be disregarded. In pleasure that activity in which blessedness consists is abated, and this could only appear to the Stoics as a restraint of life, and thus as an evil. Pleasure is not in conformity with nature, and is no end of nature, says Cleanthes; and though other Stoics relax a little from the strictness of this opinion, and admit that pleasure may be according to nature, and is to be considered in a certain degree as a good, yet they all held fast to the doctrine, that it has no moral worth and is no end of nature, but is only something which is accidentally connected with the free and fitting activity of nature, while itself is not an activity, but a passive condition of the soul. In this lies the whole severity of the Stoic doctrine of morals; every thing personal is cast aside, every external end of action is foreign to the moral man, the action in wisdom is the only good. From this follows directly:
(2.)The View of the Stoics Concerning External Good.—If virtue, as the activity in conformity to nature, is exclusively agood, and if it alone can lead to happiness, then external good of every kind is something morally indifferent, and can neither be the object of our striving nor the end of any moral action. The action itself and not that towards which it tends is good. Hence such special ends as health, wealth, &c., are in themselves worthless and indifferent. They may result either in good or evil, and when deprived of them the happiness of the virtuous man is not destroyed. The Stoics yield from the rigor of their fundamental principle only in a single instance. They admit that there may be a distinction among indifferent things; that while none of these can be called a moral good, yet some may be preferable to others, and that the preferable, so far as it contributes to a life in conformity to nature, should enter into the account of a moral life. So the sage will prefer health and wealth when these are balanced in the choice with sickness and poverty, but though these objects have been rationally chosen, he does not esteem them as really good, for they are not the highest, they are inferior to the virtuous acting, in comparison with which every thing else sinks to insignificance. In making this distinction between the good and the preferable, we see how the Stoics exclude from the good every thing relative, and hold fast to it alone in its highest significance.
(3.) This abstract apprehension of the conception of virtue is still farther verified in the rigid antagonism which the Stoics affirmed between virtue and not-virtue, reason and sense. Either, they conclude, reason is awakened in the life of man and holds the mastery over him, or it is not awakened, and he serves his irrational instincts. In the former case we have a good and in the latter a bad man, while between these two cases as between virtue and vice, there is no mean. And since virtue cannot be partially possessed, but the man must be wholly virtuous or not at all, it follows that virtue as such is without degree, just as truth is, and hence also all good acts are equally good, because they spring from the full freedom of the reason, and all vicious ones equally bad, because they are impelled by the irrational instinct.
(4.) But this abstractedness of the moral standpoint, this rigid opposition of reason and irrationality, of the highest good and theindividual good, of virtue and pleasure, has no power to furnish a system of concrete moral duties. The universal moral principle of the Stoics fails in its applicability to the individual instance. The Stoic morals has no concrete principle of moral self-determination. How must we act in every individual instance, in every moral relation, so as to act according to nature? To this inquiry Stoicism can give no answer. Its system of particular duties is thus wholly without a scientific form, and is only held together by some universal conceptions which it contains. For the most part they satisfy themselves with describing in general terms the action according to nature, and with portraying their ideal of the wise man. The characteristics which they give this ideal are partly paradoxical. The wise man is free even in chains, for he acts from himself unmoved by fear or desire; the wise man alone is king, for he alone is not bound by laws and owes fealty to no one; he is the true rich man, the true priest, prophet, and poet. He is exalted above all law and every custom; even that which is most despicable and base—deception, suicide, murder—he may commit at a proper time and in a virtuous character. In a word the Stoics describe their wise man as a god, and yield it to him to be proud and to boast of his life like Zeus. But where shall we find such a sage? Certainly not among the living. In the time long ago there may have been a perfect sage of such a pattern; but now, and for a long time back, are men at best only fools who strive after wisdom and virtue. The conception of the wise man represented, therefore, to the Stoics only an ideal, the actualization of which we should strive after, though without ever hoping to reach it; and yet their system of particular duties is almost wholly occupied in portraying this unreal and abstract ideal—a contradiction in which it is seen most clearly that their whole standpoint is one of abstract subjectivity.
The Epicurean school arose at Athens, almost contemporaneously with the Porch, though perhaps a little earlier than this. Epicurus, its founder, was born 342 B.C., six years after the death of Plato. Of his youth and education little is known. In his thirty-sixth year he opened a philosophical school at Athens, over which he presided till his death, 271 B.C. His disciples and adherents formed a social league, in which they were united by the closest band of friendship, illustrating the general condition of things in Greece after the time of Alexander, when the social took the place of the decaying poetical life. Epicurus himself compared his society to the Pythagorean fraternity, although the community of goods, which forms an element in the latter, Epicurus excludes, affirming that true friends can confide in one another. The moral conduct of Epicurus has been repeatedly assailed but, according to the testimony of the most reliable witnesses, his life was blameless in every respect, and his personal character was estimable and amiable. Moreover, it cannot be doubted that much of that, which is told by some, of the offensive voluptuousness of the Epicurean band, should be regarded as calumny. Epicurus was a voluminous writer, surpassing, in this respect, even Aristotle, and exceeded by Chrysippus alone. To the loss of his greater works he has himself contributed, by his practice of composing summaries of his system, which he recommended his disciples to commit to memory. These summaries have been for the most part preserved.
The end which Epicurus proposed to himself in science is distinctly revealed in his definition of philosophy. He calls it an activity which, by means of conceptions and arguments, procures the happiness of life. Its end is, therefore, with him essentially a practical one, and on this account the object of his whole systemis to produce a scheme of morals which should teach us how we might inevitably attain a happy life. It is true that the Epicureans adopted the usual division of philosophy into logic, which they called canonics, physics, and ethics; but they confined logic to the doctrine of the criterion of truth, and considered it only as an instrument and introduction to physics, while they only treated of physics as existing wholly for ethics, and being necessary in order to free men from superstitious fear, and deliver them from the power of fables and mythical fancies concerning nature, which might hinder the attainment of happiness. We have therefore in Epicureanism the three old parts of philosophy, but in a reversed order, since logic and physics here stand as the handmaids of ethics. We shall confine ourselves in our exposition to the latter, since the Epicurean canonics and physics offer little scientific interest, and since the physics especially is not only very incomplete and without any internal connection, but rests entirely upon the atomic theory of Democritus.
Epicurus, like Aristotle and the other philosophers of his day, placed the highest good in happiness, or a happy life. More closely he makes pleasure to be the principal constituent of happiness, and even calls it the highest good. But Epicurus goes on to give a more accurate determination of pleasure, and in this he differs essentially from his predecessors, the Cyrenians. (cf.§ XIII. 3.)
1. While with Aristippus the pleasure of the moment is made the end of human efforts, Epicurus directs men to strive after a system of pleasures which should insure an abiding course of happiness for the whole life.Truepleasure is thus the object to be considered and weighed. Many a pleasure should be despised because it will result in pain, and many a pain should be rejoiced in because it would lead to a greater pleasure.
2. Since the sage will seek after the highest good, not simply for the present but for his whole life, he will hold the pleasures and pains of the soul, which like memory and hope stretch over the past and the future, in greater esteem than those of the body, which relate only to the present moment. The pleasure of the soul consists in the untroubled tranquillity of the sage, who restssecure in the feeling of his inner worth and his exaltation above the strokes of destiny. Thus Epicurus, would say that it is better to be miserable but rational than to be happy and irrational, and that the wise man might be happy though in torture. He would even affirm, like a true follower of Aristotle, that pleasure and happiness were most closely connected with virtue, that virtue is in fact inseparable from true pleasure, and that there can be no agreeable life without virtue, and no virtue without an agreeable life.
3. While other Hedonists would regard the most positive and intense feeling of pleasure as the highest good, Epicurus, on the other hand, fixed his eye on a happiness which should be abiding and for the whole life. He would not seek the most exquisite enjoyments in order to attain to a happy life, but he rather recommends one to be satisfied with little, and to practise sobriety and temperance of life. He guards himself against such a false application of his doctrine as would imply that the pleasure of the debauchee were the highest good, and boasts that with a little barley-bread and water he would rival Zeus in happiness. He even expresses an aversion for all costly pleasures, not, however, in themselves, but because of the evil consequences which they entail. True, the Epicurean sage need not therefore live as a Cynic. He will enjoy himself where he can without harm, and will even seek to acquire means to live with dignity and ease. But though all these enjoyments of life may properly belong to the sage, yet hecandeprive himself of them without misery—though heoughtnot to do so—since he enjoys the truest and most essential pleasure in the calmness of his soul and the tranquillity of his heart. In opposition to the positive pleasure of some Hedonists, the theory of Epicurus expends itself in negative conceptions, representing that freedom from pain is pleasure, and that hence the activity of the sage should be prominently directed to avoid that which is disagreeable. All that man does, says Epicurus, is that he may neither suffer nor apprehend pain, and in another place he remarks, that not to live is far from being an evil. Hence death, for which men have the greatest terror, the wise man doesnot fear. For while we live, death is not, and when death is, we are not; when it is present we feel it not, for it is the end of all feeling, and that, which by its presence cannot affect our happiness, ought not, when thought of as a future, to trouble us. Here Epicurus must bear the censure urged against him by the ancients, that he does not recognize any positive end of life, and that the object after which his sage should strive is a mere passionless state.
The crown of Epicurus’s view of the universe is his doctrine of the gods, where he has carried over his ideal of happiness. To the gods belong a human form, though without any fixed body or human wants. In the void space they lead an undisturbed and changeless life, whose happiness is incapable of increase. From the blessedness of the gods he inferred that they had nothing to do with the management of our affairs, for blessedness is repose, and on this account the gods neither take trouble to themselves nor cause it to others. It may indeed be said that these inactive gods of Epicurus, these indestructible and yet not fixed forms, these bodies which are not bodies, have but an ill connection with his general system, in which there is in fact no point to which his doctrine of the gods can be fitly joined—but a strict scientific connection is hardly the merit of this whole philosophy.
This subjective direction already noticed was carried out to its farthest extent by the Sceptics, who broke down completely the bridge between subject and object, denying all objective truth, knowledge and science, and wholly withdrawing the philosopher from every thing but himself and his own subjective estimates. In this direction we may distinguish between the old Scepticism, the new Academy, and the later Scepticism.
1.The Old Scepticism.—Pyrrhoof Elis, who was perhaps a cotemporary of Aristotle, was the head of the old Sceptics. He left no writings behind him, and we are dependent for a knowledge of his opinions upon his scholar and follower, Timon of Phlius. The tendency of these sceptical philosophers, like that of the Stoics and Epicureans, was a practical one, for philosophy, said they, ought to lead us to happiness. But in order to live happily we must know how things are, and, therefore, in what kind of a relation we stand to them. The first of these questions the Sceptics answered by attempting to show that all things, without exception, are indifferent as to truth and falsehood, uncertain, and in nowise subject to man’s judgment. Neither our senses nor our opinions concerning any thing teach us any truth; to every precept and to every position a contrary may be advanced, and hence the contradictory views of men, and especially of the philosophies of the schools respecting one and the same thing. All objective knowledge and science being thus impossible, the true relation of the philosopher to things consists in the entire suspension of judgment, and the withholding of every positive assertion. In order to avoid every thing like a positive assertion, the Sceptics had recourse to a variety of artifices, and availed themselves of doubtful modes of expression, such asit is possible;it may be so;perhaps;I assert nothing,—cautiously subjoining to this last—not even that I assert nothing. By this suspension of judgment the Sceptics thought they could attain their practical end, happiness; for the abstinence from all positive opinion is followed by a freedom from all mental disturbance, as a substance is by a shadow. He who has embraced Scepticism lives thenceforward tranquilly, without inquietude, without agitation, with an equable state of mind, and, in fact, divested of his humanity. Pyrrho is said to have originated the doctrine which lies at the basis of sceptical apathy, that no difference exists between sickness and health, or between life and death. The Sceptics, for the most part, derived the material for their views from the previous investigations in the dogmatic schools. But the grounds on which they rested were far from being profound, and were for themost part either dialectic errors which could easily be refuted, or mere subtleties. The use of the following ten tropes is ascribed to the old Sceptics, though these were perhaps not definitely brought out by either Pyrrho or Timon, but were probably first collected by Ænesidemus, soon after the time of Cicero. The withholding of all decisive judgment may rest; (1) upon the distinction generally existing between individual living objects; (2) upon the difference among men; (3) the different functions of the organs of sense; (4) the circumstances under which objects appear; (5) the relative positions, intervals, and places; (6) intermixtures; (7) the quantities and modifications of the objects we perceive; (8) relations; (9) the frequent or rare occurrence; (10) the different ways of life, the varieties of customs and laws, the mythical representations and dogmatic opinions of men.
2.The New Academy.—Scepticism, in its conflict with the Stoics, as it appeared in the Platonic school established byArcesilaus(316-241), has a far greater significance than belongs to the performances of the Pyrrhonists. In this school Scepticism sought its support by its great respect for the writings and its transmission of the oral teachings of Plato. Arcesilaus could neither have assumed nor maintained the chair of instruction in the Academy, had he not carefully cherished and imparted to his disciples the impression that his own view, respecting the withholding of a decisive judgment, coincided essentially with that of Socrates and of Plato, and if he had not also taught that he only restored the genuine and original significance of Platonism, when he set aside the dogmatic method of teaching. An immediate incitement to the efforts of Arcesilaus is found in his opposition to the rigid dogmatic system which had lately arisen in the Porch, and which claimed to be in every respect an improvement upon Platonism. Hence, as Cicero remarks, Arcesilaus directed all his sceptical and polemic attacks against Zeno, the founder of Stoicism. He granted with his opponent that no representation should form a part of undoubted knowledge, if it could possibly have arisen through any other object than that from which it actually sprung, but he would not admit that there might be a notion which expressedso truly and accurately its own object, that it could not have arisen from any other. Accordingly, Arcesilaus denied the existence of a criterion which could certify to us the truth of our knowledge. If there be any truth in our affirmations, said he, we cannot be certain of it. In this sense he taught that one can know nothing, not even that he does know nothing. But in moral matters, in choosing the good and rejecting the evil, he taught that we should follow that which is probable.
Of the subsequent leaders in the new Academy,Carneades(214-129) alone need here be mentioned, whose whole philosophy, however, consists almost exclusively in a polemic against Stoicism and in the attempt to set up a criterion of truth. His positive performance is the attempt to bring out a philosophical theory of probabilities. The later Academicians fell back to an eclectic dogmaticism.
3.The later Scepticism.—Once more we meet with a peculiar Scepticism at the time when Grecian philosophy had wholly fallen to decay. To this time belongÆnesidemus, who probably—though this cannot be affirmed with certainty—lived but a little after Cicero;Agrippa, whose date is also uncertain, though subsequent to Ænesidemus, andSextus Empiricus—i. e.a Grecian physician of the empiric sect, who probably flourished in the first half of the third century of the Christian era. These are the most significant names. Of these the last has the greatest interest for us, from two writings which he left behind him (the hypotyposes of Pyrrho in three books, and a treatise against the mathematicians in nine books), which are sources of much historical information. In these he has profusely collected every thing which the Scepticism of the ancients knew how to advance against the certainty of knowledge.
The Romans have taken no independent part in the progress of philosophy. After Grecian philosophy and literature had begun to gain a foothold among them, and especially after three distinguished representatives of Attic culture and eloquence—Carneades the Academician, Critolaus the Peripatetic, and Diogenes the Stoic—had appeared in Rome as envoys from Athens; and after Greece, a few years later, had become a Roman province, and thus outwardly in a close connection with Rome, almost all the more significant systems of Grecian philosophy, especially the Epicurean (Lucretius), and the Stoic (Seneca), flourished and found adherents in Rome, though without gaining any real philosophical progress. The Romish philosophizing is wholly eclectic, as is seen in Cicero, the most important and influential philosophic writer among the Romans. But the popular philosophy of this man and of the minds akin to him cannot be strongly assailed, for, notwithstanding its want of originality and logical sequence, it gave philosophy a broad dissemination, and made it a means of universal culture.
In New Platonism, the ancient mind made its last and almost despairing attempt at a philosophy which should resolve the dualism between the subjective and the objective. The attempt was made by taking on the one side a subjective standpoint, like the other philosophies of the post-Aristotelian time (cf.§ XVI 7);and on the other with the design to bring out objective determinations concerning the highest conceptions of metaphysics, and concerning the absolute; in other words, to sketch a system of absolute philosophy. In this respect the effort was made to copy the Platonic and Aristotelian philosophy, and the claim was set up by the new system to be a revival of the original Platonism. On both sides the new attempt formed the closing period of an ancient philosophy. It represents the last struggle, but at the same time the exhaustion of the ancient thinking and the dissolution of the old philosophy.
The first, and also the most important, representative of New Platonism, isPlotinus. He was a pupil of Ammonius Saccas, who taught the Platonic philosophy at Alexandria in the beginning of the third century, though he left no writings behind him. Plotinus (A. D. 205-270) from his fortieth year taught philosophy at Rome. His opinions are contained in a course of hastily written and not closely connected treatises, which, after his death, were collected and published in six enneads byPorphyry(who was born A. D. 233, and taught both philosophy and eloquence at Rome), his most noted disciple. From Rome and Alexandria, the New Platonism of Plotinus passed over in the fourth century to Athens, where it established itself in the Academy. In the fourth century,Jamblichus, a scholar of Porphyry, and in the fifth, Proclus, (412-485), were prominently distinguished among the New Platonists. With the triumph of Christianity and the consequent fall of heathenism, in the course of the sixth century, even this last bloom of Grecian philosophy faded away.
The common characteristic of all the New Platonists is a tendency to mysticism, theosophy, and theurgy. The majority of them gave themselves up to magic and sorcery, and the most distinguished boasted that they were the subjects of divine inspiration and illumination, able to look into the future, and to work miracles. They professed to be hierophants as much as philosophers, and exhibited the unmistakable tendency to represent a Pagan copy of Christianity, which should be at the same time aphilosophy and a universal religion. In the following sketch of New Platonism we follow mainly the track of Plotinus.
1.Ecstasy as a Subjective state.—The result of the philosophical strivings antecedent to New Platonism had been Scepticism; which, seeing the impracticability of both the Stoic and Epicurean wisdom, had assumed a totally negative relation to every positive and theoretical content. But the end which Scepticism had actually gained was the opposite of that for which it had striven. It had striven for the perfect apathy of the sage, but it had gained only the necessity of incessantly opposing every positive affirmation. Instead of the rest which they had sought, they found rather an absolute unrest. This absolute unrest of the consciousness striving after an absolute rest, begat immediately a longing to be freed from this unrest, a longing after some content which should be absolutely satisfying, and stripped of every sceptical objection. This longing after an absolutely true, found its historical expression in New Platonism. The subject sought to master and comprehend the absolute; and this, neither by objective knowledge nor dialectic mediation, but immediately, by an inner and mystical mounting up of the subject in the form of an immediate beholding, or ecstasy. The knowledge of the true, says Plotinus, is not gained by proof nor by any mediation; it cannot be found when the objects known remain separate from the subject knowing, but only when the distinction between knower and known disappears; it is a beholding of the reason in itself, not in the sense that we see the reason, but the reason beholds itself; in no other way can knowledge come. If any one has attained to such a beholding, to such a true unison with the divine, he will despise the pure thinking which he otherwise loved, for this thinking was only a movement which presupposed a difference between the perceiver and the perceived. This mystical absorption into the Deity, or, the One, this resolving the self into the absolute, is that which gives to New Platonism a character so peculiarly distinct from the genuine Grecian systems of philosophy.
2.The Cosmical Principles.—The doctrine of the three cosmical principles is most closely connected with the theory justnamed. To the two cosmical principles already received, viz., the world-soul and the world-reason, a third and higher one was added by the New Platonists. For if the reason apprehends the true by means of thinking, and not within itself alone; if, in order to grasp the absolute and behold the divine, it must lose its own self-consciousness, and go out beyond itself, then reason cannot be the highest principle, but there stands above it that primal essence, with which it must be united if it will behold the true. To this primal essence Plotinus gives different names, as “the first,” “the one,” “the good,” and “that which stands above being” (being is with him but a conception, which, like the reason, may be resolved into a higher ground, and which, united with the reason, forms but the second step in the series of highest conceptions). In all these names, Plotinus does not profess to have satisfactorily expressed the essence of this primal one, but only to have given a representation of it. In characterizing it still farther, he denies it all thinking and willing, because it needs nothing and can desire nothing; it is not energy, but above energy; life does not belong to it; neither being nor essence nor any of the most general categories of being can be ascribed to it; in short, it is that which can neither be expressed nor thought. Plotinus has thoroughly striven to think of this first principle not as first principle,i. e.not in its relation to that of which it is the ground, but only in itself, as being wholly without reference either to us or to any thing else. This pure abstraction, however, he could not carry out. He sets himself to show how every thing else, and especially the two other cosmical principles, could emanate from this first; but in order to have a principle for his emanation theory, he was obliged to consider the first in its relation to the second and as its producer.
3.The Emanation Theory of the New Platonists.—Every emanation theory, and hence also that of the New Platonists, considers the world as the effluence of God, and gives to the emanation a greater or less degree of perfection, according as it is nearer or more remote from its source. They all have for their principle the totality of being, and represent a progressivelyascending relation in its several parts. Fire, says Plotinus, emits heat, snow cold, fragrant bodies odors, and every organic thing so far as it is perfect begets something like itself. In the same way the all-perfect and the eternal, in the overflowing of his perfection sends out from himself that which is also eternal, and after him, the best, viz., the reason or world-intelligence, which is the immediate reflection and image of the primal one. Plotinus abounds in figures to show how the primal one need lose nothing nor become weakened by this emanation of reason. Next to the original one, reason is the most perfect. It contains in itself the ideal world, and the whole of true and changeless being. Some notion may be formed of its exaltation and glory by carefully beholding the sensible world in its greatness, its beauty, and the order of its ceaseless motion, and then by rising to contemplate its archetype in the pure and changeless being of the intelligible world, and then by recognizing in intelligence the author and finisher of all. In it there is neither past nor future, but only an ever abiding present. It is, moreover, as incapable of division in space as of change in time. It is the true eternity, which is only copied by time. As reason flows from the primal one, so does the world-soul eternally emanate from reason, though the latter incurs no change thereby. The world-soul is the copy of reason, permeated by it, and actualizing it in an outer world. It gives ideas externally to sensible matter, which is the last and lowest step in the series of emanations and in itself is undetermined, and has neither quality nor being. In this way the visible universe is but the transcript of the world-soul, which forms it out of matter, permeates and animates it, and carries it forward in a circle. Here closes the series of emanations, and, as was the aim of the theory, we have been carried in a constant current from the highest to the lowest, from God to the mere image of true being, or the sensible world.
Individual souls, like the world-soul, are linked both to the higher and the lower, to reason and the sensible; now bound with the latter and sharing its destiny, and anon rising to their source in reason. Their original and proper home was in the rationalworld, from whence they have come down, each one in its proper time, into the corporeal; not, however, wholly forsaking their ideal abode, but as a sunbeam touches at the same time the sun and the earth, so are they found alike in the world of reason and the world of sense. Our calling, therefore—and here we come back to the point from which we started in our exhibition of New Platonism—can only be to direct our senses and aspirations towards our proper home, in the ideal world, and by asceticism and crucifying of the flesh, to free our better self from its participation with the body. But when our soul has once mounted up to the ideal world, that image of the originally good and beautiful, it then attains the final goal of all its longings and efforts, the immediate union with God, through the enraptured beholding of the primal one in which it loses its consciousness and becomes buried and absorbed.
According to all this, the New Platonic philosophy would seem to be a monism, and thus the most perfect development of ancient philosophy, in so far as this had striven to carry back the sum of all being to one ultimate ground. But as it attained its highest principle from which all the rest was derived, by means of ecstasy, by a mystical self-destruction of the individual person (Ichheit), by asceticism and theurgy, and not by means of self-conscious thinking, nor by any natural or rational way, it is seen that ancient philosophy, instead of becoming perfected in New Platonism, only makes a despairing leap beyond itself to its own self-destruction.
1.The Christian Idea.—The Grecian intellectual life at the time of its fairest bloom, was characterized by the immediate sacrifice of the subject to the object (nature, the state, &c.): the full breach between the two, between spirit and nature, had notyet arrived; the subject had not yet so far reflected upon himself that he could apprehend his own absolute worth. This breach came in, with the decay of Grecian life, in the time after Alexander the Great. As the objective world lost its influence, the thinking consciousness turned back upon itself; but even in this very process, the bridge between subject and object was broken down. The self-consciousness had not yet become sufficiently absorbed in itself to look upon the true, the divine, in any other light than as separate from itself, and belonging to an opposite world; while a feeling of pain, of unsatisfied desire, took the place of that fair unity between spirit and nature which had been peculiar to the better periods of the Grecian civil and artistic life. New Platonism, by its overleaping speculation, and, practically, by its mortification of the sense, made a last and despairing attempt to overcome this separation, or to bury itself within it, by bringing the two sides forcibly together. The attempt was in vain, and the old philosophy, totally exhausted, came to its end. Dualism is therefore the rock on which it split. This problem, thus left without a solution, Christianity took up. It assumed for its principle the idea which the ancient thinking had not known how to carry out, affirming that the separation between God and man might be overcome, and that the human and the divine could be united in one. The speculative fundamental idea of Christianity is, that God has become incarnate, and this had its practical exhibition (for Christianity was a practical religion) in the idea of the atonement and the demand of the new birth,i. e.the positive purifying of the sense from its corruptions, instead of holding it, as asceticism, in a merely negative relation.
From the introduction of Christianity, monism has been the character and the fundamental tendency of the whole modern philosophy. In fact, the new philosophy started from the very point at which the old had stood still. The turning of the self-consciousness upon itself, which was the standpoint of the post-Aristotelian speculations, forms in Descartes the starting-point of the new philosophy, whose whole course has been the reconciling of that opposition beyond which the old could not pass.
2.Scholasticism.—It very early resulted that Christianity came in contact with the cotemporaneous philosophy, especially with Platonism. This arose first with the apologists of the second century, and the fathers of the Alexandrian church. Subsequently, in the ninth century, Scotus Erigena made an attempt to combine Christianity with New Platonism, though it was not till the second half of the Middle Ages, from the eleventh century, that there was developed any thing that might be properly termed a Christian philosophy. This was the so-called Scholasticism.
The effort of Scholasticism was to mediate between the dogma of religion and the reflecting self-consciousness; to reconcile faith and knowledge. When the dogma passed over into the schools from the Church which had given it utterance, and theology became a science of the universities, the scientific interest asserted its rights, and undertook to bring the dogma which had hitherto stood over against the self-consciousness as an external power, into a closer relation to the thinking subject. A series of attempts was now made to bring out the doctrines of the Church in the form of scientific systems (the first complete dogmatic system was given byPeter Lombard, who died 1164, in his four books of sentences, and was voluminously commented upon by the later Scholastics), all starting from the indisputable premise (beyond which scholastic thinking never reached), that the faith of the church is absolute truth; but all guided likewise by the interest to make this revealed truth intelligible, and to show it to be rational. “Credo ut intelligam”—this expression ofAnselm, the beginner and founder of Scholasticism (he was born about 1034, and made Archbishop of Canterbury in 1093), was the watchword of this whole direction. Scholasticism applied to the solution of its problem the most remarkable logical acumen, and brought out systems of doctrine like the Gothic cathedrals in their architecture. The extended study of Aristotle, calledpar eminence“the philosopher,” whom many of the most distinguished Scholastics wrote commentaries upon, and who was greatly studied at the same period among the Arabians (AvicennaandAverroes), furnished their terminology and most of their points of view. Atthe summit of Scholasticism we must place the two incontestably greatest masters of the Scholastic art and method,Thomas Aquinas(Dominican, who died 1274) andDuns Scotus(Franciscan, who died 1308), the founders of two schools, in which since their time the whole Scholastic theology divides itself—the former exalting the understanding (intellectus), and the latter the will (voluntas), as their highest principle, both being driven into essentially differing directions by this opposition of a theoretical and a practical principle. Even with this began the downfall of Scholasticism; its highest point was also the turning-point to its self-destruction. The rationality of the dogma, the oneness of faith and knowledge, had been constantly their fundamental premise; but this premise fell away, and the whole basis of their metaphysics was given up in principle, the moment Duns Scotus placed the problem of theology in the practical. When the practical and the theoretical became divided, and still more when thought and being were separated by Nominalism (cf.3), philosophy broke loose from theology and knowledge from faith; knowledge assumed its position above faith and above authority (modern philosophy), and the religious consciousness broke with the traditional dogma (the Reformation).
3.Nominalism and Realism.—Hand in hand with the whole development of Scholasticism, there was developed the opposition between Nominalism and Realism, an opposition whose origin is to be found in the relation of Scholasticism to the Platonic and Aristotelian philosophy. The Nominalists were those who held that the conceptions of the universal (the universalia) were simple names,flatus vocis, representations without content and without reality. According to them there are no universal conceptions, no species, no class; every thing which is, exists only as separate in its pure individuality; there is, therefore, no pure thinking, but only a representation and sensuous perception. The Realists, on the other hand, taking pattern from Plato, held fast to the objective reality of the universals (universalia ante rem). These opposite directions appeared first betweenRoscellinus, who took the side of Nominalism, andAnselm, who advocated theRealistic theory, and it is seen from this time through the whole period of Scholasticism, though from the age ofAbelard(born 1079) a middle view, which was both Nominalistic and Realistic, held with some slight modifications the prominent place (universalia in re). According to this view the universal is only something thought and represented, though as such it is not simply a product of the representing consciousness, but has also its objective reality in objects themselves, from which it was argued we could not abstract it if it were not essentially contained in them. This identity of thought and being, is the fundamental premise on which the whole dialectic course of the Scholastics rests. All their arguments are founded on the claim, that that which has been syllogistically proved is in reality the same as in logical thinking. If this premise is overthrown, so falls with it the whole basis of Scholasticism; and there remains nothing more for the thinker to do, who has gone astray in his objectivity, but to fall back upon himself. This self-dissolution of Scholasticism actually appears withWilliam of Occam(died 1347), the most influential reviver of that Nominalism which had been so mighty in the beginning of Scholasticism, but which now, more victorious against a decaying than then against a rising form of culture, plucked away its foundation from the framework of Scholastic dogmatism, and brought the whole structure into inevitable ruin.
The emancipation of modern philosophy from the bondage of Scholasticism was a gradual process. It first showed itself in a series of preparative movements during the fifteenth century, and became perfected, negatively, in the course of the sixteenth, and positively in the first half of the seventeenth century.
1.Fall of Scholasticism.—The immediate ground of thischanged direction of the time, we have already seen in the inner decay of Scholasticism itself. Just so soon as the fundamental premise on which the Scholastic theology and method rested, the rationality of the dogma, was abandoned, the whole structure, as already remarked, fell to inevitable ruin. The conviction, directly opposed to the principle of Scholasticism, that what might be true dogmatically, might be false, or, at least, incapable of proof in the eye of the reason—a point of view from whiche. g.the AristotelianPomponatius(1462-1530) treated the doctrines of the future state, and in whose lightVaninisubsequently went over the chief problems of philosophy—kept gaining ground, notwithstanding the opposition of the Church, and even associated with itself the opinion that reason and revelation could not be harmonized. The feeling became prevalent that philosophy must be freed from its previous condition of minority and servitude; a struggle after a greater independence of philosophic investigation was awakened, and though no one yet ventured to attack directly the doctrine of the Church, the effort was made to shatter the confidence in the chief bulwark of Scholasticism, the Aristotelian philosophy, or what at that period was regarded as such; (especially in this connectionPeter Ramus, (1515-1572) should be mentioned, who fell in the massacre of St. Bartholomew). The authority of the Church became more and more weakened in the faith of the people, and the great principles of Scholasticism came to an end.
2.The Results of Scholasticism.—Notwithstanding all, Scholasticism was not without its positively good results. Though standing wholly in the service of the Church, it had, nevertheless, grown out of a scientific impulse, and so naturally awakened a free spirit of inquiry and a sense for knowledge. It made the objects of faith the objects of thought, it raised men from the sphere of unconditional faith to the sphere of doubt, of investigation and of knowledge, and by its very effort to demonstrate the principles of theology it established, though against its knowledge and design, the authority of reason. It thus introduced to the world another principle than that of the old Church, the principle of thethinking spirit, the self-consciousness of the reason, or at least prepared the way for the victory of this principle. Even the deformities and unfavorable side of Scholasticism, the many absurd questions upon which the Scholastics divided, even their thousandfold unnecessary and accidental distinctions, their inquisitiveness and subtleties, all sprang from a rational principle, and grew out of a spirit of investigation, which could only utter itself in this way under the all powerful ecclesiastical spirit of the time. Only when it was surpassed by the advancing spirit of the age, did Scholasticism, falsifying its original meaning, make common cause and interest with the old ecclesiasticism, and turned itself as the most violent opposer against the improvements of the new period.
3.The Revival of Letters.—The revival of classic literature contributed prominently to that change in the spirit of the age which marks the beginning of the new epoch of philosophy. The study of the ancients, especially of the Greeks, had almost wholly ceased in the course of the Middle Ages; even the philosophy of Plato and Aristotle was known, for the most part, only through Latin translations or secondary sources; no one realized the spirit of classic life, and all sense for beauty of form and elegant composition had passed away. The change was chiefly brought about by means of the Greek scholars who fled from Constantinople to Italy; the study of the ancients in the original sources came up again; the newly discovered art of printing allowed the classics to be widely circulated; the Medicis drew classic scholars to their court; all this working for a far better understanding of the ancient philosophy.Besarion(died 1472) andFicinus(died 1499) were prominent in this movement. The result was presently seen. The new scholars contended against the stiff and uncouth manner in which the sciences had hitherto been treated, new ideas began to circulate, and there arose again the free, universal, thinking spirit of antiquity. In Germany, also, classic studies found a fruitful soil.Reuchlin(born 1454),MelancthonandErasmus, labored in this sense, and the classic movement, hostile as it was to the Scholastic impulse, favored most decidedly the growing tendencies to the Reformation.
4.The German Reformation.—All the elements of the new age, the struggle against Scholasticism, the revival of letters and the more enlarged culture thus secured, the striving after national independence, the attempts of the state to free itself from the Church and the hierarchy, and above all, the desire of the thinking self-consciousness for autonomy, for freedom from the fetters of authority—all these elements found their focus and point of union in the German Reformation. Though having its root at first in practical, and religious, and national interests, and expending itself mainly upon the Christian doctrine and Church, yet was the Reformation in principle and in its true consequences a rupture of the thinking spirit with authority, a protesting against the fetters of the positive, a return of the mind from its self-estrangement to itself. From that which was without, the mind now came back to that which is within, and the purely human as such, the individual heart and conscience, the subjective conviction, in a word, the rights of the subject now began to be of worth. While marriage had formerly been regarded, though not immoral, as yet inferior to continence and celibacy, it appeared now as a divine institution, a natural law ordained of God. While poverty had formerly been esteemed higher than wealth, and the contemplative life of the monk was superior to the manual labor of the layman supporting himself by his own toil, yet now poverty ceased to be desirable in itself, and labor was no longer despised. Ecclesiastical freedom took the place of spiritual bondage; monasticism and the priesthood lost their power. In the same way, on the side of knowledge the individual man came back to himself, and threw off the restraints of authority. He was impressed with the conviction that the whole process of redemption must be experienced within himself, that his reconciliation to God and salvation was his own concern, for which he needed no mediation of priests, and that he stood in an immediate relation to God. He found his whole being in his faith, in the depth of his feelings and convictions.
Since thus Protestantism sprang from the essence of the same spirit in which modern philosophy had its birth, the two have the closest relation to each other, though of course there is a specificdifference between the religious and the scientific principle. Yet in their origin, both kinds of Protestantism, that of religion and that of thought, are one and the same, and in their progress they have also gone hand in hand together. For religion, reduced to its simple elements, will be found to have its source, like philosophy, in the self-knowledge of the reason.
5.The Advancement of the Natural Sciences.—To all these phenomena, which should be regarded both as causes and as symptoms of the intellectual revolution of this period, we must add yet another, which essentially facilitated and gave a positive assistance to the freedom of the mind from the fetters of authority—the starting up of the natural sciences and the inductive method of examining nature. This epoch was a period of the most fruitful and influential discoveries in nature. The discovery of America and the passage to the East Indies had already widened the circle of view, but still greater revolutions are connected with the name of aCopernicus(died 1543),Kepler(died 1630), andGalileo(died 1642), revolutions which could not remain, without an influence upon the whole mode of thinking of that age, and which contributed prominently to break the faith in the prevailing ecclesiastical authority. Scholasticism had turned away from nature and the phenomenal world, and, blind towards that which lay before the very eyes, had spent itself in a dreamy intellectuality; but now nature rose again in honor; her glory and exaltation, her infinite diversity and fulness of life became again the immediate objects of observation; to investigate nature became an essential object of philosophy, and scientific empiricism was thus regarded as a universal and essential concern of the thinking man. From this time the natural sciences date their historical importance, for only from this time have they had an uninterrupted history. The results of this new intellectual movement can be readily estimated. Such a scientific investigation of nature not only destroyed a series of traditional errors and prejudices, but, what was of greater importance, it directed the intellectual interest towards that which is real and actual, it nourished and protected the self-thinking and feeling of self-dependence, the spirit of inquiry andproof. The standpoint of observation and experiment presupposes an independent self-consciousness of the individual, a breaking loose from authority—in a word, scepticism, with which, in fact, the founders of modern philosophy,BaconandDescartes, began; the former by conditioning the knowledge of nature upon the removal of all prejudice and every preconceived opinion, and the latter by demanding that philosophy should be begun with universal doubt. No wonder that a bitter struggle should soon break out between the natural sciences and ecclesiastical orthodoxy, which could only result in breaking the power of the latter.
6.Bacon of Verulam.—Francis of Verulam was born in 1561, and was Lord High Chancellor of England and keeper of the king’s seal under James I. From these offices he was subsequently expelled, and died in 1626, with a character which has not been without reproach. He took as his principle the inductive method, which he directed expressly against Scholasticism and the ruling scientific method. On this account he is frequently placed at the head of modern philosophy.
The sciences, says Bacon, have hitherto been in a most sad condition. Philosophy, wasted in empty and fruitless logomachies, has failed during so many centuries to bring out a single work or experiment of actual benefit to human life. Logic hitherto has served more to the establishment of error than to the investigation of truth. Whence all this? Why this penury of the sciences? Simply because they have broken away from their root in nature and experience. The blame of this is chargeable to many sources; first, the old and rooted prejudice that the human mind loses somewhat of its dignity when it busies itself much and continuously with experiments and material things; next, superstition and a blind religious zeal, which has been the most irreconcilable opposer to natural philosophy; again, the exclusive attention paid to morals and politics by the Romans, and since the Christian era to theology by every acute mind; still farther, the great authority which certain philosophers have professed, and the great reverence given, to antiquity; and in fine, a want of courage and a despair of overcoming the many and great difficultieswhich lie in the way of the investigation of nature. All these causes have contributed to keep down the sciences. Hence they must now be renewed, and regenerated, and reformed in their most fundamental principles; there must now be found a new basis of knowledge and new principles of science. This radical reformation of the sciences depends upon two conditions, objectively upon the referring of science to experience and the philosophy of nature, and subjectively upon the purifying of the sense and the intellect from all abstract theories and traditional prejudices. Both conditions furnish the correct method of natural science, which is nothing other than the method of induction. Upon a true induction depends all the soundness of the sciences.
In these propositions the Baconian philosophy is contained. The historical significance of its founder is, therefore, in general this,—that he directed the attention and reflection of his contemporaries again upon the given actuality, upon nature; that he affirmed the necessity of experience, which had been formerly only a matter of accident, and made it as in and for itself an object of thought. His merit consists in having brought up the principle of scientific empiricism, and only in this. Strictly speaking, we can allow nocontentto the Baconian philosophy, although (in his treatisede augmentis scientiarum) he has attempted a systematic encyclopedia of the sciences according to a new principle of classification, through which he has scattered an abundance of fine and fruitful observations, which are still used as apothegms.
7.The Italian Philosophers of the Transition Epoch.—Besides Bacon, other phenomena must be noticed which have prepared and introduced the new age of philosophy. First among these is a list of Italian philosophers, from the second half of the sixteenth and the first half of the seventeenth century. These philosophers are connected in a twofold manner with the movements already sketched of this transition period, first by an enthusiasm for nature which among them all partook in a greater or less degree of pantheism (Vaninie. g.gave to one of his writings the title “concerning the wonderful secrets of nature, the queen and goddess of mortals”), and second, by their connection with the systems ofancient philosophy. The best known of these philosophers are the following:Cardanus(1501-1575),Campanella(1568-1639),Giordano Bruno(—1600),Vanini(1586-1619.) They were all men of a passionate, enthusiastic and impetuous nature, unsteady and wild in character, restless and adventurous in life, men who were inspired by an eager impulse towards knowledge, but who were carried away by great fantasy, wildness of imagination, and a seeking after secret astrological and geomantic knowledge. For these reasons they also passed away, leaving no fruitful result behind. They were all persecuted by the hierarchy, and two of them (Bruno and Vanini) ended their lives at the stake. In their whole historical appearance they are like the eruption of a volcano, and are to be regarded more as forerunners and announcers than as beginners and founders of the new age of philosophy. The most important among them isGiordano Bruno. He reviewed the old idea of the Stoics, that the world is a living being, and that a world-soul penetrates it all. The content of his general thought is the profoundest enthusiasm for nature, and the plastic reason which is present in it. The reason is, according to him, the inner artist who shapes the matter and manifests himself in the forms of the universe. From the heart of the root or the germ he sends out the lobes, and from these again he evolves the shoots, and from the shoots the branches, until bud, and leaf, and blossom are brought forth. Every thing is arranged, adjusted, and perfected within. Thus the universal reason calls back from within the sap out of the fruits and flowers to the branches again, &c. The universe thus is an infinite living thing, in which every thing lives and moves after the most manifold way.
The relation of the reason to matter, Bruno determines wholly in the Aristotelian manner; both stand related to each other as form and matter, as actuality and potentiality, neither is without the other; the form is the inner impelling might of matter, and matter, as the unlimited possibility, as the capability for an infinite diversity of form, is the mother of all forms. The other side of Bruno’s philosophizing, his elaboration of the topics of Lullus,which occupies the greater part of his writings, has little philosophic interest, and we therefore pass it by.
8.Jacob Boehme.—As Bacon among the English and Bruno among the Italians, soJacob Boehmeis the index among the Germans of this transition period. Each one of these three indicates it in a way peculiar to his own nationality; Bacon as the herald of empiricism, Bruno as the representative of a poetic pantheism, and Boehme as the father of the theosophic mysticism. If we regarded alone the profoundness of his principle, Boehme should hold a much later place in the history of philosophy, but if we looked chiefly at the imperfect form of his philosophizing, his rank would be assigned to the mystics of the Middle Ages, while chronologically we must associate him with the German Reformation and the protestant elements that were nourished at that time. His true position is among the forerunners and prophets of the new age.
Jacob Boehme was born in 1575, in old Seidenburg, a village of upper Lusace, not far from Goerlitz. His parents were poor peasants. In his boyhood be took care of the cattle, and in his youth, after he had acquired the rudiments of reading and writing in a village school, he was sent to Goerlitz to learn the shoe-maker’s art. He finished his apprenticeship and settled down at Goerlitz in 1594 as master of his trade. Even in his youth he had received illuminations or mysterious revealings, which were subsequently repeated when his soul, striving for the truth, had become profoundly agitated by the religious conflicts of the age. Besides the Bible, the only books which Boehme read were some mystical writings of a theosophic and alchymistic content,e. g.those of Paracelsus. His entire want of culture is seen as soon as he undertakes to write down his thoughts, or, as he calls them, his illuminations. Hence the imperious struggle of the thought with the expression, which, however, not unfrequently rises to a dialectical acuteness and a poetic beauty. His first treatise, Aurora, composed in the year 1612, brought Boehme into trouble with the chief pastor in Goerlitz, Gregorious Richter, who publicly condemned the book from the pulpit, and even ridiculed theperson of its author. The writing of books was prohibited him by a magistrate, a prohibition which Boehme observed for many years, till at length the command of the spirit was too mighty within him, and he took up again his literary labors. Boehme was a plain, quiet, modest and gentle man. He died in 1624.
To give an exhibition of his theosophy in a few words is very difficult, since Boehme, instead of clothing his thoughts in a logical form, dressed them only in pictures of the sense and obscure analogies, and often availed himself of the most arbitrary and singular modes of expression. A twilight reigns in his writings, as in a Gothic cathedral where the light falls through variegated windows. Hence the magic effect which he has made upon many hearts. The chief thought of his philosophizing is this, viz., that the distinguishing of the self from the not-self is the essential determination of spirit, and hence of God so far as God is to be apprehended as spirit. God, according to Boehme, is living spirit only at the time and in the degree in which he conceives the distinction within himself from himself, and is in this distinction object and consciousness. The distinction of God in himself is the only source of his and of all actuosity and spontaneity, the spring and fountain of that self-active life which produces consciousness out of itself. Boehme is inexhaustible in images by which this negativity in God, his self-distinguishing and self-renunciation to the world, may be made conceivable. The great expansion without end, he says, needs limitation and a compass in which it may manifest itself, for in expansion without limit there could be no manifestation, there must be a contraction and an enclosing, in order that a manifestation may arise. See, he says in another place, if the will were only of one kind, then would the soul have only one quality, and were an immovable thing, which would always lie still and never do any thing farther than one thing; in this there could be no joy, as also no art nor science of other things, and no wisdom; every thing would be a nothing, and there would be neither heart nor will for any thing, for there would be only the single. Hence it cannot be said that the whole God is in one will and essence, there is a distinction. Nothingcan ever become manifest to itself without resistance, for if it has nothing resisting, it expends itself and never comes to itself again; but if it does not come to itself again except in that from which it has originally sprung, it thus knows nothing of its original condition. The above thought Boehme expresses when he says in hisQuestionibus Theosophicis; the reader should know that in yea and nay all things consist, whether divine, devilish, earthly, or whatever may be named. The one as the yea, is simple energy and love, and is the truth of God and God himself. But this were inconceivable, and there were neither delight, nor importance, nor sensibility, without the nay. The nay is thrown in the way of the yea, or of truth, in order that the truth may be manifest and something, in which there may be a contrarium, where eternal love may work and become sensitive and willing. There is nothing in the one which is an occasion for willing until the one becomes duplicated, and so there can be no sensation in unity, but only in duality. In brief, according to Boehme, neither knowledge nor consciousness is possible, without distinction, without opposition, without duplication; a thing becomes clear and an object of consciousness only through something else, through its own opposition identical with its own being. It was very natural to connect this thought of a unity distinguishing itself in itself, with the Christian doctrine of the Trinity, as Boehme has, in fact, repeatedly done when treating of the Divine life and its process of duplication. Schelling afterwards took up these ideas of Boehme and philosophically elaborated them.
If we should assign to the theosophy of Boehme a position in the development of later philosophy corresponding to the inner content of its principle, it would most properly be placed as a complement to the system ofSpinoza. If Spinoza taught the flowing back of all the finite into the eternal one, Boehme, on the other hand, shows the procession of the finite from the eternal one, and the inner necessity of this procession, since the being of this one would be rather a not-being without such a self-duplication. Compared with Descartes, Boehme has at least more profoundly apprehended the conception of self-consciousness and the relationof the finite to God. But his historical position in other respects is far too isolated and exceptional, and his mode of statement far too impure, to warrant us in incorporating him anywhere in a series of systems developed continuously and in a genetic connection.