The beginner and founder of modern philosophy isDescartes. While he, like the men of the transition epoch just noticed, broke loose entirely from the previous philosophizing, and began his work whollyde novo, yet he did not content himself, like Bacon, with merely bringing out a new method, or like Boehme and his contemporaries among the Italians, with affirming philosophical views without a methodical ground. He went further than any of these, and making his standpoint one of universal doubt, he affirms a new, positive, and pregnant philosophical principle, from which he attempted logically to deduce the chief points of his system. The character and novelty of his principle makes him the beginner, and its inner fruitfulness the founder, of modern philosophy.
Rene Descartes (Renatus Cartesius) was born in 1596, at La Haye in Torraine. Possessing an independent property, he volunteered as a soldier in his twenty-first year, and served in the wars with the Dutch, the Bavarians, and the Imperialists. After this he travelled a good deal, and then abode a considerable time in Paris. In 1629 he left his native land, and betook himself to Holland, that he might there, undisturbed and unknown, devote himself to philosophy, and elaborate his scientific ideas. He spent twenty years in Holland, enduring much vexatious treatment from fanatical theologians, till in 1649 he accepted an invitation from Queen Christina of Sweden, to visit Stockholm, where he died in the following year.
The chief content of the Cartesian system may be seen condensed in the following epitome.
1. If science would have any thing fixed and abiding, it must begin with the primal ground of things; every presupposition which we may have cherished from infancy must be abandoned; in a word, we must doubt at every point to which the least uncertainty is attached. We must therefore doubt not only the existence of the objects of sense, since the senses so frequently deceive, but also the truths of mathematics and geometry—for, however evident the proposition may appear that two and three make five, or that the square has four sides, yet we cannot know but what God may have designedly formed us for erroneous judgments. It is therefore advisable to doubt every thing, in fact to deny every thing, to posit every thing as false.
2. But though we posit every thing as false to which the slightest doubt may be attached, yet we cannot deny one thing, viz., the truth that we, who so think, do exist. But rather from the very fact that I posit every thing as false, that I doubt every thing, is it manifest that I, the doubter, exist. Hence the proposition: I think, therefore I am (cogito ergo sum), is the first and most certain position which offers itself to every one attempting to philosophize. Upon this the most certain of all propositions, the certainty of all other knowledge depends. The objection ofGassendithat the truth of existence follows from any other activity of man as well as from thinking, that I might just as well say: I go to walk, therefore I exist,—has no weight; for, of all my actions, I can be absolutely certain only of my thinking.
3. From the proposition I think, therefore, I am, the whole nature of the mind may be determined. When we examine who we are who hold every thing to be false that is distinct from ourselves, we see clearly that neither extension nor figure, nor any thing which can be predicated of body, but only thought, belongs to our nature. I am therefore only a thinking being,i. e.mind, soul, intelligence, reason. Thought is my substance. Mind can therefore be apprehended clearly and completely for itself alone, without any of those attributes which belong to body. Its conceptioncontains nothing of that which belongs to the conception of body. It is therefore impossible to apprehend it through any sensuous representation, or to make an image of it: it apprehends itself only through the pure intelligence.
4. From the propositioncogito ergo sum, follows still farther the universal rule of all certainty. I am certain that I am a thinking being, what now is involved in the fact that I am certain of any thing? Whence comes this certainty? From no other source than the knowledge that this first proposition contains a clear conception of that which I affirm. I know of a certainty that I am, and I know any thing else only when I know it as certainly as I know that I am. Hence I may regard it as a universal rule, that every thing is true which I know clearly and determinately.
5. This rule, however, is only a principle of certainty, not of knowledge and of truth. We apply it therefore to our thoughts or ideas, in order to discover what is objectively true. But our ideas are partly innate, partly acquired, and partly self-originated. Among those of the first class we find the idea of a God. The question arises, whence have we this idea? Manifestly not from ourselves; this idea could only be implanted within us by a being who has the fulness of all perfection in himself,i. e.only by an actually existing God. If I ask now the question, whence have I the faculty to conceive of a nature more perfect than my own? the answer must ever come, that I have it only from him whose nature is actually more perfect. All the attributes of God, the more I contemplate them, show that their idea could not have originated with myself alone. For though there might be in me the idea of substance because I am a substance, yet I could not of myself have the idea of an infinite substance, since I am finite; such an idea could only be given me through a substance actually infinite. Moreover, we must not think that the conception of the infinite is to be gained through abstraction and negation, as we might gain darkness through the negation of light; but I perceive, rather, that the infinite contains more reality than the finite, and that, therefore, the conception of the infinite must be correspondingly antecedent in me to that of the finite. Since then I have a clearand determined idea of the infinite substance, and since this has a greater objective reality than every other, so is there no other which I have so little reason to doubt. But now since I am certain that the idea of God has come to me from God himself, it only remains for me to examine the way in which I have received it from God. I have never derived it directly nor indirectly from the sense, for ideas through the sense arise only by affecting the external organs of sense; neither have I devised it, for I can neither add to it nor diminish it in any respect,—it must, therefore, be innate as the idea of myself is innate. Hence the first proof we can assign for the being of a God is the fact that we find the idea of a God within us, and that we must have a cause for its being. Again, the being of a God may be concluded from my own imperfection, and especially from the knowledge of my imperfection. For since I know that there is a perfection which is wanting in me, it follows that there must exist a being who is more perfect than I, on whom I depend and from whom I receive all I possess.—But the best and most evident proof for the being of a God is, in fine, that which is gained from the conception of a God. The mind among all its different ideas singles out the chiefest of all, that of the most perfect being, and perceives that this has not only the possibility of existence,i. e.accidental existence like all other ideas, but that it possesses necessary existence in itself. And as the mind knows that in every triangle its three angles are equal to two right angles, because this is involved in the very idea of a triangle, so does the mind necessarily infer that necessary existence belongs to the conception of the most perfect being, and that, therefore, the most perfect being actually exists. No other idea which the mind finds within itself contains necessary existence, but from the idea of the highest being existence cannot be separated without contradiction. It is only our prejudices which keep us from seeing this. Since we are accustomed in every thing to separate its conception from its existence, and since we often make ideas arbitrarily, it readily happens, that when we contemplate the highest being we are in doubt whether its idea may not be one also arbitrarily devised, or at least one inwhose conception existence does not lie.—This proof is essentially different from that of Thomas (Anselm of Canterbury). His argument was as follows: “If we understand what is indicated by the wordGod, it is all that can be conceived of greatness; but now there is actually and in thought more belonging to him than the word represents, and therefore God exists not only in word (or representation), but in fact.” Here the defect in the syllogism is manifest, for from the premise it could only be concluded that God must therefore berepresentedas existing in fact, while his actual existence would not follow. My proof on the other hand is this,—we may predicate of a thing what we clearly see belongs to its true and changeless nature, or to its essence, or to its form. But now after we had examined what God is, we found existence to belong to his true and changeless nature, and therefore may we properly predicate existence of God. Necessary existence is contained in the idea of the most perfect being, not by a fiction of our understanding but because existence belongs to his eternal and changeless nature.
6. The result just found—the existence of God—is of the highest consequence. Before attaining this we were obliged to doubt every thing, and give up even every certainty, for we did not know but that it belonged to the nature of the human mind to err, but that God had created us for error. But so soon as we look at the necessary attributes of God in the innate idea of him, so soon as we know that he is true, it would be a contradiction to suppose that he would deceive us, or that he could have made us to err; for though an ability to deceive might prove his skill, a willingness to deceive would only demonstrate his frailty. Our reason, therefore, can never apprehend an object which would not be true so far as the reason apprehended it,i. e.so far as it is clearly known. For God might justly be styled a deceiver if he had given us a reason so perverted as to hold the false for the true. And thus every absolute doubt with which we began is dispelled. From the being of God we derive every certainty. For every sure knowledge it is only necessary that we have clearly known athing, and are also certain of the existence of a God, who would not deceive.
7. From the true idea of God follow the principles of a philosophy of nature or the doctrine of the two substances. Substance is that which so exists that it needs nothing else for its existence. In this (highest) sense God is the only substance. God, as the infinite substance, has his ground in himself, is the cause of himself. The two created substances, on the other hand, the thinking and the corporeal substance, mind and matter, are substances only in a broader sense of the word; they may be apprehended under the common conception that they are things which need only the co-operation of God for their existence. Each of these two substances has an attribute which constitutes its nature and its essence, and to which all its other determinations may be referred. The attribute and essence of matter is extension, that of mind, thought. For every thing else which can be predicated of body presupposes extension, and is only a mode of extension, as every thing we can find in mind is only a modification of thought. A substance to which thought immediately belongs is called mind, and a substance, whose immediate substratum is extension, is called body. Since thought and extension are distinct from each other, and since mind cannot only be known without the attributes of the body, but is in itself the negation of those attributes, we may say that the essence of these substances is in their reciprocal negation. Mind and body are wholly distinct, and have nothing in common.
8. We pass by the physics of Descartes, which has only a subordinate philosophical interest, and notice next his views of anthropology. From this dualistic relation between mind and matter, there follows a dualistic relation between soul and body. If matter is essentially extension, and mind essentially thought, and if the two have nothing in common, then the union of soul and body can be conceived only as a mechanical one. The body is to be regarded as an artistic automaton, which God has made, as a statue or machine formed by God from the earth. Within this body the soul dwells, closely but not internally connected with it.The union of the two is only a powerful bringing of the two together, since each is not only an independent factor, but is essentially distinct from and even opposed to the other. The body by itself is a machine fully prepared, in which nothing is changed by the entrance of the thinking soul, except that through it certain motions are secured: the wheel-work of the machine remains as it was. It is only thought which distinguishes this machine from every other; hence, therefore, brutes which are not self-conscious nor thinking, must be ranked with all other machines. From this standpoint arose especially the question concerning the seat of the soul. If body and soul are independent substances, each essentially opposed to the other, they cannot interpenetrate each other, but can touch only at one point when they are powerfully brought together. This point where the soul has its seat, is, according to Descartes, not the whole brain but the pineal gland, a little kernel in the middle of the brain. The proof for this claim, that the pineal gland is the only place where the soul immediately exhibits its energy, is found in the circumstance that all other parts of the brain are twofold, which should not be in an organ where the soul has its seat, else objects would appear double. There is, therefore, no other place in the body where impressions can be so well united as in this gland. The pineal gland is, therefore, the chief seat of the soul, and the place where all our thoughts are formed.
We have thus developed the fundamental thoughts of the Cartesian system, and will now recapitulate in a few words the features characteristic of its standpoint and historic position. Descartes was the founder of a new epoch in philosophy,first, from his postulate of universal freedom from all preconceptions. His protesting against every thing which is not posited by the thought, against taking any thing for granted in respect of the truth, has remained from that time onward the fundamental principle of the new age.Secondly.Descartes has brought out the principle of self-consciousness (the mind or the thinking substance is regarded by him as an individual self, a particular Ego)—a new principle, unknown in this view to the ancients.Thirdly.Descartes has shown the opposition between being and thought, existenceand consciousness, and the mediation of this opposition, which has been the problem of the whole modern philosophy, he first affirmed as the true philosophical problem. But with these ideas, which make an epoch in the history of philosophy, there are at the same time connected the defects of the Cartesian philosophizing.First.Descartes gained the content of his system, namely his three substances, empirically. True, the system which begins with a protestation against all existence would seem to take nothing for granted, but to derive every thing from the thinking. But in fact this protesting is not thoroughly carried out. That which seems to be cast aside is afterwards, when the principle of certainty is gained, taken up again unchanged. And so it happens that Descartes finds at hand not only the idea of God, but his two substances as somethingimmediately given. True, in order to reach them, he abstracts every thing which lies immediately before him, but in the end the two substances are seen as that which remains when all else is abstracted. They are receivedempirically. Theseconddefect is, that Descartes separates so wholly from each other the two sides of the opposition between thought and being. He posits both as “substances,”i. e.as powers, which reciprocally exclude and negate each other. The essence of matter according to him consistsonlyin extension,i. e.in the pure beingextra se(Aussersichsein), and that of mindonlyin thought,i. e.in the pure beingin se(Insichsein.) The two stand over against each other as centrifugal and centripetal. But with this apprehension of mind and matter, an inner mediation of the two is an impossibility; there must be a powerful act of creation, there must be the divine assistance in order that the two sides may ever come together, and be united as they are in man. Nevertheless Descartes demands and attempts such a mediation of the two sides. But the impossibility of truly overcoming the dualism of his standpoint is thethird, and the chief defect of his system. In the proposition “I think, therefore I am,” or “I am thinking,” the two sides, being and thought, are indeed connected together, but only that they may become fixed independently in respect of each other. If the question is asked,how does the Ego stand related to the extended? the answer can only be: by thinking,i. e.negatively, by excluding it. The idea of God, therefore, is all that remains for the mediation of these two sides. The two substances are created by God, and through the divine will may be bound together; through the idea of God, the Ego attains the certainty that the extended exists. God is therefore in a certain degree aDeus ex machina, necessary in order to mediate the conflict of the Ego with the extended. It is obvious how external such a mediation is.
This defect of the Cartesian system operated as an impelling motive to those which succeeded.
1. Mind and matter, consciousness and existence, Descartes had fixed in the farthest separation from each other. Both, with him, are substances, independent powers, reciprocally excluding oppositions. Mind (i. e.in his view the simple self, the Ego) he regarded as essentially the abstraction from the sensuous, the distinguishing itself from matter and the separating of matter from itself; matter was essentially the complete opposition to thought. If the relation of these two powers be as has been given, then the question arises, how can there ever be a filiation (Rapport) between them? How, on the one hand, can the affections of the body work upon the soul, and on the other hand, how can the volition of the soul direct the body, if the two are absolutely distinct and opposed to each other? At this point,Arnold Geulincx(a disciple of Descartes, born at Antwerp 1625, and died as professor of philosophy at Leyden 1669) took up the Cartesian system, and endeavored to give it a greater logical perfection. According to Geulincx neither the soul works immediatelyupon the body, nor the body immediately upon the soul. Certainly not the former: for thoughIcan determine and move my body in many respects arbitrarily, yetIam not the cause of this movement; for I know not how it happens, I know not in what manner motion is communicated from my brain to the different parts of my body, and it is impossible that I should do that in respect of which I cannot see how it is done. But if I cannot produce motion in my body, much less can I do this outside of my body. I am therefore simply a contemplator of the world; the only act which is peculiarly mine is contemplation. But even this contemplation arises in a singular manner. For if we ask how we obtain our observations of the external world, we find it impossible that the external world should directly give them to us. For however much we may say that,e. g.in the act of seeing, the external objects produce an image in my eye or an impression in my brain as in wax, yet this impression or picture is after all only something corporeal or material, and cannot therefore come into my mind, which is absolutely distinct from every thing material. There remains, therefore, only that we seek the mediation of the two sides in God. It is God alone who can unite the outer with the inner, and the inner with the outer; who can make the outer phenomena to become inner representations or notions of the mind; who can thus bring the world within the mind’s observation, and the inner determinations of the will outward into deed. Hence every working, every act which unites the outer and inner, which brings the mind and the world into connection, is neither a working of the mind nor of the world, but only an immediate working of God. The movement of my limbs does not follow from my will, but only because it is the will of God that these movements should follow when I will. My will is anoccasionby which God moves my body—an affection of my body is anoccasionby which God brings within me a representation of the external world: the one is only the occasional cause of the other (hence the name occasionalism). My will, however, does not move God to move my limbs, but he who has imparted motion to matter and given it its laws, created also my will, and has so connected together the mostdiverse things, the movement of matter and the arbitrium of my will, that when my will puts forth a volition, such a motion follows as it wills, and the motion follows the volition without any interaction or physical influence exerted by the one upon the other. But just as it is with two clocks which go exactly alike, the one striking precisely as the other, their harmony is not the result of any reciprocal interacting, but follows because both have been fashioned and directed alike,—so is it with the movements of the body and the will, they harmonize only through that exalted artist who has in this ineffable way connected them together. We see from this that Geulincx has carried to its limit the dualistic basis of Descartes. While Descartes called the union of mind and matter a conjunction through power, Geulincx named it a miracle. There is consequently in this view no immanent, but only a transcendent mediation possible.
2. Closely connected with this view of Geulincx, and at the same time a real consequence and a wider development of the Cartesian philosophizing, is the philosophic standpoint ofNicolas Malebranche. He was born at Paris in 1638, chosen a member of the “Congrégation de l’oratoire” in his twenty-second year, won over to philosophy through the writings of Descartes, and died, after numerous feuds with theological opposers, in 1715.
Malebranche started with the Cartesian view of the relation between mind and matter. Both are strictly distinct from each other, and in their essence opposed. How now does the mind, (i. e.the Ego) gain a knowledge of the external world and have ideas of corporeal things? For it comes to know things only by means of ideas,—not through itself, not immediately. Now the mind can neither gain these ideas from itself, nor from the things themselves. Not from itself, for it is absolutely opposed to the bodily world, and hence has no capacity to idealize, to spiritualize material things, though they must become spiritualized before they can be introduced to the mind; in a word, the mind, which in relation to the material world is only an opposition, has no power to destroy this opposition. Just as little has the mind derived these ideas from things: for matter is not visiblethrough itself, but rather as antithetic to mind is it that which is absolutely unintelligible, and which cannot be idealized, that which is absolutely without light and clearness.—It only remains, therefore, that the mind beholds things in a third that stands above the opposition of the two, viz., God. God, as the absolute substance, is the absolute ideality, the infinite power to spiritualize all things. Material things have no real opposition for God, to him they are no impenetrable darkness, but an ideal existence; all things are in him spiritually and ideally; the whole world, as intellectual or ideal, is God. God is, therefore, the higher mean between the Ego and the external world. In him we behold ideas, we being so strictly united with him, that he may properly be called the place of minds.
The philosophy of Malebranche, whose simple thought is this, that we know and see all things in God,—shows itself, like the occasionalism of Geulincx, to be a peculiar attempt to stand upon the basis of the Cartesian philosophy, and with its fundamental thought to overcome its dualism.
3. Two defects or inner contradictions have manifested themselves in the philosophy of Descartes. He had considered mind and matter as substances, each one of which excluded the other from itself, and had sought a mediation of the two. But with such conditions no mediation other than an external one is possible. If thought and existence are each one substance, then can they only negate and exclude each other. Unnatural theories, like those which have been mentioned, are the inevitable result of this. The simplest way out of the difficulty is to give up the principle first assumed, to strip off their independence from the two opposites, and instead of regarding them as substances, view them as accidents of one substance. This way of escape is moreover indicated by a particular circumstance. According to Descartes, God is the infinite substance, the peculiar substance in the proper sense of the word. Mind and matter are indeed substances, but only in relation to each other; in relation to God they are dependent, and not substances. This is, strictly taken, a contradiction. The true consequence were rather to say that neither the Ego (i. e.theindividual thinking) nor the material things are independent, but that this can be predicated only of the one substance, God; this substance alone has a real being, and all the being which belongs to individual essences these latter possess not as a substantial being, but only as accidents of the one only true and real substance. Malebranche approached this consequence. With him the bodily world is ideally at least resolved and made to sink in God, in whom are the eternal archetypes of all things. ButSpinozahas most decidedly and logically adopted this consequence, and affirmed the accidence of all individual being and the exclusive substantiality of God alone. His system is the perfection and the truth of the Cartesian.
Baruch or Benedict Spinoza was born at Amsterdam, Nov. 24, 1632. His parents were Jews of Portuguese descent, and being merchants of opulence, they gave him a finished education. He studied with great diligence the Bible and the Talmud, but soon exchanged the pursuit of theology for the study of physics and the works of Descartes. He early became dissatisfied with Judaism, and presently came to an open rupture with it, though without going over formally to Christianity. In order to escape the persecutions of the Jews, who had excommunicated him, and who even went so far as to make an attempt upon his life, he left Amsterdam and betook himself to Rhynsberg, near Leyden. He finally settled down at the Hague, where he spent his life in the greatest seclusion, devoted wholly to scientific pursuits. He supported himself by grinding optic glasses, which his friends sold for him. The Elector Palatine, Charles Louis, offered him a Professorship of Philosophy at Heidelberg, with the full permission to teach as he chose, but Spinoza declined the post. Naturallyof a weak constitution, which consumption had for many years been undermining, Spinoza died at the age of 44, on the 21st of February, 1677. In his life there was mirrored the unclouded clearness and exalted serenity of the perfected sage. Abstemious in his habits, satisfied with little, the master of his passions, never intemperately sad nor joyous, gentle and benevolent, with a character of singular excellence and purity, he faithfully illustrated in his life, the doctrines of his philosophy. His chief work, theEthica, appeared the year of his death. His design was probably to have published it during his life, but the odious report that he was an atheist restrained him. The friend he most trusted, Louis Mayer, a physician, attended to its publication after the author’s death and according to his will.
The system of Spinoza rests upon three fundamental conceptions, from which all the rest may be derived with mathematical necessity. These conceptions are that of substance, of attribute, and of mode.
1. Spinoza starts from the Cartesian conception of substance: substance is that which needs nothing other for its existence. But with such a conception there can exist only one single substance. A number of substances like that of Descartes is necessarily a contradiction. There can be nothing which has a substantial being besides the one substance of all things. This one substance Spinoza calls God. Of course, with such a view, the Christian idea of God, the notion of a spiritual and personal being, must be laid aside. Spinoza expressly declares, that his notion of God is entirely different from that of the Christian; he denied that understanding and will could be predicated of God; he ridiculed those who supposed that God worked for an end, and even scorned the view which regarded the world as a product of the Divine willing or thinking. God is, with him, only substance, and nothing more. The propositions that there is only one God, and that the substance of all things is only one, are with him identical.
What now peculiarly is this substance? What is positive being? This question it is very difficult to answer directly fromthe standpoint of Spinoza, partly because a definition, according to him, must contain (i. e.must be genetically) the immediate cause of that which is to be explained, but substance is uncreated and can have no cause besides itself; but prominently because Spinoza held that every determination is a negation, since it must indicate a want of existence, a relative not-being. (Omnis determinatio est negatiois an expression which, though he uses it only occasionally, expresses the fundamental idea of his whole system.) Hence, by setting up any positive determinations of being, we only take away from substance its infinity and make it finite. When we therefore affirm any thing concerning it, we can only speak negatively,e. g.that it has no foreign cause, that it has no plurality, that it cannot be divided, etc. It is even reluctantly that Spinoza declares concerning it that it is one, for this predicate might readily be taken numerically, as implying that others, the many, stood over against it. Thus there can remain only such positive affirmations respecting it as express its absolute reference to itself. In this sense Spinoza says that substance is the cause of itself,i. e.its being concludes existence in itself. When Spinoza calls it eternal, it is only another expression for the same thought; for by eternity he understands existence itself, so far as it is conceived to follow from the definition of the thing, in a sense similar to that in which geometricians speak of the eternal properties of figures. Still farther he calls substance infinite, because the conception of infinity expressed to him the conception of true being, the absolute affirmation of existence. So also the expression, God is free, affirms nothing more than those already mentioned, viz., negatively, that every foreign restraint is excluded from him, and positively, that God is in harmony with himself, that his being corresponds to the laws of his essence.
The comprehensive statement for the above is, that there is only one infinite substance that excludes from itself all determination and negation, and is named God, or nature.
2. Besides the infinite substance or God, Descartes had assumed two other substances created by God, viz., mind (thought),and matter (extension). These two Spinoza considers in the light of attributes, though, like Descartes, he receives them empirically. What, now, is the relation of these attributes to the infinite substance? This is the severe question, the tendon-Achilles of Spinoza’s system. They cannot be essential forms in which the substance may manifest itself or appear, for this would make them determine the essence of the substance, which would contradict its conception as already given. Substance, as such, is neither understanding nor extension. If, then, the two attributes do not flow out of the essence of the substance, and do not constitute the substance, there remains only one other supposition, viz., that they are externally attached to the substance; and this is, in fact, Spinoza’s view. Attribute, according to him, is that which the understanding perceives in the substance as constituting its essence. But understanding, as Spinoza expressly says, does not belong to substance as such. Attributes, therefore, are those determinations which express the essence of the substance only for the perceiving understanding; since they express the essence of the substance in a determinate way, while substance itself has no determinate way of being, they can only fall outside the substance, viz., in the reflective understanding. To the substance itself it is indifferent whether the understanding contemplate it under these two attributes or not; the substance in itself has an infinity of attributes,i. e.every possible attribute which is not a limitation, may be predicated of it; it is only the human understanding which attaches these two attributes to the substance, and it affixes no more than these, because, among all the conceptions it can form, these alone are actually positive, or express a reality. God, or the substance, is therefore thinking, in so far as the understanding contemplates him under the attribute of thought, and is extended in so far as the understanding contemplates him under the attribute of extension. It is, says Spinoza—using a figure to express this relation of substance to attribute—it is, like a surface reflecting the light, which (objectively taken) may be hot, though, in reference to the man looking upon it, it is white. More accurately substance is a surface, standing opposite to a beholder whocan see only through yellow and blue glasses; to whom, therefore, the surface must appear either yellow or blue, though it is neither the one nor the other.
In relation to substance, therefore, the attributes must be apprehended as entirely independent: they must be conceived through themselves: their conception is not dependent upon that of substance. This is necessarily true; for since the substance can have no determinateness, then the attribute which is its determinate being, cannot be explained from the substance, but only through itself. Only by apprehending the attribute independently can the unity of the substance be maintained.
In relation to each other, the attributes are to be taken as opposites strictly and determinately diverse. Between the bodily and the ideal world there is no reciprocal influence nor interaction: a body can only spring from a body, and an idea can only have an idea for its source. Hence, therefore, neither the mind can work upon the body nor the body upon the mind. Nevertheless there exists between the two worlds a perfect harmony and an entire parallelism. It is one and the same substance which is conceived under each of the two attributes, and under which one of the two we may contemplate it is indifferent to the substance itself, for each mode of contemplation is equally correct. From this follows at once the proposition of Spinoza, that the connection of ideas and of things is the same. Hence the solution to the problem of the relation of body and soul, so difficult to find from the Cartesian standpoint, is readily seen from that of Spinoza. Body and soul are one and the same thing, only viewed under different attributes. Mind is nothing but the idea of body,i. e.it is the same thing as body, only that it is viewed under the attribute of thought. In the same way is explained the apparent but not real influence of the body upon the mind, and the mind upon the body. That which, in one point of view is bodily motion, in another is an act of thought. In short, the most perfect parallelism reigns between the world of bodily things and that of ideas.
3. Individual beings, which considered under the attribute ofthought are ideas, and under the attribute of extension are bodies, Spinoza comprehends under the conception of accidence, or, as he calls it, mode. By modes we are therefore to understand the changing forms of substance. The modes stand related to the substance as the rippling waves of the sea to the water of the sea, as forms constantly disappearing and never having a real being. In fact this example goes too far, for the waves of the sea are at least a part of the water of the sea, while the modes, instead of being parts of the substance, are essentially nothing and without being. The finite has no existence as finite; only the infinite substance has actual existence. Substance, therefore, could not be regarded more falsely than if it should be viewed as made up of modes. That would be, Spinoza remarks, as if one should say that the line is made up out of points. It is just as false to affirm that Spinoza identifies God and the world. He identifies them so little that he would rather say that the world, as world,i. e.as an aggregate of individuals, does not at all exist; we might rather say with Hegel that he denies the world (his system is an acosmism), than with Bayle, that he makes every thing God, or that he ascribes divinity to every thing.
Whence do finite things or individuals arise, if they can have no existence by the side of substance? They are only the product of our deceptive apprehension. There are two chief ways of knowledge—the intuitive, through the reason, and the imaginative. To the latter belong the knowledge of experience, and all that is abstract, superficial, and confused; to the former, the collection of all fitting (adequate) ideas. It is only the fault of the imagination that we should look upon the world as a manifoldness of individuals; the manifoldness is only a form of representation. The imagination isolates and individualizes what the reason sees together in its unity. Hence it is only as considered through the imagination (experience or opinion) that modes arethings; the reason looks upon them as necessary, or, what is the same thing, as eternal.
Such are the fundamental thoughts and features of Spinoza’s system. Hispractical philosophyyet remains to be characterizedand in a few words. Its chief propositions follow necessarily from the metaphysical grounds already cited. First, it follows from these, that what is called free will cannot be admitted. For since man is only a mode, he, like every other mode, stands in an endless series of conditioning causes, and no free will can therefore be predicated of him. The will must thus, like the body (and the resolution of the will is only a modification of the body), be determined by something other than itself. Men regard themselves as free only because they are conscious of their actions and not of the determining causes. Just so the notions which one commonly connects with the words good and evil, rest on an error as follows at once from the conception of the absolute divine causality. Good and evil are not something actually in the things themselves, but only express relative conceptions which we have formed from a comparison of things with one another. Thus, by observing certain things we form a certain universal conception, which we thereupon treat as though it were the rule for the being and acting of all individuals, and if any individual varies from this conception we fancy that it does not correspond to its nature, and is incomplete. Evil or sin is therefore only something relative, for nothing happens against God’s will. It is only a simple negation or deprivation, which only seems to be a reality in our representation. With God there is no idea of the evil. What is therefore good and what evil? That is good which is useful to us, and that evil which hinders us from partaking of a good. That, moreover, is useful to us which brings us to a greater reality, which preserves and exalts our being. But our true being is knowledge, and hence that only is useful to us which aids us in knowing; the highest good is the knowledge of God; the highest virtue of the mind is to know and love God. From the knowledge of God we gain the highest gladness and joy of the mind, the highest blessedness. Blessedness, hence, is not the reward of virtue, but virtue itself.
The grand feature of Spinoza’s philosophy is that it buries every thing individual and particular, as a finite, in the abyss of the divine substance. With its view unalterably fixed upon theeternal one, it loses sight of every thing which seems actual in the ordinary notions of men. But its defect consists in its inability to transform this negative abyss of substance into the positive ground of all-being and becoming. The substance of Spinoza, has been justly compared to the lair of a lion, which many footsteps enter, but from which none emerge. The existence of the phenomenal world, though it be only the apparent and deceptive reality of the finite, Spinoza does not explain. With his abstract conception of substance he cannot explain it. And yet the means to help him out of the difficulty lay near at hand. He failed to apply universally his fundamental principle that all determination is negation; he applied it only to the finite, but the abstract infinite, in so far as it stands over against the finite, is also a determinate; this infinite must be denied by its negation, which is the case when a finite world is posited. Jacob Boehme rightly apprehended this, when he affirmed, that without a self-duplication, without an ingress into the limited, the finite, the original ground of things is an empty nothing (cf.§ XXIII. 8). So the original ground of Spinoza is a nothing, a purely indeterminate, because with him substance was only a principle of unity and not also a principle of distinction, because its attributes, instead of being an expression of an actual difference and a positive distinction to itself, are rather wholly indifferent to itself. The system of Spinoza is the most abstract Monotheism that can be thought. It is not accidental that its author, a Jew, should have brought out again this view of the world, this view of absolute identity, for it is in a certain degree with him only a consequence of his national religion—an echo of the Orient.
We have now reached a point of divergence in the development of philosophy. Descartes had affirmed and attempted to mediate the opposition, between thought and being, mind and matter. This mediation, however, was hardly successful, for the two sides of the opposition he had fixed in their widest separation, when he posited them as two substances or powers, which reciprocally negated each other. The followers of Descartes sought a more satisfactory mediation, but the theories to which they saw themselves driven, only indicated the more clearly that the whole premise from which they started must be given up. At length Spinoza abandoned the false notion, and took away its substantiality from each of the two opposed principles. Mind and matter, thought and extension, are now one in the infinite substance. Yet they are not onein themselves, which would be the only true unity of the two. That they are one in the substance is of little avail, since they are indifferent to the substance, and are not immanent distinctions in it. Thus even with Spinoza the two remain strictly separate. The ground of this isolation we find in the fact that Spinoza himself did not sufficiently renounce the Cartesian notion, and thus could not escape the Cartesian dualism. With him, as with Descartes, thought isonlythought, and extensiononlyextension, and in such an apprehension of the two, the one necessarily excludes the other. If we would find an inner mediation for the two, we must cease to abstract every thing essential from each. The opposite sides must be mediated even in their strictest opposition. To do this, two ways alone were possible. A position could be taken either on the material or on the ideal side, and the attempt made to explain the ideal under the material, or the material under the ideal, comprehending one through the other. Both these attempts werein fact made, and at about the same time. The two parallel courses of a one-sidedidealism, and a one-sidedrealism(Empiricism, Sensualism, Materialism), now begin their development.
The founder of the realistic course and the father of modern Empiricism and Materialism, isJohn Locke, an Englishman.Thomas Hobbes(1588-1679) was his predecessor and countryman, whose name we need here only mention, as it has no importance except for the history of natural rights.
John Locke was born at Wrington, 1632. His student years he devoted to philosophy and prominently to medicine, though his weak health prevented him from practising as a physician. Few cares of business interrupted his leisure, and he devoted his time mostly to literary pursuits. His friendly relations with Lord Anthony Ashley, afterwards Earl of Shaftesbury, exerted a weighty influence upon his course in life. At the house of this distinguished statesman and author he always found the most cordial reception, and an intercourse with the most important men of England. In the year 1670 he sketched for a number of friends the first plan of his famousEssay on the Human Understanding, though the completed work did not appear till 1689. Locke died aged 72 in the year 1704. His writings are characterized by clearness and precision, openness and determinateness. More acute than profound in his philosophizing, he does not in this respect belie the characteristic of his nation. The fundamental thoughts and results of his philosophy have now become common property, especially among the English, though it should not therefore be forgotten that he is the first who has scientifically established them, and is, on this account, entitled to a true placein the history of philosophy, even though his principle was wanting in an inner capacity for development.
Locke’s Philosophy (i. e.his theory of knowledge, for his whole philosophizing expends itself in investigating the faculty of knowing) rests upon two thoughts, to which he never ceases to revert: first (negatively), there are no innate ideas; second (positively), all our knowledge arises from experience.
Many, says Locke, suppose that there are innate ideas which the soul receives coetaneous with its origin, and brings with it into the world. In order to prove that these ideas are innate, it is said that they universally exist, and are universally valid with all men. But admitting that this were so, such a fact would prove nothing if this universal harmony could be explained in any other way. But men mistake when they claim such a fact. There is, in reality, no fundamental proposition, theoretical or practical, which would be universally admitted. Certainly there is no such practical principle, for the example of different people as well as of different ages shows that there is no moral rule universally admitted as valid. Neither is there a theoretical one, for even those propositions which might lay the strongest claim to be universally valid,e. g.the proposition,—“what is, is,” or—“it is impossible that one and the same thing should be and not be at the same time,”—receive by no means a universal assent. Children and idiots have no notion of these principles, and even uncultivated men know nothing of these abstract propositions. They cannot therefore have been imprinted on all men by nature. If ideas were innate, then they must be known by all from earliest childhood. For “to be in the understanding,” and “to become known,” is one and the same thing. The assertion therefore that these ideas are imprinted on the understanding while it does not know it, is hence a manifest contradiction. Just as little is gained by the subterfuge, that these principles come into the consciousnessso soonas men use their reason. This affirmation is directly false, for these maxims which are called universal come into the consciousness much later than a great deal of other knowledge, and children,e. g.give many proofs of their use of reason beforethey know that it is impossible that a thing should be and at the same time not be. It is only correct to say that no one becomes conscious of these propositions without reasoning,—but to say that they are all known with the first reasoning is false. Moreover, that which is first known is not universal propositions, but relates to individual impressions. The child knows that sweet is not bitter long before he understands the logical proposition of contradiction. He who carefully bethinks himself, will hesitate before he affirms that particular dicta as “sweet is not bitter,” are derived from universal ones. If the universal propositions were innate, then must they be the first in the consciousness of the child; for that which nature has stamped upon the human soul must come into consciousness antecedently to any thing which she has not written there. Consequently, if there are no innate ideas, either theoretical or practical, there can be just as truly no innate art nor science. The understanding (or the soul) is essentially atabula rasa,—a blank and void space, a white paper on which nothing is written.
How now does the understanding become possessed of ideas? Only through experience, upon which all knowledge rests, and on which as its principle all knowledge depends. Experience itself is twofold; either it arises through the perception of external objects by means of the sense, in which case we call it sensation; or it is a perception of the activities of our own understanding, in which case it is named the inner sense, or, better, reflection. Sensation and reflection give to the understanding all its ideas; they are the windows through which alone the light of ideas falls upon the naturally dark space of the mind; external objects furnish us with the ideas of sensible qualities, and the inner object, which is the understanding itself, offers us the ideas of its own activities. To show the derivation and to give an explanation of all the ideas derived from both is the problem of the Lockian philosophy. For this end Locke divides ideas (representations or notions) intosimpleandcompound.Simple ideas, he names those which are impressed from without upon the understanding while it remains wholly passive, just as the images of certain objects arerepresented in a mirror. These simple ideas arepartlysuch as come to the understanding through an individual sense,e. g.the ideas of color, which are furnished to the mind through the eye, or those of sound, which come to it through the ear, or those of solidity or impenetrability, which we receive through the touch;partlysuch as a number of senses have combined to give us, as those of space and of motion, of which we become conscious by means of the sense both of touch and of sight;partlysuch as we receive through reflection, as the idea of thought and of will; andpartly, in fine, such as arise from both sensation and reflection combined,e. g.power, unity, &c. These simple ideas form the material, as it were the letters of all our knowledge. But now as language arises from a manifold combination of letters, syllables and words, so the understanding forms complex ideas by the manifold combination of simple ideas with each other. The complex ideas may be referred to three classes, viz.: the ideas of mode, of substance, and of relation. Under the ideas of mode, Locke considers the modifications of space (as distance, measurement, immensity, surface, figure, &c.), of time (as succession, duration, eternity), of thought (perception, memory, abstraction, &c.), of number, power, &c. Special attention is given by Locke to the conception of substance. He explains the origin of this conception in this way, viz.: we find both in sensation and reflection, that a certain number of simple ideas seem often to be connected together. But as we cannot divest ourselves of the impression that these simple ideas have not been produced through themselves, we are accustomed to furnish them with a ground in some existing substratum, which we indicate with the word substance. Substance is something unknown, and is conceived of as possessing those qualities which are necessary to furnish us with simple ideas. But from the fact that substance is a product of our subjective thinking, it does not follow that it has no existence outside of ourselves. On the contrary, this is distinguished from all other complex ideas in the fact that this is an idea which has its archetype distinct from ourselves, and possesses objective reality, while other complex ideas are formed by the mind at pleasure, and have noreality corresponding to them external to the mind. We do not know what is the archetype of substance, and of the substance itself we are acquainted only with its attributes. From considering the conception of substance, Locke next passes over to the idea ofrelation. A relation arises when the understanding has connected two things with each other, in such a way, that in considering them it passes over from the one to the other. Every thing is capable of being brought by the understanding into relation, or what is the same thing, to be transformed into something relative. It is consequently impossible to enumerate the sum of every possible relation. Hence Locke treats only of some of the more weighty conceptions of relation, among others, that of identity and difference, but especially that of cause and effect. The idea of cause and effect arises when our understanding perceives that any thing whatsoever, be it substance or quality, begins to exist through the activity of another. So much concerning ideas. The combination of ideas among themselves gives the conception of knowing. Hence knowledge stands in the same relation to the simple and complex ideas as a proposition does to the letters, syllables and words which compose it. From this it follows that our knowledge does not pass beyond the compass of our ideas, and hence that it is bounded by experience.
These are the prominent thoughts in the Lockian philosophy. Its empiricism is clear as day. The mind, according to it, is in itself bare, and only a mirror of the outer world,—a dark space which passively receives the images of external objects; its whole content is made by the impressions furnished it by material things.Nihil est in intellectu, quod non fuerit in sensu—is the watchword of this standpoint. While Locke, by this proposition, expresses the undoubted preponderance of the material over the intellectual, he does so still more decisively when he declares that it is possible and even probable that the mind is a material essence. He does not admit the reverse possibility, that material things may be classed under the intellectual as a special kind. Hence with him mind is the secondary to matter, and hence he is seen to take the characteristic standpoint of realism (cf.§ XXVII).It is true that Locke was not always logically consistent, and in many points did not thoroughly carry out his empiricism: but we can clearly see that the road which will be taken in the farther development of this direction, will result in a thorough denial of the ideal factor.
The empiricism of Locke, wholly national as it is, soon became the ruling philosophy in England. Standing on its basis we findIsaac Newton, the great mathematician (1642-1727),Samuel Clarke, a disciple of Newton, whose chief attention was given to moral philosophy (1675-1729), the English moralists of this period,William Wollaston(1659-1724), the Earl ofShaftesbury(1671-1713),Francis Hutcheson(1694-1746), and even some opponents of Locke, asPeter Brown, who died 1735.
As already remarked, Locke had not been wholly consistent with the standpoint of empiricism. Though conceding to material objects a decided superiority above the thinking subject, there was yet one point, viz., the recognition of substance, where he claimed for the thinking a power above the objective world. Among all the complex ideas which are formed by the subjective thinking, the idea of substance is, according to Locke, the only one which has objective reality; all the rest being purely subjective, with nothing actually corresponding to them in the objective world. But in the very fact that the subjective thinking places the conception of substance, which it has formed, in the objective world, it affirms an objective relation of things, an objective connection of them among each other, and an existing rationality. The reason of the subject in this respect stands in a certain degree above the objective world, for the relation of substance is not derived immediately from the world of sense, and isno product of sensation nor of perception through the sense. On a pure empirical standpoint—and such was Locke’s—it was therefore illogical to allow the conception of substance to remain possessed of objective being. If the understanding is essentially a bare and empty space, a white unwritten paper, if its whole content of objective knowledge consists in the impressions made upon it by material things, then must the conception of substance also be explained as a mere subjective notion, a union of ideas joined together at the mind’s pleasure, and the subject itself, thus fully deprived of every thing to which it could lay claim, must become wholly subordinated to the material world. This stride to a logical empiricism Hume has made in his criticism on the conception of causality.
David Hume was born at Edinburgh 1711. Devoted in youth to the study of law, then for some time a merchant, he afterwards gave his attention exclusively to philosophy and history. His first literary attempt was hardly noticed. A more favorable reception was, however, given to his “Essays,”—of which he published different collections from 1742 to 1757, making in all five volumes. In these Hume has treated philosophical themes as a thoughtful and cultivated man of the world, but without any strict systematic connection. In 1752 he was elected to the care of a public library in Edinburgh, and began in this same year his famous history of England. Afterwards he became secretary of legation at Paris, where he became acquainted with Rousseau. In 1767 he became under secretary of state, an office, however, which he filled for only a brief period. His last years were spent in Edinburgh, in a quiet and contented seclusion. He died 1776.
The centre of Hume’s philosophizing is his criticism of the conception of cause. Locke had already expressed the thought that we attain the conception of substance only by thehabitof always seeing certain modes together. Hume takes up this thought with earnestness. Whence do we know, he asks, that two things stand to each other in the relation of cause and effect? We do not know it apriori, for since the effect is something otherthan the cause, while knowledge apriori embraces only that which is identical, the effect cannot thus be discovered in the cause; neither do we know it through experience, for experience reveals to us only the succession in time of two facts. All our conclusions from experience, therefore, rest simply upon habit. Because we are in the habit of seeing that one thing is followed in time by another, do we form the notion that the lattermustfollow out of the former: we make the relation of causality out of the relation of succession; but a connection in time is naturally something other than a causal connection. Hence, with the conception of causality, we transcend that which is given in perception and form for ourselves, notions to which we are properly not entitled.—That which belongs to causality belongs to every necessary relation. We find within us conceptions, as those of power and expression, and in general that of necessary connection; but let us note how we attain these: not through sensation, for though external objects seem to us to have coetaneousness of being, they show as no necessary connection. Do they then come through reflection? True, it seems as if we might get the idea of power by seeing that the organs of our body move in consequence of the dictate of our mind. But since we do not know the means through which the mind works, and since all the organs of the body cannot be moved by the will, it follows, that we are indeed pointed to experience in reference to this activity; but since experience can show us only a frequent conjunction, but no real connection, it follows also that we come to the conception of power as of every necessary connection, only because we areaccustomedto a transcending process in our notions. All conceptions which express a relation of necessity, all knowledge presumptive of a real objective connection of things, rests therefore ultimately only upon the association of ideas. Having denied the conception of substance, Hume was led also to deny that of the Ego or self. If the Ego or self really exists, it must be a substance possessing inherent qualities. But since our conception of substance is purely subjective, without objective reality, it follows that there is no correspondent reality to our conceptionof the self or the Ego. The self or the Ego is, in fact, nothing other than a compound of many notions following rapidly upon each other; and under this compound we lay a conceived substratum, which we call soul, self, Ego (I). The self, or the Ego, rests wholly on an illusion. Of course, with such premises, nothing can be said of the immortality of the soul. If the soul is only the compound of our notions, it necessarily ceases with the notions—that which is compounded of the movements of the body dies with those movements.
There needs no further proof, than simply to utter these chief thoughts of Hume, to show that his scepticism is only a logical carrying out of Locke’s empiricism. Every determination of universality and necessity must fall away, if we derive our knowledge only from perceptions through the sense; these determinations cannot be comprised in sensation.
The French took up the problem of carrying out the empiricism of Locke, to its ultimate consequences in sensualism and materialism. Although this empiricism had sprung up on English soil, and had soon become universally prevalent there, it was reserved for France to push it to the last extreme, and show that it overthrew all the foundations of moral and religious life. This final consequence of empiricism did not correspond to the English national character. But on the contrary, both the empiricism of Locke, and the scepticism of Hume, found themselves opposed in the latter half of the eighteenth century, by a reaction in the Scotch philosophy (Reid1701-1799,Beattie,Oswald,Dugald Stewart, 1753-1828). The attempt was here made to establish certain principles of truth as innate and immanent in the subject, which should avail both against thetabula rasaof Locke,and the scepticism of Hume. These principles were taken in a thoroughly English way, as those of common sense, as facts of experience, as facts of the moral instinct and sound human understanding; as something empirically given, and found in the common consciousness by self-contemplation and reflection. But in France, on the other hand, there was such a public and social condition of things during the eighteenth century, that we can only regard the systems of materialism and egoistic moralism which here appeared, as the last practical consequences of the empirical standpoint,—to be the natural result of the universal desolation. The expression of a lady respecting the system of Helvetius is well known, that it uttered only the secret of all the world.
Most closely connected with the empiricism of Locke, is the sensualism of the AbbéCondillac. Condillac was born at Grenoble, 1715. In his first writings he adhered to Locke, but subsequently passed beyond him, and sought to ground a philosophical standpoint of his own. He was elected a member of the French Academy in 1768, and died in 1780. His writings fill twenty-three volumes, and have their origin in a moral and religious interest.
Condillac, like Locke, started with the proposition that all our knowledge comes from experience. While, however, Locke had indicated two sources for this knowledge, sensation and reflection, the outer and the inner sense, Condillac referred reflection to sensation, and reduced the two sources to one. Reflection is, with him, only sensation; all intellectual occurrences, even the combination of ideas and volition, are to be regarded only as modified sensations. It is the chief problem and content of Condillac’s philosophizing to carry out this thought, and derive the different functions of the soul out of the sensations of the outer sense. He illustrates this thought by a statue, which has been made with a perfect internal organization like a man, but which possesses no ideas, and in which only gradually one sense after another awakens and fills the soul with impressions. In such a view man stands on the same footing as the brute, for all hisknowledge and all his incentives to action he receives from sensation. Condillac consequently names men perfect animals, and brutes imperfect men. Still he revolts from affirming the materiality of the soul, and denying the existence of God. These ultimate consequences of sensualism were first drawn by others after him, as would naturally enough follow. As sensualism affirmed that truth or being could only be perceived through the sense, so we have only to reverse this proposition, and have the thesis of materialism, viz.: the sensible alone is, there is no other being but material being.