Helvetiushas exhibited the moral consequences of the sensualistic standpoint. While theoretical sensualism affirms that all our knowledge is determined by sensation, practical sensualism adds to this the analogous proposition that all our volition springs from the same source, and is regulated by the sensuous desire. Helvetius adopted it as the principle of morals to satisfy this sensuous desire.
Helvetius was born at Paris in 1715. Gaining a position in his twenty-third year as farmer-general, he found himself early in the possession of a rich income, but after a few years he found this office so vexatious that he abandoned it. The study of Locke decided his philosophic direction. Helvetius wrote his famed work,de l’Esprit, after he had given up his office and withdrawn himself in seclusion. It appeared in 1758, and attracted a great attention at home and abroad, though it drew upon him a violent persecution, especially from the clergy. It was fortunate for him that the persecution satisfied itself with suppressing his book. The repose in which he spent his later years was interrupted only by two journeys which he made toGermany and England. He died in 1771. His personal character was wholly estimable, full of kindness and generosity. Especially in his place as farmer-general he showed himself benevolent towards the poor, and resolute against the encroachments of his subalterns. The style of his writings is easy and elegant.
Self-love or interest, says Helvetius, is the lever of all our mental activities. Even that activity which is purely intellectual, our instinct towards knowledge, our forming of ideas, rests upon this. Since now all self-love refers essentially only to bodily pleasure, it follows that every mental occurrence within us has its peculiar source only in the striving after this pleasure; but in saying this, we have only affirmed where the principle of all morality is to be sought. It is an absurdity to require a man to do the good simply for its own sake. This is just as impracticable as that he should do the evil simply for the sake of the evil. Hence if morality would not be wholly fruitless, it must return to its empirical basis, and venture to adopt the true principle of all acting, viz., sensuous pleasure and pain, or, in other words, selfishness as an actual moral principle. Hence, as a correct legislation is that which secures obedience to its laws through reward and punishment,i. e.through selfishness, so will a correct system of morals be that which derives the duties of men from self-love, which shows that that which is forbidden is something which is followed by disagreeable consequences. A system of ethics which does not involve the self-interest of men, or which wars against this, necessarily remains fruitless.
1. It has already been remarked (§ XXX.) that the carrying out of empiricism to its extremes, as was attempted in France, was most intimately connected with the general condition of the French people and state, in the period before the revolution. The contradictory element in the character of the Middle Ages, the external and dualistic relation to the spiritual world, had developed itself in Catholic France till it had corrupted and destroyed every condition. Morality, mainly through the influence of a licentious court, had become wholly corrupted; the state had sunk to an unbridled despotism, and the church to a hierarchy as hypocritical as it was powerful. Thus, as every intellectual edifice was threatened with ruin, nature, as matter without intellect, as the object of sensation and desire, alone remained. Yet it is not the materialistic extreme which constitutes the peculiar character and tendency of the period now before us. The common character of the philosophers of the eighteenth century is rather, and most prominently, the opposition against every ruling restraint, and perversion in morals, religion, and the state. Their criticism and polemics, which were much more ingenious and eloquent than strictly scientific, were directed against the whole realm of traditional and given and positive notions. They sought to show the contradiction between the existing elements in the state and the church, and the incontrovertible demands of the reason. They sought to overthrow in the faith of the world every fixed opinion which had not been established in the eye of reason, and to give the thinking man the full consciousness of his pure freedom. In order that we may correctly estimate the merit of these men, we must bring before us the French world of that age against which their attacks were directed; the dissoluteness of a pitiful court,the slavish obedience exacted by a corrupt priesthood, a church sunken into decay yet seeking worldly honor, a state constitution, a condition of rights and of society, which must be profoundly revolting to every thinking man and every moral feeling. It is the immortal merit of these men that they gave over to scorn and hatred the abjectness and hypocrisy which then reigned; that they brought the minds of men to look with indifference upon the idols of the world, and awakened within them a consciousness of their own autonomy.
2. The most famous and influential actor in this period of the French clearing up, isVoltaire(1694-1778). Though a writer of great versatility, rather than a philosopher, there was yet no philosopher of that time who exerted so powerful an influence upon the whole thinking of his country and his age. Voltaire was no atheist. On the contrary, he regarded the belief in a Supreme Being to be so necessary, that he once said that if there were no God we should be under the necessity of inventing one. He was just as little disposed to deny the immortality of the soul, though he often expressed his doubts upon it. He regarded the atheistic materialism of a La Mettrie as nothing but nonsense. In these respects, therefore, he is far removed from the standpoint of the philosophers who followed him. His whole hatred was expended against Christianity as a positive religion. To destroy this system he considered as his peculiar mission, and he left no means untried to attain this anxiously longed-for end. His unwearied warfare against every positive religion prepared the way and gave weapons for the attacks against spiritualism which followed.
3. The Encyclopedists had a more decidedly sceptical relation to the principles and the basis of spiritualism. The philosophical Encyclopedia established byDiderot(1713-1784), and published by him in connection with d’Alembert, is a memorable monument of the ruling spirit in France in the time before the revolution. It was the pride of France at that age, because it expressed in a splendid and universally accessible form the inner consciousness of the French people. With the keenest wit it reasoned away law from the state, and freedom from morality, and spirit andGod from nature, though all this was done only in scattered, and, for the most part, timorous intimations. In Diderot’s independent writings we find talent of much philosophic importance united with great earnestness. But it is very difficult to fix and accurately to limit his philosophic views, since they were very gradually formed, and Diderot expressed them always with some reserve and accommodation. In general, however, it may be remarked, that in the progress of his speculations he constantly approached nearer the extreme of the philosophical direction of his age. In his earlier writings a Deist, he afterwards avowed the opinion that every thing is God. At first defending the immateriality and immortality of the soul, he expressed himself at a later period decidedly against these doctrines, affirming that the species alone has an abiding being while the individual passes away, and that immortality is nothing other than to live in the thoughts of coming generations. But Diderot did not venture to the real extreme of logical materialism; his moral earnestness restrained him from this.
4. The last word of materialism was spoken with reckless audacity byLa Mettrie(1709-1751), a contemporary of Diderot: every thing spiritual is a delusion, and physical enjoyment is the highest end of men. Faith in the existence of a God, says La Mettrie, is just as groundless as it is fruitless. The world will not be happy till atheism becomes universally established. Then alone will there be no more religious strife, then alone will theologians, the most odious of combatants, disappear, and nature, poisoned at present by their influence, will come again to its rights. In reference to the human soul, there can be no philosophy but materialism. All the observation and experience of the greatest philosophers and physicians declare this. Soul is nothing but a mere name, which has a rational signification only when we understand by it that part of our body which thinks. This is the brain, which has its muscles of thought, just as the limbs have their muscles of motion. That which gives man his advantage over the brutes is, first, the organization of his brain, and second, its capacity for receiving instruction. Otherwise, is mana brute like the beasts around him, though in many respects surpassed by these. Immortality is an absurdity. The soul perishes with the body of which it forms a part. With death every thing is over,la farce est jouée! The practical and selfish application of all this is—let us enjoy ourselves as long as we exist, and not throw away any satisfaction we can attain.
5. TheSystéme de la Natureafterwards attempted to elaborate with greater earnestness and scientific precision, that which had been uttered so superficially and so superciliously by La Mettrie, viz., the doctrine that matter alone exists, while mind is nothing other than matter refined.
TheSystéme de la Natureappeared in London under a fictitious name in 1770. It was then published as a posthumous work of Mirabaud, late secretary of the Academy. It doubtless had its origin in the circle which was wont to assemble with Baron Holbach, and of which Diderot, Grimm, and others formed a part. Whether the Baron Holbach himself, or his tutor Lagrange is the author of this work, or whether it is the joint production of a number, cannot now be determined. TheSystéme de la Natureis hardly a French book: the style is too heavy and tedious.
There is, in fact, nothing but matter and motion, says this work. Both are inseparably connected. If matter is at rest, it is only because hindered in motion, for in its essence it is not a dead mass. Motion is twofold, attraction and repulsion. The different motions which we see are the product of these two, and through these different motions arise the different connections and the whole manifoldness of things. The laws which direct in all this are eternal and unchangeable.—The most weighty consequences of such a doctrine are:
(1.)The materiality of man.Man is no twofold being compounded of mind and matter, as is erroneously believed. If the inquiry is closely made what the mind is, we are answered, that the most accurate philosophical investigations have shown, that the principle of activity in man is a substance whose peculiar nature cannot be known, but of which we can affirm that it is indivisible,unextended, invisible, &c. But now, who should conceive any thing determinate in a substance which is only the negation of that which gives knowledge, an idea which is peculiarly only the absence of all ideas? Still farther, how can it be explained upon such a hypothesis, that a substance which itself is not material can work upon material things; and how can it set these in motion, since there is no point of contact between the two? In fact, those who distinguish their soul from their body, have only to make a distinction between their brain and their body. Thought is only a modification of our brain, just as volition is another modification of the same bodily organ.
(2.) Another chimera, the belief in the being of a God, is connected with the twofold division of man into body and soul. This belief arises like the hypothesis of a soul-substance, because mind is falsely divided from matter, and nature is thus made twofold. The evil which men experienced, and whose natural cause they could not discover, they assigned to a deity which they imagined for the purpose. The first notions of a God have their source therefore in sorrow, fear, and uncertainty. We tremble because our forefathers for thousands of years have done the same. This circumstance awakens no auspicious prepossession. But not only the rude, but also the theological idea of God is worthless, for it explains no phenomenon of nature. It is, moreover, full of absurdities, for, since it ascribes moral attributes to God, it renders him human; while on the other hand, by a mass of negative attributes, it seeks to distinguish him absolutely from every other being. The true system, the system of nature, is hence atheistic. But such a doctrine requires a culture and a courage which neither all men nor most men possess. If we understand by the word atheist one who considers onlydeadmatter, or who designates themoving powerin nature with the name God, then is there no atheist, or whoever would be one is a fool. But if the word means one who denies the existence of a spiritual being, a being whose attributes can only be a source of annoyance to men, then are there indeed atheists, and there would be more of them, if a correct knowledge of nature and a sound reasonwere more widely diffused. But if atheism is true, then should it be diffused. There are, indeed, many who have cast off the yoke of religion, who nevertheless think it is necessary for the common people in order to keep them within proper limits. But this is just as if we should determine to give a man poison lest he should abuse his strength. Every kind of Deism leads necessarily to superstition, since it is not possible to continue on the standpoint of pure deism.
(3.) With such premises the freedom and immortality of the soul both disappear. Man, like every other substance in nature, is a link in the chain of necessary connection, a blind instrument in the hands of necessity. If any thing should be endowed with self-motion, that is, with a capacity to produce motion without any other cause, then would it have the power to destroy motion in the universe; but this is contrary to the conception of the universe, which is only an endless series of necessary motions spreading out into wider circles continually. The claim of an individual immortality is absurd. For to affirm that the soul exists after the destruction of the body, is to affirm that a modification of a substance can exist after the substance itself has disappeared. There is no other immortality than to live in the remembrance of posterity.
(4.) The practical consequences of these principles are in the highest degree favorable for the system of nature, the utility of any doctrine being ever the first criterion of its truth. While the ideas of theologians are productive only of disquiet and anxiety to man, the system of nature frees him from all such unrest, teaches him to enjoy the present moment, and to quietly yield to his destiny, while it gives him that kind of apathy which every one must regard as a blessing. If morality would be active, it can rest only upon self-love and self-interest; it must show man whither his well-considered interest would lead him. He is a good man who gains his own interest in such a way that others will find it for their interest to assist him. The system of self-interest, therefore, demands the union of men among each other, and hence we have true morality.
The logical dogmatic materialism of theSystème de la Natureis the farthest limit of an empirical direction in philosophy, and consequently closes that course of the development of a one-sided realism which had begun with Locke. The attempt first made by Locke to explain and derive the ideal world from the material, ended in materialism with the total reduction of every thing spiritual to the material, with the total denial of the spiritual. We must now, before proceeding farther, according to the classification made § XXVII., consider the idealistic course of development which ran parallel with the systems of a partial realism. At the head of this course standsLeibnitz.
As empiricism sprang from the striving to subject the intellectual to the material, to materialize the spiritual, so on the other hand, idealism had its source in the effort to spiritualize the material, or so to apprehend the conception of mind that matter could be subsumed under it. To the empiric-sensualistic direction, mind was nothing but refined matter, while to the idealistic direction matter was only degenerated (vergröbert) mind (“a confused notion,” as Leibnitz expresses it). The former, in its logical development, was driven to the principle that only material things exist, the latter (as with Leibnitz and Berkeley) comes to the opposite principle, that there are only souls and their ideas. For the partial realistic standpoint, material things were the truly substantial. But for the idealistic standpoint, the substantial belongs alone to the intellectual world, to the Egos. Mind, to the partial realism, was essentially void, atabula rasa, its whole content came to it from the external world. But a partial idealism sought to carry out the principle that nothing can come into the mind which had not at least been preformed within it, that all itsknowledge is furnished it by itself. According to the former view knowledge was a passive relation, according to the latter was it wholly active. While, in fine, a partial realism had attempted to explain the becoming in nature for the most part through real,i. e.through mechanical motives (l’homme machineis the title of one of la Mettrie’s writings), idealism had sought an explanation of the same through ideal motives,i. e.teleologically. While the former had made its prominent inquiry for moving causes, and had, indeed, often ridiculed the search for a final cause; it is final causes toward which the latter directs its chief aim. The mediation between mind and matter, between thought and being, will now be sought in the final cause, in the teleological harmony of all things (pre-established harmony). The standpoint of Leibnitz may thus be characterized in a word.
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibnitzwas born in 1646, at Leipsic, where his father was professor. Having chosen the law as his profession, he entered the university in 1661, and in 1663 he defended for his degree of doctor in philosophy, his dissertationde principio individui, a theme well characteristic of the direction of his later philosophizing. He afterwards went to Jena, and subsequently to Altdorf, where he became doctor of laws. At Altdorf he was offered a professorship of jurisprudence, which he refused. The rest of his life was unsettled and desultory, spent for the most part in courts, where, as a versatile courtier, he was employed in the most varied duties of diplomacy. In the year 1672 he went to Paris, in order to induce Louis XIV. to undertake the conquest of Egypt. He subsequently visited London, whence he was afterwards called to Hanover, as councillor of the Duke of Brunswick. He received later a post as librarian at Wolfenbüttel, between which place and Hanover he spent the most of his subsequent life, though interrupted with numerous journeys to Vienna, Berlin, etc. He was intimately associated with the Prussian Electress, Maria Charlotte, a highly talented woman, who surrounded herself with a circle of the most distinguished scholars of the time, and for whom Liebnitz wrote, at her own request, hisTheodicée. In 1701, after Prussia had becomea kingdom, an academy was established at Berlin, through, his efforts, and he became its first president. Similar, but fruitless attempts were made by him to establish academies in Dresden and Vienna. In 1711 the title of imperial court councillor, and a baronage, was bestowed upon him by the emperor Charles VI. Soon after, he betook himself to Vienna, where he remained a considerable period, and wrote his Monadology, at the solicitation of Prince Eugene. He died in 1716. Next to Aristotle, Leibnitz was the most highly gifted scholar that had ever lived; with the richest and most extensive learning, he united the highest and most penetrating powers of mind. Germany has reason to be proud of him, since, after Jacob Boehme, he is the first philosopher of any note among the Germans. With him philosophy found a home in Germany. It is to be regretted that the great variety of his efforts and literary undertakings, together with his roving manner of life, prevented him from giving any connected exhibition of his philosophy. His views are for the most part developed only in brief and occasional writings and letters, composed frequently in the French language. It is hence not easy to state his philosophy in its internal connection, though none of his views are isolated, but all stand strictly connected with each other. The following are the chief points:
1.The Doctrine of Monads.—The fundamental peculiarity of Leibnitz’s theory is its opposition to Spinozism. Substance, as the indeterminate universal, was with Spinoza the only positive. With Leibnitz also the conception of substance lay at the basis of his philosophy, but his definition of it was entirely different. While Spinoza had sought to exclude from his substance every positive determination, and especially all acting, and had apprehended it simply as pure being, Leibnitz viewed it as living activity and active energy, an example for which might be found in a stretched bow, which moved and straightened itself through its own energy as soon as the external hindrance was removed. That this active energy forms the essence of substance is a principle to which Leibnitz ever returns, and from which, in fact, all the other chief points in his philosophy may be derived. Fromthis there follow at the outset two determinations of substance directly opposed to Spinozism; first, that it is a single being, a monad; and second, that there are a multiplicity of monads. The first follows because substance, in so far as it exercises an activity similar to an elastic body, is essentially an excluding activity, or repulsion; the conception of an individual or a monad being that which excludes another from itself. The second follows because the existence of one monad involves the existence of many. The conception of one individual postulates other individuals, which stand over against the one as excluded from it. Hence the fundamental thesis of the Leibnitz philosophy in opposition to Spinozism is this, viz., there is a multiplicity of individual substances or monads.
2.The Monads more Accurately Determined.—The monads of Leibnitz are similar to atoms in their general features. Like these they are corpuscular units, independent of any external influence, and indestructible by any external power. But notwithstanding this similarity, there is an important and characteristic difference between the two. First, the atoms are not distinguished from each other, they are all qualitatively alike; but each one of the monads is different in quality from every other, every one is a peculiar world for itself, every one is different from every other. According to Leibnitz, there are no two things in the world which are exactly alike. Secondly, atoms can be considered as extended and divisible, but the monads are metaphysical points, and actually indivisible. Here, lest we should stumble at this proposition (for an aggregate of unextended monads can never give an extended world), we must take into consideration Leibnitz’s view of space, which, according to him, is not something real, but only confused, subjective representation. Thirdly, the monad is a representative being. With the atomists such a determination would amount to nothing, but with Leibnitz it has a very important part to play. According to him, in every monad, every other is reflected; every monad is a living mirror of the universe, and ideally contains the whole within itself as in a germ. In thus mirroring the world, however, the monad is not passive but spontaneouslyself-active: it does not receive the images which it mirrors, but produces them spontaneously itself, as the soul does a dream. In every monad, therefore, the all-seeing and all-knowing one might read every thing, even the future, since this is potentially contained in the present. Every monad is a kind of God. (Parvus in suo genere Deus.)
3.The Pre-established Harmony.—The universe is thus the sum of all the monads. Every thing, every composite, is an aggregate of monads. Thus every bodily organism is not one substance, but many, it is a multiplicity of monads, like a machine which is made up of a number of distinct pieces of mechanism. Leibnitz compared bodies to a fish-pond, which might be full of living elements, though dead itself. The ordinary view of things is thus wholly set aside; the truly substantial does not belong to bodies,i. e.to the aggregates, but to their original elements. Matter, in the vulgar sense, as something conceived to be without mind, does not at all exist. How now must the inner connection of the universe be conceived? In the following way. Every monad is a representative being, and at the same time, each one is different from every other. This difference, therefore, depends alone upon the difference of representation: there are just as many different degrees of representation as there are monads, and these degrees may be fixed according to some of their prominent stages. The representations may be classified according to the distinction between confused and distinct knowledge. Hence a monad of the lowest rank (a monadtoute nue) will be one whichsimplyrepresents,i. e.which stands on the stage of most confused knowledge. Leibnitz compares this state with a swoon, or with our condition in a dreamy sleep, in which we are not without representations, (notions)—for otherwise we could have none when awaking—but in which the representations are so numerous that they neutralize each other and do not come into the consciousness. This is the stage of inorganic nature. In a higher rank are those monads in which the representation is active as a formative vital force, though still without consciousness. This is the stage of the vegetable world. Still higher ascends the life of the monad whenit attains to sensation and memory, as is the case in the animal kingdom. The lower monads may be said to sleep, and the brute monads to dream. When still farther the soul rises to reason or reflection, we call it mind, spirit.—The distinction of the monads from each other is, therefore, this, that each one, though mirroring the whole and the same universe in itself, does it from a different point of view, and, therefore, differently, the one more, and the rest less perfectly. Each one is a different centre of the world which it mirrors. Each one contains the whole universe, the whole infinity within itself, and in this respect is like God, the only difference being that God knows every thing with perfect distinctness, while the monad represents it confusedly, though one monad may represent it more confusedly than another. The limitation of a monad does not, therefore, consist in its containing less than another or than God, but only in its containing more imperfectly or in its representing less distinctly.—Upon this standpoint the universe, in so far as every monad mirrors one and the same universe, though each in a different way, represents a drama of the greatest possible difference, as well as of the greatest possible unity and order,i. e.of the greatest possible perfection, or theabsolute harmony. For distinction in unity is harmony.—But in still another respect the universe is a system of harmony. Since the monads do not work upon each other, but each one follows only the law of its own being, there is danger lest the inner harmony of the universe may be disturbed. How is this danger removed? Thus, viz., every monad mirrors the whole and the same universe. The changes of the collected monads, therefore, run parallel with each other, and in this consists the harmony of all as pre-established by God.
4.The Relation of the Deity to the Monads.—What part does the conception of God play in the system of Leibnitz? An almost idle one. Following the strict consequences of his system, Leibnitz should have held to no proper theism, but the harmony of the universe should have taken the place of the Deity. Ordinarily he considers God as the sufficient cause of all monads. But he was also accustomed to consider the final cause of a thingas its sufficient cause. In this respect, therefore, he almost identifies God and the absolute final cause. Elsewhere he considers the Deity as a simple primitive substance, or as the individual primitive unity. Again, he speaks of God as a pure immaterial actuality,actus purus, while to the monads belongs matter,i. e.restrained actuality, striving,appetitio. Once he calls him a monad, though this is in manifest contradiction with the determinations otherwise assigned him. It was for Leibnitz a very difficult problem to bring his monadology and his theism into harmony with each other, without giving up the premises of both. If he held fast to the substantiality of the monads, he was in danger of making them independent of the Deity, and if he did not, he could hardly escape falling back into Spinozism.
5.The Relation of Soul and Bodyis clearly explained on the standpoint of the pre-established harmony. This relation, taking the premises of the monadology, might seem enigmatical. If no monad can work upon any other, how can the soul work upon the body to lead and move it? The enigma is solved by the pre-established harmony. While the body and soul, each one independently of the other, follows the laws of its being, the body working mechanically, and the soul pursuing ends, yet God has established such a concordant harmony of the two activities, such a parallelism of the two functions, that there is in fact a perfect unity for body and soul. There are, says Leibnitz, three views respecting the relation of body and soul. The first and most common supposes a reciprocal influence between the two, but such a view is untenable, because there can be no interchange between mind and matter. The second and occasional one (cf.§ XXV. 1), brings about this interchange through the constant assistance of God, which is nothing more nor less than to make God aDeus ex machina. Hence the only solution for the problem is the hypothesis of a pre-established harmony. Leibnitz illustrates these three views in the following example. Let one conceive of two watches, whose hands ever accurately point to the same time. This agreement may be explained, first (the common view), by supposing an actual connection between the hands of each, so thatthe hand of the one watch might draw the hand of the other after it, or second (the occasional view), by conceiving of a watch-maker who continually keeps the hands alike, or in fine (the pre-established harmony), by ascribing to each a mechanism so exquisitely wrought that each one goes in perfect independence of the other, and at the same time in entire agreement with it.—That the soul is immortal (indestructible), follows at once from the doctrine of monads. There is no proper death. That which is called death is only the soul losing a part of the monads which compose the mechanism of its body, while the living element goes back to a condition similar to that in which it was before it came upon the theatre of the world.
6. The monadology has very important consequences in reference toTHE THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE. As the philosophy of Leibnitz, by its opposition to Spinozism, had to do with the doctrine of being, so by its opposition to the empiricism of Locke must it expound the theory of knowledge. Locke’s Essay on the Human Understanding had attracted Leibnitz without satisfying him, and he therefore attempted a new investigation in hisNouveaux Essais, in which he defended the doctrine of innate ideas. But this hypothesis of innate ideas Leibnitz now freed from that defective view which had justified the objections of Locke. The innateness of the ideas must not be held as though they were explicitly and consciously contained in the mind, but rather the mind possesses them potentially and only virtually, though with the capacity to produce them out of itself. All thoughts are properly innate,i. e.they do not come into the mind from without, but are rather produced by it from itself. Any external influence upon the mind is inconceivable, it even needs nothing external for its sensations. While Locke had compared the mind to an unwritten piece of paper, Leibnitz likened it to a block of marble, in which the veins prefigure the form of the statue. Hence the common antithesis between rational and empirical knowledge disappears with Leibnitz in the degrees of greater or less distinctness.—Among these theoretically innate ideas, Leibnitz recognizes two of special prominence, which take the first rank as principles of all knowledgeand all ratiocination,—the principle of contradiction (principium contradictionis), and the principle of sufficient cause (principium rationis sufficientis). To these, as a principle of the second rank, must be added theprincipium indiscernibilium, or the principle that there are in nature no two things wholly alike.
7. The most elaborate exhibition of Leibnitz’s theological views is given in hisThéodicée. The Théodicée, is, however, his weakest work, and has but a loose connection with the rest of his philosophy. Written at the instigation of a woman, it belies this origin neither in its form nor in its content—not in its form, for in its effort to be popular it becomes diffuse and unscientific, and not in its content, for it accommodates itself to the positive dogmas and the premises of theology farther than the scientific basis of the system of Leibnitz would permit. In this work, Leibnitz investigates the relation of God to the world in order to show a conformity in this relation to a final cause, and to free God from the charge of acting without or contrary to an aim. Why is the world as it is? God might have created it very differently. True, answers Leibnitz, God saw an infinite number of worlds as possible before him, but out of all these he chose the one which actually is as the best. This is the famous doctrine of the best world, according to which no more perfect world is possible than the one which is.—But how so? Is not the existence of evil at variance with this? Leibnitz answers this objection by distinguishing three kinds of evil, the metaphysical, the physical, and the moral. The metaphysical evil,i. e.the finiteness and incompleteness of things, is necessary because inseparable from finite existence, and is thus independent of the will of God. Physical evil (pain, &c.), though not independent of the will of God, is often a good conditionally,i. e.as a punishment or means of improvement. Moral evil or wickedness can in no way be charged to the will of God. Leibnitz took various ways to account for its existence, and obviate the contradiction lying between it and the conception of God. At one time he says that wickedness is only permitted by God as aconditio sine qua non, because without wickedness there were nofreedom, and without freedom no virtue. Again, he reduces the moral evil to the metaphysical, and makes wickedness nothing but a want of perfection, a negation, a limitation, playing the same part as do the shadows in a painted picture, or the discords in a piece of music, which do not diminish the beauty, but only increase it through contrast. Again, he distinguishes between the material and the formal element in a wicked act. The material of sin, the power to act, is from God, but the formal element, the wickedness of the act, belongs wholly to man, and is the result of his limitation, or, as Leibnitz here and there expresses it, of his eternal self-predestination. In no case can the harmony of the universe be destroyed through such a cause.
These are the chief points of Leibnitz’s philosophy. The general characteristic of it as given in the beginning of the present section, will be found to have its sanction in the specific exhibition that has now been furnished.
Leibnitz had not carried out the standpoint of idealism to its extreme. He had indeed, on the one side, explained space and motion and bodily things as phenomena which had their existence only in a confused representation, but on the other side, he had not wholly denied the existence of the bodily world, but had recognized as a reality lying at its basis, the world of monads. The phenomenal or bodily world had its fixed and substantial foundation in the monads. Thus Leibnitz, though an idealist, did not wholly break with realism. The ultimate consequence of a subjective idealism would have been to wholly deny the reality of the objective, sensible world, and explain corporeal objects as simply phenomena, as nothing but subjective notions without any objective reality as a basis. This consequence the idealisticcounterpart to the ultimate realistic result of materialism—appears inGeorge Berkeley, who was born in Ireland, 1684, made bishop of the Anglican Church in 1734, and died in 1753. Hence, though he followed the empiricism of Locke, and sustained no outward connection with Leibnitz, we must place him in immediate succession to the latter as the perfecter of a subjective idealism.
Our sensations, says Berkeley, are entirely subjective. We are wholly in error if we believe that we have a sensation of external objects or perceive them. That which we have and perceive is only our sensations. It ise. g.clear, that by the sense of sight we canseeneither the distance, the size, nor the form of objects, but that we onlyconcludethat these exist, because our experience has taught us that a certain sensation of sight is always attended by certain sensations of touch. That which we see is only colors, clearness, obscurity, &c., and it is therefore false to say that we see and feel the same thing. So also we never go out of ourselves for those sensations to which we ascribe most decidedly an objective character. The peculiar objects of our understanding are only our own affections; all ideas are hence only our own sensations. But just as there can be no sensations outside of the sensitive subject, so no idea can have existence outside of him who possesses it. The so-called objects exist only in our notion, and have a being only as they are perceived. It is the great error of most philosophers that they ascribe to corporeal objects a being outside the conceiving mind, and do not see that they are only mental. It is not possible that material things should produce any thing so wholly distinct from themselves as sensations and notions. There is no such thing as a material external world;mind alone existsas thinking being, whose nature consists in thinking and willing. But whence then arise all our sensations which come to us like the images of fancy, without our agency, and which are thus no products of our will? They arise from a spirit superior to ourselves—for only a spirit can produce within us notions—even from God. God gives us ideas; but as it would be contradictory to assert that a being could give what it does not possess, so ideas existin God, and we derive themfrom him. These ideas in God may be called archetypes, and those in us ectypes.—In consequence of this view, says Berkeley, we do not deny an independent reality of things, we only deny that they can exist elsewhere than in an understanding. Instead therefore of speaking of a nature in which,e. g.the sun is the cause of warmth, &c., the accurate expression would be this: God announces to us through the sense of sight that we should soon perceive a sensation of warmth. Hence by nature we are only to understand the succession or the connection of ideas, and by natural laws the constant order in which they proceed,i. e.the laws of the association of ideas. This thorough-going subjective idealism, this complete denial of matter, Berkeley considered as the surest way to oppose materialism and atheism.
The idealism of Berkeley, as was to be expected from the nature of the case, remained without any farther development, but the philosophy of Leibnitz was taken up and subjected to a farther revision byChristian Wolff. He was born in Breslau in 1679. He was chosen professor at Halle, where he became obnoxious to the charge of teaching a doctrine at variance with the Scriptures, and drew upon himself such a violent opposition from the theologians of the university, that a cabinet order was issued for his dismissal on the 8th of November, 1723, and he was enjoined to leave Prussia within forty-eight hours on pain of being hung. He then became professor in Marburg, but was afterwards recalled to Prussia by Frederic II. immediately upon his accession to the throne. He was subsequently made baron, and died 1754. In his chief thoughts he followed Leibnitz, a connection which he himself admitted, though he protested against the identification of his philosophy with that of Leibnitz, and objectedto the name,Philosophia Leibnitio-Wolffiana, which was taken by his disciple Bilfinger. The historical merit of Wolff is threefold. First, and most important, he laid claim again to the whole domain of knowledge in the name of philosophy, and sought again to build up a systematic framework, and make an encyclopedia of philosophy in the highest sense of the word. Though he did not himself furnish much new material for this purpose, yet he carefully elaborated and arranged that which he found at hand. Secondly, he made again the philosophical method as such, an object of attention. His own method is, indeed, an external one as to its content, namely, the mathematical or the mathematico-syllogistical, recommended by Leibnitz, and by the application of this his whole philosophizing sinks to a level formalism. (For instance, in his principles of architecture, the eighth proposition is—“a window must be wide enough for two persons to recline together conveniently,”—a proposition which is thus proved: “we are more frequently accustomed to recline and look out at a window in company with another person than alone, and hence, since the builder of the house should satisfy the owner in every respect (§ 1), he must make a window wide enough for two persons conveniently to recline within it at the same time”.) Still this formalism is not without its advantage, for it subjects the philosophical content to a logical treatment. Thirdly, Wolff has taught philosophy to speak German, an art which it has not since forgotten. Next to Leibnitz, he is entitled to the merit of having made the German language for ever the organ of philosophy.
The following remarks will suffice for the content and the scientific classification of Wolff’s philosophy. He defines philosophy to be the science of the possible as such. But that is possible which contains no contradiction. Wolff defends this definition against the charge of presuming too much. It is not affirmed, he says, with this definition that either he or any other philosopher knows every thing which is possible. The definition only claims for philosophy the whole province of human knowledge, and it is certainly proper that philosophy should be describedaccording to the highest perfection which it can attain, even though it has not yet actually reached it.—In what parts now does this science of the possible consist? Resting on the perception that there are within the soul two faculties, one of knowing and one of willing, Wolff divides philosophy into two great parts, theoretical philosophy (an expression, however, which first appears among his followers), or metaphysics, and practical philosophy. Logic precedes both as a preliminary training for philosophical study. Metaphysics are still farther divided by Wolff into ontology, cosmology, psychology, and natural theology; practical philosophy he divides into ethics, whose object is man as man; economics, whose object is man as a member of the family; and politics, whose object is man as a citizen of the state.
1.Ontologyis the first part of Wolff’s metaphysics. Ontology treats of what are now called categories, or those fundamental conceptions which are applied to every object, and must therefore at the outset be investigated. Aristotle had already furnished a table of categories, but he had derived them wholly empirically. It is not much better with the ontology of Wolff; it is laid out like a philosophical dictionary. At its head he places the principle of contradiction, viz.: it is not possible for any thing to be, and at the same time not to be. The conception of the possible at once follows from this principle. That is possible which contains no contradiction. That is necessary, the opposite of which contradicts itself, and that is accidental, the opposite of which is possible. Every thing which is possible is a thing, though only an imaginary one; that which neither is, nor is possible, is nothing. When many things together compose a thing, this is a whole, and the individual things comprehended by it are its parts. The greatness of a thing consists in the multitude of its parts. If A contains that by which we can understand the being of B, then that in A by which B becomes understood is the ground of B, and the whole A which contains the ground of B is its cause. That which contains the ground of its properties is the essence of a thing. Space is the arrangement of things whichexist conjointly. Place is the determinate way in which a thing exists in conjunction with others. Movement is change of place. Time is the arrangement of that which exists successively, etc.
2.Cosmology.—Wolff defines the world to be a series of changing objects, which exist conjointly and successively, but which are so connected together that one ever contains the ground of the other. Things are connected in space and in time. By virtue of this universal connection, the world is one united whole; the essence of the world consists in the manner of its connection. But this manner cannot be changed. It can neither receive any new ingredients nor lose any of those it possesses. From the essence of the world spring all its changes. In this respect the world is a machine. Events in the world are only hypothetically necessary in so far as previous events have had a certain character; they are accidental in so far as the world might have been directed otherwise. In respect to the question whether the world had a beginning in time, Wolff does not express himself explicitly. Since God is independent of time, but the world has been from eternity in time, the world therefore is in no case eternal in any sense like God. But according to Wolff, neither space nor time has any substantial being. Body is a connected thing composed of matter, and possessing a moving power within itself. The powers of a body taken together are called its nature, and the comprehension of all being is called nature in general. That which has its ground in the essence of the world is called natural, and that which has not, is supernatural, or a wonder. At the close of his cosmology, Wolff treats of the perfection and imperfection of the world. The perfection of a world consists in the harmony with each other of every thing which exists conjointly and successively. But since every thing has its separate rules, the individual must give up so much from its perfection as is necessary for the symmetry of the whole.
3.Rational Psychology.--The soul is that within us which is self-conscious. In the self-consciousness of the soul are itself and other objects. Consciousness is either clear or indistinct. Clear consciousness is thought. The soul is a simple incorporeal substance.There dwells within it a power to represent to itself a world. In this sense brutes also may have a soul, but a soul which possesses understanding and will is mind, and mind belongs alone to men. The soul of man is a mind joined to a body, and this is the distinction between men and superior spirits. The movements of the soul and of the body harmonize with each other by virtue of the preëstablished harmony. The freedom of the human soul is the power according to its own arbitrament, to choose of two possible things that which pleases it best. But the soul does not decide without motives, it ever chooses that which it holds to be the best. Thus the soul would seem impelled to its action by its representations, but the understanding is not constrained to its representations of that which is good and bad, and hence also the will is not constrained, but free. As a simple being the soul is indivisible, and hence incorruptible; the souls of brutes, however, have no understanding, and hence enjoy no conscious existence after death. This belongs alone to the human soul, and hence the human soul alone is immortal.
4.Natural Theology.—Wolff uses here the cosmological argument to demonstrate the existence of a God. God might have made different worlds, but has preferred the present one as the best. This world has been called into being by the will of God. His aim in its creation was the manifestation of his own perfection. Evil in the world does not spring from the Divine will, but from the limited being of human things. God permits it only as a means of good.
This brief aphoristic exposition of Wolff’s metaphysics, shows how greatly it is related to the doctrine of Leibnitz. The latter, however, loses much of its speculative profoundness by the abstract and logical treatment it receives in the hands of Wolff. For the most part, the specific elements of the monadology remain in the background; with Wolff, his simple beings are not representative like the Monads, but more like the Atoms. Hence there is with him much that is illogical and contradictory. His peculiar merit in metaphysics is ontology, which he has elaborated far more strictly than his predecessors. A multitude of philosophical terminationsowe to him their origin, and their introduction into philosophical language.
The philosophy of Wolff, comprehensible and distinct as it was, and by its composition in the German language more accessible than that of Leibnitz, soon became the popular philosophy, and gained an extensive influence. Among the names which deserve credit for their scientific treatment of it, we may mentionThümming, 1697-1728;Bilfinger, 1693-1750;Baumeister, 1708-1785;Baumgartenthe esthetic, 1714-1762; and his scholarMeier, 1718-1777.
Under the influence of the philosophy of Leibnitz and Wolff, though without any immediate connection with it, there arose in Germany during the latter half of the eighteenth century, an eclectic popular philosophy, whose different phases may be embraced under the name of the German clearing up. It has but little significance for the history of philosophy, though not without importance in other respects. Its great aim was to secure a higher culture, and hence a cultivated and polished style of reasoning is the form in which it philosophized. It is theGermancounterpart of theFrenchclearing up. As the latter closed the realistic period of development by drawing the ultimate consequence of materialism, so the former closed the idealistic series by its tendency to an extreme subjectivism. To the men of this direction, the empirical, individual Ego becomes the absolute; they forget every thing else for it, or rather every thing else has a value in their eyes only in proportion as it refers and ministers to the subject by contributing to its demands and satisfying its inner cravings. Hence the question of immortality becomes now the great problem of philosophy (in which respect we may mentionMendelssohn, 1727-1786, the most important man in this direction); the eternal duration of the individual soul is the chief point of interest; objective ideas or truths of faith,e. g.the personality of God, though not denied, cease to have an interest; it is held as a standing article of belief that we can know nothing of God. In another current of this direction, it is moral philosophy and esthetics (Garvey, 1742-1798;Engel, 1741-1802;Abbt, 1738-1766;Sulzer, 1720-1779) which find a scientific treatment, because both these preserve a subjective interest. In general, every thing is viewed in its useful relations; the useful becomes the peculiar criterion of truth; that which is not useful to the subject, or which does not minister to his subjective ends, is set aside. In connection with this turn of mind stands the prevailing teleological direction which the investigations of nature assumed (Reimarus, 1694-1765), and the utilitarian character given to ethics. The happiness of the individual was considered as the highest principle and the supreme end (Basedow, 1723-1790). Even religion is contemplated from this point of view. Reimarus wrote a treatise upon the “advantages” of religion, in which he attempted to prove that religion was not subversive of earthly pleasure, but rather increased it; andSteinbart(1738-1809) elaborated, in a number of treatises, the theme that all wisdom consists alone in attaining happiness,i. e.enduring satisfaction, and that the Christian religion, instead of forbidding this, was rather itself the true doctrine of happiness. In other particulars Christianity received only a temperate respect; wherever it laid claim to any authority disagreeable to the subject (as in individual doctrines like that of future punishment), it was opposed, and in general the effort was made to counteract, as far as possible, the positive dogma by natural religion. Reimarus, for example, the most zealous defender of theism and of the teleological investigation of nature, is at the same time the author of the Wolfenbüttel fragments. By criticizing the Gospel history, and every thing positive and transmitted, and by rationalizing the supernatural in religion, the subject displayed its new-found independence. In fine, the subjective standpoint of this period exhibits itself in thenumerous autobiographies and self-confessions then so prevalent; the isolated self is the object of admiring contemplation (Rousseau, 1712-1778, and his confessions); it beholds itself mirrored in its particular conditions, sensations, and views—a sort of flirtation with itself, which often rises to sickly sentimentality. According to all this, it is seen to be the extreme consequence of subjective idealism which constitutes the character of the German clearing up period, which thus closes the series of an idealistic development.
The idealistic and the realistic stage of development to which we have now been attending, each ended with a one-sided result. Instead of actually and internally reconciling the opposition between thought and being, they both issued in denying the one or the other of these factors. Realism, on its side, had made matter absolute; and idealism, on its side, had endowed the empirical Ego with the same attribute—extremes in which philosophy was threatened with total destruction. It had, in fact, in Germany as in France, become merged in the most superficial popular philosophy. ThenKantarose, and brought again into one channel the two streams which, when separate from each other, threatened to lose themselves amid the sands. Kant is the great renovator of philosophy, who brought back to their point of divergence the one-sided efforts which had preceded him, and embraced them in their unity and totality. He stands in some special and fitting relation either antagonistic or harmonious to all others—to Locke no less than to Hume, to the Scottish philosophers no less than to the English and French moralists, to the philosophy of Leibnitz and of Wolff, as well as to the materialism of the French and the utilitarianism of the German clearing up period. Hisrelation to the development of a partial idealism and a one-sided realism is thus stated: Empiricism had made the Ego purely passive and subordinate to the sensible external world—idealism had made it purely active, and given it a sovereignty over the sensible world; Kant attempted to strike a balance between these two claims, by affirming that the Ego as practical is free and autonomic, an unconditioned lawgiver for itself, while as theoretical it is receptive and conditioned by the phenomenal world; but at the same time the theoretical Ego contains the two sides within itself, for if, on the one side, empiricism may be justified upon the ground that the material and only field of all our knowledge is furnished by experience, so on the other side, rationalism may be justified on the ground that there is an apriori factor and basis to our knowledge, for in experience itself we make use of conceptions which are not furnished by experience, but are contained apriori in our understanding.
In order, now, that we may bring the very elaborate framework of the Kantian philosophy into a clearer outline, let us briefly glance at its fundamental conceptions, and notice its chief principles and results. Kant subjected the activity of the human mind in knowing, and the origin of our experience, to his critical investigation. Hence his philosophy is called critical philosophy, or criticism, because it aims to be essentially an examination of our faculty of knowledge; it is also called transcendental philosophy, since Kant calls the reflection of the reason upon its relation to the objective world, a transcendental reflection (transcendental must not be confounded with transcendent), or, in other words, a transcendental knowledge is one “which does not relate so much to objects of knowledge, as to our way of knowing them, so far as this is apriori possible.” The examination of the faculty of knowledge, which Kant attempts in his “Critick of Pure Reason,” shows the following results. All knowledge is a product of two factors, the knowing subject and the external world. Of these two factors, the latter furnishes our knowledge with experience, as the matter, and the former with the conceptions of the understanding, as the form, throughwhich a connected knowledge, or a synthesis of our perceptions in a whole of experience first becomes possible. If there were no external world, then would there be no phenomena; if there were no understanding, then these phenomena, or perceptions, which are infinitely manifold, would never be brought into the unity of a notion, and thus no experience were possible. Thus, while intuitions without conceptions are blind, and conceptions without intuitions are empty, knowledge is a union of the two, since it requires that the form of conception should be filled with the matter of experience, and that the matter of experience should be apprehended in the net of the understanding’s conceptions. Nevertheless, we do not know things as they are in themselves.First, because the categories, or the forms of our understanding prevent. By bringing that which is given as the material of knowledge into our own conceptions as the form, there is manifestly a change in respect of the objects, which become thought of not as they are, but only as we apprehend them; they appear to us only as they are transmuted into categories. But besides this subjective addition, there is yet another.Secondly, we do not know things as they are in themselves, because even the intuitions which we bring within the form of the understanding’s conceptions, are not pure and uncolored, but are already penetrated by a subjective medium, namely, by the universal form of all objects of sense, space and time. Space and time are also subjective additions, forms of sensuous intuition, which are just as originally present in our minds as the fundamental conceptions or categories of our understanding. That which we would represent intuitively to ourselves we must place in space and time, for without these no intuition is possible. From this it follows that it is only phenomena which we know, and not things in themselves separate from space and time.
A superficial apprehension of these Kantian principles might lead one to suppose that Kant’s criticism did not essentially go beyond the standpoint of Locke’s empiricism. But such a supposition disappears upon a careful scrutiny. Kant was obliged to recognize with Hume that the conceptions, cause and effect, substanceand attribute, and the other conceptions which the human understanding sees itself necessitated to think in the phenomena, and in which every one of its thoughts must be found, do not arise from any experience of the sense. For instance, when we become affected through different senses, and perceive a white color, a sweet taste, a rough surface, &c., and predicate all these of one thing, as a piece of sugar, there come from without only the plurality of sensations, while the conception of unity cannot come through sensation, but is a category or conception borne over to the sensations from the mind itself. But instead of denying, for this reason, the reality of these conceptions of the understanding, Kant took a step in advance, assigning a peculiar province to this activity of the understanding, and showing that these forms of thought thus furnished to the matter of experience are immanent laws of the human faculty of knowledge, the peculiar laws of the understanding’s operations, which may be obtained by a perfect analysis of our thinking activity. (Of these laws or conceptions there are twelve, viz., unity, plurality, totality; reality, negation, limitation; substantiality, causality, reciprocal action; possibility, actuality, and necessity.)
From what has been said we can see the three chief principles of the Kantian theory of knowledge:
1.We know only Phenomena and not Things in Themselves.—The experience furnished us by the external world becomes so adjusted and altered in its relations (for we apprehend it at first in the subjective framework of space and time, and then in the equally subjective forms of our understanding’s conceptions), that it no longer represents the thing itself in its original condition, pure and unmixed.
2.Nevertheless Experience is the only Province of our Knowledge, and there is no Science of the Unconditioned.—This follows of course, for since every knowledge is the product of the matter of experience, and the form of the understanding, and depends thus upon the co-working of the sensory and the understanding, then no knowledge is possible of objects for which one of these factors, experience, fails us; a knowledge alone from the understanding’sconceptions of the unconditioned is illusory since the sensory can show no unconditioned object corresponding to the conception. Hence the questions which Kant places at the head of his whole Critick; how are synthetical judgments apriori possible?i. e.can we widen our knowledge apriori, by thought alone, beyond the sensuous experience? is a knowledge of the supersensible possible? must be answered with an unconditional negative.
3. Still, if the human knowledge makes no effort to stride beyond the narrow limits of experience,i. e.to become transcendent, it involves itself in the greatest contradictions. The three ideas of the reason, the psychological, the cosmological, and the theological, viz. (a) the idea of an absolute subject,i. e.of the soul, or of immortality, (b) the idea of the world as a totality of all conditions and phenomena, (c) the idea of a most perfect being—are so wholly without application to the empirical actuality, are so truly regulative, and not constitutive principles, which are only the pure products of the reason, and are so entirely without a correspondent object in experience, that whenever they are applied to experience,i. e.become conceived of as actually existing objects, they lead to pure logical errors, to the most obvious paralogisms and sophisms. These errors, which are partly false conclusions and paralogisms, and partly unavoidable contradictions of the reason with itself, Kant undertook to show in reference to all the ideas of the reason. Take,e. g.the cosmological idea. Whenever the reason posits any transcendental expressions in reference to the universe,i. e.attempts to apply the forms of the finite to the infinite, it is at once evident that the antithesis of those expressions can be proved just as well as the thesis. The affirmation that the world has a beginning in time, and limits in space, can be proved as well as, and no better than its opposite, that the world has no beginning in time, and no spacial limits. Whence it follows that all speculative cosmology is an assumption by the reason. So also with the theological idea; it rests on bare logical paralogisms, and false conclusions, as Kant, with great acuteness, shows in reference to eachof the proofs for the being of a God, which previous dogmatic philosophies had attempted. It is therefore impossible to prove and to conceive of the existence of a God as a Supreme Being, or of the soul as a real subject, or of a comprehending universe. The peculiar problems of metaphysics lie outside the province of philosophical knowledge.
Such is the negative part of the Kantian philosophy; its positive complement is found in the “Critick of the Practical Reason.” While the mind as theoretical and cognitive is wholly conditioned, and ruled by the objective and sensible world, and thus knowledge is only possible through intuition, yet as practical does it go wholly beyond the given (the sense impulse), and is determined only through the categorical imperative, and the moral law, which is itself, and is therefore free and autonomic; the ends which it pursues are those which itself, as moral spirit, places before itself; objects are no more its masters and lawgivers, to which it must yield if it would know the truth, but its servants, which it may use for its own ends in actualizing its moral law. While the theoretical mind is united to a world of sense and phenomena, a world obedient to necessary laws, the practical mind, by virtue of the freedom essential to it, by virtue of its direction towards an absolute aim, belongs to a purely intelligible and supersensible world. This is the practical idealism of Kant, from which he derives the three practical postulates of the immortality of the soul, moral freedom, and the being of a God, which, as theoretical truths, had been before denied.
With this brief sketch for our guidance, let us now pass on to a more extended exposition of the Kantian Philosophy.