These, then, were the principal elements of the philosophical Renaissance. First, there was a certain survival of Aristotelianism as a method of comprehensive and logical arrangement. Then there was the new Platonism, bringing along with it a revival of either Alexandrian or mediaeval pantheism, and closely associated with geometrical studies. Thirdly, there was the old Greek Atomism, as originally set forth by Democritus or as re-edited by Epicurus, traditionally unfavourable to theology, potent alike for decomposition and reconstruction, confirmed by the new astronomy, and lending its method to the reformation of mathematics; next the later Greek ethical systems; and finally the formless idea of infinite power which all Greek systems had, as such,conspired to suppress, but which, nevertheless, had played a great part in the earlier stages of Greek speculation both physical and moral.
On these foundations the lofty edifice of Spinozism was reared; out of these materials its composite structure was built; and without a previous study of them it cannot be understood.
Whether Spinoza ever read Plato is doubtful. One hardly sees why he should have neglected a writer whose works were easily accessible, and at that time very popular with thinking minds. But whether he was acquainted with theDialoguesat first hand or not, Plato will help us to understand Spinoza, for it was through the door of geometry that he entered philosophy, and under the guidance of one who was saturated with the Platonic spirit; so far as Christianity influenced him, it was through elements derived from Plato; and his metaphysical method was one which, more than any other, would have been welcomed with delight by the author of theMenoand theRepublic, as an attempt to realise his own dialectical ideal. For Spinozism is, on the face of it, an application of geometrical reasoning to philosophy, and especially to ethics. It is also an attempt to prove transcendentally what geometricians only assume—the necessity of space. Now, Plato looked on geometrical demonstration as the great type of certainty, the scientific completion of what Socrates had begun by his interrogative method, the one means of carrying irrefragable conviction into every department of knowledge, and more particularly into the study of our highest good. On the other hand, he saw that geometricians assume what itself requires to be demonstrated; and he confidently expected that the deficiency would be supplied by his own projected method of transcendent dialectics. Such at least seems to be the drift of the following passage:
When I speak of the division of the intellectual, you will also understand me to speak of that knowledge which reason herself attains by the power of dialectic, using the hypotheses not as first principles, but only as hypotheses—that is to say as steps and points of departure into a region which is above hypotheses, in order that she may soar beyond them to the first principle of the whole; and clinging to this and then to that which depends on this, by successive steps she descends again without the aid of any sensible object, beginning and ending in ideas.560
When I speak of the division of the intellectual, you will also understand me to speak of that knowledge which reason herself attains by the power of dialectic, using the hypotheses not as first principles, but only as hypotheses—that is to say as steps and points of departure into a region which is above hypotheses, in order that she may soar beyond them to the first principle of the whole; and clinging to this and then to that which depends on this, by successive steps she descends again without the aid of any sensible object, beginning and ending in ideas.560
The problem, then, which Spinoza set himself was, first, to account for the fundamental assumptions of all science, and more particularly of geometry, by deducing them from a single self-evident principle; and then to use that principle for the solution of whatever problems seemed to stand most in need of its application. And, as usually happens in such adventurous enterprises, the supposed answer of pure reason was obtained by combining or expanding conceptions borrowed without criticism from pre-existing systems of philosophy.
Descartes had already accomplished a great simplification of the speculative problem by summing up all existence under the two heads of extension and thought. It remained to account for these, and to reduce them to a single idea. As we have seen, they were derived from Greek philosophy, and the bond which was to unite them must be sought for in the same direction. It will be remembered that the systems of Plato and Aristotle were bounded at either extremity by a determinate and by an indeterminate principle. With the one, existence ranged between the Idea of Good at the upper end of the scale and empty space at the lower; with the other, between absolute Thought and First Matter. It was by combining the two definite terms, space and thought, that Descartes had constructed his system; and after subtracting these the two indefinite terms remained. In one respect they were even more opposed to each other than were the terms with which they had been respectively associated. The Ideaof Good represented unity, identity, and constancy, as against plurality, difference, and change; while Aristotle’s Matter was, by its very definition, multiform, fluctuating, and indeterminate. Nevertheless, there were equally important analogies traceable between them. No very clear account could be given of either, and both were customarily described by negatives. If Matter fell short of complete existence, the Good transcended all existence. If the one was a universal capacity for assuming Forms, the other was the source whence all Forms proceeded. When the distinctive characteristics of an individual were thought away, the question might well be mooted into which principle it would return. The ambiguous use of the word Power contributed still further to their identification, for it was not less applicable to the receptive than to the productive faculty. Now we have just seen into what importance the idea of Power suddenly sprang at the Renaissance: with Bruno it was the only abiding reality of Nature; with Hobbes it was the only object of human desire.
Another term occupying a very large place in Aristotle’s philosophy was well adapted to mediate between and eventually to unite the two speculative extremes. This was Substance; in logic the subject of predication, in metaphysics the substratum of qualities, the οὐσία or Being of the Ten Categories. Now First Matter might fairly claim the position of a universal subject or substance, since it was invested with every sensible quality in turn, and even, as the common element of all Forms, with every thinkable quality as well. Aristotle himself had finally pronounced for the individual compound of Form and Matter as the true substance. Yet he also speaks as if the essential definition of a thing constituted the thing itself; in which case Form alone could be the true subject; and a similar claim might be put forward on behalf of the Plotinian One.561
Such were theà priorielements which a historical synthesis had prepared to satisfy the want of a metaphysical Absolute. Let us now see what result would follow when the newly-recovered idea of space was subjected to a metaphysical analysis. Extension is both one and infinite. No particular area can be conceived apart from the whole which both contains and explains it. Again, extension is absolutely homogeneous; to whatever distance we may travel in imagination there will still be the same repetition of similar parts. But space, with the Cartesians, meant more than a simple juxtaposition of parts; having been made the essence of matter, it was invested with mechanical as well as with geometrical properties. The bodies into which it resolved itself were conceived as moving, and as communicating their movement to one another through an unbroken chain of causation in which each constituted a single link, determining and determined by the rest; so that, here also, each part was explained by reference to an infinite whole, reproducing its essence, while exempt from the condition of circumscribed existence. We can understand, then, that when the necessity of accounting for extension itself once became felt, the natural solution would be to conceive it as holding the same relation to some greater whole which its own subdivisions held to their sum total; in other words it should be at once a part, an emanation, and an image of the ultimate reality. This is, in fact, very nearly the relation which Matter holds to the One in the Neo-Platonic system. And we know that with Plotinus Matter is almost the same as infinite Extension.
Corresponding to the universal space which contains all particular spaces, there was, in the Neo-Platonic system, a universal Thought which contained all particular thoughts,—the Nous about which we heard so much in studying Plotinus.Such a conception is utterly strange to the modern mind, but it was familiar enough to Spinoza; and we can see how it would be suggested by the common forms of reasoning. The tendency of syllogism is either to subsume lower under higher notions until asummum genusis reached, or to resolve all subjects into a single predicate, or to connect all predicates with a single subject. The analogies of space, too, would tell in the same direction, bringing nearer the idea of a vast thought-sea in which all particular thoughts, or what to a Cartesian meant the same thing, all particular minds, were contained. And Neo-Platonism showed how this universal Mind or Thought could, like the space which it so much resembled, be interpreted as the product of a still higher principle. To complete the parallelism, it remained to show that Thought, which before had seemed essentially finite, is, on the contrary, co-infinite with Extension. How this was done will appear a little further on.
Spinoza gathered up all the threads of speculation thus made ready for his grasp, when he defined God as a substance consisting of infinite attributes, each of which expresses his infinite and eternal essence; subsequently adding that the essence here spoken of is Power, and that two of the infinite attributes are Extension and Thought, whereof the particular things known to us are modes. Platonism had decomposed the world into two ideal principles, and had re-created it by combining them over again in various proportions, but they were not entirely reabsorbed and worked up into the concrete reality which resulted from their union; they were, so to speak, knotted together, but the ends continued to hang loose. Above and below the finite sphere of existence there remained as an unemployed surplus the infinite causal energy of the One and the infinite passive potentiality of Matter. Spinoza combined and identified the two opposing elements in the notion of a single substance as infinite in actuality as they had been in power. He thus gave its highest metaphysical expressionto that common tendency which we traced through the prospects opened out by the Copernican astronomy, the revival of Atomism, the dynamical psychology of Hobbes, and the illimitable passion of the Renaissance, while, at the same time, preserving the unity of Plato’s idealism, and even making it more concentrated than before.
It has been shown how universal space and universal thought at once contain and explain each particular space and each particular concept. In like manner, the infinite substance contains and explains space and thought themselves. Contains them, yes, as attributes; but explains them, how? As two among an infinity of attributes. In other words, if we ask why there should be such an existence as space, the answer is because existence, being infinite, must necessarily include every conceivable thing. The argument is strikingly like a principle of the Epicurean philosophy, and may well have been suggested by it. According to Lucretius, the appearance of design in our world need not be attributed to creative intelligence, because infinite atoms moving in infinite manners through infinite time, must at length arrive, after a comprehensive series of experiments, at the present frame of things;562and the same principle is invoked on a smaller scale to account for the origin of organised beings, of memory, and of civil society.563In both systems, infinite space is the root-conception; but what Lucretius had legitimately used to explain becoming, Spinoza illegitimately applies to the elucidation of being. At one stroke all empirical knowledge is placed on anà priorifoundation. By assuming unlimited credit at the bank of the universe we entitle ourselves to draw a cheque for any particular amount. Thus the idea of infinite attributes is no mere collateral speculation, but forms anessential element of Spinozism. The known varieties of existence are, so to speak, surrounded, supported, and fixed in their places by the endless multitude of the unknown. And this conception of being as absolutely infinite, is another proof of Spinoza’s Platonic tendencies, for it involves the realisation of an abstract idea, that is to say, of Being, which the philosopher treats as something more comprehensive than the facts of consciousness whence it is derived.
Or, again, we may say that two principles,—the Nominalistic as well as the Realistic,—are here at work. By virtue of the one, Spinoza makes Being something beyond and above the facts of experience. By virtue of the other he reinvests it with concrete reality, but a reality altogether transcending our powers of imagination. Very much, also, that Plotinus says about his One might be applied to Spinoza’s Substance, but with a new and positive meaning. The First Cause is above existence, but only existence as restricted within the very narrow limits of our experience, and only as infinite reality transcends the parts which it includes.
It is well known that Spinoza draws a sharp line of demarcation between the two attributes of Extension and Thought, which, with him, correspond to what are usually called body and mind. Neither attribute can act on the other. Mind receives no impressions from body, nor does body receive any impulses from mind. This proposition follows by rigorous logical necessity from the Platonic principle that mind is independent of body, combined with the Stoic principle that nothing but body can act on body, generalised into the wider principle that interaction implies homogeneity of nature. According to some critics, Spinoza’s teaching on this point constitutes a fatal flaw in his philosophy. How, it is asked, can we know that there is any such thing as body (or extension) if body cannot be perceived,—for perceived it certainly cannot be without acting on our minds? The idea of infinite substance suggests a way out of thedifficulty. ‘I find in myself,’ Spinoza might say, ‘the idea of extension. In fact, my mindisnothing but the idea of extension, or the idea of that idea, and so on through as many self-reflections as you please. At the same time, mind, or thought, is not itself extended. Descartes and the Platonists before him have proved thus much. Consequently I can conceive extension as existing independently of myself, and, more generally, of all thought. But how can I be sure that it actually does so exist? In this wise. An examination of thought leads me to the notion of something in which it resides—a substance whose attribute it is. But having once conceived such a substance, I cannot limit it to a single attribute, nor to two, nor to any finite number. Limitation implies a boundary, and there can be no boundary assigned to existence, for existence by its very definition includes everything that is. Accordingly, whatever can be conceived, in other words whatever can be thought without involving a contradiction,—an important reservation which I beg you to observe,—must necessarily exist. Now extension involves no contradiction, therefore it exists,—exists, that is to say, as an attribute of the infinite substance. And, by parity of reasoning, there must be an idea of extension; for this also can exist without involving a contradiction, as the simplest introspection suffices to show. You ask me why then I do not believe in gorgons and chimaeras. I answer that since, in point of fact, they do not exist, I presume that their notion involves a contradiction, although my knowledge of natural law is not sufficiently extended to show me where the contradiction lies. But perhaps science will some day be able to point out in every instance of a non-existing thing, where the contradiction lies, no less surely than it can now be pointed out in the case of impossible geometrical figures.’ In short, while other people travel straight from their sensations to an external world, Spinoza travels round to it by the idea of an infinite substance.564
The relation of Spinoza’s Substance to its attributes is ambiguous. It is at once their cause, their totality, and their unity. The highly elastic and indefinite term Power helped these various aspects to play into and replace one another according to the requirements of the system. It is associated with the subjective possibility of multiplying imaginary existences to any amount; with the causal energy in which existence originates; and with the expansiveness characteristic alike of Extension and of Thought. For the two known attributes of the universal substance are not simply related to it as co-predicates of a common subject; they severally express its essential Power, and are, to that extent, identical with one another. But when we ask, How do they express Power? the same ambiguity recurs. Substance is revealed through its attributes, as a cause through its effects; as an aggregate through its constituents; and as an abstract notion through its concrete embodiments. Thus Extension and Thought are identical through their very differences, since these illustrate the versatility of their common source, and at the same time jointly contribute to the realisation of its perfection. But, for all practical purposes, Spinoza deals only with the parallelism and resemblance of the attributes. We have to see how he establishes it, and how far he was helped in so doing by the traditions of Greek philosophy.
It has been already shown how Extension, having become identified with matter, took on its mechanical qualities, and was conceived as a connected series of causes or modes of motion. The parallel found by Spinoza for this series in Thought is the chain of reasons and consequents forming ademonstrative argument; and here he is obviously following Aristotle, who although ostensibly distinguishing between formal and efficient causes, hopelessly confounds them in the second book of hisPosterior Analytics.565We are said to understand a thing when we bring it under a general rule, and also when we discover the mechanical agency which produces it. For instance, we may know that a particular man will die, either from the fact that all men are mortal, or from the fact that he has received a fatal wound. The general rule, however, is not the cause of what will happen, but only the cause of our knowing that it will happen; and knowledge of the rule by no means carries with it a knowledge of the efficient cause; as we see in the case of gravitation and other natural forces whosemodus operandiis still a complete mystery. What deceived Aristotle was partly his false analysis of the syllogism, which he interpreted as the connexion of two terms by the interposition of a middle answering to the causal nexus of two phenomena; and partly his conception of the universe as a series of concentric spheres, through which movement is transmitted from without, thus combining the two ideas of notional comprehension and mechanical causation.
Be this as it may, Spinoza takes up the Aristotelian identification of logical with dynamical connexion, and gives it the widest possible development. For the Stagirite would not, at any rate, have dreamed of attributing any but a subjective existence to the demonstrative series, nor of extending it beyond the limits of our actual knowledge. Spinoza, on the other hand, assumes that the whole infinite chain of material causes is represented by a corresponding chain of eternal ideas; and this chain he calls the infinite intellect of God.566Here, besides the necessities of systematisation, theinfluence of mediaeval realism is plainly evident. For, when the absolute self-existence of Plato’s Ideas had been surrendered in deference to Aristotle’s criticism, a home was still found for them by Plotinus in the eternal Nous, and by the Christian Schoolmen in the mind of God; nor did such a belief present any difficulties so long as the divine personality was respected. The pantheism of Spinoza, however, was absolute, and excluded the notion of any but a finite subjectivity. Thus the infinite intellect of God is an unsupported chain of ideas recalling the theory at one time imagined by Plato.567Or its existence may be merely what Aristotle would have called potential; in other words, Spinoza may mean that reasons will go on evolving themselves so long as we choose to study the dialectic of existence, always in strict parallelism with the natural series of material movements constituting the external universe; and just as this is determined through all its parts by the totality of extension, or of all matter (whether moving or motionless) taken together, so also at the summit of the logical series stands the idea of God, from whose definition the demonstration of every lesser idea necessarily follows. It is true that in a chain of connected energies the antecedent, as such, must be always precisely equal to the consequent; but, apparently, this difficulty did not present itself to Spinoza, nor need we be surprised at this; for Kant, coming a century later, was still so imbued with Aristotelian traditions as, similarly, to derive the category of Cause and Effect from the relation between Reason and Consequent in hypothetical propositions.568
Meanwhile the parallelism between Thought and Extension was not exhausted by the identification just analysed. Extension was not only a series of movements; it still remained an expression for co-existence and adjacency.Spinoza, therefore, felt himself obliged to supply Thought with a correspondingly continuous quality. It is here that his chief originality lies, here that he has been most closely followed by the philosophy of our own time. Mind, he declares, is an attribute everywhere accompanying matter, co-extensive and co-infinite with space. Our own animation is the sum or the resultant of an animation clinging to every particle that enters into the composition of our bodies. When our thoughts are affected by an external impulse, to suppose that this impulse proceeds from anything material is a delusion; it is produced by the mind belonging to the body which acts on our body; although in what sense this process is to be understood remains a mystery. Spinoza has clearly explained the doctrine of animal automatism, and shown it to be perfectly conceivable;569but he has entirely omitted to explain how the parallel influence of one thought (or feeling) on another is to be understood; for although this too is spoken of as a causal relation, it seems to be quite different from the logical concatenation described as the infinite intellect of God; and to suppose that idea follows from idea like movement from movement would amount to a complete materialisation of mind; while our philosopher would certainly have repudiated Mr. Shadworth Hodgson’s theory, that states of consciousness are only connected through their extended substratum, as the segments of a mosaic picture are held together by the underlying surface of masonry. Nor can we admit that Spinoza entertained the theory, now so popular, according to which extension and consciousness are merely different aspects of a single reality. For this would imply that the substance which they manifest had an existence of its own apart from its attributes; whereas Spinoza makes it consist of the attributes, that is to say, identifies it with their totality. We are forced, then, to conclude that the proposition declaring thought and extension to be the same thing570has noother meaning than that they are connected by the double analogy which we have endeavoured to explain.
The analogy between Thought and Extension under the two aspects of necessary connexion and mere contingent relation in co-existence or succession, was, in truth, more interesting to its author as a basis for his ethical than as a development of his metaphysical speculations. The two orders of relations represent, in their distinction, the opposition of science to opinion or imagination, the opposition of dutiful conviction to blind or selfish impulse. Spinoza borrows from the Stoics their identification of volition with belief; but in working out the consequences of this principle it is of Plato rather than of the Stoics that he reminds us. The passions are in his system what sense, imagination, and opinion were in that of the Athenian idealist; and his ethics may almost be called the metaphysics of theRepublicturned outside in. Joy, grief and desire are more or less imperfect perceptions of reality—a reality not belonging to the external world but to the conscious subject itself.571When Spinoza traces them to a consciousness or expectation of raised or lowered power, we recognise the influence of Hobbes; but when, here as elsewhere, he identifies power with existence, we detect a return to Greek forms of thought. The great conflict between illusion and reality is fought out once more; only, this time, it is about our own essence that we are first deceived and then enlightened. If the nature and origin of outward things are half revealed, half concealed by sense and imagination, our emotions are in like manner the obscuring and distorting medium through which we apprehend our inmost selves, and whatever adds to or takes away from the plenitude of our existence; and what science is to the one, morality and religion are to the other.
It is remarkable that while Spinoza was giving a new application to the Platonic method, another Cartesian,Malebranche, was working it out more strictly on the old lines of speculative research. TheRecherche de la Véritéof this unjustly neglected thinker is a methodical account of the various subjective obstacles which impede our apprehension of things as they really exist, and of the means by which it may be facilitated. Here also, attention is concentrated on the subjective side of philosophy; and if the mental processes selected for study are of theoretical rather than practical interest, we may probably attribute this to the circumstance that every ethical question was already decided for Malebranche by the Church whose orders he had assumed.
But it was not merely in the writings of professed philosophers that the new aspect of Platonism found expression. All great art embodies in one form or another the leading conceptions of its age; and the latter half of the seventeenth century found such a manifestation in the comedies of Molière. If these works stand at the head of French literature, they owe their position not more to their author’s brilliant wit than to his profound philosophy of life; or rather, we should say that with him wit and philosophy are one. The comic power of Shakespeare was shown by resolving the outward appearances of this world into a series of dissolving illusions. Like Spinoza and Malebranche, Molière turns the illusion in, showing what perverted opinions men form of themselves and others, through misconceptions and passions either of spontaneous growth or sedulously fostered by designing hands. Society, with him, seems almost entirely made up of pretenders and their dupes, both characters being not unfrequently combined in the same person, who is made a victim through his desire to pass for what he is not and cannot be. And this is what essentially distinguishes the art of Molière from the New Comedy of Athens, which he, like other moderns, had at first felt inclined to imitate until the success of thePrécieuses Ridiculesshowed him where his true opportunities lay. For the New Comedy was Aristotelian where it was not simply humanist; that isto say, it was an exhibition of types like those sketched by Aristotle’s disciple, Theophrastus, and already prefigured in the master’s ownEthics. These were the perennial forms in a world of infinite and perishing individual existences, not concealed behind phenomena, but incorporated in them and constituting their essential truth. The Old Comedy is something different again; it is pre-philosophic, and may be characterised as an attempt to describe great political interests and tendencies through the medium of myths and fables and familiar domesticities, just as the old theories of Nature, the old lessons of practical wisdom, and the first great national chronicles had been thrown into the same homely form.572
The purely intellectual view of human nature, the definition of mind in terms of cognition, is one more fallacy from which Aristotle’s teaching, had it not fallen into neglect or contempt, might have guarded Spinoza. Nevertheless, his parallelism between passion and sensuous perception saves him from the worst extravagances of his Greek predecessors. For the senses, however much they might be maligned, never were nor could be altogether rejected; while the passions met with little mercy from Plato and with none from the Stoics, who considered them not only unnecessary but even unnatural. Spinoza more wisely sees in them assertions, however obscure and confused, of the will to be and grow which constitutes individual existence. And he sees that they can no more be removed by pointing out their evil consequences than sense-impressions can be abolished by proving their fallaciousness. On the other hand, when Spinoza speaks as if one emotion could only be conquered or expelled by another emotion, we must not allow his peculiar phraseology to conceal from us the purely intellectual character of his whole ethical system. What he really holds is that emotion can beovercome by reason or better knowledge, because it is itself an imperfect cognition. Point by point, an analogy—or something more than an analogy—is made out between the errors of sensuous perception joined to imagination, and the errors of our spontaneous efforts after happiness or self-realisation. Both are imposed on us from without, and neither can be got rid of by a simple act of volition. Both are affected by illusions of perspective: the nearer object of desire, like the nearer object of perception, assuming a disproportionate place in the field of view. In both, accidental contiguity is habitually confounded with causation; while in both the assignment of causes to effects, instead of being traced back through an infinite series of antecedents, stops short with the antecedent nearest to ourselves. If objects are classified according to their superficial resemblances or the usages of common language, so also are the desires sustained and intensified by imitation and rivalry. By parity of reasoning, moral education must be conducted on the same lines as intellectual education. First, it is shown how our individual existence, depending as it does on forces infinitely exceeding our own, is to be maintained. This is chiefly done by cultivating friendly relations with other men; probably, although Spinoza does not himself make the comparison, on the same principle as that observed in the mutual assistance and rectification of the senses, together with their preservation by means of verbal signs. The misleading passions are to be overcome by discovering their origin; by referring the pleasures and pains which produce them to the right causes; by calling in thought to redress the balance of imagination; by dividing the attention among an infinite number of causes; finally, by demonstrating the absolute necessity of whatever actions excite them, and classifying them according to their relations, in the same way that the phenomena of the material world are dealt with when subjected to scientific analysis.
So far Spinoza, following the example of Stoicism, has only studied the means by which reason conquers passion. He now proceeds to show, in the spirit of Plato or of Platonic Christianity, how immensely superior to the pleasures of sense and opinion are those afforded by true religion—by the love of God and the possession of eternal life. But, here also, as in the Greek system, logic does duty for emotion. The love of God means no more than viewing ourselves as filling a place in the infinite framework of existence, and as determined to be what we are by the totality of forces composing it. And eternal life is merely the adjustment of our thoughts to the logical order by which all modes of existence are deducible from the idea of infinite power.
Thus, while Spinoza draws to a head all the tendencies inherited from Greek philosophy, borrowing from the early physicists their necessarianism; from the Atomists, their exclusion of final causes, their denial of the supernatural, and their infinite worlds; from the Athenian school, their distinction between mind and body and between reason and sense; from Aristotle, his parallelism between causation and syllogism; from the Epicureans, their vindication of pleasure; and from the Stoics, their identification of belief with action, their conquest of passion and their devotion to humanity;—it is to the dominant Platonism of the seventeenth century that his system owes its foundation, its development, and its crown; for he begins by realising the abstract conception of being, and infers its absolute infinity from the misleading analogy of space, which is not an abstraction at all; deduces his conclusions according to the geometrical method recommended by Plato; and ends, like Plato, by translating dialectic formulas into the emotional language of religious faith.573
From this grand synthesis, however, a single element was omitted; and, like the uninvited guest of fairy tradition, it proved strong enough singly to destroy what had been constructed by the united efforts of all the rest. This was the sceptical principle, the critical analysis of ideas, first exercised by Protagoras, made a new starting-point by Socrates, carried to perfection by Plato, supplementing experience with Aristotle, and finally proclaimed in its purity as the sole function of philosophy by an entire school of Greek thought.
Notwithstanding the sterility commonly associated with mere negation, it was this which, of all the later Greek schools, possessed the greatest powers of growth. Besides passing through more than one stage of development on its own account, Scepticism imposed serious modifications on Stoicism, gave birth to Eclecticism, and contributed to the establishment of Neo-Platonism. The explanation is not far to seek. The more highly organised a system is, the more resistance does it offer to change, the more does its transmission tend to assume a rigidly scholastic form. To such dogmatism the Sceptics were, on principle, opposed; and by keeping the problems of philosophy open, they facilitated the task of all who had a new solution to offer; while mind and its activities being, to some extent, safe from the universal doubt, the sceptical principle spontaneously threw back thought on a subjective instead of an objective synthesis of knowledge—in other words, on that psychological idealism the pregnancy and comprehensiveness of which are every day becoming more clearly recognised. And we shall now see how the same fertilising power of criticism has been manifested in modern times as well.
The sceptical philosophy, already advocated in the Middle Ages by John of Salisbury, was, like every other form of ancient thought, revived at the Renaissance, but only underthe very superficial form which infers from the co-existence of many divergent opinions that none of them can be true. Even so, however, it led Montaigne to sounder notions of toleration and humanity than were entertained by any of his contemporaries. With Bacon, and still more with Descartes, it also appears as the necessary preparation for a remodelling of all belief; but the great dogmatic systems still exercised such a potent influence on both those thinkers that their professed demand for a new method merely leads up to an altered statement of the old unproved assumptions.
Meanwhile the old principle of universal doubt could no longer be maintained in presence of the certainties already won by modern science. Man, in the time of Newton, had, as Pope tersely puts it, ‘too much knowledge for the sceptic side.’ The problem was not how to establish the reality, but how to ascertain the origin and possible extent of that knowledge. The first to perceive this, the first to evolve criticism out of scepticism, and therefore the real founder of modern philosophy, was Locke. Nevertheless, even with him, the advantage of studying the more recent in close connexion with the earlier developments of thought does not cease; it only enters on a new phase. If he cannot, like his predecessors, be directly affiliated to one or more of the Greek schools, his position can be illustrated by a parallel derived from the history of those schools. What Arcesilaus and Carneades had been to Socrates and his successors, that Locke was, in a large measure, to Bacon and the Cartesians. He went back to the initial doubt which with them had been overborne by the dogmatic reaction, and insisted on making it a reality. The spirit of theApologiais absent from Plato’s later dialogues, only to reappear with even more than its original power in the teaching of the New Academy. And, in like manner, Descartes’ introspective method, with its demand for clear ideas, becomes, in theEssay concerning Human Understanding, an irresistible solvent forthe psychologyy and physics of its first propounder. The doctrine of innate ideas, the doctrine that extension is the essence of matter, the doctrine that thought is the essence of mind, the more general doctrine, held also by Bacon, that things have a discoverable essence whence all their properties may be deduced by a process analogous to mathematical reasoning,—all collapsed when brought to the test of definite and concrete experience.
We have here, indeed, something comparable not only to the scepticism of the New Academy, but also to the Aristotelian criticism of Plato’s metaphysics; and, at first sight, it might seem as if the Peripatetic philosophy was destined once more to regain the position taken from it by the resuscitation of its ancient foe. But Locke was not inclined to substitute one form of scholasticism for another. By applying the analytical method of Atomism to knowledge itself, he created a weapon equally fatal to the two competing systems. Under his dissection, the concrete individual substance of the one vanished no less completely than the universal ideas of the other. Nothing remained but a bundle of qualities held together by a subjective bond.
Similarly, in political science, the analytical method of assuming civil government to result from a concurrence of individual wills, which with Hobbes had served only to destroy ecclesiastical authority, while leaving intact and even strengthening the authority of secular rulers, was reinterpreted by Locke as a negation of all absolutism whatever.
It is interesting to observe how, here also, the positive science of the age had a large share in determining its philosophic character. Founded on the discovery of the earth’s true shape, Aristotle’s metaphysics had been overthrown by the discovery of the earth’s motion. And now the claims of Cartesianism to have furnished an exact knowledge of matter and a definition of it whence all the facts of observation could be deducedà priori, were summarily refuted by the discoveryof universal gravitation. The Cartesians complained that Newton was bringing back the occult qualities of the Schoolmen; but the tendency of bodies to move towards one another proved as certain as it was inexplicably mysterious. For a time, the study of causes was superseded by the study of laws; and the new method of physical science moved in perfect harmony with the phenomenism of Locke. One most important consequence of this revolution was to place the new Critical philosophy on a footing quite different from that occupied by the ancient sceptics. Both restricted certain knowledge to our own states of consciousness; but it now appeared that this might be done without impeaching the value of accepted scientific conclusions, which was more than the Academic philosophy would have admitted. In other words, granting that we were limited to phenomena, it was shown that science consisted in ascertaining the relations of these phenomena to one another, instead of to a problematic reality lying behind them; while, that such relations existed and were, in fact, part of the phenomena themselves, was what no sceptic could easily deny.
Nevertheless, in each case, subjective idealism had the effect of concentrating speculation, properly so called, on ethical and practical interests. Locke struck the keynote of eighteenth century philosophy when he pronounced morality to be ‘the proper science and business of mankind in general.’574And no sooner had morality come to the front than the significance of ancient thought again made itself apparent. Whether through conscious imitation, or because the same causes brought about the same effects, ethical enquiries moved along the lines originally laid down in the schools of Athens. When rules of conduct were not directly referred to a divine revelation, they were based either on a supposed law of Nature, or on the necessities of human happiness, or on some combination of the two. Nothing is more characteristic ofthe eighteenth century than its worship of Nature. Even the theology of the age is deeply coloured by it; and with the majority of those who rejected theology it became a new religion. But this sentiment is demonstrably of Greek origin, and found its most elaborate, though not its most absolute, expression in Stoicism. The Stoics had inherited it from the Cynics, who held the faith in greater purity; and these, again, so far as we can judge, from a certain Sophistic school, some fragments of whose teaching have been preserved by Xenophon and Plato; while the first who gave wide currency to this famous abstraction was, in all probability, Heracleitus. To the Stoics, however, is due that intimate association of naturalism with teleology which meets us again in the philosophy of the last century, and even now wherever the doctrine of evolution has not been thoroughly accepted. It was assumed, in the teeth of all evidence, that Nature bears the marks of a uniformly beneficent design, that evil is exclusively of human origin, and that even human nature is essentially good when unspoiled by artificial restrictions.
Yet if teleology was, in some respects, a falling-off from the rigid mechanicism first taught by the pre-Socratic schools and then again by the Cartesian school, in at least one respect it marked a comparative progress. For the first attempts made both by ancient and modern philosophy to explain vital phenomena on purely mechanical principles were altogether premature; and the immense extension of biological knowledge which took place subsequently to both, could not but bring about an irresistible movement in the opposite direction. The first to revive teleology was Leibniz, who furnished a transition from the seventeenth to the eighteenth century by his monadology. In this, Atomism is combined with Aristotelian ideas, just as it had previously been combined with Platonic ideas by Descartes. The movement of the atoms is explained by their aspiration after a more perfect state instead of by mechanical pressure. But while Leibniz still relies onthe ontological argument of Descartes to prove the existence of God, this was soon abandoned, along with the cosmological argument, for the argument from design, which was also that used by the Stoics; while in ethics the fitness of things was substituted for the more mechanical law of self-preservation, as the rule of conduct; and the subjection of all impulse to reason was replaced by the milder principle of a control exercised by the benevolent over the malevolent instincts. This was a very distinct departure from the Stoic method, yet those who made it were more faithful to teleology than Stoicism had been; for to condemn human feeling altogether was implicitly to condemn the work of Nature or of God.
The other great ethical method of the eighteenth century, its hedonism, was closely connected with the sceptical movement in speculative philosophy, and, like that, received an entirely new significance by becoming associated with the idea of law. Those who isolate man from the universe are necessarily led to seek in his interests as such the sole regulator of his actions, and their sole sanction in the opinion of his fellows. Protagoras went already so far, notwithstanding his unwillingness to recognise pleasure as the supreme end; and in the system of his true successor, Aristippus, the most extreme hedonism goes hand in hand with the most extreme idealism; while with Epicurus, again, both are tempered by the influence of naturalism, imposing on him its conceptions of objective law alike in science and in practice. Still his system leaned heavily to the side of self-gratification pure and simple; and it was reserved for modern thought to establish a complete equilibrium between the two competing tendencies of Greek ethics. This has been effected in Utilitarianism; and those critics are entirely mistaken who, like M. Guyau, regard that system as a mere reproduction of Epicureanism. It might with full as much reason be called a modern version of Stoicism. The idea of humanity is essentially Stoic; to work for the good of humanity was aStoic precept; and to sacrifice one’s own pleasure for that higher good is a virtue which would have satisfied the most rigorous demands of a Cleanthes, an Epictêtus, or an Aurelius.
Utilitarianism agrees with the ancient hedonism in holding pleasure to be the sole good and pain the sole evil. Its adherents also, for the most part, admit that the desire of the one and the dread of the other are the sole motives to action; but, while making the end absolutely universal and impersonal, they make the motive into a momentary impulse, without any necessary relation to the future happiness of the agent himself. The good man does his duty because doing it gives him pleasure, or because the failure to do it would give him pain, at the moment; although he knows that a contrary course would save him from greater pain or win him greater pleasure hereafter. No accurate thinker would call this acting from a selfish or interested motive; nor does it agree with the teaching of Epicurus. Were all sensitive beings to be united in a single organism, then, on utilitarian principles, self-interest, interpreted in the sense of seeking its own preservation and pleasure, would be the only law that the individualised aggregate could rationally obey. But the good of each part would be rigorously subordinated to the good of the whole; and utilitarian morality desires that we should act as if this hypothesis were realised, at least in reference to our own particular interests. Now, the idea of humanity as forming such a consolidated whole is not Epicurean. It belongs to the philosophy which always reprobated pleasure, precisely because its pursuit is associated with the dereliction of public duty and with bitter rivalry for the possession of what, by its very nature, exists only in limited quantities, while the demand for it is unlimited or, at any rate, far exceeds the supply. According to the Stoics, there was only one way in which the individual could study his privateinterest without abandoning his position as a social being, and this was to find it exclusively in the practice of virtue.575But virtue and public interest remained mere forms scantily supplemented by appeals to the traditional morality, until the idea of generalised happiness, of pleasure diffused through the whole community, came to fill them with substance and life.
It has also to be observed that the idea of utility as a test of moral goodness is quite distinct from hedonism. Plato proclaims, in the most unequivocal terms, that actions must be estimated by their consequences instead of by the feelings of sympathy or antipathy which they excite; yet no one could object more strongly to making pleasure the end of action. Thus, three distinct doctrines seem to converge in modern English ethics, of which all are traceable to Greek philosophy, but only one to Epicureanism in particular, and not ultimately to that but to the older systems whence it sprang.
And here we unexpectedly find ourselves confronted by a new relation between ancient and modern thought. Each acts as a powerful precipitant on the other, dissolving what might otherwise have passed for inseparable associations, and combining elements which a less complete experience might have led us to regard as necessarily incompatible with one another. The instance just analysed is highly significant; nor does it stand alone. Modern spiritualists often talk as if morality was impossible apart from their peculiar metaphysics. But the Stoics, confessedly the purest moralists of antiquity, were uncompromising materialists; while the spiritualist Aristotle taught what is not easily distinguishable from a very refined sort of egoism. Again, the doctrine of free-will is now commonly connected with a belief in the separability of consciousness from matter, and, like that, is declared to be an indispensable condition of morality. Among the Greeks,however, it was held by the materialist Epicureans more distinctly than by any other school; while the Stoics did not find necessarianism inconsistent with self-sacrificing virtue. The partial derivation of knowledge from an activity in our own minds is another supposed concomitant of spiritualism; although Aristotle traces every idea to an external source, while at the same time holding some cognitions to be necessarily true—a theory repudiated by modern experientialists. To Plato, the spirituality of the soul seemed to involve its pre-existence no less than its immortality, a consequence not accepted by his modern imitators. Teleology is now commonly opposed to pantheism; the two were closely combined in Stoicism; while Aristotle, although he believed in a personal God, attributed the marks of design in Nature to purely unconscious agencies.
The naturalism and utilitarianism of the eighteenth century are the last conceptions directly inherited from ancient philosophy by modern thought. Henceforward, whatever light the study of the former can throw on the vicissitudes of the latter is due either to their partial parallelism, or to an influence becoming every day fainter and more difficult to trace amid the multitude of factors involved. The progress of analytical criticism was continually deflected or arrested by the still powerful resistance of scholasticism, just as the sceptical tendencies of the New Academy had been before, though happily with less permanent success; and as, in antiquity, this had happened within no less than without the critical school, so also do we find Locke clinging to the theology of Descartes; Berkeley lapsing into Platonism; Hume playing fast and loose with his own principles; and Kant leaving it doubtful to which side he belongs, so evenly are the two opposing tendencies balanced in his mind, sodexterously does he adapt the new criticism to the framework of scholastic logic and metaphysics.
Meanwhile the strength of the analytical method was doubled by its extension to the phenomena of growth and change; for, as applied to these, it became the famous theory of Development or Evolution. No idea belongs so completely to modern philosophy; for even the ancient thinkers who threw their cosmology into a historical form had never attempted to explain the present by the past. If anything, they explained the past by the present, assuming a rough analogy to exist between the formation of the universe as a whole and the genesis of those natural or artificial bodies which were continually growing or being built up before their eyes. Their cosmology was, in fact, nothing but the old mythology stripped of its personal or conscious element; and, like it, was a hypothesis unsupported by any external evidence;—a criticism not inconsistent with the admission that to eliminate the supernatural element from speculation was, even in the absence of any solid addition to human knowledge, an achievement of inestimable value. The evolutionary method is also an elimination of the supernatural, but it is a great deal more. By tracing the history of compound structures to their first origin, and noting the successive increments to which their gradual growth is due, it reveals, as no statical analysis ever could, the actual order of synthesis, and the meaning of the separate constituents by whose joint action their movements are determined; while, conversely, their dissolution supplies us with a number of ready-made experiments in which the influence of each particular factor in the sum total may be detected by watching the changes that ensue on its removal. In a word, the method of evolution is the atomistic method, extended from matter to motion, and viewed under the form of succession instead of under the form of co-existence.
As a universal philosophy, the theory of Development,like every other modern idea, has only been permitted to manifest itself in combination with different forms of the old scholasticism. The whole speculative movement of our century is made up of such hybrid systems; and three, in particular, still divide the suffrages of many thinking men who have not been able entirely to shake off the influence of reactionary ideas. These are the systems of Hegel, of Comte, and of Mr. Herbert Spencer. In each, the logic and metaphysics inherited from Greek thought are variously compounded with the new science. And each, for that very reason, serves to facilitate the transition from one to the other; a part analogous to that played among the Greeks themselves by the vast constructions of Plato and Aristotle, or, in an age of less productivity, by the Stoic and Alexandrian philosophies.
The influence of Aristotle has, indeed, continued to make itself felt not only through the teaching of his modern imitators, but more directly as a living tradition in literature, or through the renewed study of his writings at first hand. Even in the pure sciences, it survived until a comparatively recent period, and, so far as the French intellect goes, it is not yet entirely extinct. From Abélard on, Paris was the headquarters of that soberer scholasticism which took its cue from the Peripatetic logic; and the resulting direction of thought, deeply impressed as it became on the French character and the French language, was interrupted rather than permanently altered by the Cartesian revolution, and, with the fall of Cartesianism, gradually recovered its old predominance. The Aristotelian philosophy is remarkable above all others for clear definitions, full descriptions, comprehensive classifications, lucid reasoning, encyclopaedic science, and disinterested love of knowledge; along with a certain incapacity for ethical speculation,576strong conservative leanings, and a general tendency towards the rigid demarcation rather than the fruitful commingling of ideas. And it will probably be admittedthat these are also traits characteristic of French thinking as opposed to English or German thinking. For instance, widely different as is theMécanique Célestefrom the astronomy of Aristotle’s treatiseOn the Heavens, both agree in being attempts to prove the eternal stability of the celestial system.577The destructive deluges by which Aristotle supposes civilisation to be periodically interrupted, reappear on a larger scale in the theory of catastrophes still held by French geologists. Another Aristotelian dogma, the fixity of organic species, though vigorously assailed by eminent French naturalists, has, on the whole, triumphed over the opposite doctrine of transformism in France, and now impedes the acceptance of Darwin’s teaching even in circles where theological prepossessions are extinct. The accepted classifications in botany and zoology are the work of Frenchmen following in the footsteps of Aristotle, whose genius for methodical arrangement was signally exemplified in at least one of these departments; the division of animals into vertebrate and invertebrate being originally due to him. Bichat’s distinction between the animal and the vegetable functions recalls Aristotle’s distinction between the sensitive and nutritive souls; while his method of studying the tissues before the organs is prefigured in the treatise on theParts of Animals. For a long time, the ruling of Aristotle’sPoeticswas undisputed in French criticism; and if anything could disentitle Montesquieu’sEsprit des Loisto the proud motto,Prolem sine matre creatam, it would be its close relationship to thePoliticsof the same universal master. Finally, if it be granted that the enthusiasm for knowledge, irrespective of its utilitarian applications, exists to a greater degree among the educated classes of France than in any other modern society, we may plausibly attribute this honourable characteristic to the fostering influence of one who hasproclaimed more eloquently than any other philosopher that theoretical activity is the highest good of human life, the ideal of all Nature, and the sole beatitude of God.
It remains to add a few words on the position which ancient and modern philosophy respectively occupy towards theology. Here their relation is one of contrast rather than of resemblance. The Greek thinkers start at an immense distance from religious belief, and their first allusions to it are marked by a scornful denial of its validity. Gradually, with the transition from physical to ethical enquiries, an approximation between the two is brought about, though not without occasional returns to their former attitude of hostility. Finally, in presence of a common danger they become interwoven and almost identified with one another; while the new religion against which they make common cause, itself presents the same spectacle of metaphysical and moral ideas entering into combination with the spontaneous products of popular mythology. And be it observed that throughout the whole of this process action and reaction were equal and contrary. The decline and corruption of philosophy was the price paid for the elevation and purification of religion. While the one was constantly sinking, the other was constantly rising, until they converged on the plane of dogmatic theology. By the very circumstances of the case, an opposite course has been imposed on the development of modern philosophy. Starting from an intimate union with religion, it slowly disengages itself from the compromising alliance; and, although, here also, the normal course of ideas has been interrupted by frequent reactions, the general movement of European thought has been no less decidedly towards a complete emancipation from the popular beliefs than the movement of Greek thought had been towards their conciliation and support.
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