Wolfs definition of philosophy is 'the Science of the possible in so far as it can be'; and the possible = the non-contradictory.
P.64, § 29. The oriental sage corresponds (cf. Hegel,Werke,xii. 229) to the writer known as Dionysius the Areopagite (De Mystica Theologia,andDe Divitus Nominibus.)—The same problem as to the relation of the Infinite (God) to the Finite (world) is discussed in Jewish speculation (by Saadia, Mamuni,&c.) as the question of the divine names,—a dogma founded on the thirteen names (or attributes) applied to God in Exodus xxxiv. 6. (Cf. D. Kaufmann,Geschichte der Attributenlehre.) The same spirit has led to the list of ninety-nine 'excellent names' of Allah in Islam, a list which tradition derives from Mohammed.
P.65, § 31. Cf.Werke,ii. 47seqq.:'The nature of the judgment or proposition—involving as it does a distinction of subject and predicate—is destroyed by the "speculative" proposition. This conflict of the propositional form with the unity of comprehension which destroys it is like the antagonism in rhythm between metre and accent. The rhythm results from the floating "mean" and unification of the two. Hence even in the "philosophical" proposition the identity of subject and predicate is not meant to annihilate their difference (expressed by the propositional form): their unity is meant to issue as aharmony.The propositional form lets appear the definite shade or accent pointing to a distinction in its fulfilment: whereas inthe predicate giving expression to the substance, and the subject itself falling into the universal, we have the unity in which that accent is heard no more. Thus in the proposition "God is Being" the predicate is Being; it represents the substance in which the subject is dissolved away. Being is here meant not to be predicate but essence: and in that way God seems to cease to be what he is—by his place in the proposition—viz. the permanent subject. The mind—far from getting further forward in the passage from subject to predicate—feels itself rather checked, through the loss of the subject, and thrown back, from a sense of its loss, to the thought of the subject. Or,—since the predicate itself is enunciated as a subject (as Being or as Essence) which exhausts the nature of the subject, it again comes face to face with the subject even in the predicate.—Thought thus loses its solid objective ground which it had on the subject: yet at the same time in the predicate it is thrown back upon it, and instead of getting to rest in itself it returns upon the subject of the content.—To this unusual check and arrest are in the main due the complaints as to the unintelligibility of philosophical works,—supposing the individual to possess any other conditions of education needed for understanding them.'
P.66, § 32. On the relation of dogmatism and scepticism see the introduction to Kant'sCriticism of Pure Reason,and compare Caird'sCritical Philosophy of I. Kant,vol. i. chap. i.
P.67, § 33. The subdivision of 'theoretical' philosophy or metaphysics into the four branches, Ontology, Cosmology, Psychology (rational and empirical), and Natural Theology, is more or less common to the whole Wolfian School. Wolf's special addition to the preceding scholastic systems is found in the conception of a general Cosmology. Metaphysics precedes physics, and the departments of practical philosophy. In front of all stands logic or rational philosophy. Empirical psychology belongs properly to physics, but reasons of practical convenience put it elsewhere.
P.69, § 34. The question of the 'Seat of the Soul' is well known in the writings of Lotze (e.g. Metaphysic,§ 291).
Absolute actuosity. TheNotio Deiaccording to Thomas Aquinas, as well as the dogmatics of post-Reformation times, isactus purus(oractus purissimus). For Godnihil potentialitatis habet.Cf.Werke, xii.228: 'Aristotle especially has conceived God under the abstract category of activity. Pure activityis knowledge (Wissen)—in the scholastic age,actus purus—: but in order to be put as activity, it must be put in its "moments." For knowledge we require another thing which is known: and which, when knowledge knows it, is thereby appropriated. It is implied in this that God—the eternal and self-subsistent—eternally begets himself as his Son,—distinguishes himself from himself. But what he thus distinguishes from himself, has not the shape of an otherness: but what is distinguished isipso factoidentical with what it is parted from. God is spirit: no darkness, no colouring or mixture enters this pure light. The relationship of father and son is taken from organic life and used metaphorically—the natural relation is only pictorial and hence does not quite correspond to what is to be expressed. We say, God eternally begets his Son, God distinguishes himself from himself: and thus we begin from God, saying he does this, and in the other he creates is utterly with himself (the form of Love): but we must be well aware that God is thiswhole action itselfGod is the beginning; he does this: but equally is he only the end, the totality: and as such totality he is spirit. God as merely the Father is not yet the true (it is the Jewish religion where he is thus without the Son): He is rather beginning and end: He is his presupposition, makes himself a presupposition (this is only another form of distinguishing): He is the eternal process.'
Nicolaus Cusanus speaks of God (De docta Ignorantia,ii. I) asinfinita actualitas quae est actu omnis essendi possibilitas.The term 'actuosity' seems doubtful.
P.73, § 36.Sensus eminentior.Theology distinguishes three modes in which the human intelligence can attain a knowledge of God. By thevia causalitatisit argues that God is; by thevia negationis,what he is not; by thevia eminentiae,it gets a glimpse of the relation in which he stands to us. It regards Godi.e.as the cause of the finite universe; but as God is infinite, all that is predicated of him must be taken as merely approximative (sensu eminentiori) and there is left a vast remainder which can only be filled up with negations [Durandus de S. Porciano on the Sentent, i. 3. I]. Thesensus eminentioris the subject of Spinoza's strictures, Ep. 6 (56 in Opp. ii. 202): while Leibniz adopts it in the preface toThéodicée,'Les perfections de Dieu sont celles de nos âmes, mais il les possède sans bornes: il est un océan, dont nous n'avons reçuque les gouttes; il y a en nous quelque puissance, quelque connaissance, quelque bonté; mais elles sont toutes entières en Dieu.'
Thevia causalitatisinferse.g.,from the existence of morality and intelligence here, a Being whose will finds expression therein: thevia eminentiaeinfers that that will is good, and that intelligence wise in the highest measure, and thevia negationissets aside in the conception of God all the limitations and conditions to which human intelligence and will are subject.
P.80, § 38. The verses (forming part of the advice which Mephistopheles, personating Faust, gives to the recently-arrived pupil) stand in the original in a different order: beginning "Dann hat er die Theile in seiner Hand," &c. The meaning of these and the two preceding lines is somewhat as follows, in versification even laxer than Goethe's:—
If you want to describe life and gather its meaning,To drive out its spirit most be your beginning,Then though fast in your hand lie the parts one by oneThe spirit that linked them, alas! is gone.And 'Nature's Laboratory' is only a nameThat the chemist bestows on't to hide his own shame.
One may compareWilhelm Meister's Wanderjahre,iii. 3, where it is remarked, in reference to some anatomical exercises: 'You will learn ere long that building-up is more instructive than tearing-down, combining more than separating, animating the dead more than killing again what was killed already.... Combining means more than separating: reconstructing more than onlooking.' The first part ofFaustappeared 1808: theWanderjahre,1828-9.
P.82, § 39. The article on the 'Relation of scepticism to philosophy, an exposition of its various modifications, and comparison of the latest with the ancient'—in form a review of G. E. Schulze'sCriticism of Theoretical Philosophy'—was republished in vol. xvi. of Hegel'sWerke(vol. i. of theVermischte Schriften).
P.87, § 42. In an earlier review of Kant's work (Werke,i. 83) on Glauben und Wissen (an article in Sendling and Hegel'sJournal) Hegel attaches more weight to a factor in the critical theory of knowledge, here neglected. Kant, he says, has—within the limits allowed by his psychological terms of thought—'put (in an excellent way) theà prioriof sensibility into the original identity and multiplicity, and that as transcendental imagination in the "higher power" of an immersion of unity in multiplicity: whilst Understanding (Verstand) he makes to consist in the elevation to universality of thisà priorisynthetic unity of sensibility,—whereby this identity is invested with a comparative antithesis to the sensibility: and Reason (Vernunft) is presented as a still higher power over the preceding comparative antithesis, without however this universality and infinity being allowed to go beyond the stereotyped formal pure infinity. This genuinely rational construction by which, though the bad name "faculties" is left, there is in truth presented a single identity of them all, is transformed by Jacobi into a series of faculties,restingone upon another.'
P.87, § 42. Fichte: cf.Werke,i. 420: 'I have said before, and say it here again, that my system is no other than the Kantian. That means: it contains the same view of facts, but in its method is quite independent of the Kantian exposition.' 'Kant, up to now, is a closed book.'—i. 442. There are two ways of critical idealism. 'Either' (as Fichte) 'it actually deduces from the fundamental laws of intelligence, that system of necessary modes of action, and with it, at the same time, the objective conceptions thus arising, and thus lets the whole compass of our conceptions gradually arise under the eyes of the reader or hearer; or' (like Kant and his unprogressive disciples) 'it gets hold of these laws from anywhere and anyhow, as they are immediately applied to objects, therefore on their lowest grade (—on this grade they are calledcategories),and then asseverates that it is by these that objects are determined and arranged.' And i. 478: 'I know that the categories which Kant laid down are in no wayprovedby him to be conditions of self-consciousness, but only said to be so: I know that space and time and what in the original consciousness is inseparable from them and fills them both, are still less deduced as such conditions, for of them it is not even said expressly—as of the categories—that they are so, but only inferentially. But I believe quite as surely that I know that Kant had the thought of such a system: that everything he actually propounds are fragments and results of this system; and that his statements have meaning and coherence only on this presupposition.' Cf. viii. 362.
P.89, § 42. Transcendental unity of self-consciousness. Kant'sKritik der reinen Vernunft,§ 16: 'TheI thinkmust be able to accompany all my ideas.... This idea is an act of spontaneity. ... I name it pure apperception ... or original apperception ... because it is that self-consciousness which can be accompanied by none further. The unity of it I also call the transcendental unity of self-consciousness, in order to denote the possibility of cognitionà priorifrom it.'
P.92, § 44.Caput mortuum:a term of the Alchemists to denote the non-volatile precipitate left in the retort after the spirit had been extracted: the fixed or dead remains, 'quando spiritus animam sursum vexit.'
P.92, § 45. Reason and Understanding. In the Wolfian School (e.g.in Baumgarten'sMetaphysik,§ 468) the term intellect (Verstand) is used of the general faculty of higher cognition, whileratio(Vernunft) specially denotes the power of seeing distinctly the connexions of things. So Wolff (Vernünftige Gedanken von Gott, &c.§ 277) defines Verstand as 'the faculty of distinctly representing the possible,' and Vernunft (§ 368) as 'the faculty of seeing into the connexion of truths.' It is on this use ofReasonas the faculty of inference that Kant's use of the term is founded: though it soon widely departs from its origin. For upon the 'formal' use of reason as the faculty of syllogising, Kant superinduces a transcendental use as a 'faculty ofprinciples,' while the understanding is only 'a faculty ofrules.''Reason,' in other words, 'itself begets conceptions,' and 'maxims, which it borrows neither from the senses nor from the understanding.' (Kritik d. r. Vern., Dialektik,Einleit. ii. A.) And the essential aim of Reason is to give unity to the various cognitions of understanding. While the unity given by understanding is 'unity of a possible experience,' that sought by reason is the discovery of an unconditioned which will complete the unity of the former (Dial.Einleit. iv), or of 'the totality of the conditions to a given conditioned.' (Dial,vii.)
It is this distinction of the terms which is dominant in Fichte and Hegel, where Verstand is the more practical intellect which seeks definite and restricted results and knowledges, while Vernunft is a deeper and higher power which aims at completeness. In Goethe's more reflective prose we see illustrations of this usage:e.g. Wilh. Meister's Wanderjahre,i. it is said to be the object of the 'reasonable' man 'das entgegengesetzte zu überschauenund in Uebereinstimmung zu bringen': or Bk. ii. Reasonable men when they have devised something verständig to get this or that difficulty out of the way, &c. Goethe, in hisSprüche in Prosa(896),Werke,iii. 281, says 'Reason has for its province the thing in process (das Werdende), understanding the thing completed (das Gewordene): the former does not trouble itself about the purpose, the latter asks not whence. Reason takes delight in developing; understanding wishes to keep everything as it is, so as to use it.' (Similarly in Eckermann's Convers. Feb. 13, 1829.) Cf. Oken, Naturphilosophie, § 2914. Verstand ist Microcosmus, Vernunft Macrocosmus.
Kant's use of the term Reason, coupled with his special view of Practical Reason and his use of the term Faith (Glaube), leads on to the terminology of Jacobi. In earlier writings Jacobi had insisted on the contrast between the superior authority of feeling and faith (which are in touch with truth) and the mechanical method of intelligence and reasoning (Verstand and Vernunft). At a later period however he changed and fixed the nomenclature of his distinction. What he had first called Glaube he latterly called Vernunft,—which is in brief a 'sense for the supersensible'—an intuition giving higher and complete or total knowledge—an immediate apprehension of the real and the true. As contrasted with this reasonable faith or feeling, he regards Verstand as a mere faculty of inference or derivative knowledge, referring one thing to another by the rule of identity.
This distinction which is substantially reproduced by Coleridge (though with certain clauses that show traces of Schellingian influence) has connexions—like so much else in Jacobi—with the usage of Schopenhauer, 'Nobody,' says Jacobi, 'has ever spoken of an animal Vernunft: a mere animal Verstand however we all know and speak of.' (Jacobi'sWerke,iii. 8.) Schopenhauer repeats and enforces the remark. All animals possess, says Schopenhauer, the power of apprehending causality, of cognising objects: a power of immediate and intuitive knowledge of real things: this is Verstand. But Vernunft, which is peculiar to man, is the cognition oftruth(not of reality): it is an abstract judgment with a sufficient reason (Welt als W.i. § 6).
One is tempted to connect the modern distinction with an older one which goes back in its origin to Plato and Aristotle, but takes form in the Neo-Platonist School, and enters the Latin world through Boëthius.Consol. Phil.iv. 6:Igitur uti est adintellectum ratiocinatio, ad id quod est id quod gignitur, ad aeternitatem tempus,and in v. 4 there is a full distinction ofsensus, imaginatio, ratioandintelligentiain ascending order.Ratiois the discursive knowledge of the idea (universali consideratione perpendit): intelligentiaapprehends it at once, and as a simpleforma (pura mentis acie contuetur): [cf. Stob.Ed.i. 826-832: Porphyr.Sentent.15]. Reasoning belongs to the human species, just as intelligence to the divine alone. Yet it is assumed—in an attempt to explain divine foreknowledge and defend freedom—that man may in some measure place himself on the divine standpoint (v. 5).
This contrast between a higher mental faculty (mens) and a lower (ratio) which even Aquinas adopts from the interpretation of Aristotle (Summa Theol.i. 79, 9) is the favourite weapon in the hands of mysticism. After the example of Dionysius Areop., Nicolaus of Cusa, Reuchlin, and other thinkers of the Renaissance depreciate mere discursive thought and logical reasoning. It is the innermens—like a simple ray of light—penetrating by an immediate and indivisible act to the divine—which gives us access to the supreme science. Thissimplex intelligentia,—superior to imagination or reasoning—as Gerson says,Consid. de Th.10, is sometimes namedmens,sometimesSpiritus,the light of intelligence, the shadow of the angelical intellect, the divine light. From Scotus Erigena to Nicolas of Cusa one tradition is handed down: it is taken up by men like Everard Digby (in hisTheoria Analytica) and the group of Cambridge Platonists and by Spinoza in the seventeenth century, and it reappears, profoundly modified, in the German idealism between 1790 and 1820.
P.99, § 48. 'Science of Logic'; Hegel's large work on the subject, published between 1812-16. The discussions on the Antinomies belong chiefly to the first part of it.
P.102, § 50. 'Natural Theology,' here to be taken in a narrower sense than in p. 73, where it is equivalent to Rational Theology in general. Here it means 'Physico-theology'—the argument from design in nature.
P.103, § 50. Spinoza—defining God as 'the union of thought with extension.' This is not verbally accurate; for according toEthica,i. pr. 11, God, or the substance, consists of infinite attributes, each of which expresses the eternal and infinite essence. But Spinoza mentions of 'attributes' only two:Ethica,ii. pr. 1. I Thought is an attribute of God: pr. 2, Extension is an attributeof God. And he adds,Ethica,i. pr. 10, Schol. 'All the attributes substance has were always in it together, nor can one be produced by another.' And inEthica,ii. 7. Sch. it is said: 'Thinking substance and extended substance is one and the same substance which is comprehended now under this, now under that attribute.'
P.110, § 54. 'Practical in the true sense of the word.' Cf. Kant,Werke,Ros. and Sch. i. 581: 'A great misunderstanding, exerting an injurious influence on scientific methods, prevails with regard to what should be considered "practical" in such sense as to justify its place in practical philosophy. Diplomacy and finance, rules of economy no less than rules of social intercourse, precepts of health and dietetic of the soul no less than the body, have been classed as practical philosophy on the mere ground that they all contain a collection of practical propositions. Hut although such practical propositions differ in mode of statement from the theoretical propositions which have for import the possibility of things and the exposition of their nature, they have the same content. "Practical," properly so called, are only those propositions which relate toLibertyunder laws. All others whatever are nothing but the theory of what pertains to thenatureof things—only that theory is brought to bear on the way in which the things may be produced by us in conformity with a principle;i.e.the possibility of the things is presented as the result of a voluntary action which itself too may be counted among physical causes.' And Kant,Werke,iv. 10. 'Hence a sum of practical precepts given by philosophy does not form a special part of it (co-ordinate with the theoretical) merely because they are practical. Practical they might be, even though their principle were wholly derived from the theoretical knowledge of nature,—astechnico-practicalrules. They are practical in the true sense, when and because their principle is not borrowed from the nature-conception (which is always sensuously conditioned) and rests therefore on the supersensible, which the conception of liberty alone makes knowable by formal laws. They are therefore ethico-practical,i.e.not merelyprecepts and ruleswith this or that intention, but laws without antecedent reference to ends and intentions.'
P.111, § 54. Eudaemonism. But there is Eudaemonism and Eudaemonism; as Cf. Hegel,Werke,i. 8. 4 The time had come when the infinite longing away beyond the body and the worldhad reconciled itself with the reality of existence. Yet the reality which the soul was reconciled to—the objective which the subjectivity recognised—was actually only empirical existence, common world and actuality.... And though the reconciliation was in its heart and ground sure and fast, it still needed an objective form for this ground: the very necessity of nature made the blind certitude of immersion in the reality of empirical existence seek to provide itself with a justification and a good conscience. This reconciliation for consciousness was found in the Happiness-doctrine: the fixed point it started from being the empirical subject, and what it was reconciled to, the vulgar actuality, whereon it might now confide, and to which it might surrender itself without sin. The profound coarseness and utter vulgarity, which is at the basis of this happiness-doctrine, has its only elevation in its striving after justification and a good conscience, which however can get no further than the objectivity of mere intellectualism.
'The dogmatism of eudaemonism and of popular philosophy (Aufklärung) therefore did not consist in the fact that it made happiness and enjoyment the supreme good. For if Happiness be comprehended as anIdea,it ceases to be something empirical and casual—as also to be anything sensuous. In the supreme existence, reasonable act (Thun) and supreme enjoyment are one. So long as supreme blessedness is supremeIdeait matters not whether we try to apprehend the supreme existence on the side of its ideality,—which, as isolated may be first called reasonable act—or on the side of its reality—which as isolated may be first called enjoyment and feeling. For reasonable act and supreme enjoyment, ideality and reality are both alike in it and identical. Every philosophy has only one problem—to construe supreme blessedness as supreme Idea. So long as it is by reason that supreme enjoyment is ascertained, the distinguishability of the two at once disappears: for this comprehension and the infinity which is dominant in act, and the reality and finitude which is dominant in enjoyment, are taken up into one another. The controversy with happiness becomes a meaningless chatter, when happiness is known as the blessed enjoyment of the eternal intuition. But what was called eudaemonism meant—it must be said—an empirical happiness, an enjoyment of sensation, not the eternal intuition and blessedness.'
P.112, § 55. Schiller.Ueber die aesthetische Erziehung desMenschen(1795), 18th letter. 'Through beauty the sensuous man is led to form and to thought; through beauty the intellectual man is led back to matter and restored to the sense-world. Beauty combines two states which are opposed to one another.' Letter 25. 'We need not then have any difficulty about finding a way from sensuous dependence to moral liberty, after beauty has given a case where liberty can completely co-exist with dependence, and where man in order to show himself an intelligence need not make his escape from matter. If—as the fact of beauty teaches—man is free even in association with the senses, and if—as the conception necessarily involves—liberty is something absolute and supersensible, there can no longer be any question how he comes to elevate himself from limitations to the absolute: for in beauty this has already come to pass.' Cf.Ueber Anmuth und Würde(1793). 'It is in a beautiful soul, then, that sense and reason, duty and inclination harmonize; and grace is their expression in the appearance. Only in the service of a beautiful soul can nature at the same time possess liberty.' (See Bosanquet'sHistory of Aesthetic.)
P.115, § 60. The quotation in the note comes from § 87 of theKritik der Urtheilskraft(Werke,ed. Ros. and Sch. iv. 357).
P.120, § 60. Fichte,Werke,i. 279. 'The principle of life and consciousness, the ground of its possibility, is (as has been shown) certainly contained in the Ego: yet by this means there arises no actual life, no empirical life in time—and another life is for us utterly unthinkable. If such an actual life is to be possible, there is still needed for that a special impulse (Aufstoss) striking the Ego from the Non-ego. According to my system, therefore, the ultimate ground of all actuality for the Ego is an original action and re-action between the Ego and something outside it, of which all that can be said is that it must be completely opposed to the Ego. In this reciprocal action nothing is brought into the Ego, nothing foreign imported; everything that is developed from itad infinitumis developed from it solely according to its own laws. The Ego is merely put in motion by that opposite, so as to act; and without such a first mover it would never have acted; and, as its existence consists merely in action, it would not even have existed. But the source of motion has no further attributes than to set in motion, to be an opposing force which as such is only felt.
'My philosophy therefore is realistic. It shows that the consciousness of finite natures cannot at all be explained, unless we assume a force existing independently of them, and completely opposed to them;—on which as regards their empirical existence they are dependent. But it asserts nothing further than such an opposed force, which is merelyfelt,but notcognised,by finite beings. All possible specifications of this force or non-ego, which may present themselvesad infinitumin our consciousness, my system engages to deduce from the specifying faculty of the Ego....
'That the finite mind must necessarily assume outside it something absolute (a Ding:an:sich), and yet must on the other hand acknowledge that this something only exists for the mind (is a necessary noümenon): this is the circle which may be infinitely expanded, but from which the finite mind can never issue.' Cf. Fichte'sWerke,i. 248, ii. 478.
P.121, § 62. F. H. Jacobi (Werke,v. 82) in hisWoldemar(a romance contained in a series of letters, first publishedas a wholein 1781) writes: 'The philosophical understanding (Verstand) is jealous of everything unique, everything immediately certain which makes itself true, without proofs, solely by its existence. It persecutes this faith of reason even into our inmost consciousness, where it tries to make us distrust the feeling of our identity and personality.' 'What is absolutely and intrinsically true,' he adds (v. 122), 'is not got by way of reasoning and comparison: both our immediate consciousness (Wissen)—I am—and our conscience (Gewissen) are the work of a secret something in which heart, understanding, and sense combine.' 'Notions (Begriffe), far from embalming the living, really turn it into a corpse' (v. 380).
Cf. Fichte's words (Werke,ii. 255), Aus dem Gewissen allein stammt die Wahrheit, &c.
P.122, § 62. The Letters on the doctrine of Spinoza, published in 1785, were re-issued in 1789 with eight supplements.
'A science,' says Jacobi in his latest utterance (Werke,iv. pref. xxx.) 'is only a systematic register of cognitions mutually referring to one another—the first and last point in the series is wanting.'
P.123, § 62. Lalande's dictum is referred to by Fries (Populäre Vorlesungen über Sternkunde,1813) quoted by Jacobi in hisWerke,ii. 55. What Lalande has actually written in the preface to his work on astronomy is that the science as he understands it has no relation to natural theology—in other words, that he is not writing a Bridgewater treatise.
P.123, § 63. Jacobi,Werke,ii. 222. 'For my part, I regard the principle of reason as all one with the principle of life.' And ii. 343: 'Evidently reason is the true and proper life of our nature.' It is in virtue of our inner tendency and instinct towards the eternal (Richtung und Trieb auf das Ewige),—of our sense for the supersensible—that we, human beings, really subsist (iv. 6. 152). And this Organ der Vernehmung des Uebersinnlichen is Reason (iii. 203, &c.).
The language of Jacobi fluctuates, not merely in words, but in the intensity of his intuitionalism. Thus,e.g.iii. 32: 'The reason man has is no faculty giving the science of the true, but only a presage' (Ahndung des Wahren). 'The belief in a God,' he says, at one time (iii. 206) 'is as natural to man as his upright position': but that belief is, he says elsewhere, only 'an inborn devotion (Andacht) before an unknown God.' Thus, if we have an immediate awareness (Wissen) of God, this is not knowledge or science (Wissenschaft). Such intuition of reason is described (ii. 9) as 'the faculty ofpresupposingthe intrinsically (an sich) true, good, and beautiful, with full confidence in the objective validity of the presupposition.' But that object we are let see only in feeling (ii. 61). 'Our philosophy,' he says (iii. 6) 'starts from feeling—of course an objective and pure feeling.'
P.124, § 63. Jacobi (Werke,iv. a, p. 211): 'Through faith (Glaube) we know that we have a body.' Such immediate knowledge of our own activity—'the feeling of I am, I act' (iii. 411)—the sense of 'absolute self-activity' or freedom (of which the 'possibility cannot be cognised,' because logically a contradiction) is what Jacobi calls Anschauung (Intuition). He distinguishes a sensuous, and a rational intuition (iii. 59).
P.125, § 63. Jacobi expressly disclaims identification of his Glaube with the faith of Christian doctrine (Werke,iv. a, p. 210). In defence he quotes from Hume, Inquiry V, and from Reid, passages to illustrate his usage of the term 'belief—by the distinction between which and faith certain ambiguities are no doubt avoided.
P.129, § 66. Kant had said'Concepts without intuitions are empty'It is an exaggeration of this half-truth (the other half isIntuitions without concepts are blind) that is the basis of these statements of Jacobi (and of Schopenhauer)—a view of which the following passage from Schelling (Werke,ii. 125) is representative. 'Concepts (Begriffe) are only silhouettes of reality. They are projected by a serviceable faculty, the understanding, which only comes into action when reality is already on the scene,—which only comprehends, conceives, retains what it required a creative faculty to produce.... The mere concept is a word without meaning.... All reality that can attach to it is lent to it merely by the intuition (Anschauung) which preceded it. ... Nothing is real for us except what isimmediately givenus, without any mediation by concepts, without our feeling at liberty. But nothing reaches us immediately except through intuition.' He adds, however, 'Intuition is due to the activity of mind (Sein): it demands a disengaged sense (freier Sinn) and an intellectual organ (geistiges Organ).'
P.134. Cicero:De Natura Deorum,i. 16; ii. 4,De quo autem omnium natura consentit, id verum esse necesse est; cf. Seneca, Epist. cxvii. 6. The principle is common to Stoics and Epicureans: it is the maxim of Catholic truthQuod semper, quod ubique, quod ab omnibus creditum est—equivalent to Aristotle's ὄ πᾶσι δοκεῖ, τοῦτ' εἷναι φάμεν—But as Aristotle remarks (An. Post.i. 31) τὸ καθόλον καὶ ἐπὶ πᾶσιν ἀδίνατον αἰσθάνεσθαι.
Jacobi:Werke,vi. 145. 'The general opinion about what is true and good must have an authority equal to reason.'
P.136, § 72. Cf.Encyclop.§ 400: 'That the heart and the feeling is not the form by which anything is justified as religious, moral, true, and just, and that an appeal to heart and feeling either means nothing or means something bad, should hardly need enforcing. Can any experience be more trite than that hearts and feelings are also bad, evil, godless, mean, &c.? Ay, that the heart is the source of such feelings only, is directly said in the words: Out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, &c. In times when the heart and the sentiment are, by scientific theology and philosophy, made the criterion of goodness, religion, and morality, it is necessary to recall these trivial experiences.'
P.145, § 80. Goethe; the reference is toWerke,ii. 268 (Natur und Kunst):
Wer Groszes will, muß sich zusammenraffen:In der Beschränkung zeigt sich erst der Meister,Und das Gesetz nur kann uns Freiheit geben.
Such 'limitation' of aim and work is a frequent lesson inWilhelm Meister's Wanderjahre, e.g.i. ch. 4. 'Many-sidedness prepares, properly speaking, only the element in which the one-sided can act.... The best thing is to restrict oneself to a handi-work.' And i. ch. 12: 'To be acquainted with and to exercise one thing rightly gives higher training than mere tolerableness (halfness) in a hundred sorts of things.' And ii. ch. 12: 'Your general training and all establishments for the purpose are fool's farces.'
P.147, § 81. Cf. Fichte,Werke,ii. 37. 'Yet it is notwewho analyse: but knowledge analyses itself, and can do so, because in all its being it is afor-self(Für:sich),' &c.
P.149, § 81. Plato, the inventor of Dialectic. Sometimes on the authority of Aristotle, as reported byDiog. Laert.ix. 25, Zeno of Elea gets this title; but Hegel refers to such statements asDiog. Laer,',ii. 34 τρίτον δὲ Πλάτων προσέθηκε τὸν διαλεκτικὸν λόγον, καὶ ἐτελεσιουργῆσε φιλοσοφίαν.
Protagoras. But it is rather in the dialogueMeno,pp. 81-97, that Plato exhibits this view of knowledge. Cf.Phaedo,72 E, andPhaedrus,245.
Parmenides; especially see Plat.Parmen.pp. 142, 166; cf. Hegel,Werke,xi v. 204.
With Aristotle dialectic is set in contrast to apodictic, and treated as (in the modern sense) a quasi-inductive process (Ar.Top.Lib. viii.): with the Stoics, dialectic is the name of the half-rhetorical logic which they, rather than Aristotle, handed on to the schoolmen of the Middle Ages.
P.150, § 81. The physical elements are fire, air, earth, and water. Earthquakes, storms, &c., are examples of the 'meteorological process.' Cf.Encyclop.§§ 281-289.
P. 152, § 82. Dialectic; cf:Werke,v. 326 seqq.
P. 154, § 82. Mysticism; cf. Mill'sLogic,bk. v, ch. 3, § 4: 'Mysticism is neither more nor less than ascribing objectiveexistence to the subjective creations of the mind's own faculties, to mere ideas of the intellect; and believing that by watching and contemplating these ideas of its own making, it can read in them what takes place in the world without.' Mill thus takes it as equivalent to an ontological mythology—probably a rare use of the term.
P.156, § 85. The Absolute. The term, in something like its modern usage, is at least as old as Nicolaus Cusanus. God, according to him, is theabsoluta omnium quidditas (Apol.406), theesse absolutum,oripsum esse in existentibus(De ludo Globi,ii. 161 a), theunum absolutum,thevis absoluta,orpossibilitas absoluta,orvalor absolutus: absoluta vita, absoluta ratio: absoluta essendi forma.On this term and its companioninfinitieshe rings perpetual changes. But its distinct employment to denote the 'metaphysical God' is much more modern. In Kant,e.g.the 'Unconditioned' (Das Unbedingte) is the metaphysical, corresponding to the religious, conception of deity; and the same is the case with Fichte, who however often makes use of the adjective 'absolute.' It is with Schelling that the term is naturalised in philosophy: it already appears in his works of 1793 and 1795: and from him apparently it finds its way into Fichte'sDarstellung der Wissenschaftslehreof 1801 (Werke,ii. 13) 'The absolute is neither knowing nor being; nor is it identity, nor is it indifference of the two; but it is throughout merely and solely the absolute.'
The term comes into English philosophical language through Coleridge and later borrowers from the German. See Ferrier'sInstitutes of Metaphysic,Prop. xx, and Mill'sExamination of Hamilton,chap. iv.
P.158, § 86. Cf. Schelling, iii. 372: I = I expresses the identity between the 'I,' in so far as it is the producing, and the 'I' as the produced; the original synthetical and yet identical proposition: thecogito=sumof Schelling.
P.159. Definition of God asEns realissimum, e.g.Meier'sBaumgarten's Metaphysic,§ 605.
Jacobi,Werke,iv. 6, thus describes Spinoza's God.
As to the beginning cf. Fichte,Werke,ii. 14 (speaking of 'absolute knowing'): 'It is not a knowing of something, nor isit a knowing of nothing (so that it would be a knowing of somewhat, but this somewhat be nothing): it is not even a knowing of itself, for it is no knowledge at allof;—nor is itaknowing (quantitatively and in relation), but it is (the) knowing (absolutely qualitatively). It is no act, no event, or that somewhat is in knowing; but it is just the knowing, in which alone all acts and all events, which are there set down, can be set down.'
History of Philosophy; cf. Hegel,Werke,i. 165. 'If the Absolute, like its phenomenon Reason, be (as it is) eternally one and the same, then each reason, which has turned itself upon and cognised itself, has produced a true philosophy and solved the problem which, like its solution, is at all times the same. The reason, which cognises itself, has in philosophy to do only with itself: hence in itself too lies its whole work and its activity; and as regards the inward essence of philosophy there are neither predecessors nor successors.
'Just as little, as of constant improvements, can there be talk of "peculiar views" of philosophy.... The true peculiarity of a philosophy is the interesting individuality, in which reason has organised itself a form from the materials of a particular age; in it the particular speculative reason finds spirit of its spirit, flesh of its flesh; it beholds itself in it as one and the same, as another living being. Each philosophy is perfect in itself, and possesses totality, like a work of genuine art. As little as the works of Apelles and Sophocles, if Raphael and Shakespeare had known them, could have seemed to them mere preliminary exercises for themselves—but as cognate spiritual powers;—so little can reason in its own earlier formations perceive only useful preparatory exercises.' Cf. Schelling, iv. 401.
P.160, § 86. Parmenides (ap. Simplic.Phys.): of the two ways of investigation the first is thatit is,and that not-to-be is not.
ἡ μὲν ὅπως ἓστι τε καὶ ὡς οὐκ ἓστι μὴ εἶναι
P.161, § 87. The Buddhists. Cf. Hegel,Werke,xi. 387. Modern histories of Buddhism insist upon the purely ethico-religious character of the teaching. Writers like von Hartmann (Religionsphilosophie,p. 320) on the contrary hold that Buddhism carried out the esoteric theory of Brahmanism to the consequence that the abstract one is nothing. According to Vassilief,Le Bouddhisme,p. 318 seqq., one of the Buddhist metaphysicalschools, the Madhyamikas, founded by Nâgârdjuna 400 years after Buddha, taught that All is Void.—Such metaphysics were probably reactions of the underlying Brahmanist idea.
But generally Buddhism (as was not unnatural 60 years ago) is hardly taken here in its characteristic historical features.
P.167, § 88. Aristotle,Phys,i. 8 (191 a. 26): 'Those philosophers who first sought the truth and the real substance of things got on a false track, like inexperienced travellers who fail to discover the way, and declared that nothing can either come into being or disappear, because it is necessary that what comes into being should come into being either from what is or from what is not, and that it is from both of these impossible: for what is does not become (it already is), and nothing would become from what is not.'
(5) is an addition of ed. 3 (1830); cf.Werke,xvii. 181.
P.168, § 88. The view of Heraclitus here taken is founded on the interpretation given by Plato (in theTheaetetus,152;Cratylus,401) and by Aristotle, of a fundamental doctrine of the Ephesian—which however is expressed in the fragments by the name of the everliving fire. The other phrase (Ar.Met.i. 4) is used by Aristotle to describe the position, not of Heraclitus, but of Leucippus and Democritus. Cf. Plutarch,adv. Colotem,4. 2 Δημόκριτος διορίζεται μὴ μᾱλλον τὸ δὲν ἥ τὸ μηδν εἶναι; cf. Simplic. in Ar.Phys.fol. 7.
P.169, § 89. Daseyn: Determinate being. Cf. Schelling, i. 209. 'Being (Seyn) expresses the absolute, Determinate being (Daseyn) a conditional, 'positing': Actuality, one conditioned in a definite sort by a definite condition. The single phenomenon in the whole system of the world hasactuality;the world of phenomena in general has Daseyn; but the absolutely-posited, the Ego,is. I amis all the Ego can say of itself.'
P.171, § 91. Being-by-self: An:sich:seyn.
Spinoza,Epist.50,figura non aliud quam determinatio et determinatio negatio est.
P.172, § 92. Grenze (limit or boundary), and Schranke (barrier or check) are distinguished inWerke,iii. 128-139 (see Stirling'sSecret of Hegel,i. 377 seqq.). Cf. Kant's remark,Krit. d. r. Vernunft,p. 795, that Hume only erschränkt our intellect, ohne ihn zu begrenzen.
P.173, § 92. Plato,Timaeus,c. 35 (formation of the world-soul): 'From the individual and ever-identical essence (ὀυσία)and the divisible which is corporeal, he compounded a third intermediate species of essence.... And taking these, being three, he compounded them all into one form (ἰδέα), adjusting perforce the unmixable nature of the other and the same, and mingling them all with the essence, and making of three one again, he again distributed this total into as many portions as were fitting, but each of them mingled out of the same and the other and the essence.'
P.175, § 94. Philosophy. Cf. Schelling,Werke,ii. 377. 'A various experience has taught me that for most men the greatest obstacle to the understanding and vital apprehension of philosophy is their invincible opinion that its object is to be sought at an infinite distance. The consequence is, that while they should fix their eye on what is present (das Gegenwärtige), every effort of their mind is called out to get hold of an object which is not in question through the whole inquiry.' ... 'The aim of the sublimest science can only be to show the actuality,—in the strictest sense the actuality, the presence, the vital existence (Daseyn)—of a God in the whole of things and in each one.... Here we deal no longer with an extra-natural or supernatural thing, but with the immediately near, the alone-actual to which we ourselves also belong, and in which we are.'
P.177, § 95. Plato'sPhilebus,ch. xii-xxiii (pp. 23-38): cf.Werke,xiv. 214 seqq.: 'The absolute is therefore what in one unity is finite and infinite.'
P.178. Idealism of Philosophy: cf. Schelling, ii. 67. 'Every philosophy therefore is and remains Idealism; and it is only under itself that it embraces realism and idealism; only that the former Idealism should not be confused with the latter, which is of a merely relative kind.'
Hegel,Werke,iii. 163. 'The proposition that the finite is "ideal" constitutes Idealism. In nothing else consists the Idealism of philosophy than in recognising that the finite has no genuine being.... The contrast of idealistic and realistic philosophy is therefore of no importance. A philosophy that attributed to finite existences as such a genuine ultimate absolute being would not deserve the name philosophy.... By "ideal" is meant existing as a representation in consciousness: whatever is in a mental concept, idea or imagination is "ideal": "ideal" is just another word for "in imagination,"—something not merely distinct from the real, but essentially not real. Themind indeed is the great idealist: in the sensation, representation, thought of the mind the fact has not what is calledrealexistence; in the simplicity of the Ego such external being is only suppressed, existingfor me,and "ideally" in me. This subjective idealism refers only to the representational form, by which an import is mine.'
P.180, § 96. The distinction of nature and mind as real and ideal is especially Schelling's: Seee.g.hisEinleitung,&c. iii. 272. 'If it is the problem of Transcendental Philosophy to subordinate the real to the ideal, it is on the contrary the problem of the philosophy of nature to explain the ideal from the real.'
P. 183, § 98. Newton: seeScholiumat the end of thePrincipia,and cf.Optics,iii. qu. 28.
Modern Atomism, besides the conception of particles or molecules, has that of mathematical centres of force.
Kant,Werke,v. 379 (ed. Rosenk.). 'The general principle of thedynamicof material nature is that all reality in the objects of the external senses must be regarded as moving force: whereby accordingly so-called solid or absolute impenetrability is banished from natural science as a meaningless concept, and repellent force put in its stead; whereas true and immediate attraction is defended against all the subtleties of a self-misconceiving metaphysic and declared to be a fundamental force necessary for the very possibility of the concept of matter.'
P.184, § 98. Abraham Gottheit Kästner (1719-1800), professor forty-four years at Göttingen, enjoyed in the latter half of the eighteenth century a considerable repute, both in literature and in mathematical science. Some of, his epigrams are still quoted.
P.190, § 102. The two 'moments' of number Unity, and Sum (Anzahl), may be compared with the Greek distinction between one and ἀριθμός (cf. Arist.Phys.iv. 12 ἐλάχίστος ἀριθμός ἡ δυάς). According to Rosenkranz (Leben Hegels) the classification of arithmetical operations often engaged Hegel's research. Note the relation in Greek between λογικόν and λογιστικόν. Cf. Kant's view of the 'synthesis' in arithmetic.
P.193, § 103. Intensive magnitude. Cf. Kant,Kritik der reinen Vernunft,p. 207, on Anticipation of Perception (Wahrnehmung), and p. 414, in application to the question of the soul's persistence.
P.195, § 104. Not Aristotle, but rather Simplicius on thePhysicsof Aristotle, fol. 306: giving Zeno's argument against the alleged composition of the line from a series of points. What you can say of one supposed small real unit, you can say of a smaller, and so onad infinitum.(Cf. Burnet'sEarly Greek Philosophy,p. 329.)
P.196, § 104. The distinction between imagination and intellect made by Spinoza inEp.xii. (olim xxix.) inOpp.ed. Land vol. ii. 40 seqq. is analogous to that already noted (p. 402) betweenratioandintellegentia,and is connected, as by Boëthius, with the distinction which Plato,Timaeus,37, draws between eternity (αἰών) and time.
The infinite (Eth.i. prop. 8. Schol. I) is the 'absolute affirmation of a certain nature's existence,' as opposed to finitude which is reallyex parte negatio.'The problem has always been held extremely difficult, if not inextricable, because people did not distinguish between what is concluded to be infinite by its own nature and the force of its definition, and what has no ends, not in virtue of its essence, but in virtue of its cause. It was difficult also because they did not distinguish between what is called infinite because it has no ends, and that whose parts (though we may have a maximum and minimum of it) we cannot equate or explicate by any number. Lastly because they lid not distinguish between what we can only understand (intelligere,) but not imagine, and what we can also imagine.'
To illustrate his meaning, Spinoza calls attention to the distinction of substance from mode, of eternity from duration. We can 'explicate' the existence only of modes by duration: that of substance, 'by eternity,i.e.by an infinite fruition of existence or being' (per aeternitatem, hoc est, infinitam existendi, sive, invita latinitate, essendi fruitionem.) The attempt therefore to show that extendedsubstanceis composed of parts is an illusion,—which arises because we look at quantity 'abstractly or superficially, as we have it in imagination by means of the senses.' So looking at it, as we are liable to do, a quantity will be found divisible, finite, composed of parts and manifold. But if we look at it as it really is,—as a Substance —as it is in the intellect alone—(which is a work of difficulty), it will be found infinite, indivisible, and unique. 'It is only therefore when we abstract duration and quantity from substance, that we use time to determine duration and measure to determine quantity, so as to be able to imagine them.Eternity and substance, on the other hand, are no objects of imagination but only of intellect; and to try to explicate them by such notions as measure, time, and number—which are only modes of thinking or rather of imagining—is no better than to fall into imaginative raving.' 'Nor will even the modes of Substance ever be rightly understood, should they be confounded with this sort ofentia rationis' (i.e. modi cogitandisubserving the easier retention, explication andimaginationof thingsunderstood)' or aids to imagination. For when we do so, we separate them from substance, and from the mode in which they flow from eternity, without which they cannot be properly understood.' (Cf. Hegel'sWerke,i. 63.)
The verses from Albr. von Haller come from his poem on Eternity (1736). Hegel seems to quote from an edition before 1776, when the fourth line was added in the stanza as it thus finally stood:—
Ich häufe ungeheure Zahlen,Gebürge Millionen auf,Ich welze Zeit auf Zeit und Welt auf Welten hin,Und wenn ich auf der March des endlichen nun bin,Und von der fürchterlichen HöheMit Schwindeln wieder nach dir sehe,Ist alle Macht der Zahl, vermehrt mit tausend Malen,Noch nicht ein Theil von dir.Ich tilge sie, und du liegst ganz vor mir.
Kant,Kritik d. r. Vernunft,p. 641. 'Even Eternity, howevereerilysublime may be its description by Haller,' &c.
P.197, § 104. Pythagoras in order of time probably comes between Anaximenes (of Ionia) and Xenophanes (of Elea). But the mathematical and metaphysical doctrines attributed to the Pythagorean are known to us only in the form in which they are represented in Plato and Aristotle,i.e.in a later stage of development. The Platonists (cf. Arist.Met.i. 6; xi. 1. 12; xii. 1. 7; cf. Plat.Rep.p. 510) treated mathematical fact as mid-way between 'sensibles' and 'ideas'; and Aristotle himself places mathematics as a science between physical and metaphysical (theological) philosophy.
The tradition (referred to p. 198) about Pythagoras is given by Iamblichus,Vita Pyth.§115 seqq.: it forms part of the later Neo-Pythagorean legend, which entered literature in the first centuries of the Christian era.
P.201, § 107. Hebrew hymns:e.g. Psalmslxxiv. and civ.; Proverbs viii. and Job xxxviii.Vetus verbum est,says Leibniz (ed. Erdmann, p. 162),Deum omnia pondere, mensura, numero, fecisse.
P. 202, § 108. The antinomy of measure. These logical puzzles are the so-called fallacy of Sorites (a different thing from the chain-syllogism of the logic-books); cf. Cic.Acad.ii. 28, 29;De Divin.ii. 4—and the φαλακρός cf. Horace,Epist.ii. 1-45.
P.211, § 113. Self-relation—(sich) auf sich beziehen.
P. 213, § 115. The 'laws of thought' is the magniloquent title given in the Formal Logic since Kant's day to the principles or maxims (principia, Grundsätze) which Kant himself described as 'general and formal criteria of truth.' They include the so-called principle of contradiction, with its developments, the principle of identity and excluded middle: to which, with a desire for completeness, eclectic logicians have added the Leibnizian principle of the reason. Hegel has probably an eye to Krug and Fries in some of his remarks. The three laws may be compared and contrasted with the three principles, —homogeneity, specification, and continuity of forms, in Kant'sKritik d. r. Vern.p. 686.
P.217, § 117. Leibniz,Nouveaux Essais,Liv. ii. ch. 27, § 3 (ed. Erdmann, p. 273: cf. fourth Letter to Clarke).Il n'y a point deux individus indiscernables. Un gentilhomme d'esprit de mes amis, en parlant avec moi en présence de Madame l'Electrice dans le jardin de Herrenhausen, crut qu'il trouverait bien deux feuilles entièrement semblables. Madame l'Electrice l'en défia, et il courut longtems en vain pour en chercher.
The principle of individuation or indiscernibility is: 'If two individuals were perfectly alike and equal and, in a word, indistinguishable by themselves, there would be no principle of individuation: (Leibniz, ed. Erdm. p. 277)Poser deux choses indiscernables est poser la même chose sous deux noms(p. 756).Principium individuationis idem est quod absolutae specificationis quâ res ita sit determinata, ut ab aliis omnibus distingui possit.
P.221, § 119. Polarity. Schelling, ii. 489. 'The law of Polarity is a universal law of nature'; cf. ii. 459: 'It is a first principle of a philosophic theory of nature to have a view (inthe whole of nature), on polarity and dualism.' But he adds (476), 'It is time to define more accurately the concept of polarity.' So Oken,Naturphilosophie: §76: 'A force consisting of two principles is called Polarity.' § 77: 'Polarity is the first force which makes its appearance in the world.' § 81: 'The original movement is a result of the original polarity.'
P.223, § 119. Cf. Fichte, ii. 53. 'To everything but this the logically trained thinker can rise. He is on his guard against contradiction. But, in that case, how about the possibility of the maxim of his own logic that we can think no contradiction. In some way he must have got hold of contradiction and thought it, or he could make no communications about it. Had such people only once regularly asked themselves how they came to think themerelypossible or contingent (the not-necessary), and how they actually do so! Evidently they here leap through a not-being, not-thinking, &c., into the utterly unmediated, self-initiating, free,—into beënt non-being,—in short, the above contradiction, as it was laid down. With consistent thinkers the result of this incapacity is nothing but the utter abolition of freedom,—the most absolute fatalism and Spinozism.
P.227, §121. Leibniz (ed. Erdmann, p. 515). 'The principle ofla raison déterminanteis that nothing ever occurs without there being a cause for it, or at least a determinant reason,i.e.something which may serve to render a reasonà prioriwhy that is existent rather than in any other way. This great principle holds good in all events.' Cf. p. 707. 'The principle of "sufficient reason" is that in virtue of which we consider that no fact could be found true or consistent, no enunciation truthful, without there being a sufficient reason why it is so and not otherwise.... When a truth is necessary, we can find the reason of it by analysis, resolving it into simpler ideas and truths, until we come to primitive ideas.... But the sufficient reason ought also to be found in contingent truths or truths of fact,i.e.in the series of things spread through the universe of creatures, or the resolution into particular reasons might go into a limitless detail: ... and as all this detail embraces only other antecedent, or more detailed contingencies, ... the sufficient or final (dernière) reason must be outside the succession or series of this detail of contingencies, however infinite it might be. And it is thus that the final reason of things must be in a "necessary substance," in which the detail of the changesexists onlyeminenter,as in the source,—and it is what we call God.'(Monadology§§ 32-38.)
Hence the supremacy of final causes. ThusOpp.ed. Erdmann, p. 678:Ita fit ut efficientes causae pendeant a finalibus, et spiritualia sint natura priora materialibus.Accordingly he urges, p. 155, that final cause has not merely a moral and religious value in ethics and theology, but is useful even in physics for the detection of deep-laid truths. Cf. p. 106:C'est sanctifier la Philosophie que de faire couler ses ruisseaux de la fontaine des attributs de Dieu. Bien loin d'exclure les causes finales et la considération d'un être agissant avec sagesse, c'est de là qu'il faut tout déduire en Physique.Cf. alsoPrincipes de la Nature(Leibn. ed. Erdm. p. 716): 'It is surprising that by the sole consideration of efficient causes or of matter, we could not render a reason for those laws of movement discovered in our time.Il y faut recourir aux causes finales.'
P.228, § 121 Socrates. The antitheses between Socrates and the Sophists belongs in the main to the Platonic dialogues,—not co the historical Socrates. It is the literary form in which the philosophy of Plato works out its development through the criticism of contemporary opinions and doctrines. And even in Plato's writings the antagonism is very unlike what later interpretations have made out of it.
P.231, § 124. Thing by itself (thing in itself) the Ding:an:sich.
P.235, § 126. Cf.Encycl.§ 334 (Werke,viii. 1. p. 411). 'In empirical chemistry the chief object is theparticularityof the matters and products, which are grouped by superficial abstract features which make impossible any system in the special detail. In these lists, metals, oxygen, hydrogen, &c.—metalloids, sulphur, phosphorus appear side by side assimplechemical bodies on the same level. The great physical variety of these bodies must of itself create a prepossession against such coordination; and their chemical origin, the process from which they issue, is clearly no less various. But in an equally chaotic way, more abstract and more real processes are put on the same level. If all this is to get scientific form, every product ought to be determined according to the grade of the concrete and completely developed process from which it essentially issues, and which gives it its peculiar significance; and for that purpose it is not less essential to distinguish grades in abstractness or reality of the process. Animal and vegetable substances in anycase belong to a quite other order: so little can their nature be understood from the chemical process, that they are rather destroyed in it, and only the way of their death is apprehended. These substances, however, ought above all to serve to counter-act the metaphysic predominant in chemistry as in physics,—the ideas or rather wild fancies of theunalterability of mattersunder all circumstances, as well as the categories of thecompositionand theconsistenceof bodies from such matters. We see it generally admitted that chemical matters lose in combination thepropertieswhich they show in separation: and yet we find the idea prevailing that they are the same thingswithoutthe properties as they arewiththem,—so that as thingswiththese properties they are not results of the process.'—Cf.Werke,vii. a. 372: 'Air does not consist of oxygen and nitrogen: but these are the forms under which air is put,' cf.ib.403.
P.241, § 131. Fichte'sSonnenklarer Berichtappeared in 1801.
P.247, § 136. Herder'sGott: Gespräche über Spinoza's System,1787, 2nd ed. 1800. 'God is, in the highest and unique sense of the word, Force,i.e.the primal force of all forces, the soul of all souls' (p. 63), 'All that we call matter, therefore, is more or less animate: it is a realm of efficient forces. One force predominates: otherwise there were noone,no whole' (p. 207). 'The supreme being (Daseyn) could give its creatures nothing higher than being. (Theophron.) But, my friend, being and being, however simple in the concept, are in their estate very different; and what do you suppose, Philolaus, marks its grades and differences? (Phil.) Nothing but forces. In God himself we found no higher conception; but all his forces were only one. The supreme force could not be other than supreme goodness and wisdom, ever-living, ever-active. (Theoph.) Now you yourself see, Philolaus, that the supreme, or rather the All (for God is not a supreme unit in a scale of beings like himself), could not reveal himself otherwise than in the universe as active. In him nothing could slumber, and what he expressed was himself. He is before everything, and everything subsists in him: the whole world an expression, an appearance of his ever-living, ever-acting forces' (p. 200).
'It was the mistake of Spinoza,' says Herder, 'to be unduly influenced by the Cartesian phraseology. Had he chosen the conception of force and effect, everything would have gone easier, and his system become much more distinct and coherent.'Had he developed the conception of power, and the conception of matter, he must in conformity with his system necessarily have come to the conception of forces, which work as well in matter as in organs of thinking: he would in that case have regarded power and thought as forces,i.e.as one.' (Cf. H. Spencer, 'Force, the Ultimate of Ultimates.' First Princ. p 169)
According to Rosenkranz (Leben Hegels,p. 223) there exists in manuscript a criticism by Hegel on the second edition of Herder'sGod.Herder's Dialogue belongs to the controversy aroused by Jacobi's letters on Spinoza.
P.250, § 136. Newton. Leibniz charges him with the view that God needs from time to timeremonter sa montre,otherwise it would cease going: that his machine requires to be cleaned (décrasser) by extraordinary aid' (ed. Erdm. p. 746).
P.252, § 140. The verses quoted occur in Goethe'sWerkeii. 376, under the heading Allerdings. Originally the first four lines appeared in Haller's poemDie menschlichen Tugendenthus—
Ins Innre der Natur bringt sein erschaffner Geist:Zu glücklich, wenn sie noch die äußre Schale weist!(To nature's heart there penetrates no mere created mind:Too happy if she but display the outside of her rind.)