Aristotle
Plato had done much, he had laid the foundation of modern thought; it remained to classify it and to systematize it. This task was reserved forAristotle(Vol. 2, p. 501), one of the greatest geniuses of any age. He invented the sciences of logic, ethics, aesthetics, and psychology, as separate sciences. He was at once a student, a reader, a lecturer, a writer, and a book collector. He was the first man whom we know to have collected books, and he was employed at one time by the kings of Egypt as consulting librarian. His system of aesthetics still remains the best foundation of the critic’s training. The fundamental difference between Aristotle and Plato is that Platonism is a philosophy of universal forms, and Aristotelianism one of individual substances. As Professor Case puts it in the Britannica: “Plato makes us think first of the supernatural and the kingdomof heaven, Aristotle of the natural and the whole world.” His inquiries, therefore, pre-eminently implied that “transvaluation of all values,” of which Nietzsche was to boast more than two thousand years later. A contemporary of Aristotle, whose philosophy occupies a somewhat independent position, isEpicurus(Vol. 9, p. 683). His advice to a young disciple was to “steer clear of culture.” His system, in fact, led him to go back from words to realities in order to find in nature a more enduring and a wider foundation for ethical doctrine; “to give up reasonings, and get at feelings, to test conceptions and arguments by a final reference to the only touchstone of truth—the senses.” A famous Roman who subscribed to the doctrines of Epicurus was the poet-philosopher-scientist,Lucretius(Vol. 17, p. 107), whose theories in his poemDe Rerum Naturaso curiously anticipated much of modern physics and psychology.
The Last Greek Schools
Two schools remain to be considered before the Greek philosophy can be dismissed: theStoics(Vol. 25, p. 942) and the Neoplatonists (seeNeoplatonism, Vol. 19, p. 372). The Stoics caught the practical spirit of the age which had been evoked by Aristotle and provided a popular philosophy to meet individual needs. They showed kinship with the Cynics, but under the inspiration of their founder, Zeno of Citium, they avoided the excesses of that school, and formulated a system which fired the imagination of the time and finally bequeathed to Rome the guiding principles which were to raise her to greatness. Zeno is regarded as the best exponent of anarchistic philosophy in ancient Greece, and he and his philosophers opposed the conception of a free community without government to the state-Utopia of Plato; seeAnarchism(Vol. 1, p. 915). Of Neoplatonism Adolph Harnack says in the Britannica (Vol. 19, p. 372):
Judged from the standpoint of empirical science, philosophy passed its meridian in Plato and Aristotle, declined in the postAristotelian systems, and set in the darkness of Neoplatonism. But, from the religious and moral point of view, it must be admitted that the ethical “mood” which Neoplatonism endeavored to create and maintain is the highest and purest ever reached by antiquity.
The most famous exponents of this system werePlotinus(Vol. 21, p. 849), an introspective mystic, andPorphyry(Vol. 22, p. 103), who edited Plotinus’s works and wrote his biography. Neoplatonism, coming as it did early in our era, formed a link between the pagan philosophy of ancient Greece and Christianity.
Medieval Ecclesiasticism
With the death ofBoetius(Vol. 4, p. 116), in 524 A.D., and with the closing of the philosophical schools in Athens five years later, intellectual darkness settled over Europe and hung there for centuries. When in the Middle Ages, the speculative sciences once again attracted men’s minds, Christianity had already impressed its mark.Scholasticism(Vol. 24, p. 346) as a system began with the teaching ofScotus Erigena(Vol. 9, p. 742) at the end of the 9th century, and culminated three centuries later withAlbertus Magnus(Vol. 1, p. 504), with his greater discipleThomas Aquinas(Vol. 2, p. 250), whose ideas have animated orthodox philosophic thought in the Catholic Church to this day, and withMeister Eckhart(Vol. 8, p. 886), the first of the great speculative mystics (seeMysticism, Vol. 19, p. 123).
Modern Ideas
With the Reformation an assertion of independence made itself heard. Man’s relation to man assumed an importance comparable to that of his relation to God; and the first steps on the path which was to lead to the rationalism of the French Encyclopaedists and of the English Utilitarians were taken by AlbericusGentilis(Vol. 11, p. 603), and HugoGrotius(Vol. 12, p. 621).In England,Francis Bacon(Vol. 3, p. 135) was independently working out the same problems. In philosophy his position was that of a humanist. The remarkable success of Grotius’s treatiseDe Jure Belli et Pacisbrought his views of natural right into great prominence, and suggested such questions as: “What is man’s ultimate reason for obeying laws? Wherein exactly does their agreement with his rational and social nature exist? How far and in what sense is his nature really social?” The answers whichHobbes(Vol. 13, p. 545), who was considerably influenced by Bacon, gave to these fundamental questions in hisLeviathanmarked the starting point of independent ethical inquiry in England.|The Utilitarians|From this time on the drift of thought in England, though of course often profoundly affected by the speculations of continental philosophers, mainly ran in utilitarian channels; and the succession of ideas may be traced throughLocke(Vol. 16, p. 844), whose influence on the French Encyclopaedists was far reaching,Hume(Vol. 13, p. 876), JeremyBentham(Vol. 3, p. 747) with his famous principle of the “greatest happiness for the greatest number,” J. S.Mill(Vol. 18, p. 454), and HerbertSpencer(Vol. 24, p. 634), with his philosophy of the “unknowable.”
Back to Dreams
Meanwhile, on the continent of Europe,Descartes(Vol. 7, p. 79), in theDiscourse of Method, had stated his famous proposition “Cogito, ergo sum,” and had laid down those fundamental dogmas of logic, metaphysics, and physics, from which started the subsequent inquiries ofLocke,Leibnitz(Vol. 16, p. 385), andNewton(Vol. 19, p. 583). ButCartesianism(Vol. 5, p. 414), as Dr. Caird points out in the Britannica, includes not only the work of Descartes, but also that ofMalebranche(Vol. 17, p. 486) and ofSpinoza(Vol. 25, p. 687), who, from very different points of view, developed the Cartesian theories, the former saturated with the study of Augustine, the latter with that of Jewish philosophy.
The Rights of Man
There follows a group of men whose speculations left a deep mark on the course of events in Europe and America:Voltaire(Vol. 28, p. 199),Montesquieu(Vol. 18, p. 775), Jean JacquesRousseau(Vol. 23, p. 775), and DenisDiderot(Vol. 8, p. 204). The antiecclesiastical animus which informed the writings of the first, theEsprit des Loisof the second, theContrat Socialof the third, and the famous encyclopaedia of the last, had political results, but their influence on metaphysical inquiry was practically nil.
Transcendentalism
Outstanding, of course, in the 18th century was the influence of ImmanuelKant(Vol. 15, p. 662), who summed up the teachings of Leibnitz and Hume, carried them to their logical issues, and immensely extended them. In fact, Kant and his discipleFichte(Vol. 10, p. 313), as Prof. Case shows in the articleMetaphysics(Vol. 18, p. 231), “became the most potent philosophic influences on European thought in the 19th century, because their emphasis was on man.” They made man believe in himself and in his mission. They fostered liberty and reform, and even radicalism. They almost avenged man on the astronomers, who had shown that the world is not made for earth, and therefore not for man. Kant half asserted, and Fichte wholly, that Nature is man’s own construction. TheKritikand theWissenschaftslehrebelonged to the revolutionary epoch of the “Rights of Man,” and produced as great a revolution in thought as the French Revolution did in fact. Instead of the old belief that God made the world for man, philosophers began to fall into the pleasing dream “I am everything, and everything is I”—and even“I am God.” The termTranscendentalism(Vol. 27, p. 172) has been specially applied to the philosophy of Kant and his successors, which is based on the view that true knowledge is intuitive, or supernatural. The famous Transcendental Club founded, 1836, byEmerson(Vol. 9, p. 332) and others in New England, was not “transcendental” in the Kantian sense; its main theme was regeneration, a revolt from theological formalism, and a wider literary outlook; see alsoBrook Farm(Vol. 4, p. 645),Thoreau(Vol. 26, p. 877),A. Bronson Alcott(Vol. 1, p. 528), andMargaret Fuller(Vol. 11, p. 295).
Idealism
Schelling’sposition (Vol. 24, p. 316), like that of his discipleHegel(Vol. 13, p. 200), differed from the transcendentalism of Kant and Fichte in regarding all noumena, or things comprehended (Vol. 19, p. 828), as knowable products of universal reason—the Absolute Ego, and, the absolute being God, nature as a product of universal reason, “a direct manifestation not of man but of God.” This was the starting point of noumenal idealism in Germany, and showed a reversion to the wider opinions of Aristotle. Hegelianism in which this idealism is carried to its limit is professedly one of the most difficult of philosophies. Hegel said “One man has understood me and even he has not.” His obscurity lies in the manner in which, as William Wallace shows in his article on the philosopher (Vol. 13, p. 204), he “abruptly hurls us into worlds where old habits of thought fail us.” The influence of Hegel on English thought has been wide and lasting.
Realism
Schopenhauer(Vol. 24, p. 372) was essentially a realist. He led the inevitable reaction against the absorption of everything in reason which is the keynote of the Kantian system. In the very title of his chief work,The World as Will and Idea, he emphasizes his position in giving “will” equal weight with “mind” or “idea” (Vorstellung). His “Will to Live” embodies a wholesome practical idea. Eduard vonHartmann(Vol. 13, p. 36) in his sensationalPhilosophy of the Unconsciousestablished the thesis: “When the greater part of the Will in existence is so far enlightened by reason as to perceive the inevitable misery of existence, a collective effort to will non-existence will be made, and the world will relapse into nothingness, the Unconscious into quiescence.” He thus goes a step further in pessimism than did Schopenhauer, and the essence of his doctrine is the will to non-existence—notto live, instead of a will to live. German realism is, however, so strongly coloured by the idealistic cast of the national thought that we have to go to France and England for the most thorough-going statement of the realist position. In France the eclecticism ofV. Cousin(Vol. 7, p. 330) marked a doctrine of comprehension and toleration, opposed to the arrogance of absolutism and to the dogmatism of sensationalism which were the tendencies of his day. In England a reversion to Baconian ideas produced the natural or intuitive realism ofReid(Vol. 23, p. 51),Dugald Stewart(Vol. 25, p. 913),Sir William Hamilton(Vol. 12, p. 888) and their followers, and led to the synthetic philosophy ofHerbert Spencer(Vol. 25, p. 634).
Materialism
The materialists go a step further than the realists. In its modern sense materialism is the view that all we know is body (or matter), of which the mind is an attribute or function. This attitude was induced by the rapid advances of the natural sciences, and by the unifying doctrine of gradual evolution in nature. It was also heralded by a remarkable growth in commerce, manufactures, and industrialism. The leaders of the movementwereBüchner(Vol. 4, p. 719) whoseKraft und Stoffbecame a text book of materialism, andHaeckel(Vol. 12, p. 803) who in hisRiddle of the Universeasserts that, sensations being an inherent property of all substance, neither mind nor soul can have an origin.
The 19th Century and Beyond
In the inquiries ofLotze(Vol. 17, p. 23), andFechner(Vol. 10, p. 231), the latter an experimental psychologist, lies the germ of much of the speculative thought of the present day. Lotze, as the well-known psychologist Henry Sturt says in his article in the Britannica (Vol. 17, p. 25), “brought philosophy out of the lecture room into the market place of life.” He saw that metaphysics must be the foundation of psychology, and that the current idealist theories of the origin of knowledge were unsound; and he concluded that the union of the regions of facts, of laws, and of standards of values, can only become intelligible through the idea of a personal deity. Like a brilliant meteorNietzsche(Vol. 19, p. 672) flashed across the philosophic sky. His theories of the super-man are known to everyone. His brilliant essays are all in the nature of prolegomena to a philosophy which, embodied in a master work, the “Will to Power,” was to contain a transvaluation of all existing ethical values. Unfortunately he did not live to complete the work, which remains a fragment; but the drift of his thought is clearly indicated. One other system should be mentioned, that ofPositivism(Vol. 22, p. 172), which its founder,Auguste Comte(Vol. 6, p. 814) hoped would supersede every other system. Comte’s philosophy confines itself to the data of experience and declines to recognise a priori or metaphysical speculations. The system of morality which he built up on it, and in which God is replaced by Humanity, has largely failed, in spite of the brilliant ideas which animate it, because it is in many of its aspects retrograde. A most interesting review of present day tendencies in the regions of Metaphysics will be found at the end of that article, with special reference to the brilliant work ofWundt(see also Vol. 28, p. 855), who constructing his system on the Kantian order—sense, understanding, reason, exhibits most clearly the necessary consequence from psychological to metaphysical idealism. His philosophy is the best exposition of modern idealism—that we perceive the mental and, therefore, all we know and conceive is mental.
The Historical Clue
This sketch of the course of events in philosophical speculation will at least enable the reader to follow the historical clue to the evolution of ideas. Every student must, in order to attain a true perspective, know thegenealogyof the ideas he is studying. It will therefore be best that he first read the general articles referred to in the beginning of this chapter, supplementing them by the accounts given of the separate systems under the headings of their authors.
A list of the philosophical and psychological articles (more than 500 in number) in the Britannica will be found in the Index (Vol. 29, p. 939) and it is not repeated here.