The collected works of Dugald Stewart

Front matter

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Contents

DISSEETATION.

PROGRESS OF METAPHYSICAL, ETHICAL, AND POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY^

Page Preface, containing some Critical Remarks on the Discourse prefixed to

Chapter I. Progress of Philosophy from the Revival of Letters to the

publication of Bacon's Philosophical Works, . . 25

Chapter II. Progress of Philosophy from the publication of Bacon's Philosophical Works till that of the Essay on Human Understanding.

Sect. 1. Progress of Philosophy in England during this period. —

Antagonists of Hohbes, .... .85

Skct. 2. Progress of Philosophy in France during the Seventeenth Century. — Montaigne. — Charron. — La Rochefoucauld, . . 98

Descartes. — Gassendi. — Malebranche, . . . 112

Sect. 3. Progress of Philosophy during the Seventeenth Century in some parts of Europe not included in the preceding Review, ...... 170

PART SECOND.— Introduction, , . . . . . 20S Progress of Metaphysics during the Eighteenth Century

Sect. 1. Historical and Critical Review of the Philosophical Works of

Locke and Leibnitz.- — Locke, .... 20G Sect. 2. Continuation of the Review of Locke and Ijeibnitz.— Leibnitz, 252

Xll

CONTENTS.

Sect, 3. Of the Metaphysical Speculations of Newton and Clarke. — Digression with respect to the System of Spinoza, Collins, and Jonathan Edwards. — Anxiety of both to reconcile the scheme of Necessity with Man's Moral Agency. — Departure of some later Necessitarians from their views, ......

Sect. 4. Of some Authors who have contributed, by their Critical or Historical Writings, to diffuse a taste for Metaphysical Studies. — Bayle. — Fontenelle. — Addison. — Metaphysical Works of Berkeley, ....

Sect. 5. Hartleian School, ......

Sect. 6. Condillac, and other French Metaphysicians of a later date,

Sect. 7. Kant, and other Metaphysicians of the New German School,

Sect. 8. Metaphysical Philosophy of Scotland,

313 352 358 389 427

PAET THIRD.—

Progress of Ethical and Political Philosophy during the Eighteenth

Century. — Chapter. — (Fragment in conclusion.) — Progress, Tendencies, Results,

Notes and Illustrations,

To Part I., ...

To Part II., . .

To Part III.,

Supplement, .....

Preface

CONTAININa SOME CRITICAL REMARKS ON THE DISCOURSE PREFIXED TO THE FRENCH ENCYCLOPEDIE.

When I ventured to undertake the task of contributing a Preliminary Dissertation to these Supplemental Volumes of the Encyclopcedia Britannica^ my original intention was^ after the example of D'Alembert^ to have begun with a general survey of the various departments of human knowledge. The outline of such a survey, sketched by the comprehensive genius of Bacon, together with the corrections and improvements suggested by his illustrious disciple, would, I thought, have rendered it comparatively easy to adapt their intellectual map to the present advanced state of the sciences ; while the unrivalled authority which their united work has long maintained in the republic of letters, would, I flattered myself, have softened those criticisms which might be expected to be incurred by any similar attempt of a more modern hand. On a closer examination, however, of their labours, I found myself under the necessity of abandoning this design. Doubts immediately occurred to me with respect to the justness of their logical views, and soon terminated in a conviction, that these views are radically and essentially erroneous. Instead, therefore, of endeavouring to give additional currency to speculations which I conceived to be fundamentally unsound, I resolved to avail myself of the present opportunity

VOL. I. A to point out their most important defects, — defects which, I am nevertheless very ready to acknowledge, it is much more easy to remark than to supply. The critical strictures which, in the course of this discussion, I shall have occasion to offer on my predecessors, will, at the same time, account for my forbearing to substitute a new map of my own, instead of that to which the names of Bacon and D'Alembert have lent so great and so well-merited a celebrity; and may perhaps suggest a doubt, whether the period be yet arrived for hazarding again, with any reasonable prospect of success, a repetition of their bold experiment. For the length to which these strictures are likely to extend, the only apology I have to offer is the peculiar importance of the questions to which they relate, and the high authority of the writers whose opinions I presume to controvert.

Before entering on his main subject, D'Alembert is at pains to explain a distinction, which he represents as of considerable importance, between the Grenealogy of the sciences, and the Encyclopedical arrangement of the objects of human knowledge. ^ " In examining the former," he observes, " our aim is, by remounting to the origin and genesis of our ideas, to trace the causes to which the sciences owe their birth ; and to mark the characterisl^ics by which they are distinguished from each other. In order to ascertain the latter, it is necessary to comprehend, in one general scheme^ all the various departments of study ; to arrange them into proper classes; and to point out their mutual relations and dependencies." Such a scheme is sometimes likened by D'Alembert to a map or chart of the intellectual world ; sometimes to a genealogical ^ or encyclopedical tree, indicating the manifold and complicated affinities of those studies, which, however apparently remote and unconnected, are all the common offspring of the human understanding. For

'Hue faut pas confondre I'orclre Ency- genealogical sliould have Leen employed clopedique des connoissances humaines on this occasion, where the author's wish avec la Genealogie des Sciences." — was to contradistinguish the idea de- Avertissement, p. 7. noted by it, from that historical view of

the sciences to which the word genea-

^ It is to be regretted that the epithet logy had been previously applied.

executing successfully this chart or tree, a philosophical delineation of the natural progress of the mind may (according to him) furnish very useful lights ; although he acknowledges that the results of the two undertakings cannot fail to differ widely in many instances — the laws which regulate the generation of our ideas often interfering with that systematical order in the relative arrangement of scientific pursuits, which it is the purpose of the Encyclopedical Tree to exhibit.^

In treating of the first of these subjects, it cannot be denied that D'Alembert has displayed much ingenuity and invention ; but the depth and solidity of his general train of thought may be questioned. On various occasions, he has evidently suffered himself to be misled by a spirit of false refinement ; and on others, where probably he was fully aware of his inability to render the theoretical chain complete, he seems to have aimed at concealing from his readers the faulty links, by availing himself of those epigrammatic points, and other artifices of style, with Avhich the genius of the French language enables a skilful writer to smooth and varnish over his most illogical transitions.

The most essential imperfections, however, of this historical sketch, may be fairly ascribed to a certain vagueness and indecision in the author's idea, with regard to the scope of his inquiries. What he has in general pointed at is to trace, from the theory of the Mind, and from the order followed by nature in the development of its powers, the successive steps by which

* The true reason of this might per- considered as the basis of the arts ; and,

haps have been assigned in simpler in a course of liberal education, the for -

terms, by remarking that the order of mer are always taught prior to the latter,

invention is, in most cases, the reverse But, in the order of invention and dis-

of that fitted for didactic communication. covery, the arts preceded the sciences.

This observation applies not only to Men measured land before they studied

the analytical and synthetical processes speculative geometry ; and governments

of the individual, but to the progressive were established before politics were stu-

improvements of the species, when com- died as a science. A remark somewhat

pared with the arrangements prescribed similar is made by Celsus concerning the

by logical method for conveying a history of medicine : " Non medicinam

knowledge of them to students. In an rationi esse posteriorem, sed post medici-

enlightened age, the sciences are justly nam inventam, rationem esse quassitam,"

4 DISSEllTATION. — PREFACE.

the curiosity may be conceived to have been gradually conducted from one intellectual pursuit to another ; but, in the execution of this design, (which in itself is highly philosophical and interesting,) he does not appear to have paid due attention to the essential difference between the history of the human species, and that of the civilized and inquisitive individual. The former was undoubtedly that which principally figured in his conceptions ; and to which, I apprehend, he ought to have confined himself exclusively ; whereas, in fact, he has so completely blended the two subjects together, that it is often impossible to say which of them was uppermost in his thoughts. The consequence is, that instead of throwing upon either those strong and steady lights which might have been expected from his powers, he has involved both in additional obscurity. This indistinctness is more peculiarly remarkable in the beginning of his Discourse, where he represents men in the earliest infancy of science, before they had time to take any precautions for securing the means of their subsistence, or of their safety, — as philosophizing on their sensations, — on the existence of their own bodies, — and on that of the material world. His Discourse, accordingly, sets out with a series of Meditations, precisely analogous to those which form the introduction to the philosophy of Descartes ; meditations which, in the order of time, have been uniformly posterior to the study of external nature ; and which, even in such an age as the present, are confined to a comparatively small number of recluse metaphysicians.

Of this sort of conjectural or theoretical history, the most unexceptionable specimens which have yet appeared, are indisputably the fragments in Mr. Smith's posthumous work on the History of Astronomy, and on that of the Ancient Systems of Physics and Metaphysics. That, in the latter of these, he naay have occasionally accommodated his details to his own peculiar opinions concerning the object of Philosophy, may perhaps, with some truth, be alleged ; but he must at least be allowed the merit of completely avoiding the error by which D'Alembert was misled ; and even in those instances where he himself seems to wander a little from the right path, of furnishing his successors with a thread, leading by easy and almost insensible steps, from the first gross perceptions of sense, to the most abstract refinements of the Grecian schools. Nor is this the only praise to which these fragments are entitled. By seizing on the different points of view from whence the same object was contemplated by different sects, they often bestow a certain degree of unity and of interest on what before seemed calculated merely to bewilder and to confound ; and render the apparent aberrations and caprices of the understanding subservient to the study of its operations and laws.

To the foregoing strictures on D'Alembert's view of the origin of the sciences, it may be added, that this introductory part of his Discourse does not seem to have any immediate connexion with the sequel. We are led, indeed, to expect, that it is to prepare the way for the study of the Encylopedical Tree afterwards to be exhibited; but in this expectation we are completely disappointed ; — no reference to it whatever being made by the author in the farther prosecution of his subject. It forms, accordingly, a portion of his Discourse altogether foreign to the general design ; while, from the metaphysical obscurity which pervades it, the generality of readers are likely to receive an impression, either unfavourable to the perspicuity of the writer, or to their own powers of comprehension and of reasoning. It were to be wished, therefore, that instead of occupying the first pages of the Encyclopedie^ it had been reserved for a separate article in the body of that work. There it might have been read by the logical student, with no small interest and advantage ; for, with all its imperfections, it bears numerous and precious marks of its author's hand.

In delineating his Encyclopedical Tree, D'Alembert has, in my opinion, been still more unsuccessful than in the speculations which have been hitherto under our review. His veneration for Bacon seems, on this occasion, to have prevented him from giving due scope to his own powerful and fertile genius, and has engaged him in the fruitless task of attempting, by means of arbitrary definitions, to draw a veil over incurable defects and blemishes. In this part of Bacon s logic, it must, at the same time, be owned, that there is something peculiarly captivating to the fancy ; and, accordingly, it has united in its favour the suffrages of almost all the succeeding authors who have treated of the same subject. It will be necessary for me, therefore, to explain fully the grounds of that censure, which, in opposition to so many illustrious names, I have presumed to bestow on it.

Of the leading ideas to which I more particularly object, the following statement is given by D'Alembert. I quote it in preference to the corresponding passage in Bacon, as it contains various explanatory clauses and glosses, for which we are indebted to the ingenuity of the commentator.

" The objects about which our minds are occupied, are either spiritual or material, and the media employed for this purpose are our ideas, either directly received, or derived from reflection. The system of our direct knowledge consists entirely in the passive and mechanical accumulation of the particulars it comprehends; an accumulation which belongs exclusively to the province of Memory. Kefiection is of two kinds, according as it is employed in reasoning on the objects of our direct ideas, or in studying them as models for imitation.

" Thus, Memory, Eeason, strictly so called, and Imagination, are the three modes in which the mind operates on the subjects of its thoughts. By Imagination, however, is here to be understood, not the faculty of conceiving or representing to ourselves what we have formerly perceived, a faculty which differs in nothing from the memory of these perceptions, and which, if it were not relieved by the invention of signs, would be in a state of continual exercise. The power which we denote by this name has a nobler province allotted to it, that of rendering imitation subservient to the creations of genius.

" These three faculties suggest a corresponding division of human knowledge into three branches : — 1. History, which derives its materials from Memory; 2. Philosophy, which is the product of Keason ; and 3. Poetry, (comprehending under this title all the Fine Arts,) which is the offspring of Imaginatiou.^ If we place Reason before Imagination, it is because this order appears to us conformable to the natural progress of our intellectual operations.^ The Imagination is a creative faculty, and the mind, before it attempts to create, begins by reasoning upon what it sees and knows. Nor is this all. In the faculty of Imagination, both Eeason and Memory are, to a certain extent, combined — ^the mind never imagining or creating objects but such as are analogous to those whereof it has had previous experience. Where this analogy is wanting, the combinations are extravagant and displeasing ; and, consequently, in that agreeable imitation of nature, at which the fine arts aim in common, invention is necessarily subjected to the control of rules which, it is the business of the philosopher to investigate.

" In farther justification of this arrangement, it may be remarked, that Reason, in the course of its successive operations on the subjects of thought, by creating abstract and general ideas, remote from the perceptions of sense, leads to the Exercise of Imagination as the last step of the process. Thus metaphysics and geometry are, of all the sciences belonging to Eeason, those in which Imagination has the greatest share. I ask pardon for this observation from those men of taste, who, little aware of the near afiinity of geometry to their own pursuits, and still less suspecting that the only intermediate step

^ The latitude given by D'Alembert naturelle, qui n'est autre cliose qu'in-

to the meaning of the word Poetry is a vention on creation." real and very important improvement ^ In placing Reason before Imagina-

on Bacon, who restricts it to fictitious tion, D'Alembert departs from the order

History or Fables.— (De Aug. Scient. lib. in which these faculties are arranged by

ii. cap. i.) D'Alembert, on the other Bacon. *' Si nous n'avons pas place,

hand, employs it in its natural signifi- comme lui, la Raison apres I'lmagina

cation, as synonymous with invention or tion, c'est que nous avons suivi, dans

creation. " La Peinture, la Sculpture, le systeme Encyclopedique, I'ordre meta-

1' Architecture, la Poesie, la Musique, et physique des operations de I'esprit,

leurs differentes divisions, composent la plutot que I'ordre hi&torique de ses pro-

troisieme distribution generale qui nait gres depuis la renaissance des lettres."

de rimagination, et dont les parties sent — {Disc. Prelim.) How far the motive

comprises sous le noni de Beaux- Arts. here assigned for the change is valid,

On pent les rapporter tous a la Poesie, the reader will be enabled to judge

en prenant ce mot dans sa signification from the sequel of the above quotation.

O DISSERTATION, — PREFACE.

between them is formed by metaphysics, are disposed to employ their wit in depreciating its value. The truth is, that, to the geometer who invents, Imagination is not less essential than to the poet who creates. They operate, indeed, differently on their object, the former abstracting and analyzing, where the latter combines and adorns; — ^two processes of the mind, it must, at the same time, be confessed, which seem from experience to be so little congenial, that it may be doubted if the talents of a great geometer and of a great poet will ever be united in the same person. But whether these talents be, or be not mutually exclusive, certain it is, that they who possess the one, have no right to despise those who cultivate the other. Of all the great men of antiquity, Archimedes is perhaps he who is the best entitled to be placed by the side of Homer.''

D'Alembert afterwards proceeds to observe, that of these three general branches of the Encyclopedical Tree, a natural and convenient subdivision is afforded by the metaphysical distribution of things into Material and Spiritual. " With these two classes of existences,'' he observes farther, " history and philosophy are equally conversant ; but as for the Imagination^ her imitations are entirely confined to the material ivorld ; — a circumstance," he adds, " which conspires with the other arguments above stated, in justifying Bacon for assigning to her the last place in his enumeration of our intellectual faculties."^ Upon this subdivision he enlarges at some length, and with considerable ingenuity; but on the present occasion it would be quite superfluous to follow him any farther, as more than enough has been already quoted to enable my readers to

^Tntliis exclusive limitation of the pro- precisely expressed in our language by vince of Imagination to things material the word Conception. The province and sensible, D'Alembert has followed assigned to Imagination by D'Alembert the definition given by Descartes in his is more extensive than this, for he assecond Meditation : — " Imaginari nihil cribes to her also a creative and combinaliud est quam rei corporece jiguram ing power ; but still his definition agrees seu imaginem contemplari f^ — a power with that of Descartes, inasmuch as it of the mind, which (as I have elsewhere excludes entirely from her dominion both observed) appears to me to be most the intellectual and the moral worlds.

judge, whether the objections which I am now to state to the foregoing extracts be as sound and decisive as I apprehend them to be.

Of these objections a very obvious one is suggested by a consideration, of which D'Alembert himself has taken notice, — that the three faculties to which he refers the whole operations of the understanding are perpetually blended together in their actual exercise, insomuch that there is scarcely a branch of human knowledge which does not, in a greater or less degree, furnish employment to them all. It may be said, indeed, that some pursuits exercise and invigorate particular faculties more than others ; that the study of History, for example, although it may occasionally require the aid both of Keason and of Imagination, yet chiefly furnishes occupation to the Memory ; and that this is sufficient to justify the logical division of our mental powers as the ground-work of a corresponding Encyclopedical classification.^ This, however, will be found more specious than solid. In what respects is the faculty of Memory more essentially necessary to the student of history than to the philosopher or to the poet; and, on the other hand, of what value, in the circle of the sciences, would be a collection of historical details, accumulated without discrimination, without a scrupulous examination of evidence, or without any attempt to compare and to generalize ? For the cultivation of that species of history, in particular, which alone deserves a place in the Encyclopedical Tree, it may be justly affirmed, that the rarest and most comprehensive combination of all our mental gifts is indispensably requisite.

Another, and a still more formidable objection to Bacons

^ I allude here to the folio wmg apo- sairement dans chaque art, comme dans

logy for Bacon, suggested by a very chaque science. Mais on peut repondre,

learned and judicious writer : — que I'une ou I'autre de ces trois fiicultes,

" On a fait cependant a Bacon quel- quoique secondee par les deux autres,

ques reproches assez fondes. On a ob- peut cependant jouer le role principal,

serve que sa classification des sciences En prenant la distinction de Bacon dans

repose sur une distinction qui n'est pas ce sens, sa classification reste exacte, et

rigoureuse, puisque la memoire, la rai- devient tres utile." — Degerando, Hist

son, et I'Imagination concourent neces- Comp. tome i. p. 298.

classification, may be derived from the very imperfect and partial analysis of the mind which it assumes as its basis. Why were the powers of Abstraction and Generalization passed over in silence ? — ^powers which, according as they are cultivated or neglected, constitute the most essential of all distinctions between the intellectual characters of individuals. A corresponding distinction, too, not less important, may be remarked among the objects of human study, according as our aim is to treasure up particular facts, or to establish general conclusions. Does not this distinction mark out, with greater precision, the limits which separate philosophy from mere historical narrative, than that which turns upon the different provinces of Eeason and of Memory ?

I shall only add one other criticism on this celebrated enumeration, and that is, its want of distinctness, in confounding together the Sciences and the Arts under the same general titles. Hence a variety of those capricious arrangements, which must immediately strike every reader who follows Bacon through his details ; the reference, for instance, of the mechanical arts to the department of History; and, consequently, according to his own analysis of the mind, the ultimate reference of these arts to the faculty of Memory : while, at the same time, in his tripartite division of the whole field of human knowledge, the art of Poetry has one entire province allotted to itself

These objections apply in common to Bacon and to D'Alembert. That which follows has a particular reference to a passage already cited from the latter, where, by some false refinements concerning the nature and functions of Imagination, he has rendered the classification of his predecessor incomparably more indistinct and illogical than it seemed to be before.

That all the creations, or new combinations of Imagination, imply the previous process of decomposition or analysis, is abundantly manifest; and, therefore, without departing from the common and popular use of language, it may undoubtedly be said, that the faculty of abstraction is not less essential to the Poet, than to the Geometer and the Metaphysician.1 But this is not the doctrine of D'Alembert. On the contrary, he affirms, that Metaphysics and G-eometry are, of all the sciences connected with Eeason, those in which Imagination has the greatest share ; an assertion which, it will not be disputed, has at first sight somewhat of the air of a paradox ; and which, on closer examination, will, I apprehend, be found altogether inconsistent with fact. If indeed D'Alembert had, in this instance, used (as some writers have done) the word Imagination as synonymous with Invention, I should not have thought it worth while (at least so far as the geometer is concerned) to dispute his proposition. But that this was not the meaning annexed to it by the author, appears from a subsequent clause, where he tells us, that the most refined operations of reason, consisting in the creation of generals which do not fall under the cognizance of our senses, naturally lead to the exercise of Imagination. His doctrine, therefore, goes to the identification of Imagination with Abstraction ; two faculties so very different in the direction which they give to our thoughts, that (according to his own acknowledgment) the man who is habitually occupied in exerting the one, seldom fails to impair both his capacity and his relish for the exercise of the other.

This identification of two faculties, so strongly contrasted in their characteristical features, was least of all to be expected from a logician, who had previously limited the province of Imagination to the imitation of material objects ; a limitation, it may be remarked in passing, which is neither sanctioned by common use, nor by just views of the philosophy of the Mind. Upon what ground can it be alleged that Milton's portrait of

^ Tins assertion must, however, be Those of the poet amount to nothing understood with some qualifications; more than to a separation into parts of the for, although the poet, as well as the realities presented to his senses ; which geometer and the metaphysician, he separation is only a preliminary step perpetually called upon to decompose, to a subsequent recomposition into new by means of abstraction, the complicated and ideal forms of the things abstractobjects of perception, it must not be ed ; whereas the abstractions of the meconcluded that the abstractions of all taphysician and of the geometer form the the three are exactly of the same kind. very objects of their respective sciences.

12 DISSERTATION. — PKEFAGE.

Satan's intellectual and moral character was not the offspring of the same creative faculty which gave birth to his Garden of Eden ? After such a definition, however, it is difficult to conceive how so very acute a writer should have referred to Imagination the abstractions of the geometer and of the metaphysician ; and still more, that he should have attempted to justify this reference, by observing, that these abstractions do not fall under the cognizance of the senses. My own opinion is, that in the composition of the whole passage he had a view to the unexpected parallel between Homer and Archimedes, with which he meant, at the close, to surprise his readers.

If the foregoing strictures be well founded, it seems to follow, not only that the attempt of Bacon and of D'Alembert to classify the sciences and arts according to a logical division of our faculties, is altogether unsatisfactory, but that every future attempt of the same kind may be expected to be liable to similar objections. In studying, indeed, the Theory of the Mind, it is necessary to push our analysis as far as the nature of the subject admits of; and, wherever the thing is possible, to examine its constituent principles separately and apart from each other : but this consideration itself, when combined with what was before stated on the endless variety of forms in which they may be blended together in our various intellectual pursuits, is sufficient to shew how ill adapted such an analysis must for ever remain to serve as the basis of an Encyclopedical distribution, i

The circumstance to which this part of Bacon's philosophy is

^ In justice to tlie authors of the En- pareille division, pour croire que riotre cyclopedical Tree prefixed to the French systeme soit I'unique ou le meilleur ; Dictionary, it ought to be observed, that il nous suffira que notre travail ne soit it is spoken of by D'Alembert, in his pas entierement desapprouve par les Preliminary Discourse, with the utmost bons esprits." And, some pages aftermodesty and diffidence ; and that he has wards — " Si le public eclaire donne son expressed not only his own conviction, approbation a ces changemens, elle sera but that of his colleague, of the impos- la recompense de notre docilite ; et s'il sibility of executing such a task in a ne les approuve pas, nous n'en serons manner likely to satisfy the public. que plus convaincus de I'impossibilite " Nous sommes trop convaincus de Par- de former un arbre encyclopedique qui bitraire qui regnera toujours dans une soit an gre de tout le monde."

chiefly indebted for its popularity^ is the specious simplicity and comprehensiveness of the distribution itself — not the soundness of the logical views by which it was suggested. That all our intellectual pursuits may be referred to one or other of these three heads — History^ Philosophy, and Poetry, may undoubtedly be said with considerable plausibility ; the word history being understood to comprehend all our knowledge of particular facts and particular events ; the word philosophy, all the general conclusions or laws inferred from these particulars by induction ; and the word poetry, all the arts addressed to the imagination, Not that the enumeration, even with the help of this comment, can be considered as complete, for (to pass over entirely the other objections already stated) under which of these three heads shall we arrange the various branches of pure mathematics ?