Fragments in philosophy and science; being collected essays and addresses

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Prefatory Note

First, the philosophical presupposition of a view which joins the words " Philosophy " and " Science " is, to my thinking, at once an Idealism and also a Naturalism. No philosophy can to-day deny Naturalism; by Naturalism meaning the recognition of the right of Dame Nature, — physical, vital, mental, — to be and to do what she really is and does with no let nor hindrance whatever, from us or from all the tribe of thought.

If we allow science at all — knowledge of Nature, at all — then the ideal of science and of scientific explanation is once for all erected. The camel's body will follow his nose ! Philosophy at the best must saddle the camel — not hack him to pieces, nor essay to build a more comely beast from such of his disjecta membra as suit a finished taste ! Naturalism, which, in my usage of the term, is a name for science not for philosophy, must sweep the boards of every fact that " is, was, or ever shall be," of every fact of every kind, before its task is done, leaving not a pawn on any square of the board we call the cosmos.

Second, Philosophy is a new reading of Science, a saying of this or that about knowledge — not a special species of knowledge, nor a discovery of what is new. Philosophy evaluates, estimates, criticises, unifies, enjoys. Philosophy says " How ? " — to Science's " What? " How can this and that both be true ? — how can the universe hold both man and nature ? — both fact and ideal ? — both " is " and " ought " ? How can action be immoral and thinking false ? — the world so beautiful and its second ring so hollow ! In short : How can and how must we men think Nature and act naturally ? — Nature being what and only what science makes her out to be.

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PREFATORY NOTE

If such be one's presuppositions, then it follows that one's philosophy is simply one's thought — one's best thought — about Nature.

Now another signboard — a personal signboard ! My best thought of nature, my type of philosophy, is an Idealism which finds that the universe of science, is, when all is said, a cosmos which is not only true but also beautiful, and in some sense good. Science tells us what is true ; that is science's prerogative : and whatever may be science's final word about Nature, that word is in so far the truth of the matter. Philosophy then enters her questions : How can such truth be also good, beautiful, livable — or none of these ? While others say other things, and many others many other things, I say — using the liberty of this preface — it is true and good because it is beautiful. Nothing, I think, can be true without being beautiful, and nothing can be, in any high sense, good without being beautiful. In the words of my colleague and friend Professor A. T. Ormond (Foundations of Knowledge, p. 228 ) " the aesthetic principle is at the same time a demand and an intuition ... an ideal requirement and an intuition under which our world completes itself. ... It represents the point in our conceptions where worth and truth coalesce and become one."

The ascription of beauty, a reasoned, criticised, thought-out ascription of aesthetic quality, is the final form of our thought about nature, man, the world, the All. Let this be our sign-board — vague-seeming as it is !

J. M. B.

Princeton, March, 1902.

IX

Contents

Page Chapter

I. Philosophy : its Relation to Life and Education ". . 3

II. The Idealism of Spinoza 24

II

Recent years have been rich in discussions of the historical position and work of the Jew Spinoza. His life has always had a singular charm and attractiveness from its stern uprightness and frank independence, and it has been a protest against the unjust personal attacks of many — theologians often — who fail to discriminate between opinion which is individual, and life which is universal. The man who thinks true but lives false is worse than the man who thinks false but lives true; and history utters few clearer and more emphatic words than those she uses to tell of Spinoza's nobility and grandeur of character. And yet Dr. Hodge, writing from the standpoint of dogmatic theology, is right in placing Spinoza in the front of the host of modern destructive rationalists, as every one knows who appreciates the Spinoza revival of the eighteenth century. Herder and the author of the Wolfenbiittel fragments have a distinct background of Spinozism. Goethe said Spinoza was one of the overpowering influences of his life, and no one doubts it who reads the Geheimnisse.

1 This paper was written with especial reference to Sir F. Pollock's Spinoza, his Life and Philosophy, 1st ed., London, 1880 (a revised second edition appeared in 1899). Other English works which may be consulted are : Martineau, Study of Spinoza, and Types of Ethical Theory, chapter iii., bk. i., Sigwart, Der Spinozismus, and the historians (Ueberweg, Fischer, Erdmann). (From The Presbyterian Review, Jan., 1889.)

Schleiermacher would have been impossible without Spinoza.

This is all true, and Spinozism is rightly considered the force that makes for Pantheism ; yet in philosophy we look at the foundations of things, and while we may contend strenuously with a man about our theological system, we do it the more hopefully when he is one with us in the fundamental postulates of our world theory. And so much the more if his sympathies are human and his aspirations Godward. In metaphysics Spinoza is on the side of Theism, the intuition of God, and pure morality; in the humanities he has been a preserving and cleansing power. The high idealistic tone of German literature, especially verse, was inspired and preserved by him, and a similar wave of spiritual perception swept over England when Coleridge in his own way reproduced direct from the pages of the Ethics the doctrine of an all-pervading Reason and Love. Theology may have as much to fear from pantheism and mystic idealism as from absolute scepticism or sensationalism — as much to fear from Spinoza as from Hume or D'Alembert — but philosophy has not, and for the same reason that an earthquake does more damage at the top of a building than at the bottom.

The question, " Is Spinoza an idealist ? " has arisen, I think, largely from the fact spoken of above, that his influence has been decidedly idealistic, that is, idealistic in a broad human sense. A distinction must be carefully preserved between the high spiritual view of things which is sometimes called idealism, and the definite form of philosophic thought that bears that name in many different systems, just as we hear of a materialism of life and thinking, when strict materialism in a philosophical sense is quite inapplicable. The inquiry before us is concerned exclusively with the rigid philosophical meaning of idealism. No one is disposed to doubt that Spinoza was a high spiritual thinker ; our only question is: Does his system contain the germs of philosophic idealism, and if so is it an essential part of his thought, and what was his personal attitude toward it ?

There are several principles to be observed in the application of the historical method to the development of philosophic thought — principles which are evident enough in statement, but difficult of application. First, all such development must be founded upon undoubted fact. Comte's application of his "law of the three stages," Hegel's development of " reason " in ancient ' history, and Jacobi's exposition of Spinoza, are cases of the violation of this requirement through misunderstanding or misrepresentation. Second, all development must begin with the stage reached by the doctrine which is developing, and not with the starting-point of the doctrine which is subsequently developed. To the neglect of this law is due, I think, half the misconstruction in the history of modern philosophy. A library of Locke commentaries is useless to-day because they begin to estimate him not where he left off, but where Hume began. Locke was not an enemy of a-priorism, but of innate ideas; and to judge him rightly we must deal with the latter doctrine as it was developing, and not with the former as it was afterward developed. There is a broad gulf here, and it is not fair to blow Locke into it because his house was built on the windward side. Third, philosophic doctrines in their interdependence should exhibit a logical and essential rather than an accidental connection. This principle is also of capital importance. The controversy as to the Platonism of the Sermon on the Mount 1 illustrates the difficulty of distinguishing accidental from essential resemblances in trains of thought. But the principle is plain. Of two conflicting doctrines, that must be neglected which is of less importance in the author's general system, rather than that which is essential and whose erasure will wreck the entire work of his hands. Without prejudging either we must accept as the author's opinion that which is clearly advocated by him. 2

The Ethics of Spinoza is an effort to put a system of speculative metaphysics into strict mathematical form. Following the lead of Descartes, who made mathematical clearness and distinctness the test of necessary truth, Spinoza advanced certain self-evident propositions or axioms from which the closely linked chain of propositions and demonstrations depends. It is Etluca ordine geometrica demonstrata. His other writings are more or less special or practical in their subject-matter, and it is to this great work that our attention must be especially given.

It is evident at once to those who are at all familiar with the doctrine of Spinoza that implicit idealistic coloring, if it is to be found at all, must appear in the doctrine of " attributes." Remembering that to Spinoza " substance " is the absolute and infinite ground of all things, the self-caused, that of which nothing positive can be asserted or known, " that which is in itself

1 See parallel drawn by Martineau, Types of Ethical Theory, i., pp. 78-80.

2 An example of this is the conflict between Sir William Hamilton's doctrine of consciousness as the necessary characteristic of mind, and his theory of unconscious or " latent " mental images. The latter is his clearly expressed opinion.

and is conceived by itself," " whose concept needs not the concept of another thing for it to be formed from " (JEth., Def. 3), we can understand the definition of attribute as " that which intellect perceives concerning substance, as constituting the essence thereof " (Def. 4) ; and again (Epist. 27), "it is called attribute with respect to the understanding, which attributes to substance such a determined nature as aforesaid." This definition of attribute, not as a manifestation of substance, but as what the intellect takes for a manifestation, looks immediately to the magnification of mind in relation to the world, a form of absolute idealism ; yet while we admit this fully from the point of view of this single doctrine, we maintain that the system, as a whole, cannot bear this construction; that insistence upon this aspect of the doctrine of attribute overthrows the doctrine of substance and subverts the entire structure of the metaphysics ; and that this looking toward idealism is foreign to Spinoza's own view of his work.

The argument may be conducted along the following lines :

1. All implicit development of Spinoza toward Idealism rests upon the theory of perception advocated in Def. 4.

2. This theory of perception is not necessary to the general system ; indeed, it contradicts its fundamental conception.

3. Consequently this theory of perception must be modified in conformity with the great lines of Spinoza's thought, i. e., it must be given the form of absolute a realism.

1 Used in the sense of the " identity " philosophy, of which Spinoza is called the father.

II

Turning to the development of the doctrine of attribute, we will remember that Spinoza's substance is not only infinite in its being, but also in its attributes. By definition it is " absolutely infinite, . . . consisting of infinite attributes, whereof each one expresses eternal and infinite being." If there were not an infinity of attributes the substance would not be absolutely infinite, for here would be an unfulfilled possibility of enlargement. Further, each of these attributes, partaking of the nature of the absolute, is infinite, or, to preserve the distinction of Def. 4, would be perceived as such by an infinite intelligence. Man is endowed with the power of perceiving two of these attributes, matter or extension, and mind — but not in their full extent. We can conceive an intelligence capable of mightier efforts than ours, of making the entire universe of thought and extension its object ; this intellect would differ from ours in degree. And we can also conceive an intelligence that differs from ours in kind, one that is endowed with different capacities toward the absolute — that is, capable of perceiving attributes of which we know nothing, and differing from others of its kind, like ours, in degree. So in passing from our present state of knowledge of the attributes to the state of knowledge that infinite intelligence enjoys, we must pass through an infinite number of stages, each representing an infinitely diversified series of intellects. But reasoning again from the impossibility of an unrealized possibility in reference to the absolute or its attributes, we reach the startling declaration that whatever is possible is actual. 1 So all these intellects must exist, 1 and we seem to be giving to intellect a prominence that is discouraging. Yet this process of multiplying intellects is based upon Def . 4 — that is, it starts from the fact of perception, and not from that of reality. 2

But not only does intellect perceive the attributes in general, as one of these it perceives itself ; and we have another line of idealistic development, noticed briefly by Mr. Pollock. Mind is counted twice. The unity of the attributes in the absolute gives the famous proposition, " ordo et connexio rerum est ordo et comnexio idearum" All the modifications, modes, of one of the attributes are accompanied by modifications in all the others — modifications that are identical in fact, though partaking in exhibition of the peculiarity of the attribute to which they belong. Pollock, following Erdmann, and perhaps Spinoza himself, uses the figure of infinite planes 3 of infinite magnitude to represent the attributes and identical figures drawn all over these planes to represent the modes. Spinoza's doctrine will admit of its further extension. Let us conceive all things under the name substance as concentrated at a point, and from this point expanding in attributes, radia-

1 This seems to be hinted in Spinoza's answer (Epist. 68) to Tschirnhausen's objection (Epist. 67), where we find the expression " infinite minds." See also Eth., ii., 7, and i., 10.

2 Herbart reasons somewhat the same, likening Spinoza's doctrine of attribute to his own doctrine of " accidental view " (zufdllige Ansicht). He says : " He who would draw idealism from this would greatly err. Of this enemy of the whole cosmology Spinoza thiuks so little that he puts under the axioms of the second part these : ' Man thinks ' and ' We are conscious of particular bodies variously affected,' " etc. (Metaph., i., § 49).

3 Lewes uses the figure of planes in the same connection ; his use of modes also is the same as Spinoza's, although he seems not to be aware of it {Problems of Life and Mind, ii., 16-22).

ting in infinite planes in all directions, and so constituting an infinite sphere of existence. 1 Now let these planes be covered with figures varying infinitely in the limits of each plane, and not identical in the different planes. We know mind and body under different forms — under forms of thought and extension — and though, according to Spinoza, they are the same in essence, yet they are not perceived so by us. So these figures may differ in shape, provided they are reducible to an ultimate oneness. 2 To carry out the mathematical figure, let rectangular axes of three dimensions be drawn through the central point, and it is only necessary that all the figures in the plane of any two of these axes be reduced to the general equation of a circle in that plane, the common equation

The resulting equation must be that of a circle, for the modes are themselves substance, constituting in the infinite mode the attribute, and in the great aggregate the universe, and the universe is represented as spherical.

With this still inadequate conception of Spinoza's mighty flight of speculation — in Heinze's judgment the mightiest that the world has seen since Plato — we must ask by whom this universe is to be perceived? There cannot be another infinite, for by the doctrine of " Sameness of Indiscernibles " held by Spinoza, it would be identical with the infinite we are considering. There

1 Spinoza uses the word " globule," Tract, de Deo et Homine. This is the old scientific conception of the world, the stars being fixed in a spherical shell (so Anaximenes, Xenophanes, etc.), also current in Jewish speculations, with which Spinoza was no doubt familiar.

2 Camerer says (Die Lehre Spinozas), quoting as authority Eth., iii., 6 : " Die Modi eines jeden Attributes involviren den Begriff ihres Attributes, nicht aber den eines Anderen."

cannot be an outside intellect less than infinite, for it would be inadequate to the conception. It must be perceived by some intellect, otherwise, by Def. 4, there would be no attributes. There is but one alternative remaining, and that is that the universe is perceived by the intellect that is within; that by reason of peculiar endowment, or by reason of its constitution as intellect, or by reason of an original pre-eminence in the world building, the attribute intellect wraps its mighty folds around all substantial existence. This is the alternative to which Pollock is compelled to drive Spinoza. He says : x " Spinoza seems to say that every mode of every attribute, other than thought, has a several mind or modification of thought to itself," and 2 " the modes of thought are numerically equal to the modes of all the other attributes together — in other words, thought, instead of being coequal with the infinity of the other attributes, is infinitely infinite." Again, in summing up the discussion: " the intellect that perceives an attribute as constituting the essence of substance belongs to the attribute of thought. Thus, if we push analysis farther, we find that thought swallows up all the other attributes, for all conceivable attributes turn out to be objective aspects of thought itself." The words in italics — which are mine — strikingly indicate the alternative just described. It should be noticed, again, that the whole difficulty here, as in the last case, arises from the perception of the attribute and not from its reality — i. e. 9 from Def. 4.

Ill

Passing to the second stage of our argument, we are led to inquire what relation the doctrine of Def. 4 bears

to the general system of Spinoza. The strange inconsistency seen in denning substance as that of which no positive predication can be made, and then in postulating attributes of this substance, gives us at once the reason for the qualifying clause of Def. 4 — viz., that attributes are only what intellect " perceives concerning substance." Nothing can be asserted of substance, he declares, for all assertion is definition ; if negative, then limitative, and if positive, then predicative; and definition is to Spinoza subsumption. 1 But substance as defined (Def. 3) is incapable of subsumption ; consequently, no attribute can be asserted in reality, and the only way to reach phenomenal existence at all is to make extension and thought attributes in perception.

The application of the third of the canons of criticism already laid down leaves us no doubt as to which of these alternatives is Spinoza's real view. His doctrine of substance, on the one hand, is the corner-stone of his metaphysics. His first work, 2 discovered latest, and probably dating back to the time of his excommunication, when he was most completely under the leading of Descartes, announces the unity of God or substance, and reasons a priori therefrom. The unity and uniformity of nature is the supreme principle of the later developed " system of nature " and of the " psychology," and this leads directly to the doctrine of the absolute and ultimate sameness of the attributes in their identical substance. This is given its due importance by Pollock. He says : 3 " The first and leading idea in Spinoza's philosophy is that of the unity and uniformity

1 Determinatio est negatio, Epist. 50. Cf. Schwegler, Gesckichte der Philosophic in Umriss, p. 106.

2 De Deo et Homine, Germ, translation by Auerbach, in collected works, ed. of 1871.

3 P. 84. Cf. Zeller, Geschichte d. deutschen Philosophie, 2d ed., p. 51.

3 33 of the world." In the " psychology " this doctrine, as has been often pointed out, is the historical culmination of the discussions which had given rise to the dualism of Descartes, the " occasionalism " of Malebranche, and the " pre-established harmony " of Leibnitz ; and as a solution of the problem of the interaction of body and mind, it anticipates the u double-aspect theory " as held to-day by the "identity" philosophers of Germany and the positivists of England and France. It is therefore sufficiently clear that the doctrine of one absolute substance, with all that it carries in its train, is essential to the thought of Spinoza.

On the other hand, the distinction between an attribute and what the mind takes for an attribute seems to be an after-thought. We have no evidence that the distinction between noumenon and phenomenon, absolute and relative, things in themselves as opposed to things as they appear, was current until Kant. At any rate, Spinoza nowhere urges it, as is admitted by Pollock in a remarkable passage. "The manifestations," he says, 1 " are themselves the reality. Substance consists of attributes, and has no reality other than theirs. As for the suggestion that the perception of the understanding in this respect may be illusory — in other words, that the reality of things is unknowable — it is one which Spinoza was incapable of entertaining ; it is wholly foreign to his thought, and I submit that it ought to be to all sound thinking. ... To me it amounts to a contradiction in terms to speak of unknowable existence in an absolute sense. I cannot tell what existence means if not the possibility of being known or perceived." This is going to the utmost length in attributing realism to Spinoza, and though it is correct from the analogy of Spinoza's thought, as will be shown, yet it destroys utterly the distinction drawn in the definition of attribute, and which is our only warrant for an idealistic development. If Spinoza was incapable of entertaining the suggestion that the perception of the understanding may be illusory, then he meant nothing by distinguishing between attributes as they are and as they are perceived, and the ground of our idealism disappears. Yet the assertion that this distinction is foreign to his thought is too strong, and cannot be maintained. The words of Epistle 27 are unmistakable: " I understand the same by attribute (or by substance), except that it is called attribute with respect to the understanding." l And again : 2 " The understanding must apprehend the attributes and affections of God, and nothing else." Proposition 10 of the Ethics is merely an enlargement of this distinction, and without it can have no place in the teaching of Spinoza. 3

There is no difference of opinion, therefore, as to the relative importance of the doctrines under discussion. Common consent seems to indicate and fairness seems to require that the doctrine of substance be the starting-point for the development, that Spinoza himself regarded it so, and that while the distinction of Def . 4 is a real one, and if maintained carries unlimited idealistic possibilities, yet its development is made impossible by the inherent contradictions to which it gives rise. 4

1 Pollock's translation.

3 Cf. Erdmann's strong position, Gesck. d. Philos., 3d ed., ii., p. 59 (sentence beginning, Was endlich den Spinoza selbst betrifft, etc.). This distinction is the basis of Martineau's classification of Spinoza's system as immanental rather than transcendental, although there are infinity-lesstwo transcendent attributes (Types of Eth. Theory).

* That the balance of these two views of the attributes is not well

IV

Let us, then, attempt to interpret Spinoza in the terms of our general result — i. e.j the removal of the coDdition of perception in the definition of attribute, in such a way that the universe is looked at artificially and simply as an external fact with which our mind has nothing to do. Thought is not really external to the universe — otherwise it had lost an attribute — but thought is entirely correlative with extension and innumerable other attributes. The results in the direction of idealism are striking in the extreme. The infinite stages of intellect, each representing infinitely diversified orders, will be no longer necessary ; for they arise for the complete perception of the attributes, and the necessity for this perception is gone. And not only will they be unnecessary, but they will be impossible. Thought is one of the attributes co-ordinate and correlative with all the others, each of which is infinite, and to multiply intellects to the extension of thought beyond infinity is to institute a disparaging comparison of infinites, which is impossible. Thought is limited to its peculiar sphere,

maintained in Spinoza's mind is clear from his declaration of the independence of the attributes as perceived. They are to be thought of as in themselves individually, but yet as constituting substance. See Herbart, Metaph., i., § 41, and Fischer, Geschichte, i., pt. 2, p. 285.

It is difficult to say just what Pollock means by idealism in this connection ; probably only a tendency to subjectivism. It is not "subjective idealism which turns the world into a phantom/' for he expressly disclaims this for Spinoza (p. 49), although in so doing he is not true to his reasoning on p. 175. Nor is it the milder Berkeleyan type, for on p. 170 we read : " It [Spinoza's system] is proof even against the objections to which Berkeley's Idealism is exposed." It seems to indicate only an undue and preponderating role given to the attribute mind. It is only necessary to interpret this in any one of the forms of historic idealism to see that Spinoza believed in none of them.

and we are freed from Pollock's charge that intellect is infinitely infinite. And in the other case, in which we found a passage to idealism, the same is true ; the sphere of existence now rolls on without being perceived in its entirety. The attributes, arranged in symmetrical and correlated harmony, fulfil the functions of their original endowment. Thought and extension assume form respectively in the modes or individuals of whose reality we are sensible. Modifications in one give modifications in the other through the bond of a living unity, and infinite forms of unknown existence repeat the story of the change. Nor is it necessary to infer that thought and extension are peculiarly related to each other or more intimately than others of the attributes. 1 We know only the two, but in the plane of intellect there may be figures, modes, which, while reducible to the ultimate equation of intellect, perceive three, four, an indefinite number of attributes, with as clear a consciousness, in as intimate a relation, as we perceive our two. 2 There are points, for example, at which the spiritual world interpenetrates the natural, and while our vision is dim and misty, we still may see that it runs parallel and very near to our own.

But another piece of reasoning, and that in which Sir F. Pollock places most confidence in developing Spinoza toward idealism, remains to be considered, and to avoid misunderstanding, I quote the page at length. 3 It reads: "Let us now turn to the main point of Spinoza's implicit idealism. What is the conclusion to

1 See Tschirnhausen's objection, already referred to, Epist. 65 and 67 ; also Pollock, pp. 171, 172.

i Spinoza's answer to Tschirnhausen. Erdmann, Gesch. d. Philos., 3d Auf ., Bd. ii., p. 60.

which it really points ? What would Spinoza have done if he had not been hampered by a remnant of Cartesian dualism? We have to observe that each attribute is complete in itself ; the possibility of mutual interference is rigorously excluded. The perception of things as extended is not a relation between the extended thing and the perceiving mind, for they are incommensurable. Every extended thing has its correlate in thought, whether that correlate is part of a conscious mind or not ; and when it is a perception of a conscious mind, the perception is a mode of thought, and nothing else. And the thing correlated to the perception is not the object perceived, but the organism of the perceiving subject. The series of ideas or modes of thought is whole or continuous ; no other attribute has any part in it. How, then, can we say that thought perceives extension? — or what ground have we for making extension co-ordinate with thought, and in some way which, nevertheless, is not causation, necessary to its manifestations? Putting out of sight the supposed & priori necessity for an infinity of attributes, let us assume extension and all its modes to be blotted out of existence. Thought and its modes will by the hypothesis remain unaffected ; every mental correlate of a material fact will be precisely what it was before ; the psychical order of things, ordo et connexio idearum, will be unaltered," etc.