Modern philosophy

Front matter

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Preface

It has not been my purpose in this work to write a com¬ plete History of Modern Philosophy. Such an undertaking, if fitly carried out, would far exceed the limits within which I wished to keep, and would compel me to enter into some wearisome details. I have endeavored to present a full anal¬ ysis and criticism of the systems only of those great think¬ ers whose writings have permanently influenced the course of European thought, paying most attention to the earlier French and later German philosophers, with whom com¬ paratively few English readers are at all familiar. Hence I have said little about Hobbes or Locke, Hume, Reid, or Hamilton, whose writings are accessible to all, and who ought not to be studied by thoughtful and earnest inquirers at second hand. But the great names of Descartes, Spinoza, and Malebranche, of Leibnitz and Kant, of Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel, are little more than names with most English students, even including many of those who assume to weigh their systems against each other and to dogmatize respect¬ ing their merits and defects. Perhaps the experience of one whose duty it has been for many years to lecture upon their writings to large classes of University students may have been valuable, in so far as it has induced the endeavor to make intelligible what is abstruse and obscure, and to render a discussion interesting which may appear at first sight re¬ pulsive, though it is really important and profound. I be¬ lieve that Kant, Hegel, and Schopenhauer, to mention no

VI

PREFACE.

others, have not been fairly appreciated by English students of philosophy, because they have not been thoroughly un¬ derstood, probably for the reason that metaphysical thought on the Continent of Europe generally assumes a pedantic and technical garb to which the countrymen of Locke and Berkeley are not habituated, and for which they have an instinctive dislike. A translation of their works, however faithfully executed, is even more obscure than the original, as it sacrifices the advantage which one who studies them in German possesses through the etymology of the technical terms, which often reflects much light upon their meaning and upon the general course of thought. My purpose has been to furnish an exposition of their systems which should be intelligible throughout, and also comprehensive enough to enable the student to form a fair estimate of their excel¬ lences and defects, and even, if he wishes, to peruse with little difficulty the works themselves, either in the original or in an English translation. In particular, I have endeav¬ ored to give a complete analysis and explanation of Kant’s “ Critique of Pure Reason; ” for one who has fairly mas¬ tered this great work holds the key to all German meta¬ physics.

One who publishes a treatise upon Modern Philosophy, however, may reasonably aspire to be something more than a commentator. Aiming to be thorough and impartial in setting forth the opinions of others, I have also held it to be a duty frankly to avow and earnestly to defend the whole doctrine which appeared to me to be just and true, whether it was also of good report or not. No one can be an earnest student of Philosophy without arriving at definite convic¬ tions respecting the fundamental truths of Theology. In my own case, nearly forty years of diligent inquiry and re¬ flection concerning these truths have served only to enlarge and confirm the convictions with which I began, and which are inculcated in this book. Earnestly desiring to avoid

PREFACE.

vii

prejudice on either side, and to welcome evidence and argu¬ ment from whatever source they might come, without pro¬ fessional bias, and free from any external inducement to teach one set of opinions rather than another, I have faith¬ fully studied most of what the philosophy of these modern times and the science of our own day assume to teach. And the result is, that I am now more firmly convinced than ever that what has been justly called “ the dirt-philosophy ” of materialism and fatalism is baseless and false. I accept with unhesitating conviction and belief the doctrine of the being of one Personal God, the Creator and Governor of the world, and of one Lord Jesus Christ, in whom “ dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily; ” and I have found noth¬ ing whatever in the literature of modern infidelity which, to my mind, casts even the slightest doubt upon that belief. Not being a clergyman, I am not exposed to the cruel im¬ putation which unbelievers have too long been permitted to fling against the clergy, of being induced by prudential motives to profess what they do not believe. Let me be permitted also to repeat the opinion, which I ventured to express as far back as 1849, that “ the time seems to have arrived for a more practical and immediate verification than the world has ever yet witnessed of the great truth, that the civilization which is not based upon Christianity is big with the elements of its own destruction.”

Harvard College, Cambridge, July 3, 1877.

CONTEXTS

Contents

CHAPTER X.

Transition to Kant. — His Life and Character. — The Purpose of the Critique.

CHAPTER XI.

Chapter I

Introductory. — The Philosophy of the Seventeenth Century. — Relations of Philosophy to Psychology and Logic.

What we have first to consider is the philosophy of the seven¬ teenth century; and this as represented to us more particularly in the writings of Descartes and his immediate successors. Histori¬ cally considered, the period is one of great importance. It is more fertile than any other century since the Christian era in the great names, and the leading dogmas and systems, of the phil¬ osophy of these modern times. It is the age of Descartes, Pascal, Spinoza, Gassendi, Malebranche, and Leibnitz, — of Hobbes, Cudworth, John Locke, and Samuel Clarke. I do not include the name which many will think the greatest of them all, because the philosophy of Bacon is primarily concerned only with the means of making discoveries in physical science, and, through them, of promoting the outward well-being of mankind, treating only in¬ cidentally, and with a view to this purpose, of the great problems of metaphysical science, and of those fundamental truths of our intellectual, moral, and spiritual being, which it is our present ob¬ ject to investigate. The “ Novum Organon ” ought to be read in connection with the writings, not of the great men just mentioned, except so far as some of these distinguished themselves also in the departments of mathematical and physical research, but of Kepler, Galileo, and Newton, of Franklin, Cuvier, and Faraday. The philosophy of modern inductive science will come into view in this book only so far as it is governed by the universal laws of thought and by the philosophy of the human mind.

The seventeenth century deserves study not only on account of 1

PHILOSOPHY OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY.

the genius of the great men who illustrated it, but because it was an epoch in the history of human thought, and the proper birth¬ time of the philosophy of these modern days. Every former age, every preceding school of thought, as far back at least as the origin of metaphysical speculation with the Pythagoreans and the Eleatics, was more or less colored by antecedent systems and the authority of former times. Each was built upon a foundation that had been already laid for it; each spoke to minds already to a great extent preoccupied. Even Plato professed only to repeat the colloquial teachings of his great master Socrates, and Aristotle continually refers to the doctrines of those whom he calls “ the ancients,” whom he cites, indeed, “ with a sort of indulgent consciousness of superi¬ ority.” At a later period, the Alexandrian School avowed the Eclectic principle, and put together a patchwork of Oriental mys¬ ticism and Greek dialectics. Then, for a long interval, philosophy was merged in theology, and all questions were answered peremp¬ torily by the authority of the Scriptures and the Church. In Scholasticism pure speculation and argumentative subtlety revived, but only within the limits of faith. The ambition of Thomas Aquinas and the other Schoolmen was to erect theology into a perfect science, distributed into parts with exact method, and rest¬ ing upon philosophical dogmas with a carefully traced filiation of doctrines. Aristotelic premises were evoked to support theolog¬ ical conclusions. Novelty was shunned, because it immediately incurred suspicion of heresy.

Then came a startling conjuncture of great events, which brought about a revolution in human thought and in the course of external affairs. The Revival of Letters, the invention of printing, the Reformation in religion, the discovery of America and the passage round the Cape of Good Hope, and the rapid development of the power of the municipalities and the burgher class, were all crowded together, so to speak, into one epoch, about the close of the fifteenth century. A great crisis had arrived, and men’s minds were perplexed with awe and hope as old institutions crumbled around them, and former modes of thought became dis¬ credited. Other revolutions had been produced and accompanied by the shock of arms, and were productive in the main of material changes; but the present was an outburst of mental activity, which showed itself in the destruction of old dogmas, the progress of discovery and invention, and the collision of new opinions. Physical science started first in the race, and soon achieved great success, because it carried less weight; it was comparatively little

INTRODUCTORY.

impeded by jealous authority or old traditions. Most of its devo¬ tees worked in an open field and without dread of consequences; the persecution of Galileo was an almost solitary case. Metaphys¬ ical science at first threw off the yoke of Scholasticism and the authority of the Middle Ages only to subject itself once more to the great minds of Greece, whose writings had been brought again to light with all the charms of novelty and the graces of eloquence by the Revival of Letters. The philosophy of the sixteenth cen¬ tury is rightly called by Cousin a necessary and useful transition from the absolute slavery of thought in mediaeval times to its ab¬ solute independence a century afterwards. The leading philos¬ ophers of that century were great scholars, rather than great thinkers. They hunted out and collated old manuscripts; with indefatigable zeal and industry they translated, annotated, and lectured on Plato and Aristotle. We find among them a school of idealistic Platonism, always tending to mysticism, and a class of peripatetics, worshipping Aristotle, and always sliding into mate¬ rialism and skepticism. The former school may be said to have begun with Marsilius Ficinus, and ended with the martyr, Gior¬ dano Bruno. The latter consisted of a crowd of speculatists upon medicine, astronomy, and cosmogony, not infrequently passing over into magic and thaumaturgy.

The glory remained for Descartes and his contemporaries and successors, the men of the seventeenth century, to break with the past altogether. They no longer deigned even to controvert an¬ cient philosophy or mediaeval metaphysics, but passed them by as obsolete, perhaps with silent contempt, and busied themselves with an attempt to reconstruct the philosophical edifice from its foun¬ dations. They accepted nothing upon authority; they borrowed not a stick or a stone from those who had gone before them. None of them were learned men, except in the mathematical and physical sciences. I mean they were not scholars in the technical meaning of that name; they cared nothing for antiquity, and seldom quoted books. Perhaps they carried this peculiarity too far ; they had too much contempt for what had gone before; their chief fault was intellectual arrogance. For they aspired to reconstruct not merely the foundations of knowledge, but the whole structure; to build anew from corner stone to pinnacle. Each one aimed at completeness; each endeavored to think out a full theory of philosophy, with all the parts fitly dovetailed and put together. Philosophy to them was the science of first princi¬ ples carried out to its ultimate results, and verified by its adequacy

PHILOSOPHY OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY.

to meet every case and settle every doubt. At least, this was eminently the case with Descartes, Spinoza, Leibnitz, Hobbes, and, though in a different sense, John Locke. It was long ago re¬ marked of Descartes, that he began by doubting every thing, even his own existence, and ended by thinking that he had proved every thing, so as to leave his successors nothing to do. Spinoza followed the Cartesian method with even greater mathematical rigor and precision. Beginning after the manner of the geometer with a full series of definitions and axioms, by their aid he dem¬ onstrates in order all the propositions needing proof, and thus proceeds till he has covered the whole ground of possible knowl¬ edge. Though the writings of Leibnitz were fragmentary and miscellaneous, the character of his mind was systematic even to excess, and his genius more daring and comprehensive than that of any man of modern times. His towering ambition aspired to fashion and create anew all science and philosophy, through a few pregnant aphorisms and assumptions, which he stated with inimita¬ ble force and brevity ; and though he was obliged to leave them not half worked out, many of them have been verified by the progress of discovery since his day, and have shaped the whole course of modern speculation. The character of Hobbes is intimated in his insolent remark, “ If I had read as many books as other men, I should have been as ignorant as they are.” According to an emi¬ nent critic, only Aristotle and Kant were his equals in what may be called the genius of System, — the logical filiation of doctrines having the broadest and most diverging consequences. His influ¬ ence is even now predominant in one of the leading schools of speculative science both in England and this country. The mod¬ esty of Locke is as evident as the haughtiness and dogmatism of Hobbes. But his philosophy covers as much ground, though worked out in a different spirit and with a very dissimilar method. His object was “ to inquire into the original, certainty, and extent of human knowledge,” not by logical deduction, from a few self-evident principles, but by careful observation and patient research. The characteristics of his work are sound judgment and clear com¬ mon sense existing in that rare perfection in which they become coincident with far-sighted genius. In his Essay, he never cites Descartes or Hobbes by name, though his purpose evidently is to refute some of their principal doctrines.

One of the chief influences that shaped the philosophy of the seventeenth century was the rapid development, at that time, of mathematical and physical science. Descartes, Leibnitz, and

INTRODUCTORY.

Pascal were the greatest mathematicians of their own age, and among the greatest of all modern times. The discoveries of the two former changed the whole face of the science and paved the way for all its subsequent success; and Pascal was a prodigy of parts, who discovered geometry anew, and seemed to discern by intuition what others could obtain only by patient and long con¬ tinued effort. The rigorous methods of filiation and proof, the completeness, precision, and certainty which characterize mathe¬ matics, these men endeavored to transfer to philosophy. Spinoza and Hobbes, though not to so great a degree adepts in exact sci¬ ence, still strove, with good success in this respect, to follow their example. Locke, as might have been expected from his early studies in medicine, rather followed the inductive method, and aimed at completeness through a comprehensive examination of all the phenomena. Physical discovery had made vast progress, and the triumphant anticipations of Bacon had begun to be real¬ ized. Astronomical science had been revolutionized, and the dis¬ covery and proof of the great law of gravitation were already fore¬ shadowed, though not as yet formally announced. This great success had generated enthusiasm and inspired confidence in future effort. Never was there greater activity of mind, or more vigor and originality of speculation. Not in physical science only, but in every department of intellectual effort, ambition was kindled and grand results were confidently expected. In the mere collis¬ ion of opinions, in the conflict of opposing systems, many sparks of truth were struck out; everywhere were signs of energy and life.

It has seemed to me that the writings of these men would be a fitting introduction to a course of philosophical study. We need not fear that we shall thus be unprofitably detained in groping over the history of the past, digging up the dead bones of dogmas and systems that have passed away and of obsolete controversies. Philosophy, it is true, repeats itself in each succeeding'age,— under new influences perhaps, with a different bias, and with ten¬ dencies and applications that are often entirely novel. But the groundwork is always the same, the old problems and questions are perpetually recurrent, the same difficulties and stumbling blocks impede our progress, and the answers, the attempted solutions, are found along the old lines of inquiry. Philosophy is uniform, be¬ cause it is founded on the unity of human nature. Curiosity is excited by the same objects, the old doubts and fears start up afresh, and we try the former paths of escape from the same laby-

MODERN PHILOSOPHY.

rinth. There is not a question now agitated between the rival schools of speculation in our own days, either by Mill and the Positivists on the one hand, or by the German Transcendentalists on the other, which does not find its prototype in the discussions of the seventeenth century, and even much farther back, in the Academy, the Porch, and the Garden of the Greeks. Hamilton and Mansel repeat Pascal. Mill follows the same track with Hobbes and Locke. Kant is largely influenced by Leibnitz ; Fichte’s motto is the old Cartesian cogito, ergo sum; and Schelling is a reproduction, with modern improvements, of Spinoza. Modern astronomy will sooner be emancipated from Copernicus and Kepler, than modern philosophy from its teachers and guides of two hundred years ago.

This is no confession of weakness or plagiarism on the part of our contemporaries. The repetition is often unconscious ; little is borrowed, and no attempt is made to establish systems or opinions on the mere authority of the past. The coincidence is that only which necessarily results from the sameness of subject, the unity of human nature, and the common purpose iri view. “ It is not in Montaigne, but in myself,’’ says Pascal, “ that I find all which I read in his book.” Always, also, the issues are colored and diver¬ sified by the ever changing circumstances of the age. The theme is old, but it is repeated with a thousand variations, and is ap¬ plied and adapted to the protean forms of literature, and to the constant progress of physical science. The empiricism and posi¬ tivism of Hobbes are necessarily unlike those of Comte and Lewes, because, in the interval between them, whole sciences, like biology, geology, and political economy, have been constructed and largely developed. These large additions to our stores of knowledge have not only supplied new evidence and illustrations bearing on old problems, but have affected the whole current of philosophic thought.

If we lose something of the freshness of modern inquiry by going back to the philosophy of two centuries ago, we gain by taking up questions nearer their source, when they were presented with greater purity and simplicity. Already we are falling too much under the direction of the schools of thought of our own day. What we have to dread is the authority not so much of the past, as of the present, — the overshadowing influence, the pres¬ tige, of great names and European reputation. Great distance affects the imagination and cows the intellect even more than great antiquity. The best discipline for enabling us fairly to

INTRODUCTORY.

think our own thoughts is to escape from the heated discussions of the hour, the glare and turmoil of the work actually going on around us, and go back to study essentially the same questions under the softer light and still atmosphere of a former age. The spirit of partisanship is rife among us, not only in politics and religion, but in what should be the calm domain of science and abstract thought. We take sides too eagerly in a number of hot disputes, where the combatants apparently think more of triumph¬ ing over their opponents than of the progress of discovery or the interests of truth. Some of our savans seem more ambitious to be accounted hard hitters, than to be first in peaceful victories over ignorance and sin. The taste for these gladiatorial exhibitions has been fostered by the unhappy transference of the arena of contest to periodicals weekly or bi-monthly, and even to the newspapers, where the shouts of a mob are the guerdon of victory. It is a relief to go back to a century in which the war of words was conducted only in folios read by the erudite few, and of which the personal animosities have long since been buried.

But is not the admission now made a hazardous one ? What profit, it may be asked, can there be in constantly grinding the same corn over again in the old mill ? Or what gain in repeating the labor of Penelope, forever weaving and unravelling the same web ? None at all, we may frankly answer, if the only object in life is to be fed and clothed. To adopt the language of Mr. Wallace, “ the very terms in which Lord Bacon scornfully depre¬ ciated one great result of philosophy must be accepted in their literal truth. Like a nun, a virgin consecrated to God, she pro¬ duces no offspring; she bears no fruit.” The question which jesting Pilate addressed to our Saviour, and did not wait for an answer, “ What is truth ? ” has not been answered yet, and proba¬ bly never will be. But is there no advantage, then, in the en¬ deavor to find an answer, though it be announced only with a stammering tongue ? The problems with which we are even now occupied were problems in the days of Thales and Xenophanes — in the very infancy of the human race; they are unsolved yet, and many of them are perhaps insoluble. But what of that? Philosophy, as its very name imports, is not so much truth, as the search after truth. Hamilton with good reason quotes Seneca, sordet cognita veritas ; the truth already known is already of no account, as it no longer enters into the activity of intellect, but only cumbers it with passive accumulations. The wealth, polit¬ ical economists tell us, which is literally locked up, only rusts or

MODERN PHILOSOPHY.

rots; and we might as well put dried leaves or slate stones in its place. It is really of use only when it is in the form of capital, constantly changing its form, circulating from hand to hand, and thereby keeping up the industry and life of the whole community. So is it with knowledge. , Truths already found out and demon¬ strated, and then duly classified and ticketed, so as to be stored away in books or in the pigeon-holes of memory, are really unpro¬ ductive and dead wealth, serving no purpose but to pamper the vanity of its possessor. A large portion of it is voluntarily for¬ gotten, for it is registered in books, and with the aid of cata¬ logues, indices, and vade-mecums , we know where to find it. “We cannot be too often reminded,” says an eminent empiricist, “ that the really great men, and those who are the sole permanent benefactors of their species, are not the great experimenters, nor the great observers, nor the great readers, nor the great scholars; but the great thinkers. Thought is the creator and vivifier of all human affairs. Actions, facts, and external man¬ ifestations of every kind, often triumph for a while; but it is the progress of ideas which ultimately determines the progress of the world. Unless these are changed, every other change is superficial, and every improvement is precarious.” The world already has more facts at its command than it knows what to do with. The mind, like the body, can easily get food enough; what it craves is activity, — exercise and a good digestion. The naturalists, in respect to the mere materials of their science, are already suffering from the embarrassment of riches, and so are beginning to think that there is something better to do than to travel to the ends of the earth in order to add one or two new species or varieties to a list already numbering about one hundred thousand, carefully laid away and drying up in herbariums. In our own day and neighborhood, an earnest advocate of what are called “ utilitarian studies,” frankly confesses that “ the boundless nomenclature of natural history bids fair to exhaust the resources of all languages, as it has already done of most brains that have set about its amplification and its reduction to use.”

I am not decrying the proper worth of such collections. They have a use, though it is a subordinate one. Like encyclopaedias and dictionaries, they are good for reference, — that is, to aid in¬ quiry. They are serviceable, also, so far as they suggest new questions or feed the discussion of old ones, — so far as they stim¬ ulate and keep up research. But the means must never outrank the end. Always what is of highest moment is the search, the

INTRODUCTORY.

endeavor, the question not yet answered, the problem not yet solved, and, it may be, insoluble.

But why seek to estimate the loss or gain from an undertaking which at any rate is inevitable ? Men have been engaged in the pursuit of speculative truth ever since they began to think, though voices have never been wanting to admonish them that the end was unattainable. But the warning was unheeded, for it is self¬ contradictory. Aristotle long ago remarked, that we are compelled to philosophize in order to prove that philosophy itself is illusory and vain. Skepticism is as much a speculation and a system as dogmatism ; either is a nullity, if it does not rest on a philosophical basis. How happens it, that the endeavor which is always baffled has yet been constantly repeated for the last three thousand years ? The only possible answer is, that the effort itself is so irresistibly attractive that it must be reckoned a necessity of our nature.

First principles and ultimate principles mean precisely the same thing, the nominal' difference between them arising merely from that eud or aspect of the subject which happens to come first into view. Hence it is that every science, either in its initial steps or its final results, leads us infallibly to those higher truths, those laws of broadest generalization, those necessary and universal ideas, with which philosophy is specially concerned. Hence is it that the adepts in any of the special sciences never come to a full understanding of their own subjects of inquiry without encroach¬ ing upon metaphysical ground; and even our physicists find them¬ selves studying and teaching metaphysics unawares. The ideas of space and time form the groundwork of mathematics ; those of 'Substance and causality enter into every investigation of physics ; personality and obligation are conditions of morals; right is the foundation of law, beauty is the essence of art, supreme goodness is the inspiration of religion. When the doctrine of morphology was first explained to Schiller, he immediately exclaimed, “ This is not an observation , but an idea .” These discussions about the Reign of Law, the Origin of Species (which is but another name for Cosmogony), Pangenesis and Epigenesis, the Conservation and the Unity of Force, Morphology, Homology, and Development, — these discussions, which have been so far popularized by the savans that already they are carried on in the newspapers, — all belong to the border ground between facts cognized by sense, and the higher truths, independent of experience, which can be grasped only by pure reason. In them mere inductive science gives place to the anticipations of the intellect; and Plato’s subordination of

DEFINITION OF PHILOSOPHY.

the sensible to the intelligible world, the world of pure ideas, of typical and self-existent forms — to o^tojs ov — is realized in the most advanced speculations of modern physical science. It is the Nemesis of ancient metaphysics following hard upon the steps of the Baconian reform.

At the outset of every enterprise, especially in undertaking a new study, we need to know which field it is that we desire to enter and survey, what are its precise limits in every direction, and what are its relations to the surrounding territory. Other¬ wise, we shall be continually throwing away effort, and each step taken may only lead us farther away from the goal. Nowhere is this difficulty more felt than in Philosophy, in respect to the defini¬ tion and boundaries of which hardly any two writers or students are agreed. The word itself has a different use in England and America from what it has on the continent of Europe. Through¬ out Germany and France, it is at least so far restricted as to ex¬ clude physics, or the study of material things, whether organic or inorganic; and is limited to those inquiries which lead up to, or grow out of, the science of mind. At most, the physical sciences come into view so far only as the philosopher seeks to determine their relations with each other, and thereby their filiation, interde¬ pendence, and proper classification in a universal scheme of human knowledge; and even this is more properly a special philosophy, a philosophy of the sciences, than Philosophy itself, in the ab¬ stract. Hence we have the seeming contradiction and absurdity, that Comte and his followers write voluminous and ponderous works, one leading purpose of which is to prove that Philosophy as such is impossible and null, a delusion and a nonentity, consist¬ ing of