an outline of the history of christian thought since kant by edward caldwell moore parkman professor of theology in harvard university new york charles scribner's sons to adolf harnack on his sixtieth birthday by his first american pupil prefatory note it is hoped that this book may serve as an outline for a larger work, in which the judgments here expressed may be supported in detail. especially, the author desires to treat the literature of the social question and of the modernist movement with a fulness which has not been possible within the limits of this sketch. the philosophy of religion and the history of religions should have place, as also that estimate of the essence of christianity which is suggested by the contact of christianity with the living religions of the orient. pasque island, mass., _july_ , . contents chapter i a. introduction. . b. the background. . deism. . rationalism. . pietism. . Æsthetic idealism. . chapter ii idealistic philosophy. . kant. . fichte. . schelling. . hegel. . chapter iii theological reconstruction. . schleiermacher. . ritschl and the ritschlians. chapter iv the critical and historical movement. . strauss. . baur. . the canon. . the life of jesus. . the old testament. . the history of doctrine. . harnack. . chapter v the contribution of the sciences. . positivism. . naturalism and agnosticism. . evolution. . miracles. . the social sciences. . chapter vi the english-speaking peoples; action and reaction. . the poets. . coleridge. . the oriel school. . ersine and campbell. . maurice. . channing. . bushnell. . the catholic revival. . the oxford movement. . newman. . modernism. . robertson. . phillips brooks. . the broad church. . carlyle. . emerson. . arnold. . martineau. . james. . bibliography. . chapter i a. introduction the protestant reformation marked an era both in life and thought for the modern world. it ushered in a revolution in europe. it established distinctions and initiated tendencies which are still significant. these distinctions have been significant not for europe alone. they have had influence also upon those continents which since the reformation have come under the dominion of europeans. yet few would now regard the reformation as epoch-making in the sense in which that pre-eminence has been claimed. no one now esteems that it separates the modern from the mediæval and ancient world in the manner once supposed. the perspective of history makes it evident that large areas of life and thought remained then untouched by the new spirit. assumptions which had their origin in feudal or even in classical culture continued unquestioned. more than this, impulses in rational life and in the interpretation of religion, which showed themselves with clearness in one and another of the reformers themselves, were lost sight of, if not actually repudiated, by their successors. it is possible to view many things in the intellectual and religious life of the nineteenth century, even some which protestants have passionately reprobated, as but the taking up again of clues which the reformers had let fall, the carrying out of purposes of their movement which were partly hidden from themselves. men have asserted that the renaissance inaugurated a period of paganism. they have gloried that there supervened upon this paganism the religious revival which the reformation was. even these men will, however, not deny that it was the intellectual rejuvenation which made the religious reformation possible or, at all events, effective. nor can it be denied that after the revolution, in the protestant communities the intellectual element was thrust into the background. the practical and devotional prevailed. humanism was for a time shut out. there was more room for it in the roman church than among protestants. again, the renaissance itself had been not so much an era of discovery of a new intellectual and spiritual world. it had been, rather, the rediscovery of valid principles of life in an ancient culture and civilisation. that thorough-going review of the principles at the basis of all relations of the life of man, which once seemed possible to renaissance and reformation, was postponed to a much later date. when it did take place, it was under far different auspices. there is a remarkable unity in the history of protestant thought in the period from the reformation to the end of the eighteenth century. there is a still more surprising unity of protestant thought in this period with the thought of the mediæval and ancient church. the basis and methods are the same. upon many points the conclusions are identical. there was nothing of which the protestant scholastics were more proud than of their agreement with the fathers of the early church. they did not perceive in how large degree they were at one with christian thinkers of the roman communion as well. few seem to have realised how largely catholic in principle protestant thought has been. the fundamental principles at the basis of the reasoning have been the same. the notions of revelation and inspiration were identical. the idea of authority was common to both, only the instance in which that authority is lodged was different. the thoughts of god and man, of the world, of creation, of providence and prayer, of the nature and means of salvation, are similar. newman was right in discovering that from the first he had thought, only and always, in what he called catholic terms. it was veiled from him that many of those who ardently opposed him thought in those same terms. it is impossible to write upon the theme which this book sets itself without using the terms catholic and protestant in the conventional sense. the words stand for certain historic magnitudes. it is equally impossible to conceal from ourselves how misleading the language often is. the line between that which has been happily called the religion of authority and the religion of the spirit does not run between catholic and protestant. it runs through the middle of many protestant bodies, through the border only of some, and who will say that the roman church knows nothing of this contrast? the sole use of recurrence here to the historic distinction is to emphasise the fact that this distinction stands for less than has commonly been supposed. in a large way the history of christian thought, from earliest times to the end of the eighteenth century, presents a very striking unity. in contrast with this, that modern reflection which has taken the phenomenon known as religion and, specifically, that historic form of religion known as christianity, as its object, has indeed also slowly revealed the fact that it is in possession of certain principles. furthermore, these principles, as they have emerged, have been felt to be new and distinctive principles. they are essentially modern principles. they are the principles which, taken together, differentiate the thinker of the nineteenth century from all who have ever been before him. they are principles which unite all thinkers at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth centuries, in practically every portion of the world, as they think of all subjects except religion. it comes more and more to be felt that these principles must be reckoned with in our thought concerning religion as well. one of these principles is, for example, that of dealing in true critical fashion with problems of history and literature. long before the end of the age of rationalism, this principle had been applied to literature and history, other than those called sacred. the thorough going application of this scientific method to the literatures and history of the old and new testaments is almost wholly an achievement of the nineteenth century. it has completely altered the view of revelation and inspiration. the altered view of the nature of the documents of revelation has had immeasurable consequences for dogma. another of these elements is the new view of nature and of man's relation to nature. certain notable discoveries in physics and astronomy had proved possible of combination with traditional religion, as in the case of newton. or again, they had proved impossible of combination with any religion, as in the case of laplace. the review of the religious and christian problem in the light of the ever increasing volume of scientific discoveries--this is the new thing in the period which we have undertaken to describe. a theory of nature as a totality, in which man, not merely as physical, but even also as social and moral and religious being, has place in a series which suggests no break, has affected the doctrines of god and of man in a way which neither those who revered nor those who repudiated religion at the beginning of the nineteenth century could have imagined. another leading principle grows out of kant's distinction of two worlds and two orders of reason. that distinction issued in a new theory of knowledge. it laid a new foundation for an idealistic construing of the universe. in one way it was the answer of a profoundly religious nature to the triviality and effrontery into which the great rationalistic movement had run out. by it the philosopher gave standing forever to much that prophets and mystics in every age had felt to be true, yet had never been able to prove by any method which the ordered reasoning of man had provided. religion as feeling regained its place. ethics was set once more in the light of the eternal. the soul of man became the object of a scientific study. there have been thus indicated three, at least, of the larger factors which enter into an interpretation of christianity which may fairly be said to be new in the nineteenth century. they are new in a sense in which the intellectual elements entering into the reconsideration of christianity in the age of the reformation were not new. they are characteristic of the nineteenth century. they would naturally issue in an interpretation of christianity in the general context of the life and thought of that century. the philosophical revolution inaugurated by kant, with the general drift toward monism in the interpretation of the universe, separates from their forebears men who have lived since kant, by a greater interval than that which divided kant from plato. the evolutionary view of nature, as developed from schelling and comte through darwin to bergson, divides men now living from the contemporaries of kant in his youthful studies of nature, as those men were not divided from the followers of aristotle. of purpose, the phrase christian thought has been interpreted as thought concerning christianity. the problem which this book essays is that of an outline of the history of the thought which has been devoted, during this period of marvellous progress, to that particular object in consciousness and history which is known as christianity. christianity, as object of the philosophical, critical, and scientific reflection of the age--this it is which we propose to consider. our religion as affected in its interpretation by principles of thought which are already widespread, and bid fair to become universal among educated men--this it is which in this little volume we aim to discuss. the term religious thought has not always had this significance. philosophy of religion has signified, often, a philosophising of which religion was, so to say, the atmosphere. we cannot wonder if, in these circumstances, to the minds of some, the atmosphere has seemed to hinder clearness of vision. the whole subject of the philosophy of religion has within the last few decades undergone a revival, since it has been accepted that the aim is not to philosophise upon things in general in a religious spirit. on the contrary, the aim is to consider religion itself, with the best aid which current philosophy and science afford. in this sense only can we give the study of religion and christianity a place among the sciences. it remains true, now as always, that the majority, at all events, of those who have thought profoundly concerning christianity will be found to have been christian men. religion is a form of consciousness. it will be those who have had experience to which that consciousness corresponds, whose judgments can be supposed to have weight. that remark is true, for example, of æsthetic matters as well. to be a good judge of music one must have musical feeling and experience. to speak with any deeper reasonableness concerning faith, one must have faith. to think profoundly concerning christianity one needs to have had the christian experience. but this is very different from saying that to speak worthily of the christian religion, one must needs have made his own the statements of religion which men of a former generation may have found serviceable. the distinction between religion itself, on the one hand, and the expression of religion in doctrines and rites, or the application of religion through institutions, on the other hand, is in itself one of the great achievements of the nineteenth century. it is one which separates us from christian men in previous centuries as markedly as it does any other. it is a simple implication of the kantian theory of knowledge. the evidence for its validity has come through the application of historical criticism to all the creeds. mystics of all ages have seen the truth from far. the fact that we may assume the prevalence of this distinction among christian men, and lay it at the base of the discussion we propose, is assuredly one of the gains which the nineteenth century has to record. it follows that not all of the thinkers with whom we have to deal will have been, in their own time, of the number of avowedly christian men. some who have greatly furthered movements which in the end proved fruitful for christian thought, have been men who in their own time alienated from professed and official religion. in the retrospect we must often feel that their opposition to that which they took to be religion was justifiable. yet their identification of that with religion itself, and their frank declaration of what they called their own irreligion, was often a mistake. it was a mistake to which both they and their opponents in due proportion contributed. a still larger class of those with whom we have to do have indeed asserted for themselves a personal adherence to christianity. but their identification with christianity, or with a particular christian church, has been often bitterly denied by those who bore official responsibility in the church. the heresy of one generation is the orthodoxy of the next. there is something perverse in gottfried arnold's maxim, that the true church, in any age, is to be found with those who have just been excommunicated from the actual church. however, the maxim points in the direction of a truth. by far the larger part of those with whom we have to do have had acknowledged relation to the christian tradition and institution. they were christians and, at the same time, true children of the intellectual life of their own age. they esteemed it not merely their privilege, but also their duty, to endeavour to ponder anew the religious and christian problem, and to state that which they thought in a manner congruous with the thoughts which the men of the age would naturally have concerning other themes. it has been to most of these men axiomatic that doctrine has only relative truth. doctrine is but a composite of the content of the religious consciousness with materials which the intellect of a given man or age or nation in the total view of life affords. as such, doctrine is necessary and inevitable for all those who in any measure live the life of the mind. but the condition of doctrine is its mobile, its fluid and changing character. it is the combination of a more or less stable and characteristic experience, with a reflection which, exactly in proportion as it is genuine, is transformed from age to age, is modified by qualities of race and, in the last analysis, differs with individual men. dogma is that portion of doctrine which has been elevated by decree of ecclesiastical authority, or even only by common consent, into an absoluteness which is altogether foreign to its nature. it is that part of doctrine concerning which men have forgotten that it had a history, and have decided that it shall have no more. in its very notion dogma confounds a statement of truth, which must of necessity be human, with the truth itself, which is divine. in its identification of statement and truth it demands credence instead of faith. men have confounded doctrine and dogma; they have been taught so to do. they have felt the history of christian doctrine to be an unfruitful and uninteresting theme. but the history of christian thought would seek to set forth the series of interpretations put, by successive generations, upon the greatest of all human experiences, the experience of the communion of men with god. these interpretations ray out at all edges into the general intellectual life of the age. they draw one whole set of their formative impulses from the general intellectual life of the age. it is this relation of the progress of doctrine to the general history of thought in the nineteenth century, which the writer designed to emphasise in choosing the title of this work. as was indicated in the closing paragraphs of the preceding volume of this series, the issue of the age of rationalism had been for the cause of religion on the whole a distressing one. the majority of those who were resolved to follow reason were agreed in abjuring religion. that they had, as it seems to us, but a meagre understanding of what religion is, made little difference in their conclusion. bishop butler complains in his _analogy_ that religion was in his time hardly considered a subject for discussion among reasonable men. schleiermacher in the very title of his _discourses_ makes it plain that in germany the situation was not different. if the reasonable eschewed religious protests in germany, evangelicals in england, the men of the great revivals in america, many of them, took up a corresponding position as towards the life of reason, especially toward the use of reason in religion. the sinister cast which the word rationalism bears in much of the popular speech is evidence of this fact. to many minds it appeared as if one could not be an adherent both of reason and of faith. that was a contradiction which kant, first of all in his own experience, and then through his system of thought, did much to transcend. the deliverance which he wrought has been compared to the deliverance which luther in his time achieved for those who had been in bondage to scholasticism in the roman church. although kant has been dead a hundred years, both the defence of religion and the assertion of the right of reason are still, with many, on the ancient lines. there is no such strife between rationality and belief as has been supposed. but the confidence of that fact is still far from being shared by all christians at the beginning of the twentieth century. the course in reinterpretation and readjustment of christianity, which that calm conviction would imply, is still far from being the one taken by all of those who bear the christian name. if it is permissible in the writing of a book like this to have an aim besides that of the most objective delineation, the author may perhaps be permitted to say that he writes with the earnest hope that in some measure he may contribute also to the establishment of an understanding upon which so much both for the church and the world depends. we should say a word at this point as to the general relation of religion and philosophy. we realise the evil which kant first in clearness pointed out. it was the evil of an apprehension which made the study of religion a department of metaphysics. the tendency of that apprehension was to do but scant justice to the historical content of christianity. religion is an historical phenomenon. especially is this true of christianity. it is a fact, or rather, a vast complex of facts. it is a positive religion. it is connected with personalities, above all with one transcendent personality, that of jesus. it sprang out of another religion which had already emerged into the light of world-history. it has been associated for two thousand years with portions of the race which have made achievements in culture and left record of those achievements. it is the function of speculation to interpret this phenomenon. when speculation is tempted to spin by its own processes something which it would set beside this historic magnitude or put in place of it, and still call that christianity, we must disallow the claim. it was the licence of its speculative endeavour, and the identification of these endeavours with christianity, which finally discredited hegelianism with religious men. nor can it be denied that theologians themselves have been sinners in this respect. the disposition to regard christianity as a revealed and divinely authoritative metaphysic began early and continued long. when the theologians also set out to interpret christianity and end in offering us a substitute, which, if it were acknowledged as absolute truth, would do away with christianity as historic fact, as little can we allow the claim. again, christianity exists not merely as a matter of history. it exists also as a fact in living consciousness. it is the function of psychology to investigate that consciousness. we must say that, accurately speaking, there is no such thing as christian philosophy. there are philosophies, good or bad, current or obsolete. these are christian only in being applied to the history of christianity and the content of the christian consciousness. there is, strictly speaking, no such thing as christian consciousness. there is the human consciousness, operating with and operated upon by the impulse of christianity. it is the great human experience from which we single out for investigation that part which is concerned with religion, and call that the religious experience. it is essential, therefore, that those general investigations of human consciousness and experience, as such, which are being carried on all about us should be reckoned with, if our christian life and thought are not altogether to fall out of touch with advancing knowledge. for this reason we have misgiving about the position of some followers of ritschl. their opinion, pushed to the limit, seems to mean that we have nothing to do with philosophy, or with the advance of science. religion is a feeling of which he alone who possesses it can give account. he alone who has it can appreciate such an account when given. we acknowledge that religion is in part a feeling. but that feeling must have rational justification. it must also have rational guidance if it is to be saved from degenerating into fanaticism. to say that we have nothing to do with philosophy ends in our having to do with a bad philosophy. in that case we have a philosophy with which we operate without having investigated it, instead of having one with which we operate because we have investigated it. the philosophy of which we are aware we have. the philosophy of which we are not aware has us. no doubt, we may have religion without philosophy, but we cannot formulate it even in the rudest way to ourselves, we cannot communicate it in any way whatsoever to others, except in the terms of a philosophy. in the general sense in which every man has a philosophy, this is merely the deposit of the regnant notions of the time. it may be amended or superseded, and our theology with it. yet while it lasts it is our one possible vehicle of expression. it is the interpreter and the critique of what we have experienced. it is not open to a man to retreat within himself and say, i am a christian, i feel thus, i think so, these thoughts are the content of christianity. the consequence of that position is that we make the religious experience to be no part of the normal human experience. if we contend that the being a christian is the great human experience, that the religious life is the true human life, we must pursue the opposite course. we must make the religious life coherent with all the other phases and elements of life. if we would contend that religious thought is the truest and deepest thought, we must begin at this very point. we must make it conform absolutely to the laws of all other thought. to contend for its isolation, as an area by itself and a process subject only to its own laws, is to court the judgment of men, that in its zeal to be christian it has ceased to be thought. our most profitable mode of procedure would seem to be this. we shall seek to follow, as we may, those few main movements of thought marking the nineteenth century which have immediate bearing upon our theme. we shall try to register the effect which these movements have had upon religious conceptions. it will not be possible at any point to do more than to select typical examples. perhaps the true method is that we should go back to the beginnings of each one of these movements. we should mark the emergence of a few great ideas. it is the emergence of an idea which is dramatically interesting. it is the moment of emergence in which that which is characteristic appears. our subject is far too complicated to permit that the ramifications of these influences should be followed in detail. modifications, subtractions, additions, the reader must make for himself. these main movements of thought are, as has been said, three in number. we shall take them in their chronological order. there is first the philosophical revolution which is commonly associated with the name of kant. if we were to seek with arbitrary exactitude to fix a date for the beginning of this movement, this might be the year of the publication of his first great work, _kritik der reinen vernunft_, in .[ ] kant was indeed himself, both intellectually and spiritually, the product of tendencies which had long been gathering strength. he was the exponent of ideas which in fragmentary way had been expressed by others, but he gathered into himself in amazing fashion the impulses of his age. out from some portion of his works lead almost all the paths which philosophical thinkers since his time have trod. one cannot say even of his work, _der religion innerhalb der grenzen der blossen vernunft_, , that it is the sole source, or even the greatest source, of his influence upon religious thinking. but from the body of his work as a whole, there came a new theory of knowledge which has changed completely the notion of revelation. there came also a view of the universe as an ideal unity which, especially as elaborated by fichte, schelling and hegel, has radically altered the traditional ideas of god, of man, of nature and of their relations, the one to the other. [footnote : in the text the titles of books which are discussed are given for the first time in the language in which they are written. books which are merely alluded to are mentioned in english.] we shall have then, secondly, to note the historical and critical movement. it is the effort to apply consistently and without fear the maxims of historical and literary criticism to the documents of the old and new testaments. with still greater arbitrariness, and yet with appreciation of the significance of strauss' endeavour, we might set as the date of the full impact of this movement upon cherished religious convictions, that of the publication of his _leben jesu_, . this movement has supported with abundant evidence the insight of the philosophers as to the nature of revelation. it has shown that that which we actually have in the scriptures is just that which kant, with his reverence for the freedom of the human mind, had indicated that we must have, if revelation is to be believed in at all. with this changed view has come an altered attitude toward many statements which devout men had held that they must accept as true, because these were found in scripture. with this changed view the whole history, whether of the jewish people or of jesus and the origins of the christian church, has been set in a new light. in the third place, we shall have to deal with the influence of the sciences of nature and of society, as these have been developed throughout the whole course of the nineteenth century. if one must have a date for an outstanding event in this portion of the history, perhaps that of the publication of darwin's _origin of species_, , would serve as well as any other. the principles of these sciences have come to underlie in a great measure all the reflection of cultivated men in our time. in amazing degree they have percolated, through elementary instruction, through popular literature, and through the newspapers, to the masses of mankind. they are recognised as the basis of a triumphant material civilisation, which has made everything pertaining to the inner and spiritual life seem remote. through the social sciences there has come an impulse to the transfer of emphasis from the individual to society, the disposition to see everything in its social bearing, to do everything in the light of its social antecedents and of its social consequences. here again we have to note the profoundest influence upon religious conceptions. the very notion connected with the words redemption and salvation appears to have been changed. in the case of each of these particular movements the church, as the organ of christianity, has passed through a period of antagonism to these influences, of fear of their consequences, of resistance to their progress. in large portions of the church at the present moment the protest is renewed. the substance of these modern teachings, which yet seem to be the very warp and woof of the intellectual life of the modern man, is repudiated and denounced. it is held to imperil the salvation of the soul. it is pronounced impossible of combination with belief in a divinely revealed truth concerning the universe and a saving faith for men. in other churches, outside the churches, the forms in which men hold their christianity have been in large measure adjusted to the results of these great movements of thought. they have, as these men themselves believe, been immensely strengthened and made sure by those very influences which were once considered dangerous. in connection with this indication of the nature of our materials, we have sought to say something of the time of emergence of the salient elements. it may be in point also to give some intimation of the place of their origins, that is to say, of the participation of the various nationalities in this common task of the modern christian world. that international quality of scholarship which seems to us natural, is a thing of very recent date. that a discovery should within a reasonable interval become the property of all educated men, that scholars of one nation should profit by that which the learned of another land have done, appears to us a thing to be assumed. it has not always been so, especially not in matters of religious faith. the roman church and the latin language gave to medieval christian thought a certain international character. again the renaissance and reformation had a certain world wide quality. the relations of the english church in the reigns of the last tudors to germany, switzerland, and france are not to be forgotten. but the life of the protestant national churches in the eighteenth century shows little of this trait. the barriers of language counted for something. the provincialism of national churches and denominational predilections counted for more. in the philosophical movement we must begin with the germans. the movement of english thought known as deism was a distinct forerunner of the rationalist movement, within the particular area of the discussion of religion. however, it ran into the sand. the rationalist movement, considered in its other aspects, never attained in england in the eighteenth century the proportions which it assumed in france and germany. in france that movement ran its full course, both among the learned and, equally, as a radical and revolutionary influence among the unlearned. it had momentous practical consequences. in no sphere was it more radical than in that of religion. not in vain had voltaire for years cried, '_Écrasez l'infâme_,' and rousseau preached that the youth would all be wise and pure, if only the kind of education which he had had in the religious schools were made impossible. there was for many minds no alternative between clericalism and atheism. quite logically, therefore, after the downfall of the republic and of the empire there set in a great reaction. still it was simply a reversion to the absolute religion of the roman catholic church as set forth by the jesuit party. there was no real transcending of the rationalist movement in france in the interest of religion. there has been no great constructive movement in religious thought in france in the nineteenth century. there is relatively little literature of our subject in the french language until recent years. in germany, on the other hand, the rationalist movement had always had over against it the great foil and counterpoise of the pietist movement. rationalism ran a much soberer course than in france. it was never a revolutionary and destructive movement as in france. it was not a dilettante and aristocratic movement as deism had been in england. it was far more creative and constructive than elsewhere. here also before the end of the century it had run its course. yet here the men who transcended the rationalist movement and shaped the spiritual revival in the beginning of the nineteenth century were men who had themselves been trained in the bosom of the rationalist movement. they had appropriated the benefits of it. they did not represent a violent reaction against it, but a natural and inevitable progress within and beyond it. this it was which gave to the germans their leadership at the beginning of the nineteenth century in the sphere of the intellectual life. it is worthy of note that the great heroes of the intellectual life in germany, in the period of which we speak, were most of them deeply interested in the problem of religion. the first man to bring to england the leaven of this new spirit, and therewith to transcend the old philosophical standpoint of locke and hume, was coleridge with his _aids to reflection_, published in . but even after this impulse of coleridge the movement remained in england a sporadic and uncertain one. it had nothing of the volume and conservativeness which belonged to it in germany. coleridge left among his literary remains a work published in under the title of _confessions of an enquiring spirit_. what is here written is largely upon the basis of intuition and forecast like that of remarus and lessing a half-century earlier in germany. strauss and others were already at work in germany upon the problem of the new testament, vatke and reuss upon that of the old. this was a different kind of labour, and destined to have immeasurably greater significance. george eliot's maiden literary labour was the translation into english of strauss' first edition. but the results of that criticism were only slowly appropriated by the english. the ostensible results were at first radical and subversive in the extreme. they were fiercely repudiated in strauss' own country. yet in the main there was acknowledgement of the correctness of the principle for which strauss had stood. hardly before the decade of the sixties was that method accepted in england in any wider way, and hardly before the decade of the seventies in america. ronan was the first to set forth, in , the historical and critical problem in the new spirit, in a way that the wide public which read french understood. when we come to speak of the scientific movement it is not easy to say where the leadership lay. many englishmen were in the first rank of investigators and accumulators of material. the first attempt at a systematisation of the results of the modern sciences was that of auguste comte in his _philosophie positive_. this philosophy, however, under its name of positivism, exerted a far greater influence, both in comte's time and subsequently, in england than it did in france. herbert spencer, after the middle of the decade of the sixties, essayed to do something of the sort which comte had attempted. he had far greater advantages for the solution of the problem. comte's foil in all of his discussions of religion was the catholicism of the south of france. none the less, the religion which in his later years he created, bears striking resemblance to that which in his earlier years he had sought to destroy. spencer's attitude toward religion was in his earlier work one of more pronounced antagonism or, at least, of more complete agnosticism than in later days he found requisite to the maintenance of his scientific freedom and conscientiousness. both of these men represent the effort to construe the world, including man, from the point of view of the natural and also of the social sciences, and to define the place of religion in that view of the world which is thus set forth. the fact that there had been no such philosophical readjustment in great britain as in germany, made the acceptance of the evolutionary theory of the universe, which more and more the sciences enforced, slower and more difficult. the period of resistance on the part of those interested in religion extended far into the decade of the seventies. a word may be added concerning america. the early settlers had been proud of their connection with the english universities. an extraordinary number of them, in massachusetts at least, had been cambridge men. yet a tradition of learning was later developed, which was not without the traits of isolation natural in the circumstances. the residence, for a time, even of a man like berkeley in this country, altered that but little. the clergy remained in singular degree the educated and highly influential class. the churches had developed, in consonance with their puritan character, a theology and philosophy so portentous in their conclusions, that we can without difficulty understand the reaction which was brought about. wesleyanism had modified it in some portions of the country, but intensified it in others. deism apparently had had no great influence. when the rationalist movement of the old world began to make itself felt, it was at first largely through the influence of france. the religious life of the country at the beginning of the nineteenth century was at a low ebb. men like belaham and priestley were known as apostles of a freer spirit in the treatment of the problem of religion. priestley came to pennsylvania in his exile. in the large, however, one may say that the new england liberal movement, which came by and by to be called unitarian, was as truly american as was the orthodoxy to which it was opposed. channing reminds one often of schleiermacher. there is no evidence that he had learned from schleiermacher. the liberal movement by its very impetuosity gave a new lease of life to an orthodoxy which, without that antagonism, would sooner have waned. the great revivals, which were a benediction to the life of the country, were thought to have closer relation to the theology of those who participated in them than they had. the breach between the liberal and conservative tendencies of religious thought in this country came at a time when the philosophical reconstruction was already well under way in europe. the debate continued until long after the biblical-critical movement was in progress. the controversy was conducted upon both sides in practically total ignorance of these facts. there are traces upon both sides of that insight which makes the mystic a discoverer in religion, before the logic known to him will sustain the conclusion which he draws. there will always be interest in the literature of a discussion conducted by reverent and, in their own way, learned and original men. yet there is a pathos about the sturdy originality of good men expended upon a problem which had been already solved. the men in either camp proceeded from assumptions which are now impossible to the men of both. it was not until after the civil war that american students of theology began in numbers to study in germany. it is a much more recent thing that one may assume the immediate reading of foreign books, or boast of current contribution from american scholars to the labour of the world's thought upon these themes. we should make a great mistake if we supposed that the progress has been an unceasing forward movement. quite the contrary, in every aspect of it the life of the early part of the nineteenth century presents the spectacle of a great reaction. the resurgence of old ideas and forces seems almost incredible. in the political world we are wont to attribute this fact to the disillusionment which the french revolution had wrought, and the suffering which the napoleonic empire had entailed. the reaction in the world of thought, and particularly of religious thought, was, moreover, as marked as that in the world of deeds. the roman church profited by this swing of the pendulum in the minds of men as much as did the absolute state. almost the first act of pius vii. after his return to rome in , was the revival of the society of jesus, which had been after long agony in dissolved by the papacy itself. 'altar and throne' became the watchword of an ardent attempt at restoration of all of that which millions had given their lives to do away. all too easily, one who writes in sympathy with that which is conventionally called progress may give the impression that our period is one in which movement has been all in one direction. that is far from being true. one whose very ideal of progress is that of movement in directions opposite to those we have described may well say that the nineteenth century has had its gifts for him as well. the life of mankind is too complex that one should write of it with one exclusive standard as to loss and gain. and whatever be one's standard the facts cannot be ignored. the france of the thirties and the forties saw a liberal movement within the roman church. the names of lamennais, of lacordaire, of montalembert and ozanam, the title _l'avenir_ occur to men's minds at once. perhaps there has never been in france a party more truly catholic, more devout, refined and tolerant, more fitted to heal the breach between the cultivated and the church. however, before the second empire, an end had been made of that. it cannot be said that the french church exactly favoured the infallibility. it certainly did not stand against the decree as in the old days it would have done. the decree of infallibility is itself the greatest witness of the steady progress of reaction in the roman church. that action, theoretically at least, does away with even that measure of popular constitution in the church to which the end of the middle age had held fast without wavering, which the mightiest of popes had not been able to abolish and the council of trent had not dared earnestly to debate. whether the decree of is viewed in the light of the _syllabus of errors_ of , and again of the _encyclical_ of , or whether the encyclicals are viewed in the light of the decree, the fact remains that a power has been given to the curia against what has come to be called modernism such as innocent never wielded against the heresies of his day. meantime, so hostile are exactly those peoples among whom roman catholicism has had full sway, that it would almost appear that the hope of the roman church is in those countries in which, in the sequence of the reformation, a religious tolerance obtains, which the roman church would have done everything in its power to prevent. again, we should deceive ourselves if we supposed that the reaction had been felt only in roman catholic lands. a minister of prussia forbade kant to speak concerning religion. the prussia of frederick william iii. and of frederick william iv. was almost as reactionary as if metternich had ruled in berlin as well as in vienna. the history of the censorship of the press and of the repression of free thought in germany until the year is a sad chapter. the ruling influences in the lutheran church in that era, practically throughout germany, were reactionary. the universities did indeed in large measure retain their ancient freedom. but the church in which hengstenberg could be a leader, and in which staunch seventeenth-century lutheranism could be effectively sustained, was almost doomed to further that alienation between the life of piety and the life of learning which is so much to be deplored. in the church the conservatives have to this moment largely triumphed. in the theological faculties of the universities the liberals in the main have held their own. the fact that both church and faculties are functionaries of the state is often cited as sure in the end to bring about a solution of this unhappy state of things. for such a solution, it must be owned, we wait. the england of the period after had indeed no such cause for reaction as obtained in france or even in germany. the nation having had its revolution in the seventeenth century escaped that of the eighteenth. still the country was exhausted in the conflict against napoleon. commercial, industrial and social problems agitated it. the church slumbered. for a time the liberal thought of england found utterance mainly through the poets. by the decade of the thirties movement had begun. the opinions of the noetics in oriel college, oxford, now seem distinctly mild. they were sufficient to awaken newman and pusey, froude, keble, and the rest. then followed the most significant ecclesiastical movement which the church of england in the nineteenth century has seen, the oxford or tractarian movement, as it has been called. there was conscious recurrence of a mind like that of newman to the catholic position. he had never been able to conceive religion in any other terms than those of dogma, or the christian assurance on any other basis than that of external authority. nothing could be franker than the antagonism of the movement, from its inception, to the liberal spirit of the age. by inner logic newman found himself at last in the roman church. yet the anglo-catholic movement is to-day overwhelmingly in the ascendant in the english church. the broad churchmen of the middle of the century have had few successors. it is the high church which stands over against the great mass of the dissenting churches which, taken in the large, can hardly be said to be theologically more liberal than itself. it is the high church which has showed franciscanlike devotion in the problems of social readjustment which england to-day presents. it has shown in some part of its constituency a power of assimilation of new philosophical, critical and scientific views, which makes all comparison of it with the roman church misleading. and yet it remains in its own consciousness catholic to the core. in america also the vigour of onset of the liberalising forces at the beginning of this century tended to provoke reaction. the alarm with which the defection of so considerable a portion of the puritan church was viewed gave coherence to the opposition. there were those who devoutly held that the hope of religion lay in its further liberalisation. equally there were those who deeply felt that the deliverance lay in resistance to liberalisation. one of the concrete effects of the division of the churches was the separation of the education of the clergy from the universities, the entrusting it to isolated theological schools under denominational control. the system has done less harm than might have been expected. yet at present there would appear to be a general movement of recurrence to the elder tradition. the maintenance of the religious life is to some extent a matter of nurture and observances, of religious habit and practice. this truth is one which liberals, in their emphasis upon liberty and the individual, are always in danger of overlooking. the great revivals of religion in this century, like those of the century previous, have been connected with a form of religious thought pronouncedly pietistic. the building up of religious institutions in the new regions of the west, and the participation of the churches of the country in missions, wear predominantly this cast. antecedently, one might have said that the lack of ecclesiastical cohesion among the christians of the land, the ease with which a small group might split off for the furtherance of its own particular view, would tend to liberalisation. it is doubtful whether this is true. isolation is not necessarily a condition of progress. the emphasis upon trivial differences becomes rather a condition of their permanence. the middle of the nineteenth century in the united states was a period of intense denominationalism. that is synonymous with a period of the stagnation of christian thought. the religion of a people absorbed in the practical is likely to be one which they at least suppose to be a practical religion. in one age the most practical thing will appear to men to be to escape hell, in another to further socialism. the need of adjustment of religion to the great intellectual life of the world comes with contact with that life. what strikes one in the survey of the religious thought of the country, by and large, for a century and a quarter, is not so much that it has been reactionary, as that it has been stationary. almost every other aspect of the life of our country, including even that of religious life as distinguished from religious thought, has gone ahead by leaps and bounds. this it is which in a measure has created the tension which we feel. b. the background deism in england before the end of the civil war a movement for the rationalisation of religion had begun to make itself felt. it was in full force in the time of the revolution of . it had not altogether spent itself by the middle of the eighteenth century. the movement has borne the name of deism. in so far as it had one watchword, this came to be 'natural religion.' the antithesis had in mind was that to revealed religion, as this had been set forth in the tradition of the church, and particularly under the bibliolatry of the puritans. it is a witness to the liberty of speech enjoyed by englishmen in that day and to their interest in religion, that such a movement could have arisen largely among laymen who were often men of rank. it is an honour to the english race that, in the period of the rising might of the rational spirit throughout the western world, men should have sought at once to utilise that force for the restatement of religion. yet one may say quite simply that this undertaking of the deists was premature. the time was not ripe for the endeavour. the rationalist movement itself needed greater breadth and deeper understanding of itself. above all, it needed the salutary correction of opposing principles before it could avail for this delicate and difficult task. religion is the most conservative of human interests. rationalism would be successful in establishing a new interpretation of religion only after it had been successful in many other fields. the arguments of the deists were never successfully refuted. on the contrary, the striking thing is that their opponents, the militant divines and writings of numberless volumes of 'evidences for christianity,' had come to the same rational basis with the deists. they referred even the most subtle questions to the pure reason, as no one now would do. the deistical movement was not really defeated. it largely compelled its opponents to adopt its methods. it left a deposit which is more nearly rated at its worth at the present than it was in its own time. but it ceased to command confidence, or even interest. samuel johnson said, as to the publication of bolingbroke's work by his executor, three years after the author's death: 'it was a rusty old blunderbuss, which he need not have been afraid to discharge himself, instead of leaving a half-crown to a scotchman to let it off after his death.' it is a great mistake, however, in describing the influence of rationalism upon christian thought to deal mainly with deism. english deism made itself felt in france, as one may see in the case of voltaire. kant was at one time deeply moved by some english writers who would be assigned to this class. in a sense kant showed traces of the deistical view to the last. the centre of the rationalistic movement had, however, long since passed from england to the continent. the religious problem was no longer its central problem. we quite fail to appreciate what the nineteenth century owes to the eighteenth and to the rationalist movement in general, unless we view this latter in a far greater way. rationalism in kant wrote a tractate entitled, _was ist aufklärung?_ he said: 'aufklärung is the advance of man beyond the stage of voluntary immaturity. by immaturity is meant a man's inability to use his understanding except under the guidance of another. the immaturity is voluntary when the cause is not want of intelligence but of resolution. _sapere aude!_ "dare to use thine own understanding," is therefore the motto of free thought. if it be asked, "do we live in a free-thinking age?" the answer is, "no, but we live in an age of free thought." as things are at present, men in general are very far from possessing, or even from being able to acquire, the power of making a sure and right use of their own understanding without the guidance of others. on the other hand, we have clear indications that the field now lies, nevertheless, open before them, to which they can freely make their way and that the hindrances to general freedom of thought are gradually becoming less. and again he says: 'if we wish to insure the true use of the understanding by a method which is universally valid, we must first critically examine the laws which are involved in the very nature of the understanding itself. for the knowledge of a truth which is valid for everyone is possible only when based on laws which are involved in the nature of the human mind, as such, and have not been imported into it from without through facts of experience, which must always be accidental and conditional.' there speaks, of course, the prophet of the new age which was to transcend the old rationalist movement. men had come to harp in complacency upon reason. they had never inquired into the nature and laws of action of the reason itself. kant, though in fullest sympathy with its fundamental principles, was yet aware of the excesses and weaknesses in which the rationalist movement was running out. no man was ever more truly a child of rationalism. no man has ever written, to whom the human reason was more divine and inviolable. yet no man ever had greater reserves within himself which rationalism, as it had been, had never touched. it was he, therefore, who could lay the foundations for a new and nobler philosophy for the future. the word _aufklärung_, which the speech of the fatherland furnished him, is a better word than ours. it is a better word than the french _l'illuminisme_, the enlightenment. still we are apparently committed to the term rationalism, although it is not an altogether fortunate designation which the english-speaking race has given to a tendency practically universal in the thinking of europe, from about to the beginning of the nineteenth century. historically, the rationalistic movement was the necessary preliminary for the modern period of european civilization as distinguished from the ecclesiastically and theologically determined culture which had prevailed up to that time. it marks the great cleft between the ancient and mediæval world of culture on the one hand and the modern world on the other. the reformation had but pushed ajar the door to the modern world and then seemed in surprise and fear about to close it again. the thread of the renaissance was taken up again only in the enlightenment. the stream flowed underground which was yet to fertilise the modern world. we are here mainly concerned to note the breadth and universality of the movement. it was a transformation of culture, a change in the principles underlying civilisation, in all departments of life. it had indeed, as one of its most general traits, the antagonism to ecclesiastical and theological authority. whatever it was doing, it was never without a sidelong glance at religion. that was because the alleged divine right of churches and states was the one might which it seemed everywhere necessary to break. the conflict with ecclesiasticism, however, was taken up also by pietism, the other great spiritual force of the age. this was in spite of the fact that the pietists' view of religion was the opposite of the rationalist view. rationalism was characterised by thorough-going antagonism to supernaturalism with all its consequences. this arose from its zeal for the natural and the human, in a day when all men, defenders and assailants of religion alike, accepted the dictum that what was human could not be divine, the divine must necessarily be the opposite of the human. in reality this general trait of opposition to religion deceives us. it is superficial. in large part the rationalists were willing to leave the question of religion on one side if the ecclesiastics would let them alone. this is true in spite of the fact that the pot-house rationalism of germany and france in the eighteenth century found the main butt of its ridicule in the priesthood and the church. on its sober side, in the studies of scholars, in the bureaux of statesmen, in the laboratories of discoverers, it found more solid work. it accomplished results which that other trivial aspect must not hide from us. troeltsch first in our own day has given us a satisfactory account of the vast achievement of the movement in every department of human life.[ ] it annihilated the theological notion of the state. in the period after the thirty years' war men began to question what had been the purpose of it all. diplomacy freed itself from jesuitical and papal notions. it turned preponderantly to commercial and economic aims. a secular view of the purpose of god in history began to prevail in all classes of society. the grand monarque was ready to proclaim the divine right of the state which was himself. still, not until the period of his dotage did that claim bear any relation to what even he would have called religion. publicists, both catholic and protestant, sought to recur to the _lex naturæ_ in contradistinction with the old _lex divina_. the natural rights of man, the rights of the people, the rationally conditioned rights of the state, a natural, prudential, utilitarian morality interested men. one of the consequences of this theory of the state was a complete alteration in the thought of the relation of state and church. the nature of the church itself as an empirical institution in the midst of human society was subjected to the same criticism with the state. men saw the church in a new light. as the state was viewed as a kind of contract in men's social interest, so the church was regarded as but a voluntary association to care for their religious interests. it was to be judged according to the practical success with which it performed this function. [footnote : troeltsch, art. 'aufklärung' in herzog-hauck, _realencylopädie_, aufl., bd. ii., s. f.] then also, in the economic and social field the rational spirit made itself felt. commerce and the growth of colonies, the extension of the middle class, the redistribution of wealth, the growth of cities, the dependence in relations of trade of one nation upon another, all these things shook the ancient organisation of society. the industrial system grew up upon the basis of a naturalistic theory of all economic relations. unlimited freedom in labour and in the use of capital were claimed. there came a great revolution in public opinion upon all matters of morals. the ferocity of religious wars, the cruelty of religious controversies, the bigotry of the confessional, these all, which, only a generation earlier, had been taken by long-suffering humanity as if they had been matters of course, were now viewed with contrition by the more exalted spirits and with contempt and embitterment by the rest. men said, if religion can give us not better morality than this, it is high time we looked to the natural basis of morality. natural morality came to be the phrase ever on the lips of the leading spirits. too frequently they had come to look askance at the morality of those who alleged a supernatural sanction for that which they at least enjoined upon others. we come in this field also, as in others, upon the assertion of the human as nobler and more beautiful than that which had by the theologians been alleged to be divine. the assertion came indeed to be made in ribald and blasphemous forms, but it was not without a great measure of provocation. then there was the altered view of nature which came through the scientific discoveries of the age. bacon, copernicus, kepler, galileo, gassendi, newton, are the fathers of the modern sciences. these are the men who brought new worlds to our knowledge and new methods to our use. that the sun does not move about the earth, that the earth is but a speck in space, that heaven cannot be above nor hell beneath, these are thoughts which have consequences. instead of the old deductive method, that of the mediæval aristotelianism, which had been worse than fruitless in the study of nature, men now set out with a great enthusiasm to study facts, and to observe their laws. modern optics, acoustics, chemistry, geology, zoology, psychology and medicine, took their rises within the period of which we speak. the influence was indescribable. newton might maintain his own simple piety side by side, so to say, with his character, as a scientific man, though even he did not escape the accusation of being a unitarian. in the resistance which official religion offered at every step to the advance of the sciences, it is small wonder if natures less placid found the maintenance of their ancestral faith too difficult. natural science was deistic with locke and voltaire, it was pantheistic in the antique sense with shaftesbury, it was pantheistic-mystical with spinoza, spiritualistic with descartes, theistic with leibnitz, materialistic with the men of the encyclopædia. it was orthodox with nobody. the miracle as traditionally defined became impossible. at all events it became the millstone around the neck of the apologists. the movement went to an extreme. all the evils of excess upon this side from which we since have suffered were forecast. they were in a measure called out by the evils and errors which had so long reigned upon the other side. again, in the field of the writing of history and of the critique of ancient literatures, the principles of rational criticism were worked out and applied in all seriousness. then these maxims began to be applied, sometimes timidly and sometimes in scorn and shallowness, to the sacred history and literature as well. to claim, as the defenders of the faith were fain to do, that this one department of history was exempt, was only to tempt historians to say that this was equivalent to confession that we have not here to do with history at all. nor can we overlook the fact that the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries witnessed a great philosophical revival. here again it is the rationalist principle which is everywhere at work. the observations upon nature, the new feeling concerning man, the vast complex of facts and impulses which we have been able in these few words to suggest, demanded a new philosophical treatment. the philosophy which now took its rise was no longer the servant of theology. it was, at most, the friend, and even possibly the enemy, of theology. before the end of the rationalist period it was the master of theology, though often wholly indifferent to theology, exactly because of its sense of mastery. the great philosophers of the eighteenth century, hume, berkeley, and kant, belong with a part only of their work and tendency to the rationalist movement. still their work rested upon that which had already been done by spinoza and malebranche, by hobbes and leibnitz, by descartes and bayle, by locke and wolff, by voltaire and the encyclopædists. with all of the contrasts among these men there are common elements. there is an ever increasing antipathy to the thought of original sin and of supernatural revelation, there is the confidence of human reason, the trust in the will of man, the enthusiasm for the simple, the natural, the intelligible and practical, the hatred of what was scholastic and, above all, the repudiation of authority. all these elements led, toward the end of the period, to the effort at the construction of a really rational theology. leibnitz and lessing both worked at that problem. however, not until after the labours of kant was it possible to utilise the results of the rationalist movement for the reconstruction of theology. if evidence for this statement were wanting, it could be abundantly given from the work of herder. he was younger than kant, yet the latter seems to have exerted but slight influence upon him. he earnestly desired to reinterpret christianity in the new light of his time, yet perhaps no part of his work is so futile. pietism allusion has been made to pietism. we have no need to set forth its own achievements. we must recur to it merely as one of the influences which made the transition from the century of rationalism to bear, in germany, an aspect different from that which it bore in any other land. pietism had at first much in common with rationalism. it shared with the latter its opposition to the whole administration of religion established by the state, its antagonism to the social distinctions which prevailed, its individualism, its emphasis upon the practical. it was part of a general religious reaction against ecclesiasticism, as were also jansenism in france, and methodism in england, and the whitefieldian revival in america. but, through the character of spener, and through the peculiarity of german social relations, it gained an influence over the educated classes, such as methodism never had in england, nor, on the whole, the great awakening in america. in virtue of this, german pietism was able, among influential persons, to present victorious opposition to the merely secular tendencies of the rationalistic movement. in no small measure it breathed into that movement a religious quality which in other lands was utterly lacking. it gave to it an ethical seriousness from which in other places it had too often set itself free. in england there had followed upon the age of the great religious conflict one of astounding ebb of spiritual interest. men turned with all energy to the political and economic interests of a wholly modern civilisation. they retained, after a short period of friction, a smug and latitudinarian orthodoxy, which methodism did little to change. in france not only was the huguenot church annihilated, but the jansenist movement was savagely suppressed. the tyranny of the bourbon state and the corruption of the gallican church which was so deeply identified with it caused the rationalist movement to bear the trait of a passionate opposition to religion. in the time of pascal, jansenism had a moment when it bade fair to be to france what pietism was to germany. later, in the anguish and isolation of the conflict the movement lost its poise and intellectual quality. in germany, even after the temporary alliance of pietism and rationalism against the church had been transcended, and the length and breadth of their mutual antagonism had been revealed, there remained a deep mutual respect and salutary interaction. obscurantists and sentimentalists might denounce rationalism. vulgar ranters like dippel and barth might defame religion. that had little weight as compared with the fact that klopstock, hamann and herder, jacobi, goethe and jean paul, had all passed at some time under the influence of pietism. lessing learned from the moravians the undogmatic essence of religion. schleiermacher was bred among the devoted followers of zinzendorf. even the radicalism of kant retained from the teaching of his pietistic youth the stringency of its ethic, the sense of the radical evil of human nature and of the categorical imperative of duty. it would be hard to find anything to surpass his testimony to the purity of character and spirit of his parents, or the beauty of the home life in which he was bred. such facts as these made themselves felt both in the philosophy and in the poetry of the age. the rationalist movement itself came to have an ethical and spiritual trait. the triviality, the morbidness and superstition of pietism received their just condemnation. but among the leaders of the nation in every walk of life were some who felt the drawing to deal with ethical and religious problems in the untrammelled fashion which the century had taught. we may be permitted to try to show the meaning of pietism by a concrete example. no one can read the correspondence between the youthful schleiermacher and his loving but mistaken father, or again, the lifelong correspondence of schleiermacher with his sister, without receiving, if he has any religion of his own, a touching impression of what the pietistic religion meant. the father had long before, unknown to the son, passed through the torments of the rational assault upon a faith which was sacred to him. he had preached, through years, in the misery of contradiction with himself. he had rescued his drowning soul in the ark of the most intolerant confessional orthodoxy. in the crisis of his son's life he pitiably concealed these facts. they should have been the bond of sympathy. the son, a sorrowful little motherless boy, was sent to the moravian school at niesky, and then to barby. he was to escape the contamination of the universities, and the woes through which his father had passed. even there the spirit of the age pursued him. the precocious lad, in his loneliness, raised every question which the race was wrestling with. he long concealed these facts, dreading to wound the man he so revered. then in a burst of filial candour, he threw himself upon his father's mercy, only to be abused and measurelessly condemned. he had his way. he resorted to halle, turned his back on sacred things, worked in titanic fashion at everything but the problem of religion. at least he kept his life clean and his soul sensitive among the flagrantly immoral who were all about him, even in the pietists' own university. he laid the foundations for his future philosophical construction. he bathed in the sentiments and sympathies, poetic, artistic and humanitarian, of the romanticist movement. in his early berlin period he was almost swept from his feet by its flood. he rescued himself, however, by his rationalism and romanticism into a breadth and power of faith which made him the prophet of the new age. by him, for a generation, men like-minded saved their souls. as one reads, one realises that it was the pietists' religion which saved him, and which, in another sense, he saved. his recollections of his instruction among the herrnhuter are full of beauty and pathos. his sister never advanced a step upon the long road which he travelled. yet his sympathy with her remained unimpaired. the two poles of the life of the age are visible here. the episode, full of exquisite personal charm, is a veritable miniature of the first fifty years of the movement which we have to record. no one did for england or for france what schleiermacher had done for the fatherland. Æsthetic idealism besides pietism, the germany of the end of the eighteenth century possessed still another foil and counterpoise to its decadent rationalism. this was the so-called æsthetic-idealistic movement, which shades off into romanticism. the debt of schleiermacher to that movement has been already hinted at. it was the revolt of those who had this in common with the pietists, that they hated and despised the outworn rationalism. they thought they wanted no religion. it is open to us to say that they misunderstood religion. it was this misunderstanding which schleiermacher sought to bring home to them. what religion they understood, ecclesiasticism, roman or lutheran, or again, the banalities and fanaticisms of middle-class pietism, they despised. their war with rationalism was not because it had deprived man of religion. it had been equally destructive of another side of the life of feeling, the æsthetic. their war was not on behalf of the good, it was in the name of the beautiful. rationalism had starved the soul, it had minimised and derided feeling. it had suppressed emotion. it had been fatal to art. it was barren of poetry. it had had no sympathy with history and no understanding of history. it had reduced everything to the process by which two and two make four. the pietists said that the frenzy for reason had made man oblivious of the element of the divine. the æsthetic idealists said that it had been fatal to the element of the human. from this point of view their movement has been called the new humanism. the glamour of life was gone, they said. mystery had vanished. and mystery is the womb of every art. rationalism had been absolutely uncreative, only and always destructive. rousseau had earlier uttered this wail in france, and had greatly influenced certain minds in germany. shelley and keats were saying something of the sort in england. even as to wordsworth, it may be an open question if his religion was not mainly romanticism. all these men used language which had been conventionally associated with religion, to describe this other emotion. rationalism had ended in proving deadly to ideals. this was true. but men forgot for the moment how glorious an ideal it had once been to be rational and to assert the rationality of the universe. still the time had come when, in germany at all events, the great cry was, 'back to the ideal.' it is curious that men always cry 'back' when they mean 'forward.' for it was not the old idealism, either religious or æsthetic, which they were seeking. it was a new one in which the sober fruits of rationalism should find place. still, for the moment, as we have seen, the air was full of the cry, 'back to the state by divine right, back to the church, back to the middle age, back to the beauty of classical antiquity.' the poetry, the romance, the artistic criticism of this movement set themselves free at a stroke from theological bondage and from the externality of conventional ethics. it shook off the dust of the doctrinaires. it ridiculed the petty utilitarianism which had been the vogue. it had such an horizon as men had never dreamed before. it owed that horizon to the rationalism it despised. from its new elevation it surveyed all the great elements of the life of man. it saw morals and religion, language and society, along with art and itself, as the free and unconscious product through the ages, of the vitality of the human spirit. it must be said that it neither solved nor put away the ancient questions. especially through its one-sided æstheticism it veiled that element of dualism in the world which kant clearly saw, and we now see again, after a century which has sometimes leaned to easy pantheism. however, it led to a study of the human soul and of all its activities, which came closer to living nature than anything which the world had yet seen. to this group of æsthetic idealists belong, not to mention lesser names, lessing and hamann and winckelmann, but above all herder and goethe. herder was surely the finest spirit among the elder contemporaries of goethe. bitterly hostile to the rationalists, he had been moved by rousseau to enthusiasm for the free creative life of the human spirit. with lessing he felt the worth of every art in and for itself, and the greatness of life in its own fulfilment. he sets out from the analysis of the poetic and artistic powers, the appreciation of which seemed to him to be the key to the understanding of the spiritual world. then first he approaches the analysis of the ethical and religious feeling. all the knowledge and insight thus gained he gathers together into a history of the spiritual life of mankind. this life of the human spirit comes forth everywhere from nature, is bound to nature. it constitutes one whole with a nature which the devout soul calls god, and apprehends within itself as the secret of all that it is and does. even in the period in which he had become passionately christian, herder never was able to attain to a scientific establishing of his christianity, or to any sense of the specific aim of its development. he felt himself to be separated from kant by an impassable gulf. all the sharp antinomies among which kant moved, contrasts of that which is sensuous with that which is reasonable, of experience with pure conception, of substance and form in thought, of nature and freedom, of inclination and duty, seemed to herder grossly exaggerated, if not absolutely false. sometimes herder speaks as if the end of life were simply the happiness which a man gets out of the use of all his powers and out of the mere fact of existence. deeper is kant's contention, that the true aim of life can be only moral culture, even independent of happiness, or rather one must find his noblest happiness in that moral culture. at a period in his life when herder had undergone conversion to court orthodoxy at bückeburg and threatened to throw away that for which his life had stood, he was greatly helped by goethe. the identification of herder with christianity continued to be more deep and direct than that of goethe ever became, yet goethe has also his measure of significance for our theme. if he steadied herder in his religious experience, he steadied others in their poetical emotionalism and artistic sentimentality, which were fast becoming vices of the time. the classic repose of his spirit, his apparently unconscious illustration of the ancient maxim, 'nothing too much,' was the more remarkable, because there were few influences in the whole gamut of human life to which he did not sooner or later surrender himself, few experiences which he did not seek, few areas of thought upon which he did not enter. systems and theories were never much to his mind. a fact, even if it were inexplicable, interested him much more. to the evolution of formal thought in his age he held himself receptive rather than directing. he kept, to the last, his own manner of brooding and creating, within the limits of a poetic impressionableness which instinctively viewed the material world and the life of the soul in substantially similar fashion. there is something almost humorous in the way in which he eagerly appropriated the results of the philosophising of his time, in so far as he could use these to sustain his own positions, and caustically rejected those which he could not thus use. he soon got by heart the negative lessons of voltaire and found, to use the words which he puts into the mouth of faust, that while it freed him from his superstitions, at the same time it made the world empty and dismal beyond endurance. in the mechanical philosophy which presented itself in the _système de la nature_ as a positive substitute for his lost faith, he found only that which filled his poet's soul with horror. 'it appeared to us,' he says, 'so grey, so cimmerian and so dead that we shuddered at it as at a ghost. we thought it the very quintessence of old age. all was said to be necessary, and therefore there was no god. why not a necessity for a god to take its place among the other necessities!' on the other hand, the ordinary teleological theology, with its external architect of the world and its externally determined designs, could not seem to goethe more satisfactory than the mechanical philosophy. he joined for a time in rousseau's cry for the return to nature. but goethe was far too well balanced not to perceive that such a cry may be the expression of a very artificial and sophisticated state of mind. it begins indeed in the desire to throw off that which is really oppressive. it ends in a fretful and reckless revolt against the most necessary conditions of human life. goethe lived long enough to see in france that dissolution of all authority, whether of state or church, for which rousseau had pined. he saw it result in the return of a portion of mankind to what we now believe to have been their primitive state, a state in which they were 'red in tooth and claw.' it was not that paradisaic state of love and innocence, which, curiously enough, both rousseau and the theologians seem to have imagined was the primitive state. the thought of the discipline and renunciation of our lower nature in order to the realisation of a higher nature of mankind is written upon the very face of the second part of _faust_. certain passages in _dichtung_ and _wahrheit_ are even more familiar. 'our physical as well as our social life, morality, custom, knowledge of the world, philosophy, religion, even many an accidental occurrence in our daily life, all tell us that we must renounce.' 'renunciation, once for all, in view of the eternal,' that was the lesson which he said made him feel an atmosphere of peace breathed upon him. he perceived the supreme moral prominence of certain christian ideas, especially that of the atonement as he interpreted it. 'it is altogether strange to me,' he writes to jacobi, 'that i, an old heathen, should see the cross planted in my own garden, and hear christ's blood preached without its offending me.' goethe's quarrel with christianity was due to two causes. in the first place, it was due to his viewing christianity as mainly, if not exclusively, a religion of the other world, as it has been called, a religion whose god is not the principle of all life and nature and for which nature and life are not divine. in the second place, it was due to the prominence of the negative or ascetic element in christianity as commonly presented, to the fact that in that presentation the law of self-sacrifice bore no relation to the law of self-realisation. in both of these respects he would have found himself much more at home with the apprehension of christianity which we have inherited from the nineteenth century. the programme of charity which he outlines in the _wanderjahre_ as a substitute for religion would be taken to-day, so far as it goes, as a rather moderate expression of the very spirit of the christian religion. chapter ii idealistic philosophy the causes which we have named, religious and æsthetic, as well as purely speculative, led to such a revision of philosophical principles in germany as took place in no other land. the new idealistic philosophy, as it took shape primarily at the hands of kant, completed the dissolution of the old rationalism. it laid the foundation for the speculative thought of the western world for the century which was to come. the answers which æstheticism and pietism gave to rationalism were incomplete. they consisted largely in calling attention to that which rationalism had overlooked. kant's idealism, however, met the intellectual movement on its own grounds. it triumphed over it with its own weapons. the others set feeling over against thought. he taught men a new method in thinking. the others put emotion over against reason. he criticised in drastic fashion the use which had been made of reason. he inquired into the nature of reason. he vindicated the reasonableness of some truths which men had indeed felt to be indefeasibly true, but which they had not been able to establish by reasoning. kant immanuel kant was born in in königsberg, possibly of remoter scottish ancestry. his father was a saddler, as melanchthon's had been an armourer and wolff's a tanner. his native city with its university was the scene of his whole life and labour. he was never outside of prussia except for a brief interval when königsberg belonged to russia. he was a german professor of the old style. studying, teaching, writing books, these were his whole existence. he was the fourth of nine children of a devoted pietist household. two of his sisters served in the houses of friends. the consistorial-rath opened the way to the university. an uncle aided him to publish his first books. his earlier interest was in the natural sciences. he was slow in coming to promotion. only after was he full professor of logic and metaphysics. in he published the first of the books upon which rests his world-wide fame. nevertheless, he lived to see the triumph of his philosophy in most of the german universities. his subjects are abstruse, his style involved. it never occurred to him to make the treatment of his themes easier by use of the imagination. he had but a modicum of that quality. he was hostile to the pride of intellect often manifested by petty rationalists. he was almost equally hostile to excessive enthusiasm in religion. the note of his life, apart from his intellectual power, was his ethical seriousness. he was in conflict with ecclesiastical personages and out of sympathy with much of institutional religion. none the less, he was in his own way one of the most religious of men. his brief conflict with wöllner's government was the only instance in which his peace and public honour were disturbed. he never married. he died in königsberg in . he had been for ten years so much enfeebled that his death was a merciful release. kant used the word 'critique' so often that his philosophy has been called the 'critical philosophy.' the word therefore needs an explanation. kant himself distinguished two types of philosophy, which he called the dogmatic and critical types. the essence of a dogmatic philosophy is that it makes belief to rest upon knowledge. its endeavour is to demonstrate that which is believed. it brings out as its foil the characteristically sceptical philosophy. this esteems that the proofs advanced in the interest of belief are inadequate. the belief itself is therefore an illusion. the essence of a critical philosophy, on the other hand, consists in this, that it makes a distinction between the functions of knowing and believing. it distinguishes between the perception of that which is in accordance with natural law and the understanding of the moral meaning of things.[ ] kant thus uses his word critique in accordance with the strict etymological meaning of the root. he seeks to make a clear separation between the provinces of belief and knowledge, and thus to find an adjustment of their claims. of an object of belief we may indeed say that we know it. yet we must make clear to ourselves that we know it in a different sense from that in which we know physical fact. faith, since it does not spring from the pure reason, cannot indeed, as the old dogmatisms, both philosophical and theological, have united in asserting, be demonstrated by the reason. equally it cannot, as scepticism has declared, be overthrown by the pure reason. the ancient positive dogmatism had been the idealistic philosophy of plato and aristotle. the old negative dogmatism had been the materialism of the epicureans. to plato the world was the realisation of ideas. ideas, spiritual entities, were the counterparts and necessary antecedents of the natural objects and actual facts of life. to the epicureans, on the other hand, there are only material bodies and natural laws. there are no ideas or purposes. in the footsteps of the former moved all the scholastics of the middle age, and again, even locke and leibnitz in their so-called 'natural theology.' in the footsteps of the latter moved the men who had made materialism and scepticism to be the dominant philosophy of france in the latter half of the eighteenth century. the aim of kant was to resolve this age-long contradiction. free, unprejudiced investigation of the facts and laws of the phenomenal world can never touch the foundations of faith. natural science can lead in the knowledge only of the realm of the laws of things. it cannot give us the inner moral sense of those things. to speak of the purposes of nature as men had done was absurd. natural theology, as men had talked of it, was impossible. what science can give is a knowledge of the facts about us in the world, of the growth of the cosmos, of the development of life, of the course of history, all viewed as necessary sequences of cause and effect. [footnote : paulsen, _kant_, a. .] on the other hand, with the idealists, kant is fully persuaded that there is a meaning in things and that we can know it. there is a sense in life. with immediate certainty we set moral good as the absolute aim in life. this is done, however, not through the pure reason or by scientific thinking, but primarily through the will, or as kant prefers to call it, the practical reason. what is meant by the practical reason is the intelligence, the will and the affections operating together; that is to say, the whole man and not merely his intellect, directed to those problems upon which, in sympathy and moral reaction, the whole man must be directed and upon which the pure reason, the mere faculty of ratiocination, does not adequately operate. in the practical reason the will is the central thing. the will is that faculty of man to which moral magnitudes appeal. it is with moral magnitudes that the will is primarily concerned. the pure reason may operate without the will and the affections. the will, as a source of knowledge, never works without the intelligence and the affections. but it is the will which alone judges according to the predicates good and evil. the pure reason judges according to the predicates true and false. it is the practical reason which ventures the credence that moral worth is the supreme worth in life. it then confirms this ventured credence in a manifold experience that yields a certainty with which no certainty of objects given in the senses is for a moment to be compared. we know that which we have believed. we know it as well as that two and two make four. still we do not know it in the same way. nor can we bring knowledge of it to others save through an act of freedom on their part, which is parallel to the original act of freedom on our own part. how can these two modes of thought stand related the one to the other? kant's answer is that they correspond to the distinction between two worlds, the world of sense and the transcendental or supersensible world. the pure and the practical reason are the faculties of man for dealing with these two worlds respectively, the phenomenal and the noumenal. the world which is the object of scientific investigation is not the actuality itself. this is true in spite of the fact that to the common man the material and sensible is always, as he would say, the real. on the contrary, in kant's opinion the material world is only the presentation to our senses of something deeper, of which our senses are no judge. the reality lies behind this sensible presentation and appearance. the world of religious belief is the world of this transcendent reality. the spirit of man, which is not pure reason only, but moral will as well, recognises itself also as part of this reality. it expresses the essence of that mysterious reality in terms of its own essence. its own essence as free spirit is the highest aspect of reality of which it is aware. it may be unconscious of the symbolic nature of its language in describing that which is higher than anything which we know, by the highest which we do know. yet, granting that, and supposing that it is not a contradiction to attempt a description of the transcendent at all, there is no description which carries us so far. this series of ideas was perhaps that which gave to kant's philosophy its immediate and immense effect upon the minds of men wearied with the endless strife and insoluble contradiction of the dogmatic and sceptical spirits. we may disagree with much else in the kantian system. even here we may say that we have not two reasons, but only two functionings of one. we have not two worlds. the philosophical myth of two worlds has no better standing than the religious myth of two worlds. we have two characteristic aspects of one and the same world. these perfectly interpenetrate the one the other, if we may help ourselves with the language of space. each is everywhere present. furthermore, these actions of reason and aspects of world shade into one another by imperceptible degrees. almost all functionings of reason have something of the qualities of both. however, when all is said, it was of greatest worth to have had these two opposite poles of thought brought clearly to mind. the dogmatists, in the interest of faith, were resisting at every step the progress of the sciences, feeling that that progress was inimical to faith. the devotees of science were saying that its processes were of universal validity, its conclusions irresistible, the gradual dissolution of faith was certain. kant made plain that neither party had the right to such conclusions. each was attempting to apply the processes appropriate to one form of rational activity within the sphere which belonged to the other. nothing but confusion could result. the religious man has no reason to be jealous of the advance of the sciences. the interests of faith itself are furthered by such investigation. illusions as to fact which have been mistakenly identified with faith are thus done away. nevertheless, its own eternal right is assured to faith. with it lies the interpretation of the facts of nature and of history, whatever those facts may be found to be. with the practical reason is the interpretation of these facts according to their moral worth, a worth of which the pure reason knows nothing and scientific investigation reveals nothing. here was a deliverance not unlike that which the reformation had brought. the mingling of aristotelianism and religion in the scholastic theology luther had assailed. instead of assent to human dogmas luther had the immediate assurance of the heart that god was on his side. and what is that but a judgment of the practical reason, the response of the heart in man to the spiritual universe? it is given in experience. it is not mediated by argument. it cannot be destroyed by syllogism. it needs no confirmation from science. it is capable of combination with any of the changing interpretations which science may put upon the outward universe. the reformation had, however, not held fast to its great truth. it had gone back to the old scholastic position. it had rested faith in an essentially rationalistic manner upon supposed facts in nature and alleged events of history in connection with the revelation. it had thus jeopardised the whole content of faith, should these supposed facts of nature or events in history be at any time disproved. men had made faith to rest upon statements of scripture, alleging such and such acts and events. they did not recognise these as the naïve and childlike assumptions concerning nature and history which the authors of scripture would naturally have. when, therefore, these statements began with the progress of the sciences to be disproved, the defenders of the faith presented always the feeble spectacle of being driven from one form of evidence to another, as the old were in turn destroyed. the assumption was rife at the end of the eighteenth century that christianity was discredited in the minds of all free and reasonable men. its tenets were incompatible with that which enlightened men infallibly knew to be true. it could be no long time until the hollowness and sham would be patent to all. even the interested and the ignorant would be compelled to give it up. of course, the invincibly devout in every nation felt of instinct that this was not true. they felt that there is an inexpugnable truth of religion. still that was merely an intuition of their hearts. they were right. but they were unable to prove that they were right, or even to get a hearing with many of the cultivated of their age. to kant we owe the debt, that he put an end to this state of things. he made the real evidence for religion that of the moral sense, of the nonscience and hearts of men themselves. the real ground of religious conviction is the religious experience. he thus set free both science and religion from an embarrassment under which both laboured, and by which both had been injured. kant parted company with the empirical philosophy which had held that all knowledge arises from without, comes from experienced sensations, is essentially perception. this theory had not been able to explain the fact that human experience always conforms to certain laws. on the other hand, the philosophy of so-called innate ideas had sought to derive all knowledge from the constitution of the mind itself. it left out of consideration the dependence of the mind upon experience. it tended to confound the creations of its own speculation with reality, or rather, to claim correspondence with fact for statements which had no warrant in experience. there was no limit to which this speculative process might not be pushed. by this process the medieval theologians, with all gravity, propounded the most absurd speculations concerning nature. by this process men made the most astonishing declarations upon the basis, as they supposed, of revelation. they made allegations concerning history and the religious experience which the most rudimentary knowledge of history or reflection upon consciousness proved to be quite contrary to fact. both empiricism and the theory of innate ideas had agreed in regarding all knowledge as something given, from without or from within. the knowing mind was only a passive recipient of impressions thus imparted to it. it was as wax under the stylus, _tabula rasa_, clean paper waiting to be written upon. kant departed from this radically. he declared that all cognition rests upon the union of the mind's activity with its receptivity. the material of thought, or at least some of the materials of thought, must be given us in the multiformity of our perceptions, through what we call experience from the outer world. on the other hand, the formation of this material into knowledge is the work of the activity of our own minds. knowledge is the result of the systematising of experience and of reflection upon it. this activity of the mind takes place always in accordance with the mind's own laws. kant held them to the absolute dependence of knowledge upon material applied in experience. he compared himself to copernicus who had taught men that they themselves revolved around a central fact of the universe. they had supposed that the facts revolved about them. the central fact of the intellectual world is experience. this experience seems to be given us in the forms of time and space and cause. these are merely forms of the mind's own activity. it is not possible for us to know 'the thing in itself,' the _ding an sich_ in kant's phrase, which is the external factor in any sensation or perception. we cannot distinguish that external factor from the contribution to it, as it stands in our perception, which our own minds have made. if we cannot do that even for ourselves, how much less can we do it for others! it is the subject, the thinking being who says 'i,' which, by means of its characteristic and necessary active processes, in the perception of things under the forms of time and space, converts the chaotic material of knowledge into a regular and ordered world of reasoned experience. in this sense the understanding itself imposes laws, if not upon nature, yet, at least, upon nature as we can ever know it. there is thus in kant's philosophy a sceptical aspect. knowledge is limited to phenomena. we cannot by pure reason know anything of the world which lies beyond experience. this thought had been put forth by locke and berkeley, and by hume also, in a different way. but with kant this scepticism was not the gist of his philosophy. it was urged rather as the basis of the unconditioned character which he proposed to assert for the practical reason. kant's scepticism is therefore very different from that of hume. it does not militate against the profoundest religious conviction. yet it prepared the way for some of the just claims of modern agnosticism. according to kant, it is as much the province of the practical reason to lay down laws for action as it is the province of pure reason to determine the conditions of thought, though the practical reason can define only the form of action which shall be in the spirit of duty. it cannot present duty to us as an object of desire. desire can be only a form of self-love. in the end it reckons with the advantage of having done one's duty. it thus becomes selfish and degraded. the identification of duty and interest was particularly offensive to kant. he was at war with every form of hedonism. to do one's duty because one expects to reap advantage is not to have done one's duty. the doing of duty in this spirit simply resolves itself into a subtler and more pervasive form of selfishness. he castigates the popular presentation of religion as fostering this same fault. on the other hand, there is a trait of rigorism in kant, a survival of the ancient dualism, which was not altogether consistent with the implications of his own philosophy. this philosophy afforded, as we have seen, the basis for a monistic view of the universe. but to his mind the natural inclinations of man are opposed to good conscience and sound reason. he had contempt for the shallow optimism of his time, according to which the nature of man was all good, and needed only to be allowed to run its natural course to produce highest ethical results. he does not seem to have penetrated to the root of rousseau's fallacy, the double sense in which he constantly used the words 'nature' and 'natural.' otherwise, kant would have been able to repudiate the preposterous doctrine of rousseau, without himself falling back upon the doctrine of the radical evil of human nature. in this doctrine he is practically at one with the popular teaching of his own pietistic background, and with calvinism as it prevailed with many of the religiously-minded of his day. in its extreme statements the latter reminds one of the pagan and oriental dualisms which so long ran parallel to the development of christian thought and so profoundly influenced it. kant's system is not at one with itself at this point. according to him the natural inclinations of men are such as to produce a never-ending struggle between duty and desire. to desire to do a thing made him suspicious that he was not actuated by the pure spirit of duty in doing it. the sense in which man may be in his nature both a child of god, and, at the same time, part of the great complex of nature, was not yet clear either to kant or to his opponents. his pessimism was a reflection of his moral seriousness. yet it failed to reckon with that which is yet a glorious fact. one of the chief results of doing one's duty is the gradual escape from the desire to do the contrary. it is the gradual fostering by us, the ultimate dominance in us, of the desire to do that duty. even to have seen one's duty is the dawning in us of this high desire. in the lowest man there is indeed the superficial desire to indulge his passions. there is also the latent longing to be conformed to the good. there is the sense that he fulfils himself then only when he is obedient to the good. one of the great facts of spiritual experience is this gradual, or even sudden, inversion of standard within us. we do really cease to desire the things which are against right reason and conscience. we come to desire the good, even if it shall cost us pain and sacrifice to do it. paul could write: 'when i would do good, evil is present with me.' but, in the vividness of his identification of his willing self with his better self against his sinning self, he could also write: 'so then it is no more i that do the sin.' _das radicale böse_ of human nature is less radical than kant supposed, and 'the categorical imperative' of duty less externally categorical than he alleged. still it is the great merit of kant's philosophy to have brought out with all possible emphasis, not merely as against the optimism of the shallow, but as against the hedonism of soberer people, that our life is a conflict between inclination and duty. the claims of duty are the higher ones. they are mandatory, absolute. we do our duty whether or not we superficially desire to do it. we do our duty whether or not we foresee advantage in having done it. we should do it if we foresaw with clearness disadvantage. we should find our satisfaction in having done it, even at the cost of all our other satisfactions. there is a must which is over and above all our desires. this is what kant really means by the categorical imperative. nevertheless, his statement comes in conflict with the principle of freedom, which is one of the most fundamental in his system. the phrases above used only eddy about the one point which is to be held fast. there may be that in the universe which destroys the man who does not conform to it, but in the last analysis he is self-destroyed, that is, he chooses not to conform. if he is saved, it is because he chooses thus to conform. man would be then most truly man in resisting that which would merely overpower him, even if it were goodness. of course, there can be no goodness which overpowers. there can be no goodness which is not willed. nothing can be a motive except through awakening our desire. that which one desires is never wholly external to oneself. according to kant, morality becomes religion when that which the former shows to be the end of man is conceived also to be the end of the supreme law-giver, god. religion is the recognition of our duties as divine commands. the distinction between revealed and natural religion is stated thus: in the former we know a thing to be a divine command before we recognise it as our duty. in the latter we know it to be our duty before we recognise it as a divine command. religion may be both natural and revealed. its tenets may be such that man can be conceived as arriving at them by unaided reason. but he would thus have arrived at them at a later period in the evolution of the race. hence revelation might be salutary or even necessary for certain times and places without being essential at all times or, for that matter, a permanent guarantee of the truth of religion. there is nothing here which is new or original with kant. this line of reasoning was one by which men since lessing had helped themselves over certain difficulties. it is cited only to show how kant, too, failed to transcend his age in some matters, although he so splendidly transcended it in others. the orthodox had immemorially asserted that revelation imparted information not otherwise attainable, or not then attainable. the rationalists here allege the same. kant is held fast in this view. assuredly what revelation imparts is not information of any sort whatsoever, not even information concerning god. what revelation imparts is god himself, through the will and the affection, the practical reason. revelation is experience, not instruction. the revealers are those who have experienced god, jesus the foremost among them. they have experienced god, whom then they have manifested as best they could, but far more significantly in what they were than in what they said. there is surely the gravest exaggeration of what is statutory and external in that which kant says of the relation of ethics and religion. how can we know that to be a command of god, which does not commend itself in our own heart and conscience? the traditionalist would have said, by documents miraculously confirmed. it was not in consonance with his noblest ideas for kant to say that. on the other hand, that which i perceive to be my duty i, as religious man, feel to be a command of god, whether or not a mandate of god to that effect can be adduced. whether an alleged revelation from god inculcates such a truth or duty may be incidental. in a sense it is accidental. the content of all historic revelation is conditioned in the circumstances of the man to whom the revelation is addressed. it is clear that the whole matter of revelation is thus apprehended by kant with more externality than we should have believed. his thought is still essentially archaic and dualistic. he is, therefore, now and then upon the point of denying that such a thing as revelation is possible. the very idea of revelation, in this form, does violence to his fundamental principle of the autonomy of the human reason and will. at many points in his reflection it is transparently clear that nothing can ever come to a man, or be given forth by him, which is not creatively shaped by himself. as regards revelation, however, kant never frankly took that step. the implications of his own system would have led him to that step. they led to an idea of revelation which was psychologically in harmony with the assumptions of his system, and historically could be conceived as taking place without the interjection of the miraculous in the ordinary sense. if the divine revelation is to be thought as taking place within the human spirit, and in consonance with the laws of all other experience, then the human spirit must itself be conceived as standing in such relation to the divine that the eternal reason may express and reveal itself in the regular course of the mind's own activity. then the manifold moral and religious ideals of mankind in all history must take their place as integral factors also in the progress of the divine revelation. when we come to the more specific topics of his religious teaching, freedom, immortality, god, kant is prompt to assert that these cannot be objects of theoretical knowledge. insoluble contradictions arise whenever a proof of them is attempted. if an object of faith could be demonstrated it would cease to be an object of faith. it would have been brought down out of the transcendental world. were god to us an object among other objects, he would cease to be a god. were the soul a demonstrable object like any other object, it would cease to be the transcendental aspect of ourselves. kant makes short work of the so-called proofs for the existence of god which had done duty in the scholastic theology. with subtilty, sometimes also with bitter irony, he shows that they one and all assume that which they set out to prove. they are theoretically insufficient and practically unnecessary. they have such high-sounding names--the ontological argument, the cosmological, the physico-theological--that almost in spite of ourselves we bring a reverential mood to them. they have been set forth with solemnity by such redoubtable thinkers that there is something almost startling in the way that kant knocks them about. the fact that the ordinary man among us easily perceives that kant was right shows only how the climate of the intellectual world has changed. freedom, immortality, god, are not indeed provable. if given at all, they can be given only in the practical reason. still they are postulates in the moral order which makes man the citizen of an intelligible world. there can be no 'ought' for a being who is necessitated. we can perceive, and do perceive, that we ought to do a thing. it follows that we can do it. however, the hindrances to the realisation of the moral ideal are such that it cannot be realised in a finite time. hence the postulate of eternal life for the individual. finally, reason demands realisation of a supreme good, both a perfect virtue and a corresponding happiness. man is a final end only as a moral subject. there must be one who is not only a law-giver, but in himself also the realisation of the law of the moral world. kant's moral argument thus steps off the line of the others. it is not a proof at all in the sense in which they attempted to be proofs. the existence of god appears as a necessary assumption, if the highest good and value in the world are to be fulfilled. but the conception and possibility of realisation of a highest good is itself something which cannot be concluded with theoretical evidentiality. it is the object of a belief which in entire freedom is directed to that end. kant lays stress upon the fact that among the practical ideas of reason, that of freedom is the one whose reality admits most nearly of being proved by the laws of pure reason, as well as in conduct and experience. upon an act of freedom, then, belief rests. 'it is the free holding that to be true, which for the fulfilment of a purpose we find necessary.' now, as object of this 'free holding something to be true,' he sets forth the conception of the highest good in the world, to be realised through freedom. it is clear that before this argument would prove that a god is necessary to the realisation of the moral order, it would have to be shown that there are no adequate forces immanent within society itself for the establishment and fulfilment of that order. as a matter of fact, reflexion in the nineteenth century, devoted as it has been to the evolution of society, has busied itself with hardly anything more than with the study of those immanent elements which make for morality. it is therefore not an external guarantor of morals, such as kant thought, which is here given. it is the immanent god who is revealed in the history and life of the race, even as also it is the immanent god who is revealed in the consciousness of the individual soul. even the moral argument, therefore, in the form in which kant puts it, sounds remote and strange to us. his reasoning strains and creaks almost as if he were still trying to do that which he had just declared could not be done. what remains of significance for us, is this. all the debate about first causes, absolute beings, and the rest, gives us no god such as our souls need. if a man is to find the witness for soul, immortality and god at all, he must find it within himself and in the spiritual history of his fellows. he must venture, in freedom, the belief in these things, and find their corroboration in the contribution which they make to the solution of the mystery of life. one must venture to win them. one must continue to venture, to keep them. if it were not so, they would not be objects of faith. the source of the radical evil in man is an intelligible act of human freedom not further to be explained. moral evil is not, as such, transmitted. moral qualities are inseparable from the responsibility of the person who commits the deeds. yet this radical disposition to evil is to be changed into a good one, not altogether by a process of moral reformation. there is such a thing as a fundamental revolution of a man's habit of thought, a conscious and voluntary transference of a man's intention to obey, from the superficial and selfish desires which he has followed, to the deep and spiritual ones which he will henceforth allow. there is an epoch in a man's life when he makes the transition. he probably does it under the spell of personal influence, by the power of example, through the beauty of another personality. to kant salvation was character. it was of and in and by character. to no thinker has the moral participation of a man in the regeneration of his own character been more certain and necessary than to kant. yet, the change in direction of the will generally comes by an impulse from without. it comes by the impress of a noble personality. it is sustained by enthusiasm for that personality. kant has therefore a perfectly rational and ethical and vital meaning for the phrase 'new birth.' for the purpose of this impulse to goodness, nothing is so effective as the contemplation of an historical example of such surpassing moral grandeur as that which we behold in jesus. for this reason we may look to jesus as the ideal of goodness presented to us in flesh and blood. yet the assertion that jesus' historical personality altogether corresponds with the complete and eternal ethical ideal is one which we have no need to make. we do not possess in our own minds the absolute ideal with which in that assertion we compare him. the ethical ideal of the race is still in process of development. jesus has been the greatest factor urging forward that development. we ourselves stand at a certain point in that development. we have the ideals which we have because we stand at that point at which we do. the men who come after us will have a worthier ideal than we do. again, to say that jesus in his words and conduct expressed in its totality the eternal ethical ideal, would make of his life something different from the real, human life. every real, human life is lived within certain actual antitheses which call out certain qualities and do not call out others. they demand certain reactions and not others. this is the concrete element without which nothing historical can be conceived. to say that jesus lived in entire conformity to the ethical ideal so far as we are able to conceive it, and within the circumstances which his own time and place imposed, is the most that we can say. but in any case, kant insists, the real object of our religious faith is not the historic man, but the ideal of humanity well-pleasing to god. since this ideal is not of our own creation, but is given us in our super-sensible nature, it may be conceived as the son of god come down from heaven. the turn of this last phrase is an absolutely characteristic one, and brings out another quality of kant's mind in dealing with the christian doctrines. they are to him but symbols, forms into which a variety of meanings may be run. he had no great appreciation of the historical element in doctrine. he had no deep sense of the social element and of that for which christian institutions stand. we may illustrate with that which he says concerning christ's vicarious sacrifice. substitution cannot take place in the moral world. ethical salvation could not be conferred through such a substitution, even if this could take place. still, the conception of the vicarious suffering of christ may be taken as a symbolical expression of the idea that in the pain of self-discipline, of obedience and patience, the new man in us suffers, as it were vicariously, for the old. the atonement is a continual ethical process in the heart of the religious man. it is a grave defect of kant's religious philosophy, that it was so absolutely individualistic. had he realised more deeply than he did the social character of religion and the meaning of these doctrines, not alone as between man and god, but as between man and man, he surely would have drawn nearer to that interpretation of the doctrine of the atonement which has come more and more to prevail. this is the solution which finds in the atonement of christ the last and most glorious example of a universal law of human life and history. that law is that no redemptive good for men is ever secured without the suffering and sacrifice of those who seek to confer that good upon their fellows. kant was disposed to regard the traditional forms of christian doctrine, not as the old rationalism had done, as impositions of a priesthood or inherently absurd. he sought to divest them indeed of that which was speculatively untrue, though he saw in them only symbols of the great moral truths which lie at the heart of religion. the historical spirit of the next fifty years was to teach men a very different way of dealing with these same doctrines. * * * * * kant had said that the primary condition, fundamental not merely to knowledge, but to all connected experience, is the knowing, experiencing, thinking, acting self. it is that which says 'i,' the ego, the permanent subject. but that is not enough. the knowing self demands in turn a knowable world. it must have something outside of itself to which it yet stands related, the object of knowledge. knowledge is somehow the combination of those two, the result of their co-operation. how have we to think of this co-operation? both hume and berkeley had ended in scepticism as to the reality of knowledge. hume was in doubt as to the reality of the subject, berkeley as to that of the object. kant dissented from both. he vindicated the undoubted reality of the impression which we have concerning a thing. yet how far that impression is the reproduction of the thing as it is in itself, we can never perfectly know. what we have in our minds is not the object. it is a notion of that object, although we may be assured that we could have no such notion were there no object. equally, the notion is what it is because the subject is what it is. we can never get outside the processes of our own thought. we cannot know the thing as it is, the _ding-an-sich_, in kant's phrase. we know only that there must be a 'thing in itself.' fichte fichte asked, why? why must there be a _ding-an-sich_? why is not that also the result of the activity of the ego? why is not the ego, the thinking subject, all that is, the creator of the world, according to the laws of thought? if so much is reduced to idea, why not all? this was fichte's rather forced resolution of the old dualism of thought and thing. it is not the denial of the reality of things, but the assertion that their ideal element, that part of them which is not mere 'thing,' the action and subject of the action, is their underlying reality. according to kant things exist in a world beyond us. man has no faculty by which he can penetrate into that world. still, the farther we follow kant in his analysis the more does the contribution to knowledge from the side of the mind tend to increase, and the more does the factor in our impressions from the side of things tend to fade away. this basis of impression being wholly unknowable is as good as non-existent for us. yet it never actually disappears. there would seem to be inevitable a sort of kernel of matter or prick of sense about which all our thoughts are generated. yet this residue is a vanishing quantity. this seemed to fichte to be a self-contradiction and a half-way measure. only two positions appeared to him thorough-going and consequent. either one posits as fundamental the thing itself, matter, independent of any consciousness of it. so spinoza had taught. or else one takes consciousness, the conscious subject, independent of any matter or thing as fundamental. this last fichte claimed to be the real issue of kant's thought. he asserts that from the point of view of the thing in itself we can never explain knowledge. we may be as skilful as possible in placing one thing behind another in the relation of cause to effect. it is, however, an unending series. it is like the cosmogony of the eastern people which fabled that the earth rests upon the back of an elephant. the elephant stands upon a tortoise. the question is, upon what does the tortoise stand? so here, we may say, in the conclusive manner in which men have always said, that god made the world. yet sooner or later we come to the child's question: who made god? fichte rightly replied: 'if god is for us only an object of knowledge, the _ding-an-sich_ at the end of the series, there is no escape from the answer that man, the thinker, in thinking god made him.' all the world, including man, is but the reflexion, the revelation in forms of the finite, of an unceasing action of thought of which the ego is the object. nothing more paradoxical than this conclusion can be imagined. it seems to make the human subject, the man myself, the creator of the universe, and the universe only that which i happen to think it to be. this interpretation was at first put upon fichte's reasoning with such vigour that he was accused of atheism. he was driven from his chair in jena. only after several years was he called to a corresponding post in berlin. later, in his _vocation of man_, he brought his thought to clearness in this form: 'if god be only the object of thought, it remains true that he is then but the creation of man's thought. god is, however, to be understood as subject, as the real subject, the transcendent thinking and knowing subject, indwelling in the world and making the world what it is, indwelling in us and making us what we are. we ourselves are subjects only in so far as we are parts of god. we think and know only in so far as god thinks and knows and acts and lives in us. the world, including ourselves, is but the reflection of the thought of god, who thus only has existence. neither the world nor we have existence apart from him.' johann gottlieb fichte was born at rammenau in . his father was a ribbon weaver. he came of a family distinguished for piety and uprightness. he studied at jena, and became an instructor there in . he was at first a devout disciple of kant, but gradually separated himself from his master. there is a humorous tale as to one of his early books which was, through mistake of the publisher, put forth without the author's name. for a brief time it was hailed as a work of kant--his _critique of revelation_. fichte was a man of high moral enthusiasm, very uncompromising, unable to put himself in the place of an opponent, in incessant strife. the great work of his jena period was his _wissenschaftslehre_, . his popular works, _die bestimmung des menschen_ and _anweisung zum seligen leben_, belong to his berlin period. the disasters of drove him out of berlin. amidst the dangers and discouragements of the next few years he wrote his famous _reden an die deutsche nation_. he drew up the plan for the founding of the university of berlin. in he was called to be rector of the newly established university. he was, perhaps, the chief adviser of frederick william iii in the laying of the foundations of the university, which was surely a notable venture for those trying years. in the autumn of and again in , when the hospitals were full of sick and wounded after the russian and leipzig campaigns, fichte and his wife were unceasing in their care of the sufferers. he died of fever contracted in the hospital in january . according to fichte, as we have seen, the world of sense is the reflection of our own inner activity. it exists for us as the sphere and material of our duty. the moral order only is divine. we, the finite intelligences, exist only in and through the infinite intelligence. all our life is thus god's life. we are immortal because he is immortal. our consciousness is his consciousness. our life and moral force is his, the reflection and manifestation of his being, individuation of the infinite reason which is everywhere present in the finite. in god we see the world also in a new light. there is no longer any nature which is external to ourselves and unrelated to ourselves. there is only god manifesting himself in nature. even the evil is only a means to good and, therefore, only an apparent evil. we are god's immediate manifestation, being spirit like himself. the world is his mediate manifestation. the world of dead matter, as men have called it, does not exist. god is the reality within the forms of nature and within ourselves, by which alone we have reality. the duty to which a god outside of ourselves could only command us, becomes a privilege to which we need no commandment, but to the fulfilment of which, rather, we are drawn in joy by the forces of our own being. how a man could, even in the immature stages of these thoughts, have been persecuted for atheism, it is not easy to see, although we may admit that his earlier forms of statement were bewildering. when we have his whole thought before us we should say rather that it borders on acosmic pantheism, for which everything is god and the world does not exist. we have no need to follow fichte farther. suffice it to say, with reference to the theory of knowledge, that he had discovered that one could not stand still with kant. one must either go back toward the position of the old empiricism which assumed the reality of the world exactly as it appeared, or else one must go forward to an idealism more thorough-going than kant had planned. of the two paths which, with all the vast advance of the natural sciences, the thought of the nineteenth century might traverse, that of the denial of everything except the mechanism of nature, and that of the assertion that nature is but the organ of spirit and is instinct with reason, fichte chose the latter and blazed out the path along which all the idealists have followed him. in reference to the philosophy of religion, we must say that, with all the extravagance, the pantheism and mysticism of his phrases, fichte's great contribution was his breaking down of the old dualism between god and man which was still fundamental to kant. it was his assertion of the unity of man and god and of the life of god in man. this thought has been appropriated in all of modern theology. schelling it was the meagreness of fichte's treatment of nature which impelled schelling to what he called his outbreak into reality. nature will not be dismissed, as simply that which is not i. you cannot say that nature is only the sphere of my self-realisation. individuals are in their way the children of nature. they are this in respect of their souls as much as of their bodies. nature was before they were. nature is, moreover, not alien to intelligence. on the contrary, it is a treasure-house of intelligible forms which demand to be treated as such. it appeared to schelling, therefore, a truer idealism to work out an intelligible system of nature, exhibiting its essential oneness with personality. friedrich wilhelm joseph von schelling was born in at leonberg in württemberg. his father was a clergyman. he was precocious in his intellectual development and much spoiled by vanity. before he was twenty years old he had published three works upon problems suggested by fichte. at twenty-three he was extraordinarius at jena. he had apparently a brilliant career before him. he published his _erster entwurf eines systems der naturphilosophe_, , and also his _system des transcendentalen idealismus_, . even his short residence at jena was troubled by violent conflicts with his colleagues. it was brought to an end by his marriage with the wife of augustus von schlegel, who had been divorced for the purpose. from to he lived in munich in retirement. the long-expected books which were to fulfil his early promise never appeared. hegel's stricture was just. schelling had no taste for the prolonged and intense labour which his brilliant early works marked out. he died in , having reached the age of seventy-nine years, of which at least fifty were as melancholy and fruitless as could well be imagined. the dominating idea of schelling's philosophy of nature may be said to be the exhibition of nature as the progress of intelligence toward consciousness and personality. nature is the ego in evolution, personality in the making. all natural objects are visible analogues and counterparts of mind. the intelligence which their structure reveals, men had interpreted as residing in the mind of a maker of the world. nature had been spoken of as if it were a watch. god was its great artificer. no one asserted that its intelligence and power of development lay within itself. on the contrary, nature is always in the process of advance from lower, less highly organised and less intelligible forms, to those which are more highly organised, more nearly the counterpart of the active intelligence in man himself. the personality of man had been viewed as standing over against nature, this last being thought of as static and permanent. on the contrary, the personality of man, with all of its intelligence and free will, is but the climax and fulfilment of a long succession of intelligible forms in nature, passing upward from the inorganic to the organic, from the unconscious to the conscious, from the non-moral to the moral, as these are at last seen in man. of course, it was the life of organic nature which first suggested this notion to schelling. an organism is a self-moving, self-producing whole. it is an idea in process of self-realisation. what was observed in the organism was then made by schelling the root idea of universal nature. nature is in all its parts living, self-moving along the lines of its development, productivity and product both in one. empirical science may deal with separate products of nature. it may treat them as objects of analysis and investigation. it may even take the whole of nature as an object. but nature is not mere object. philosophy has to treat of the inner life which moves the whole of nature as intelligible productivity, as subject, no longer as object. personality has slowly arisen out of nature. nature was going through this process of self-development before there were any men to contemplate it. it would go through this process were there no longer men to contemplate it. schelling has here rounded out the theory of absolute idealism which fichte had carried through in a one-sided way. he has given us also a wonderful anticipation of certain modern ideas concerning nature's preparation for the doctrine of evolution, which was a stroke of genius in its way. he attempted to arrange the realm of unconscious intelligences in an ascending series which should bridge the gulf between the lowest of natural forms and the fully equipped organism in which self consciousness, with the intellectual, the emotional, and moral life, at last integrated. inadequate material and a fondness for analogies led schelling into vagaries in following out this scheme. nevertheless, it is only in detail that we can look askance at his attempt. in principle our own conception of the universe is the same. it is the dynamic view of nature and an application of the principle of evolution in the widest sense. his errors were those into which a man was bound to fall who undertook to forestall by a sweep of the imagination that which has been the result of the detailed and patient investigation of three generations. what schelling attempted was to take nature as we know it and to exhibit it as in reality a function of intelligence, pointing, through all the gradations of its varied forms, towards its necessary goal in self-conscious personality. instead, therefore, of our having in nature and personality two things which cannot be brought together, these become members of one great organism of intelligence of which the immanent god is the source and the sustaining power. these ideas constitute schelling's contribution to an idealistic and, of course, an essentially monistic view of the universe. the unity of man with god, fichte had asserted. schelling set forth the oneness of god and nature, and again of man and nature. the circle was complete. * * * * * if we have succeeded in conveying a clear idea of the movement of thought from kant to hegel, that idea might be stated thus. there are but three possible objects which can engage the thought of man. these are nature and man and god. there is the universe, of which we become aware through experience from our earliest childhood. then there is man, the man given in self-consciousness, primarily the man myself. in this sense man seems to stand over against nature. then, as the third possible object of thought, we have god. upon the thought of god we usually come from the point of view of the category of cause. god is the name which men give to that which lies behind nature and man as the origin and explanation of both. plato's chief interest was in man. he talked much concerning a god who was somehow the speculative postulate of the spiritual nature in man. aristotle began a real observation of nature. but the ancient and, still more, the mediæval study of nature was dominated by abstract and theological assumptions. these prevented any real study of that nature in the midst of which man lives, in reaction against which he develops his powers, and to which, on one whole side of his nature, he belongs. even in respect of that which men reverently took to be thought concerning god, they seem to have been unaware how much of their material was imaginative and poetic symbolism drawn from the experience of man. the traditional idea of revelation proved a disturbing factor. assuming that revelation gave information concerning god, and not rather the religious experience of communion with god himself, men accepted statements of the documents of revelation as if they had been definitions graciously given from out the realm of the unseen. in reality, they were but fetches from out the world of the known into the world of the unknown. the point of interest is this:--in all possible combinations in which, throughout the history of thought, these three objects had been set, the one with the others, they had always remained three objects. there was no essential relation of the one to the other. they were like the points of a triangle of which any one stood over against the other two. god stood over against the man whom he had fashioned, man over against the god to whom he was responsible. the consequences for theology are evident. when men wished to describe, for example, jesus as the son of god, they laid emphasis upon every quality which he had, or was supposed to have, which was not common to him with other men. they lost sight of that profound interest of religion which has always claimed that, in some sense, all men are sons of god and jesus was the son of man. jesus was then only truly honoured as divine when every trait of his humanity was ignored. similarly, when men spoke of revelation they laid emphasis upon those particulars in which this supposed method of coming by information was unlike all other methods. knowledge derived directly from god through revelation was in no sense the parallel of knowledge derived by men in any other way. so also god stood over against nature. god was indeed declared to have made nature. he had, however, but given it, so to say, an original impulse. that impulse also it had in some strange way lost or perverted, so that the world, though it had been made by god, was not good. for the most part it moved itself, although god's sovereignty was evidenced in that he could still supervene upon it, if he chose. the supernatural was the realm of god. natural and supernatural were mutually exclusive terms, just as we saw that divine and human were exclusive terms. so also, on the third side of our triangle, man stood over against nature. nature was to primitive men the realm of caprice, in which they imagined demons, spirits and the like. these were antagonistic to men, as also hostile to god. then, when with the advance of reflexion these spirits, and equally their counterparts, the good genii and angels, had all died, nature became the realm of iron necessity, of regardless law, of all-destroying force, of cruel and indifferent fate. from this men took refuge in the thought of a compassionate god, though they could not withdraw themselves or those whom they loved from the inexorable laws of nature. they could not see that god always, or even often, intervened on their behalf. it cannot be denied that these ideas prevail to some extent in the popular theology at the present moment. much of our popular religious language is an inheritance from a time when they universally prevailed. the religious intuition even of psalmists and prophets opposed many of these notions. the pure religious intuition of jesus opposed almost every one of them. mystics in every religion have had, at times, insight into an altogether different scheme of things. the philosophy, however, even of the learned, would, in the main, have supported the views above described, from the dawn of reflexion almost to our own time. it was kant who first began the resolution of this three-cornered difficulty. when he pointed out that into the world, as we know it, an element of spirit goes, that in it an element of the ideal inheres, he began a movement which has issued in modern monism. he affirmed that that element from my thought which enters into the world, as i know it, may be so great that only just a point of matter and a prick of sense remains. fichte said: 'why do we put it all in so perverse a way? why reduce the world of matter to just a point? why is it not taken for what it is, and yet understood to be all alive with god and we able to think of it, because we are parts of the great thinker god?' still fichte had busied himself almost wholly with consciousness. schelling endeavoured to correct that. nature lives and moves in god, just as truly in one way as does man in another. men arise out of nature. a circle has been drawn through the points of our triangle. nature and man are in a new and deeper sense revelations of god. in fact, supplementing one another, they constitute the only possible channels for the manifestation of god. it hardly needs to be said that these thoughts are widely appropriated in our modern world. these once novel speculations of the kings of thought have made their way slowly to all strata of society. remote and difficult in their first expression in the language of the schools, their implications are to-day on everybody's lips. it is this unitary view of the universe which has made difficult the acceptance of a theology, the understandlng of a religion, which are still largely phrased in the language of a philosophy to which these ideas did not belong. there is not an historic creed, there is hardly a greater system of theology, which is not stated in terms of a philosophy and science which no longer reign. men are asking: 'cannot christianity be so stated and interpreted that it shall meet the needs of men of the twentieth century, as truly as it met those of men of the first or of the sixteenth?' hegel, the last of this great group of idealistic philosophers whom we shall name, enthusiastically believed in this new interpretation of the faith which was profoundly dear to him. he made important contribution to that interpretation. hegel georg wilhelm friedrich hegel was born in stuttgart in . his father was in the fiscal service of the king of württemberg. he studied in tübingen. he was heavy and slow of development, in striking contrast with schelling. he served as tutor in bern and frankfort, and began to lecture in jena in . he was much overshadowed by schelling. the victory of napoleon at jena in closed the university for a time. in he was called to fichte's old chair in berlin. never on very good terms with the prussian government, he yet showed his large sympathy with life in every way. after a school of philosophical thinkers began to gather about him. his first great book, his _phenomenologie des geistes_ (translated, baillie, london, ), was published at the end of his jena period. his _philosophie der religion_ and _philosophie der geschichte_ were edited after his death. they are mainly in the form which his notes took between and . he died during an epidemic of cholera in berlin in . besides his deep interest in history the most striking feature of hegel's preliminary training was his profound study of christianity. he might almost be said to have turned to philosophy as a means of formulating the ideas which he had conceived concerning the development of the religious consciousness, which seemed to him to have been the bearer of all human culture. no one could fail to see that the idea of the relation of god and man, of which we have been speaking, was bound to make itself felt in the interpretation of the doctrine of the incarnation and of all the dogmas, like that of the trinity, which are connected with it. characteristically, hegel had pure joy in the speculative aspects of the problem. if one may speak in all reverence, and, at the same time, not without a shade of humour, hegel rejoiced to find himself able, as he supposed, to rehabilitate the dogma of the trinity, rationalised in approved fashion. it is as if the dogma had been a revered form or mould, which was for him indeed emptied of its original content. he felt bound to fill it anew. or to speak more justly, he was really convinced that the new meaning which he poured into the dogma was the true meaning which the church fathers had been seeking all the while. in the light of two generations of sober dealing, as historians, with such problems, we can but view his solution in a manner very different from that which he indulged. he was even disposed mildly to censure the professional theologians for leaving the defence of the doctrine of the trinity to the philosophers. there were then, and have since been, defenders of the doctrine who have thought that hegel tendered them great aid. as a matter of fact, despite his own utter seriousness and reverent desire, his solution was a complete dissolution of the doctrine and of much else besides. his view would have been fatal, not merely to that particular form of orthodox thought, but, what is much more serious, to the religious meaning for which it stood. sooner or later men have seen that the whole drift of hegelianism was to transform religion into intellectualism. one might say that it was exactly this which the ancient metaphysicians, in the classic doctrine of the trinity, had done. they had transformed religion into metaphysics. the matter would not have been remedied by having a modern metaphysician do the same thing in another way. hegel was weary of fichte's endless discussion of the ego and schelling's of the absolute. it was not the abyss of the unknowable from which things said to come, or that into which they go, which interested hegel. it was their process and progress which we can know. it was that part of their movement which is observable within actual experience, with which he was concerned. now one of the laws of the movement of all things, he said, is that by which every thought suggests, and every force tends directly to produce, its opposite. nothing stands alone. everything exists by the balance and friction of opposing tendencies. we have the universal contrasts of heat and cold, of light and darkness, of inward and outward, of static and dynamic, of yes and no. there are two sides to every case, democratic government and absolutism, freedom of religion and authority, the individualistic and the social principles, a materialistic and a spiritual interpretation of the universe. only things which are dead have ceased to have this tide and alternation. christ is for living religion now a man, now god, revelation now natural, now supernatural. religion in the eternal conflict between reason and faith, morals the struggle of good and evil, god now mysterious and now manifest. fichte had said: the essence of the universe is spirit. hegel said: yes, but the true notion of spirit is that of the resolution of contradiction, of the exhibition of opposites as held together in their unity. this is the meaning of the trinity. in the trinity we have god who wills to manifest himself, jesus in whom he is manifest, and the spirit common to them both. god's existence is not static, it is dynamic. it is motion, not rest. god is revealer, recipient, and revelation all in one. the trinity was for hegel the central doctrine of christianity. popular orthodoxy had drawn near to the assertion of three gods. the revolt, however, in asserting the unity of god, had made of god a meaningless absolute as foundation of the universe. the orthodox, in respect to the person of christ, had always indeed asserted in laboured way that jesus was both god and man. starting from their own abstract conception of god, and attributing to jesus the qualities of that abstraction, they had ended in making of the humanity of jesus a perfectly unreal thing. on the other hand, those who had set out from jesus's real humanity had been unable to see that he was anything more than a mere man, as their phrase was. on their own assumption of the mutual exclusiveness of the conceptions of god and man, they could not do otherwise. hegel saw clearly that god can be known to us only in and through manifestation. we can certainly make no predication as to how god exists, in himself, as men say, and apart from our knowledge. he exists for our knowledge only as manifest in nature and man. man is for hegel part of nature and jesus is the highest point which the nature of god as manifest in man has reached. in this sense hegel sometimes even calls nature the son of god, and mankind and jesus are thought of as parts of this one manifestation of god. if the scripture asserts, as it seemed to the framers of the creeds to do, that god manifested himself from before all worlds in and to a self-conscious personality like his own, hegel would answer: but the scripture is no third source of knowledge, besides nature and man. scripture is only the record of god's revelation of himself in and to men. if these men framed their profoundest thought in this way, that is only because they lived in an age when men had all their thoughts of this sort in a form which we can historically trace. for platonists and neoplatonists, such as the makers of the creeds--and some portions of the scripture show this influence, as well--the divine, the ideal, was always thought of as eternal. it always existed as pure archetype before it ever existed as historic fact. the rabbins had a speculation to the same effect. the divine which exists must have pre-existed. jesus as son of god could not be thought of by the ancient world in any terms but these. the divine was static, changelessly perfect. for the modern man the divinest of all things is the mystery of growth. the perfect man is not at the beginning, but far down the immeasurable series of approaches to perfection. the perfection of other men is the work of still other ages, in which this extraordinary and inexplicable moral magnitude which jesus is, has had its influence, and conferred upon them power to aid them in the fulfilment of god's intent for themselves, which is like that intent for himself which jesus has fulfilled. surely enough has been said to show that what we have here is only the absorption of even the profoundest religious meanings into the vortex of an all-dissolving metaphysical system. the most obvious meaning of the phrase 'son of god,' its moral and spiritual, its real religious meaning, is dwelt on, here in hegel, as little as hegel claimed that the nicene trinitarians had dwelt upon it. nothing marks more clearly the distance we have travelled since hegel than does the general recognition that his attempted solution does not even lie in the right direction. it is an attempt within the same area as that of the nicene council and the creeds, namely, the metaphysical area. what is at stake is not the pre-existence or the two natures. hegel was right in what he said concerning these. the pre-existence cannot be thought of except as ideal. the two natures we assert for every man, only not in such a manner as to destroy unity in the personality. the heart of the dogma is not in these. it is the oneness of god and man, a moral and spiritual oneness, oneness in conduct and consciousness, the presence and realisation of god, who is spirit, in a real man, the divineness of jesus, in a sense which sees no meaning any longer in the old debate as between his divinity and his deity. in the light of the new theory of the universe which we have reviewed, it flashes upon us that both defenders and assailants of the doctrine of the incarnation, in the age-long debate, have proceeded from the assumption that god and man are opposites. men contended for the divineness of jesus in terms which by definition shut out his true humanity. they asserted the identity of a real man, a true historic personage, with an abstract notion of god which had actually been framed by the denial of all human qualities. their opponents with a like helplessness merely reversed the situation. to admit the deity of jesus would have been for them, in all candour and clear-sightedness, absolutely impossible, because the admission would have shut out his true humanity. on the old definitions we cannot wonder that the struggle was a bitter one. each party was on its own terms right. if god is by definition other than man, and man the opposite of god, then it is not surprising that the attempt to say that jesus of nazareth was both, remained mysticism to the one and seemed folly to the other. now, within the area of the philosophy which begins with kant this old antinomy has been resolved. an actual circle of clear relations joins the points of the old hopeless triangle. men are men because of god indwelling in them, working through them. the phrase 'mere man' is seen to be a mere phrase. to say that the nazarene, in some way not genetically to be explained, but which is hidden within the recesses of his own personality, shows forth in incomparable fulness that relation of god and man which is the ideal for us all, seems only to be saying over again what jesus said when he proclaimed: 'i and my father are one.' that jesus actualised, not absolutely in the sense that he stood out of relation to history, but still perfectly within his relation to history, that which in us and for us is potential, the sonship of god--that seems a very simple and intelligible assertion. it certainly makes a large part of the debate of ages seem remote from us. it brings home to us that we live in a new world. interesting and fruitful is hegel's expansion of the idea of redemption beyond that of the individual to that of the whole humanity, and in every aspect of its life. in my relation to the world are given my duties. the renunciation of outward duty makes the inward life barren. the principle which is to transform the world wears an aspect very different from that of stoicism, of asceticism or even of the individualism which has sought soul-salvation. in the midst of unworthiness and helplessness there springs up the consciousness of reconciliation. man, with all his imperfections, becomes aware that he is the object of the loving purpose of god. still this redemption of a man is something which is to be worked out, in the individual life and on the stage of universal history. the first step beyond the individual life is that of the church. it is from within this community of believers that men, in the rule, receive the impulse to the good. the community is, in its idea, a society in which the conquest of evil is already being achieved, where the individual is spared much bitter conflict and loneliness. nevertheless, so long as this unity of the life of man with god is realised in the church alone there remains a false and harmful opposition between the church and the world. religion is faced by a hostile power to which its principles have no application. the world is denounced as unholy. with this stigma cast upon it, it may be unholy. yet the retribution falls also upon the church, in that it becomes artificial, clerical, pharisaical. the end is never that what have been called the standards of the church shall prevail. the end is that the church shall be the shrine and centre of an influence by virtue of which the standard of truth and goodness which naturally belongs to any relation of life shall prevail. the distinction between religion and secular life must be abandoned. nothing is less sacred than a church set on its own aggrandisement. the relations of family and of the state, of business and social life, are to be restored to the divineness which belongs to them, or rather, the divineness which is inalienable from them is to be recognised. in the laws and customs of a true state, christianity first penetrates with its principles the real world. one sees how large a portion of these thoughts have been taken up into the programme of modern social movements. they are the basis of what men call a social theology. a book like fremantle's _world as the subject of redemption_ is their thorough-going exposition in the english tongue. we have no cause to pursue the philosophical movement beyond this point. its exponents are not without interest. especially is this true of schopenhauer. but the deposit from their work is for our particular purpose not great. the wonderful impulse had spent itself. these four brilliant men stand together, almost as much isolated from the generation which followed them as from that which went before. the historian of christian thought in the nineteenth century cannot overestimate the significance of their personal interest in religion. chapter iii theological reconstruction the outstanding trait of kant's reflection upon religion is its supreme interest in morals and conduct. metaphysician that he was, kant saw the evil which intellectualism had done to religion. religion was a profoundly real thing to him in his own life. religion is a life. it is a system of thought only because life is a whole. it is a system of thought only in the way of deposit from a vivid and vigorous life. a man normally reflects on the conditions and aims of what he does. religion is conduct. ends in character are supreme. religions and the many interpretations of christianity have been good or bad, according as they ministered to character. so strong was this ethical trait in kant that it dwarfed all else. he was not himself a man of great breadth or richness of feeling. he was not a man of imagination. his religion was austere, not to say arid. hegel was before all things an intellectualist. speculation was the breath of life to him. he had metaphysical genius. he tended to transform in this direction everything which he touched. religion is thought. he criticised the rationalist movement from the height of vantage which idealism had reached. but as pure intellectualist he would put most rationalists to shame. we owe to this temperament his zeal for an interpretation of the universe 'all in one piece.' its highest quality would be its abstract truth. his understanding of religion had the glory and the limitations which attend this view. schleiermacher between kant and hegel came another, schleiermacher. he too was no mean philosopher. but he was essentially a theologian, the founder of modern theology. he served in the same faculty with hegel and was overshadowed by him. his influence upon religious thought was less immediate. it has been more permanent. it was characteristically upon the side which kant and hegel had neglected. that was the side of feeling. his theology has been called the theology of feeling. he defined religion as feeling. christianity is for him a specific feeling. because he made so much of feeling, his name has been made a theological household word by many who appropriated little else of all he had to teach. his warmth and passion, his enthusiasm for christ, the central place of christ in his system, made him loved by many who, had they understood him better, might have loved him less. for his real greatness lay, not in the fact that he possessed these qualities alone, but that he possessed them in a singularly beautiful combination with other qualities. the emphasis is, however, correct. he was the prophet of feeling, as kant had been of ethical religion and hegel of the intellectuality of faith. the entire protestant theology of the nineteenth century has felt his influence. the english-speaking race is almost as much his debtor as is his own. the french huguenots of the revival felt him to be one of themselves. even to amiel and scherer he was a kindred spirit. it is a true remark of dilthey that in unusual degree an understanding of the man's personality and career is necessary to the appreciation of his thought. friedrich ernst daniel schleiermacher was born in in breslau, the son of a chaplain in the reformed church. he never connected himself officially with the lutheran church. we have alluded to an episode broadly characteristic of his youth. he was tutor in the house of one of the landed nobility of prussia, curate in a country parish, preacher at the charité in berlin in , professor extraordinarius at halle in , preacher at the church of the dreifaltigkeit in berlin in , professor of theology and organiser of that faculty in the newly-founded university of berlin in . he never gave up his position as pastor and preacher, maintaining this activity along with his unusual labours as teacher, executive and author. he died in . in his earlier years in berlin he belonged to the circle of brilliant men and women who made berlin famous in those years. it was a fashionable society composed of persons more or less of the rationalistic school. not a few of them, like the schlegels, were deeply tinged with romanticism. there were also among them jews of the house of the elder mendelssohn. morally it was a society not altogether above reproach. its opposition to religion was a by-word. an affection of the susceptible youth for a woman unhappily married brought him to the verge of despair. it was an affection which his passing pride as romanticist would have made him think it prudish to discard, while the deep, underlying elements of his nature made it inconceivable that he should indulge. only in later years did he heal his wound in a happy married life. the episode was typical of the experience he was passing through. he understood the public with which his first book dealt. that book bears the striking title, _reden über die religion, an die gebildeten unter ihren verächtern_ (translated, oman, oxford, ). his public understood him. he could reach them as perhaps no other man could do. if he had ever concealed what religion was to him, he now paid the price. if they had made light of him, he now made war on them. this meed they could hardly withhold from him, that he understood most other things quite as well as they, and religion much better than they. the rhetorical form is a fiction. the addresses were never delivered. their tension and straining after effect is palpable. they are a cry of pain on the part of one who sees that assailed which is sacred to him, of triumph as he feels himself able to repel the assault, of brooding persuasiveness lest any should fail to be won for his truth. he concedes everything. it is part of his art to go further than his detractors. he is so well versed in his subject that he can do that with consummate mastery, where they are clumsy or dilettante. it is but a pale ghost of religion that he has left. but he has attained his purpose. he has vindicated the place of religion in the life of culture. he has shown the relation of religion to every great thing in civilisation, its affinity with art, its common quality with poetry, its identity with all profound activities of the soul. these all are religion, though their votaries know it not. these are reverence for the highest, dependence on the highest, self-surrender to the highest. no great man ever lived, no great work was ever done, save in an attitude toward the universe, which is identical with that of the religious man toward god. the universe is god. god is the universe. that religionists have obscured this simple truth and denied this grand relation is true, and nothing to the point. the cultivated should be ashamed not to know this. then, with a sympathy with institutional religion and a knowledge of history in which he stood almost alone, he retracts much that he has yielded, he rebuilds much that he has thrown down, proclaims much which they must now concede. the book was published in . twenty years later he said sadly that if he were rewriting it, its shafts would be directed against some very different persons, against glib and smug people who boasted the form of godliness, conventional, even fashionable religionists and loveless ecclesiastics. vast and various influences in the germany of the first two decades of the century had wrought for the revival of religion. of those influences, not the least had been that of schleiermacher's book. among the greatest had been schleiermacher himself. the religion of feeling, as advocated in the _reden_, had left much on the ethical side to be desired. this defect the author sought to remedy in his _monologen_, published in . the programme of theological studies for the new university of berlin, _kurze darstellung des theologischen studiums_, , shows his theological system already in large part matured. his _der christliche glaube_, published in , revised three years before his death in , is his monumental work. his _ethik_, his lectures upon many subjects, numerous volumes of sermons, all published after his death, witness his versatility. his sermons have the rare note which one finds in robertson and brooks. all of the immediacy of religion, its independence of rational argument, of historical tradition or institutional forms, which was characteristic of schleiermacher to his latest day, is felt in the _reden_. by it he thrilled the hearts of men as they have rarely been thrilled. it is not forms and traditions which create religion. it is religion which creates these. they cannot exist without it. it may exist without them, though not so well or so effectively. religion is the sense of god. that sense we have, though many call it by another name. it would be more true to say that that sense has us. it is inescapable. all who have it are the religious. those who hold to dogmas, rites, institutions in such a way as to obscure and overlay this sense of god, those who hold those as substitute for that sense, are the nearest to being irreligious. any form, the most _outré_, bizarre and unconventional, is good, so only that it helps a man to god. all forms are evil, the most accredited the most evil, if they come between a man and god. the pantheism of the thought of god in all of schleiermacher's early work is undeniable. he never wholly put it aside. the personality of god seemed to him a limitation. language is here only symbolical, a mere expression from an environment which we know, flung out into the depths of that we cannot see. if the language of personal relations helps men in living with their truth--well and good. it hinders also. for himself he felt that it hindered more than helped. his definition of religion as the feeling of dependence upon god, is cited as evidence of the effect upon him of his contention against the personalness of god. religion is also, it is alleged, the sentiment of fellowship with god. fellowship implies persons. but to no man was the fellowship with the soul of his own soul and of all the universe more real than was that fellowship to schleiermacher. this was the more true in his maturer years, the years of the magnificent rounding out of his thought. god was to him indeed not 'a man in the next street.' what he says about the problem of the personalness of god is true. we see, perhaps, more clearly than did he that the debate is largely about words. similarly, we may say that schleiermacher's passing denial of the immortality of the soul was directed, in the first instance, against the crass, unsocial and immoral view which has disfigured much of the teaching of religion. his contention was directed toward that losing of oneself in god through ideals and service now, which in more modern phrase we call the entrance upon the immortal life here, the being in eternity now. for a soul so disposed, for a life thus inspired, death is but an episode. for himself he rejoices to declare it one to the issue of which he is indifferent. if he may thus live with god now, he cares little whether or not he shall live by and by. in his _monologues_ schleiermacher first sets forth his ethical thought. as it is religion that a man feels himself dependent upon god, so is it the beginning of morality that a man feels his dependence upon his fellows and their dependence on him. slaves of their own time and circumstance, men live out their lives in superficiality and isolation. they are a prey to their own selfishness. they never come into those relations with their fellows in which the moral ideal can be realised. man in his isolation from his fellows is nothing and accomplishes nothing. the interests of the whole humanity are his private interests. his own happiness and welfare are not possible to be secured save through his co-operation with others, his work and service for others. the happiness and welfare of others not merely react upon his own. they are in a large sense identical with his own. this oneness of a man with all men is the basis of morality, just as the oneness of man with god is the basis of religion. in both cases the oneness exists whether or not we know it. the contradictions and miseries into which immoral or unmoral conduct plunges us, are the witness of the fact that this inviolable unity of a man with humanity is operative, even if he ignores it. often it is his ignoring of this relation which brings him through misery to consciousness of it. man as moral being is but an individuation of humanity, just as, again, as religious being he is but an individuation of god. the goal of the moral life is the absorption of self, the elimination of self, which is at the same time the realisation of self, through the life and service for others. the goal of religion is the elimination of self, the swallowing up of self, in the service of god. in truth, the unity of man with man is at bottom only another form of his unity with god, and the service of humanity is the identical service of god. other so-called services of god are a means to this, or else an illusion. this parallel of religion and morals is to be set over against other passages, easily to be cited, in which schleiermacher speaks of passivity and contemplation as the means of the realisation of the unity of man and god, as if the elimination of self meant a sort of nirvana. schleiermacher was a pantheist and mystic. no philosopher save kant ever influenced him half so much as did spinoza. there is something almost oriental in his mood at times. an occasional fragment of description of religion might pass as a better delineation of buddhism than of christianity. this universality of his mind is interesting. these elements have not been unattractive to some portions of his following. one wearied with the philistinism of the modern popular urgency upon practicality turns to schleiermacher, as indeed sometimes to spinoza, and says, here is a man who at least knows what religion is. yet nothing is further from the truth than to say that schleiermacher had no sense for the meaning of religion in the outward life and present world. in the _reden_ schleiermacher had contended that religion is a condition of devout feeling, specifically the feeling of dependence upon god. this view dominates his treatment of christianity. it gives him his point of departure. a christian is possessed of the devout feeling of dependence upon god through jesus christ or, as again he phrases it, of dependence upon christ. christianity is a positive religion in the sense that it has direct relation to certain facts in the history of the race, most of all to the person of jesus of nazareth. but it does not consist in any positive propositions whatsoever. these have arisen in the process of interpretation of the faith. the substance of the faith is the experience of renewal in christ, of redemption through christ. this inward experience is neither produced by pure thought nor dependent upon it. like all other experience it is simply an object to be described and reckoned with. orthodox dogmatists had held that the content of the christian faith is a doctrine given in revelation. schleiermacher held that it is a consciousness inspired primarily by the personality of jesus. it must be connected with the other data and acta of our consciousness under the general laws of the operation of the mind. against rationalism and much so-called liberal christianity, schleiermacher contended that christianity is not a new set of propositions periodically brought up to date and proclaimed as if these alone were true. new propositions can have only the same relativity of truth which belonged to the old ones in their day. they may stand between men and religion as seriously as the others had done. the condition of the heart, which is religion, the experience through jesus which is christianity, is primarily an individual matter. but it is not solely such. it is a common experience also. schleiermacher recognises the common element in the christian consciousness, the element which shows itself in the christian experience of all ages, of different races and of countless numbers of men. by this recognition of the christian church in its deep and spiritual sense, schleiermacher hopes to escape the vagaries and eccentricities, and again the narrowness and bigotries of pure individualism. no liberal theologian until schleiermacher had had any similar sense of the meaning of the christian church, and of the privilege and duty of christian thought to contribute to the welfare of that body of men believing in god and following christ which is meant by the church. this is in marked contrast with the individualism of kant. of course, schleiermacher would never have recognised as the church that part of humanity which is held together by adherence to particular dogmas, since, for him, christianity is not dogma. still less could he recognise as the church that part of mankind which is held together by a common tradition of worship, or by a given theory of organisation, since these also are historical and incidental. he meant by the church that part of humanity, in all places and at all times, which has been held together by the common possession of the christian consciousness and the christian experience. the outline of this experience, the content of this consciousness, can never be so defined as to make it legislatively operative. if it were so defined we should have dogma and not christianity. nevertheless, it may be practically potent. the degree in which a given man may justly identify his own consciousness and experience with that of the christian world is problematical. in schleiermacher's own case, the identification of some of his contentions as, for example, the thought that god is not personal with the great christian consciousness of the past, is more than problematical. to this schleiermacher would reply that if these contentions were true, they would become the possession of spiritual christendom with the lapse of time. advance always originated with one or a few. if, however, in the end, a given portion found no place in the consciousness of generation truly evidencing their christian life, that position would be adjudged an idiosyncrasy, a negligible quantity. this view of schleiermacher's as to the church is suggestive. it is the undertone of a view which widely prevails in our own time. it is somewhat difficult of practical combination with the traditional marks of the churches, as these have been inherited even in protestantism from the catholic age. in a very real sense jesus occupied the central place in schleiermacher's system. the centralness of jesus christ he himself was never weary of emphasising. it became in the next generation a favorite phrase of some who followed schleiermacher's pure and bounteous spirit afar off. too much of a mystic to assert that it is through jesus alone that we know god, he yet accords to jesus an absolutely unique place in revelation. it is through the character and personality of jesus that the change in the character of man, which is redemption, is marshalled and sustained. redemption is a man's being brought out of the condition in which all higher self consciousness was dimmed and enfeebled, into one in which this higher consciousness is vivid and strong and the power of self-determination toward the good has been restored. salvation is thus moral and spiritual, present as well as future. it is possible in the future only because actual in the present. it is the reconstruction of a man's nature and life by the action of the spirit of god, conjointly with that of man's own free spirit. it is intelligible in schleiermacher's context that jesus should be spoken of as the sole redeemer of men, their only hope, and that the christian's dependence upon him should be described as absolute. as a matter of fact, however, the idea of dependence upon christ alone has been often, indeed, one may say generally, associated with a conception of salvation widely different from that of schleiermacher. it has been oftenest associated with the notion of something purely external, forensic, even magical. it is connected, even down to our own time, with reliance upon the blood of christ, almost as if this were externally applied. it has postulated a propitiatory sacrifice, a vicarious atonement, a completed transaction, something which was laid up for all and waiting to be availed of by some. now every external, forensic, magical notion of salvation, as something purchased for us, imputed to us, conferred upon us, would have been utterly impossible to schleiermacher. it is within the soul of man that redemption takes place. conferment from the side of god and christ, or from god through christ, can be nothing more, as also it can be nothing less, than the imparting of wisdom and grace and spiritual power from the personality of jesus, which a man then freely takes up within himself and gives forth as from himself. the christian consciousness contains, along with the sense of dependence upon jesus, the sense of moral alliance and spiritual sympathy with him, of a free relation of the will of man to the will of god as revealed in jesus. the will of man is set upon the reproduction within himself, so far as possible, of the consciousness, experience and character of jesus. the sin from which man is to be delivered is described by schleiermacher thus: it is the dominance of the lower nature in us, of the sense-consciousness. it is the determination of our course of life by the senses. this preponderance of the senses over the consciousness of god is the secret of unhappiness, of the feeling of defeat and misery in men, of the need of salvation. one has to read schleiermacher's phrase, 'the senses' here, as we read paul's phrase, 'the flesh.' on the other hand, the preponderance of the consciousness of god, the willing obedience to it in every act of life, becomes to us the secret of strength and of blessedness in life. this is the special experience of the christian. it is the effect of the impulse and influence of christ. we receive this impulse in a manner wholly consistent with the laws of our psychological and moral being. we carry forward this impulse with varying fortunes and by free will. it comes to us, however, from without and from above, through one who was indeed true man, but who is also, in a manner not further explicable, to be identified with the moral ideal of humanity. this identification of jesus with the moral ideal is complete and unquestioning with schleiermacher. it is visible in the interchangeable use of the titles jesus and christ. our saving consciousness of god could proceed from the person of jesus only if that consciousness were actually present in jesus in an absolute measure. ideal and person in him perfectly coincide. as typical and ideal man, according to schleiermacher, jesus was distinguished from all other founders of religions. these come before us as men chosen from the number of their fellows, receiving, quite as much for themselves as for others, that which they received from god. it is nowhere implied that jesus himself was in need of redemption, but rather that he alone possessed from earliest years the fulness of redemptive power. he was distinguished from other men by his absolute moral perfection. this excluded not merely actual sin, but all possibility of sin and, accordingly, all real moral struggle. this perfection was characterised also by his freedom from error. he never originated an erroneous notion nor adopted one from others as a conviction of his own. in this respect his person was a moral miracle in the midst of the common life of our humanity, of an order to be explained only by a new spiritually creative act of god. on the other hand, schleiermacher says squarely that the absence of the natural paternal participation in the origin of the physical life of jesus, according to the account in the first and third gospels, would add nothing to the moral miracle if it could be proved and detract nothing if it should be taken away. singular is this ability on the part of schleiermacher to believe in the moral miracle, not upon its own terms, of which we shall speak later, but upon terms upon which the outward and physical miracle, commonly so-called, had become, we need not say incredible, but unnecessary to schleiermacher himself. singular is this whole part of schleiermacher's construction, with its lapse into abstraction of the familiar sort, of which, in general, the working of his mind had been so free. for surely what we here have is abstraction. it is an undissolved fragment of metaphysical theology. it is impossible of combination with the historical. it is wholly unnecessary for the religious view of salvation which schleiermacher had distinctly taken. it is surprising how slow men have been to learn that the absolute cannot be historic nor the historic absolute. surely the claim that jesus was free from error in intellectual conception is unnecessary, from the point of view of the saving influence upon character which schleiermacher had asserted. it is in contradiction with the view of revelation to which schleiermacher had already advanced. it is to be accounted for only from the point of view of the mistaken assumption that the divine, even in manifestation, must be perfect, in the sense of that which is static and not of that which is dynamic. the assertion is not sustained from the gospel itself. it reduces many aspects of the life of jesus to mere semblance. that also which is claimed in regard to the abstract impossibility of sin upon the part of jesus is in hopeless contradiction with that which schleiermacher had said as to the normal and actual development of jesus, in moral as also in all other ways. such development is impossible without struggle. struggle is not real when failure is impossible. so far as we know, it is in struggle only that character is made. even as to the actual commission of sin on jesus' part, the assertion of the abstract necessity of his sinlessness, for the work of moral redemption, goes beyond anything which we know. the question of the sinlessness of jesus is not an _a priori_ question. to say that he was by conception free from sin is to beg the question. we thus form a conception and then read the gospels to find evidence to sustain it. to say that he did, though tempted in all points like as we are, yet so conduct himself in the mystery of life as to remain unstained, is indeed to allege that he achieved that which, so far us we know, is without parallel in the history of the race. but it is to leave him true man, and so the moral redeemer of men who would be true. to say that, if he were true man, he must have sinned, is again to beg the question. let us repeat that the question is one of evidence. to say that he was, though true man, so far as we have any evidence in fact, free from sin, is only to say that his humanity was uniquely penetrated by the spirit of god for the purposes of the life which he had to live. that heart-broken recollection of his own sin which one hears in _the scarlet letter_, giving power to the preacher who would reach men in their sins, has not the remotest parallel in any reminiscence of jesus which we possess. there is every evidence of the purity of jesus' consciousness. there is no evidence of the consciousness of sin. there is a passage in the _discourses_, in which schleiermacher himself declared that the identification of the fundamental idea of religion with the historical fact in which that religion had its rise, was a mistake. surely it is exactly this mistake which schleiermacher has here made. it will be evident from all that has been said that to schleiermacher the scripture was not the foundation of faith. as such it was almost universally regarded in his time. the new testament, he declared, is itself but a product of the christian consciousness. it is a record of the christian experience of the men of the earlier time. to us it is a means of grace because it is the vivid and original register of that experience. the scriptures can be regarded as the work of the holy spirit only in so far as this was this common spirit of the early church. this spirit has borne witness to christ in these writings not essentially otherwise than in later writings, only more at first hand, more under the impression of intercourse with jesus. least of all may we base the authority of scripture upon a theory of inspiration such as that generally current in schleiermacher's time. it is the personality of jesus which is the inspiration of the new testament. christian faith, including the faith in the scriptures, can rest only upon the total impression of the character of jesus. in the same manner schleiermacher speaks of miracles. these cannot be regarded in the conventional manner as supports of religion, for the simplest of all reasons. they presuppose religion and faith and must be understood by means of those. the accounts of external miracles contained in the gospels are matters for unhesitating criticism. the christian finds, for moral reasons and because of the response of his own heart, the highest revelation of god in jesus christ. extraordinary events may be expected in jesus' career. yet these can be called miracles only relatively, as containing something extraordinary for contemporary knowledge. they may remain to us events wholly inexplicable, illustrating a law higher than any which we yet know. therewith they are not taken out of the realm of the orderly phenomena of nature. in other words, the notion of the miraculous is purely subjective. what is a miracle for one age may be no miracle in the view of the next. whatever the deeds of jesus may have been, however inexplicable all ages may find them, we can but regard them as merely natural consequences of the personality of jesus, unique because he was unique. 'in the interests of religion the necessity can never arise of regarding an event as taken out of its connection with nature, in consequence of its dependence upon god.' it is not possible within the compass of this book to do more than deal with typical and representative persons. schleiermacher was epoch-making. he gathered in himself the creative impulses of the preceding period. the characteristic theological tendencies of the two succeeding generations may be traced back to him. many men worked in seriousness upon the theological problem. no one of them marks an era again until we come to ritschl. the theologians of the interval between schleiermacher and ritschl have been divided into three groups. the first group is of distinctly philosophical tendency. the influence of hegel was felt upon them all. to this group belong schweitzer, biedermann, lipsius, and pfleiderer. the influence of hegel was greatest upon biedermann, least upon lipsius. an estimate of the influence of schleiermacher would reverse that order. especially did lipsius seek to lay at the foundation of his work that exact psychological study of the phenomena of religion which schleiermacher had declared requisite. it is possible that lipsius will more nearly come to his own when the enthusiasm for ritschl has waned. the second group of schleiermacher's followers took the direction opposite to that which we have named. they were the confessional theologians. hoffmann shows himself learned, acute and full of power. one does not see, however, why his method should not prove anything which any confession ever claimed. he sets out from schleiermacher's declaration concerning the content of the christian consciousness. in hoffmann's own devout consciousness there had been response, since his childhood, to every item which the creed alleged. therefore these items must have objective truth. one is reminded of an english parallel in newman's _grammar of assent_. yet another group, that of the so-called mediating theologians, contains some well-known names. here belong nitzsch, rothe, müller, dorner. the name had originally described the effort to find, in the union, common ground between lutherans and reformed. in the fact that it made the creeds of little importance and fell back on schleiermacher's emphasis upon feeling, the movement came to have the character also of an attempt to find a middle way between confessionalists and rationalists. its representatives had often the kind of breadth of sympathy which goes with lack of insight, rather than that breadth of sympathy which is due to the possession of insight. yet rothe rises to real distinction, especially in his forecast of the social interpretation of religion. with the men of this group arose a speculation concerning the person of christ which for a time had some currency. it was called the theory of the kenosis. jesus is spoken of in a famous passage of the letter to the philippians; as having emptied himself of divine qualities that he might be found in fashion as a man. in this speculation the divine attributes were divided into two classes. of the one class it was held christ had emptied himself in becoming flesh, or at least he had them in abeyance. he had them, but did not use them. what we have here is but a despairing effort to be just to jesus' humanity and yet to assert his deity in the ancient metaphysical terms. it is but saying yes and no in the same breath. biedermann said sadly of the speculation that it represented the kenosis, not of the divine nature, but of the human understanding. ritschl and the ritschlians if any man in the department of theology in the latter half of the nineteenth century attained a position such as to entitle him to be compared with schleiermacher, it was ritschl. he was long the most conspicuous figure in any chair of dogmatic theology in germany. he established a school of theological thinkers in a sense in which schleiermacher never desired to gain a following. he exerted ecclesiastical influence of a kind which schleiermacher never sought. he was involved in controversy in a degree to which the life of schleiermacher presents no parallel. he was not a preacher, he was no philosopher. he was not a man of schleiermacher's breadth of interest. his intellectual history presents more than one breach within itself, as that of schleiermacher presented none, despite the wide arc which he traversed. of ritschl, as of schleiermacher, it may be said that he exerted a great influence over many who have only in part agreed with him. albrecht ritschl was born in in berlin, the son of a bishop in the lutheran church. he was educated at bonn and at tübingen. he established himself at bonn, where, in , he became professor extraordinarius and in ordinaries. in he was called to göttingen. in he became consistorialrath in the new prussian establishment for the hanoverian church. he died in . these are the simple outward facts of a somewhat stormy professional career. there was pietistic influence in ritschl's ancestry, as also in schleiermacher's. ritschl had, however, reacted violently against it. his attitude was that of repudiation of everything mystical. he had strong aversion to the type of piety which rested its assurance solely upon inward experience. this aversion is one root of the historic positivism which makes him, at the last, assert the worthlessness of all supposed revelations outside of the bible and of all supposed christian experience apart from the influence of the historical christ. he began his career under the influence of hegel. he came to the position in which he felt that the sole hope for theology was in the elimination from it of all metaphysical elements. he felt that none of his predecessors had carried out schleiermacher's dictum, that religion is not thought, but religious thought only one of the functions of religion. yet, of course, he was not able to discuss fundamental theological questions without philosophical basis, particularly an explicit theory of knowledge. his theory of knowledge he had derived eclectically and somewhat eccentrically, from lotze and kant. to this day not all, either of his friends or foes, are quite certain what it was. it is open to doubt whether ritschl really arrived at his theory of cognition and then made it one of the bases of his theology. it is conceivable that he made his theology and then propounded his theory of cognition in its defence. in a word, the basis of distinction between religious and scientific knowledge is not to be sought in its object. it is to be found in the sphere of the subject, in the difference of attitude of the subject toward the object. religion is concerned with what he calls _werthurtheile_, judgments of value, considerations of our relation to the world, which are of moment solely in accordance with their value in awakening feelings of pleasure or of pain. the thought of god, for example, must be treated solely as a judgment of value. it is a conception which is of worth for the attainment of good, for our spiritual peace and victory over the world. what god is in himself we cannot know, an existential judgment we cannot form without going over to the metaphysicians. what god is to us we can know simply as religious men and solely upon the basis of religious experience. god is holy love. that is a religious value-judgment. but what sort of a being god must be in order that we may assign to him these attributes, we cannot say without leaving the basis of experience. this is pragmatism indeed. it opens up boundless possibilities of subjectivism in a man who was apparently only too matter-of-fact. there was a time in his career when ritschl was popular with both conservatives and liberals. there were long years in which he was bitterly denounced by both. yet there was something in the man and in his teaching which went beyond all the antagonisms of the schools. there can be no doubt that it was the intention of ritschl to build his theology solely upon the gospel of jesus christ. the joy and confidence with which this theology could be preached, ritschl awakened in his pupils in a degree which had not been equalled by any theologian since schleiermacher himself. numbers who, in the time of philosophical and scientific uncertainty, had lost their courage, regained it in contact with his confident and deeply religious spirit. a wholesome nature, eminently objective in temper, concentrated with all his force upon his task, of rare dialectical gifts, he had a great sense of humour and occasionally also the faculty of bitterly sarcastic speech. his very figure radiated the delight of conflict as he walked the göttingen wall. a devoted pupil, writing immediately after ritschl's death, used concerning schleiermacher a phrase which we may transfer to ritschl himself. 'one wonders whether such a theology ever existed as a connected whole, except in the mind of its originator. neither by those about him, nor by those after him, has it been reproduced in its entirety or free from glaring contradictions.' it was not free from contradictions in ritschl's own mind. his pupils divided his inheritance among them. each appropriated that which accorded with his own way of looking at things and viewed the remainder as something which might be left out of the account. it is long since one could properly speak of a ritschlian school. it will be long until we shall cease to reckon with a ritschlian influence. he did yeoman service in breaking down the high lutheran confessionalism which had been the order of the day. in his recognition of the excesses of the tübingen school all would now agree. in his feeling against mere sentimentalities of piety many sympathise. in his emphasis upon the ethical and practical, in his urgency upon the actual problem of a man's vocation in the world, he meets in striking manner the temper of our age. in his emphasis upon the social factor in religion, he represents a popular phase of thought. with all of this, it is strange to find a man of so much learning who had so little sympathy with the comparative study of religions, who was such a dogmatist on behalf of his own inadequate notion of revelation, the logical effect of whose teaching concerning the church would be the revival of an institutionalism and externalism such as protestantism has hardly known. since schleiermacher the german theologians had made the problem of the person of christ the centre of discussion. in the same period the problem of the person of christ had been the central point of debate in america. here, as there, all the other points arranged themselves about this one. the new movement which went out from ritschl took as its centre the work of christ in redemption. this is obvious from the very title of ritschl's great book, _die christliche lehre von der rechtfertigung und versöhnung_. of this work the first edition of the third and significant volume was published in . before that time the formal treatises on theology had followed a traditional order of topics. it had been assumed as self-evident that one should speak of a person before one talked of his work. it did not occur to the theologians that in the case of the divine person, at all events, we can securely say that we know something as to his work. much concerning his person must remain a mystery to us, exactly because he is divine. our safest course, therefore, would be to infer the unknown qualities of his person from the known traits of his work. certainly this would be true as to the work of god in nature. this was not the way, however, in which the minds of theologians worked. the habit of dealing with conceptions as if they were facts had too deep hold upon them. so long as men believed in revelation as giving them, not primarily god and the transcendental world itself, but information about god and the transcendental, they naturally held that they knew as much of the persons of god and christ as of their works. schleiermacher had opened men's eyes to the fact that the great work of christ in redemption is an inward one, an ethical and spiritual work, the transformation of character. he had said, not merely that the transformation of man's character follows upon the work of redemption. it is the work of redemption. the primary witness to the work of christ is, therefore, in the facts of consciousness and history. these are capable of empirical scrutiny. they demand psychological investigation. when thus investigated they yield our primary material for any assertion we may make concerning god. above all, it is the nature of jesus, as learned on the evidence of his work in the hearts of men, which is our great revelation and source of inference concerning the nature of god. instead of saying in the famous phrase, that the christians think of christ as god, we say that we are able to think of god, as a religious magnitude, in no other terms than in those of his manifestation and redemptive activity in jesus. none since kant, except extreme confessionalists, and those in diminishing degree, have held that the great effect of the work of christ was upon the mind and attitude of god. less and less have men thought of justification as forensic and judicial, a declaring sinners righteous in the eye of the divine law, the attribution of christ's righteousness to men, so far at least as to relieve these last of penalty. this was the anselmic scheme. indeed, it had been tertullian's. less and less have men thought of reconciliation as that of an angry god to men, more and more as of alienated men with god. the phrases of the orthodoxy of the seventeenth century, lutheran as well as calvinistic, survive. more and more new meaning, not always consistent, is injected into them. no one would deny that the loftiest moral enthusiasm, the noblest sense of duty, animated the hearts of many who thought in the terms of calvinism. the delineation of god as unreconciled, of the work and sufferings of christ as a substitution, of salvation as a conferment, caused gratitude, tender devotion, heroic allegiance in some. it worked revulsion in others. it was protested against most radically by kant, as indeed it had been condemned by many before him. for kant the renovation of character was the essential salvation. yet the development of his doctrine was deficient through the individualistic form which it took. salvation was essentially a change in the individual mind, brought about through the practical reason, and having its ideal in jesus. yet for kant our salvation had no closer relation to the historic revelation in jesus. furthermore, so much was this change an individual issue that we may say that the actualisation of redemption would be the same for a given man, were he the only man in the universe. to hold fast to the ethical idealism of kant, and to overcome its subjectivity and individualism, was the problem. the reference to experience which underlies all that was said above was particularly congruous with the mood of an age grown weary of hegelianism and much impressed with the value of the empirical method in all the sciences. another great contention of our age is for the recognition of the value of what is social. its emphasis is upon that which binds men together. salvation is not normally achieved except in the life of a man among and for his fellows. it is by doing one's duty that one becomes good. one is saved, not in order to become a citizen of heaven by and by, but in order to be an active citizen of a kingdom of real human goodness here and now. in reality no man is being saved, except as he does actively and devotedly belong to that kingdom. the individual would hardly be in god's eyes worth the saving, except in order that he might be the instrumentality of the realisation of the kingdom. those are ideas which it is possible to exaggerate in statement or, at least, to set forth in all the isolation of their quality as half-truths. but it is hardly possible to exaggerate their significance as a reversal of the immemorial one-sidedness, inadequacy, and artificiality both of the official statement and of the popular apprehension of christianity. these ideas appeal to men in our time. they are popular because men think them already. men are pleased, even when somewhat incredulous, to learn that christianity will bear this social interpretation. most christians are in our time overwhelmingly convinced that in this direction lies the interpretation which christianity must bear, if it is to do the work and meet the needs of the age. its consonance with some of the truths underlying socialism may account, in a measure, for the influence which the ritschlian theology has had. as was indicated, ritschl's epoch-making book bears the title, _the christian doctrine of justification and reconciliation_. the book might be described in the language of the schools as a monograph upon one great dogma of the christian faith, around which, as the author treats it, all the other doctrines are arranged. the familiar topic of justification, of which luther made so much, was thus given again the central place. what the book really offered was something quite different from this. it was a complete system of theology, but it differed from the traditional systems of theology. these had followed helplessly a logical scheme which begins with god as he is in himself and apart from any knowledge which we have of him. they then slowly proceeded to man and sin and redemption, one empirical object and two concrete experiences which we may know something about. ritschl reversed the process. he aimed to begin with certain facts of life. such facts are sin and the consciousness of forgiveness, awareness of restoration to the will and power of goodness, the gift of love and of a spirit which can feel itself victorious even in the midst of ills in life, confidence that this life is not all. these phrases, taken together, would describe the consciousness of salvation. this consciousness of sin and salvation is a fact in individual men. it has evidently been a fact in the life of masses of men for many generations. the facts have thus a psychology and a history from which reflection on the phenomenon of faith must take its departure. there is no reason why, upon this basis, and until it departs from the scientific methods which are given with the nature of its object, theology should not be as truly a science as is any other known among men. this science starts with man, who in the object of many other sciences. it confines itself to man in this one aspect of his relation to moral life and to the transcendent meaning of the universe. it notes the fact that men, when awakened, usually have the sense of not being in harmony with the life of the universe or on the way to realisation of its meaning. it notes the fact that many men have had the consciousness of progressive restoration to that harmony. it inquires as to the process of that restoration. it asks as to the power of it. it discovers that that power is a personal one. men have believed that this power has been exerted over them, either in personal contact, or across the ages and through generations of believers, by one jesus, whom they call saviour. they have believed that it was god who through jesus saved them. jesus' consciousness thus became to them a revelation of god. the thought leads on to the consideration of that which a saved man does, or ought to do, in the life of the world and among his fellows, of the institution in which this attitude of mind is cherished and of the sum total of human institutions and relations of which the saved life should be the inward force. there is room even for a clause in which to compress the little that we know of anything beyond this life. we have written in unconventional words. there is no one place, either in ritschl's work or elsewhere, where this grand and simple scheme stands together in one context. this is unfortunate. were this the case, even wayfaring men might have understood somewhat better than they have what ritschl was aiming at. it is a still greater pity that the execution of the scheme should have left so much to be desired. that this execution would prove difficult needs hardly to be said. that it could never be the work of one man is certainly true. to have had so great an insight is title enough to fame. ritschl falls off from his endeavour as often as did schleiermacher--more often and with less excuse. the might of the past is great. the lumber which he meekly carries along with him is surprising, as one feels his lack of meekness in the handling of the lumber which he recognised as such. the putting of new wine into old bottles is so often reprobated by ritschl that the reader is justly surprised when he nevertheless recognises the bottles. the system is not 'all of one piece'--distinctly not. there are places where the rent is certainly made worse by the old cloth on the new garment. the work taken as a whole is so bewildering that one finds himself asking, 'what is ritschl's method?' if what is meant is not a question of detail, but of the total apprehension of the problem to be solved, the apprehension which we strove to outline above, then ritschl's courageous and complete inversion of the ancient method, his demand that we proceed from the known to the unknown, is a contribution so great that all shortcomings in the execution of it are insignificant. his first volume deals with the history of the doctrine of justification, beginning with anselm and abelard. in it ritschl's eminent qualities as historian come out. in it also his prejudices have their play. the second volume deals with the biblical foundations for the doctrine. ritschl was bred in the tübingen school. yet here is much forced exegesis. ritschl's positivistic view of the scripture and of the whole question of revelation, was not congruous with his well-learned biblical criticism. the third volume is the constructive one. it is of immeasurably greater value than the other two. it is this third volume which has frequently been translated. in respect of his contention against metaphysics it is hardly necessary that we should go into detail. with his empirical and psychological point of departure, given above, most men will find themselves in entire sympathy. the confusion of religion, which is an experience, with dogma which is reasoning about it, and the acceptance of statements in scripture which are metaphysical in nature, as if they were religious truths--these two things have, in time past, prevented many earnest thinkers from following the true road. when it comes to the constructive portion of his work, it is, of course, impossible for ritschl to build without the theoretical supports which philosophy gives, or to follow up certain of the characteristic magnitudes of religion without following them into the realm of metaphysics, to which, quite as truly as to that of religion, they belong. it would be unjust to ritschl to suppose that these facts were hidden from him. as to his attitude toward mysticism, there is a word to say. in the long history of religious thought those who have revolted against metaphysical interpretation, orthodox or unorthodox, have usually taken refuge in mysticism. hither the prophet augustine takes refuge when he would flee the ecclesiastic augustine, himself. the brethren of the free spirit, tauler, à kempis, suso, the author of the _theologia germanica_, molinos, madame gayon, illustrate the thing we mean. ritschl had seen much of mysticism in pietist circles. he knew the history of the movement well. what impressed his sane mind was the fact that unhealthy minds have often claimed, as their revelation from god, an experience which might, with more truth, be assigned to almost any other source. he desired to cut off the possibility of what seemed to him often a tragic delusion. the margin of any mystical movement stretches out toward monstrosities and absurdities. for that matter, what prevents a buddhist from declaring his thoughts and feelings to be christianity? indeed, ritschl asks, why is not buddhism as good as such christianity? he is, therefore, suspicious of revelations which have nothing by which they can be measured and checked. the claim of mystics that they came, in communion with god, to the point where they have no need of christ, seemed to him impious. there is no way of knowing that we are in fellowship with god, except by comparing what we feel that this fellowship has given us, with that which we historically learn that the fellowship with god gave to christ. this is the sense and this the connexion in which ritschl says that we cannot come to god save in and through the historic christ as he is given us in the gospels. the inner life, at least, which is there depicted for us is, in this outward and authoritative sense, our norm and guide. large difficulties loom upon the horizon of this positivistic insistence upon history. can we know the inner life of christ well enough to use it thus as test in every, or even in any case? does not the use of such a test, or of any test in this external way, take us out of the realm of the religion of the spirit? men once said that the church was their guide. others said the scripture was their guide. now, in the sense of the outwardness of its authority, we repudiate even this. it rings devoutly if we say christ is our guide. yet, as ritschl describes this guidance, in the exigency of his contention against mysticism, have we anything different? what becomes of confucianists and shintoists, who have never heard of the historic christ? and all the while we have the sense of a query in our minds. is it open to any man to repudiate mysticism absolutely and with contumely, and then leave us to discover that he does not mean mysticism as historians of every faith have understood it, but only the margin of evil which is apparently inseparable from it? that margin of evil others see and deplore. against it other remedies have been suggested, as, for example, intelligence. some would feel that in ritschl's remedy the loss is greater than the gain. this historical character of revelation is so truly one of the fountain heads of the theology which takes its rise in ritschl, that it deserves to be considered somewhat more at length. the ritschlian movement has engaged a generation of more or less notable thinkers in the period since ritschl's death. these have dissented at many points from ritschl's views, diverged from his path and marked out courses of their own. we shall do well in the remainder of this chapter to attempt the delineation in terms, not exclusively of ritschl, but of that which may with some laxity be styled ritschlianism. the value judgments of religion indicate only the subjective form of religious knowledge, as the ritschlians understand it. faith, however, does not invent its own contents. historical facts, composing the revelation, actually exist, quite independent of the use which the believer makes of them. no group of thinkers have more truly sought to draw near to the person of the historic jesus. the historical person, jesus of nazareth, is the divine revelation. that sums up this aspect of the ritschlian position. some negative consequences of this position we have already noted. let us turn to its positive significance. herrmann is the one of the ritschlians who has dealt with this matter not only with great clearness, but also with deep christian feeling in his _verkehr des christen mit gott_, , and notably in his address, _der begriff der offenbarung_, . if the motive of religion were an intellectual curiosity, a verbal communication would suffice. as it is a practical necessity, this must be met by actual impulse in life. that passing out of the unhappiness of sin, into the peace and larger life which is salvation, does indeed imply the movement of god's spirit on our hearts, in conversion and thereafter. this is essentially mediated to us through the scriptures, especially through those of the new testament, because the new testament contains the record of the personality of jesus. in that our personality is filled with the spirit which breathes in him, our salvation is achieved. the image of jesus which we receive acts upon us as something indubitably real. it vindicates itself as real, in that it takes hold upon our manhood. of course, this assumes that the church has been right in accepting the gospels as historical. herrmann candidly faces this question. not every word or deed, he says, which is recorded concerning jesus, belongs to this central and dynamic revelation of which we speak. we do not help men to see jesus in a saving way if, on the strength of accounts in the new testament, we insist concerning jesus that he was born of a virgin, that he raised the dead, that he himself rose from the dead. we should not put these things before men with the declaration that they must assent to them. we must not try to persuade ourselves that that which acted upon the disciples as indubitably real must of necessity act similarly upon us. we are to allow ourselves to be seized and uplifted by that which, in our position, touches us as indubitably real. this is, in the first place, the moral character of jesus. it is his inner life which, on the testimony of the disciples, meets us as something real and active in the world, as truly now as then. what are some facts of this inner life? the jesus of the new testament shows a firmness of religious conviction, a clearness of moral judgment, a purity and force of will, such as are not found united in any other figure in history. we have the image of a man who is conscious that he does not fall short of the ideal for which he offers himself. it is this consciousness which is yet united in him with the most perfect humility. he lives out his life and faces death in a confidence and independence which have never been approached. he has confidence that he can lift men to such a height that they also will partake with him in the highest good, through their full surrender to god and their life of love for their fellows. it is clear that herrmann aims to bring to the front only those elements in the life of jesus which are likely to prove most effectual in meeting the need and winning the faith of the men of our age. he would cast into the background those elements which are likely to awaken doubt and to hinder the approach of men's souls to god. for herrmann himself the virgin birth has the significance that the spiritual life of jesus did not proceed from the sinful race. but herrmann admits that a man could hold even that without needing to allege that the physical life of jesus did not come into being in the ordinary way. the distinction between the inner and outward life of jesus, and the declaration that belief in the former alone is necessary, has the result of thus ridding us of questions which can scarcely fail to be present to the mind of every modern man. yet it would be unjust to imply that this is the purpose. quite the contrary, the distinction is logical for this theology. redemption is an affair of the inner life of a man. it is the force of the inner life of the redeemer which avails for it. it is from the belief that such an inner and spiritual life was once realised here on earth, that our own faith gathers strength, and gets guidance in the conflict for the salvation of our souls. the belief in the historicity of such an inner life is necessary. so harnack also declares in his _wesen des christenthums_, . it is noteworthy that in this connexion neither of these writers advances to a form of speculation concerning the exalted christ, which in recent years has had some currency. according to this doctrine, there is ascribed to the risen and ascended jesus an existence with god which is thought of in terms different from those which we associate with the idea of immortality. in other words, this continued existence of christ as god is a counterpart of that existence before the incarnation, which the doctrine of the pre-existence alleged. but surely this speculation can have no better standing than that of the pre-existence. sin in the language of religion is defection from the law of god. it is the transgression of the divine command. in what measure, therefore, the life of man can be thought of as sinful, depends upon his knowledge of the will of god. in scripture, as in the legends of the early history of the race, this knowledge stands in intimate connexion with the witness to a primitive revelation. this thought has had a curious history. the ideas of mankind concerning god and his will have grown and changed as much as have any other ideas. the rudimentary idea of the good is probably of social origin. it first emerges in the conflict of men one with another. as the personalised ideal of conduct, the god then reacts upon conduct, as the conduct reacts upon the notion of the god. only slowly has the ideal of the good been clarified. only slowly have the gods been ethicised. 'an honest god is the noblest work of man.' the moralising and spiritualising of the idea of jahve lies right upon the face of the old testament. the ascent of man on his ethical and spiritual side is as certain as is that on his physical side. long struggle upward through ignorance, weakness, sin, gradual elevating of the standard of what ought to he, growingly successful effort to conform to that standard--this is what the history of the race has seen. athwart this lies the traditional dogma. the dogma took up into itself a legend of the childhood of the world. it elaborated that which in genesis is vague and poetic into a vast scheme which has passed as a sacred philosophy of history. it postulated an original revelation. it affirmed the created state of man as one of holiness before a fall. to the framers of the dogma, if sin is the transgression of god's will, then it must be in light of a revelation of that will. in the scriptures we have vague intimations concerning god's will, growingly clearer knowledge of that will, evolving through history to jesus. in the dogma we have this grand assumption of a paradisaic state of perfectness in which the will of god was from the beginning perfectly known. in the platonic, as in the rabbinic, speculation the idea must precede the fact. every step of progress is a defection from that idea. the dogma suffers from an insoluble contradiction within itself. it aims to give us the point of departure by which we are to recognise the nature of sin. at the same moment it would describe the perfection of man at which god has willed that by age-long struggle he should arrive. now, if we place this perfection at the beginning of human history, before all human self-determination, we divest it of ethical quality. whatever else it may be, it is not character. on the other hand, if we would make this perfection really that of moral character, then we cannot place it at the beginning of human history, but far down the course of the evolution of the higher human traits, of the consciousness of sin and of the struggle for redemption. it is not revelation from god, but naïve imagination, later giving place to adventurous speculation concerning the origin of the universe, which we have in the doctrine of the primeval perfection of man. we do not really make earnest with our christian claim that in jesus we have our paramount revelation, until we admit this. it is through jesus, and not from adam that we know sin. so we might go on to say that the dogma of inherited guilt is a contradiction in terms. disadvantage may be inherited, weakness, proclivity to sin, but not guilt, not sin in the sense of that which entails guilt. what entails guilt is action counter to the will of god which we know. that is always the act of the individual man myself. it cannot by any possibility be the act of another. it may be the consequence of the sins of my ancestors that i do moral evil without knowing it to be such. even my fellows view this as a mitigation, if not as an exculpation. the very same act, however, which up to this point has been only an occasion for pity, becomes sin and entails guilt, when it passes through my own mind and will as a defection from a will of god in which i believe, and as a righteousness which i refuse. the confusion of guilt and sin in order to the inclusion of all under the need of salvation, as in the augustinian scheme, ended in bewilderment and stultification of the moral sense. it caused men to despair of themselves and gravely to misrepresent god. it is no wonder if in the age of rationalism this dogma was largely done away with. the religious sense of sin was declared to be an hallucination. nothing is more evident in the rationalist theology than its lack of the sense of sin. this alone is sufficient explanation of the impotency and inadequacy of that theology. kant's doctrine of radical evil testifies to his deep sense that the rationalists were wrong. he could see also the impossibility of the ancient view. but he had no substitute. hegel, much as he prided himself upon the restoration of dogma, viewed evil as only relative, good in the making. schleiermacher made a beginning of construing the thought of sin from the point of view of the christian consciousness. ritschl was the first consistently to carry out schleiermacher's idea, placing the christian consciousness in the centre and claiming that the revelation of the righteousness of god and of the perfection of man is in jesus. all men being sinners, there is a vast solidarity, which he describes as the kingdom of evil and sets over against the kingdom of god, yet not so that the freedom or responsibility of man is impaired. god forgives all sin save that of wilful resistance to the spirit of the good. that is, ritschl regards all sin, short of this last, as mainly ignorance and weakness. it is from ritschl, and more particularly from kaftan, that the phrases have been mainly taken which served as introduction to this paragraph. for the work of god through christ, in the salvation of men from the guilt and power of sin, various terms have been used. different aspects of the work have been described by different names. redemption, regeneration, justification, reconciliation and election or predestination--these are the familiar words. this is the order in which the conceptions stand, if we take them as they occur in consciousness. election then means nothing more than the ultimate reference to god of the mystery of an experience in which the believer already rejoices. on the other hand, in the dogma the order is reversed. election must come first, since it is the decree of god upon which all depends. redemption and reconciliation have, in christian doctrine, been traditionally regarded as completed transactions, waiting indeed to be applied to the individual or appropriated by him through faith, but of themselves without relation to faith. reconciliation was long thought of as that of an angry god to man. especially was this last the characteristic view of the west, where juristic notions prevailed. origen talked of a right of the devil over the soul of man until bought off by the sacrifice of christ. this is pure paganism, of course. the doctrine of anselm marks a great advance. it runs somewhat thus: the divine honour is offended in the sin of man. satisfaction corresponding to the greatness of the guilt must be rendered. man is under obligation to render this satisfaction; yet he is unable so to do. a sin against god is an infinite offence. it demands an infinite satisfaction. man can render no satisfaction which is not finite. the way out of this dilemma is the incarnation of the divine logos. for the god-man, as man, is entitled to bring this satisfaction for men. on the other hand, as god he is able so to do. in his death this satisfaction is embodied. he gave his life freely. god having received satisfaction through him demands nothing more from us. abelard had, almost at the same time with anselm, interpreted the death of christ in far different fashion. it was a revelation of the love of god which wins men to love in turn. this notion of abelard was far too subtle. the crass objective dogma of anselm prevailed. the death of christ was a sacrifice. the purpose was the propitiation of an angry god. the effect was that, on the side of god, a hindrance to man's salvation was removed. the doctrine accurately reflects the feudal ideas of the time which produced it. in grotius was done away the notion of private right, which lies at the basis of the theory of anselm. that of public duty took its place. a sovereign need not stand upon his offended honour, as in anselm's thought. still, he cannot, like a private citizen, freely forgive. he must maintain the dignity of his office, in order not to demoralise the world. the sufferings of christ did not effect a necessary private satisfaction. they were an example which satisfied the moral order of the world. apart from this change, the conception remains the same. as kaftan argues, we can escape the dreadful externality and artificiality of this scheme, only as redemption and regeneration are brought back to their primary place in consciousness. these are the initial experiences in which we become aware of god's work through christ in us and for us. the reconciliation is of us. the redemption is from our sins. the regeneration is to a new moral life. through the influence of jesus, reconciled on our part to god and believing in his unchanging love to us, we are translated into god's kingdom and live for the eternal in our present existence. redemption is indeed the work of god through christ, but it has intelligible parallel in the awakening of the life of the mind, or again of the spirit of self-sacrifice, through the personal influence of the wise and good. salvation begins in such an awakening through the personal influence of the wisest and best. it is transformation of our personality through the personality of jesus, by the personal god of truth, of goodness and of love. all that which god through jesus has done for us is futile, save as we make the actualisation of our deliverance from sin our continuous and unceasing task. when this connexion of thought is broken through, we transfer the whole matter of salvation from the inner to the outer world and make of it a transaction independent of the moral life of man. justification and reconciliation also are primarily acts and gifts of god. justification is a forensic act. the sense is not that in justification we are made just. we are, so to say, temporarily thus regarded, not that leniency may become the occasion of a new offence, but that in grateful love we may make it the starting point of a new life. we must justify our justification. it is easy to see the objections to such a course on the part of a civil judge. he must consider the rights of others. it was this which brought grotius and the rest, with the new england theologians down to park, to feel that forgiveness could not be quite free. if we acknowledge that this symbolism of god as judge or sovereign is all symbolism, mere figure of speech, not fact at all, then that objection--and much else--falls away. if we assert that another figure of speech, that of god as father, more perfectly suggests the relation of god and man, then forgiveness may be free. then justification and forgiveness are only two words for one and the same idea. then the nightmare of a god who would forgive and cannot, of a god who will forgive but may not justify until something further happens, is all done away. then the relation of the death of jesus to the forgiveness of our sins cannot be other than the relation of his life to that forgiveness. both the one and the other are a revelation of the forgiving love of god. we may say that in his death the whole meaning of his life was gathered. we may say that his death was the consummation of his life, that without it his life would not have been what it is. this is, however, very far from being the ordinary statement of the relation of jesus' death, either to his own life or to the forgiveness of our sins. the doctrinal tradition made much also of the deliverance from punishment which follows after the forgiveness of sin. in fact, in many forms of the dogma, it has been the escape from punishment which was chiefly had in mind. along with the forensic notion of salvation we largely or wholly discard the notion of punishment. we retain only the sense that the consequence of continuing in sin is to become more sinful. god himself is powerless to prevent that. punishment is immanent, vital, necessary. the penalty is gradually taken away if the sin itself is taken away--not otherwise. it returns with the sin, it continues in the sin, it is inseparable from the sin. punishment is no longer the right word. reward is not the true description of that growing better which is the consequence of being good. reward or punishment as _quid pro quo_, as arbitrary assignments, as external equivalents, do not so much as belong to the world of ideas in which we move. for this view the idea that god laid upon jesus penalties due to us, fades into thin air. jesus could by no possibility have met the punishment of sin, except he himself had been a sinner. then he must have met the punishment of his own sin and not that of others. that portion which one may gladly bear of the consequences of another's sin may rightfully be called by almost any other name. it cannot be called punishment since punishment is immanent. even eternal death is not a judicial assignment for our obstinate sinfulness. eternal death is the obstinate sinfulness, and the sinfulness the death. it must be evident that reconciliation can have, in this scheme, no meaning save that man's being reconciled to god. jesus reveals a god who has no need to be reconciled to us. the alienation is not on the side of god. that, being alienated from god, man may imagine that god is hostile to him, is only the working of a familiar law of the human mind. the fiction of an angry god is the most awful survival among us of primitive paganism. that which jesus by his revelation of god brought to pass was a true 'at-one-ment,' a causing of god and man to be at one again. to the word atonement, as currently pronounced, and as, until a half century ago, almost universally apprehended, the notion of that which is sacrificial attached. to the life and death of jesus, as revelation of god and saviour of men, we can no longer attach any sacrificial meaning whatsoever. there is indeed the perfectly general sense in which so beautiful a life and so heroic a death were, of course, a grand exemplification of self-sacrifice. yet this is a sense so different from the other and in itself so obvious, that one hesitates to use the same word in the immediate context with that other, lest it should appear that the intention was to obscure rather than to make clear the meaning. for atonement in a sense different from that of reconciliation, we have no significance whatever. reconciliation and atonement describe one and the same fact. in the dogma the words were as far as possible from being synonyms. they referred to two facts, the one of which was the means and essential prerequisite of the other. the vicarious sacrifice was the antecedent condition of the reconciling of god. in our thought it is not a reconciliation of god which is aimed at. no sacrifice is necessary. no sacrifice such as that postulated is possible. of the reconciliation of man to god the only condition is the revelation of the love of god in the life and death of jesus and the obedient acceptance of that revelation on the part of men. chapter iv the critical and historical movement it has been said that in christian times the relation of philosophy and religion may be determined by the attitude of reason toward a single matter, namely, the churchly doctrine of revelation.[ ] there are three possible relations of reason to this doctrine. first, it may be affirmed that the content of religion and theology is matter communicated to man in extraordinary fashion, truth otherwise unattainable, on which it is beyond the competence of reason to sit in judgment. we have then the two spheres arbitrarily separated. as regards their relation, theology is at first supreme. reason is the handmaiden of faith. it is occupied in applying the principles which it receives at the hands of theology. these are the so-called ages of faith. notably was this the attitude of the middle age. but in the long run either authoritative revelation, thus conceived, must extinguish reason altogether, or else reason must claim the whole man. after all, it is in virtue of his having some reason that man is the subject of revelation. he is continually asked to exercise his reason upon certain parts of the revelation, even by those who maintain that he must do so only within limits. it is only because there in a certain reasonableness in the conceptions of revealed religion that man has ever been able to make them his own or to find in them meaning and edification. this external relation of reason to revelation cannot continue. nor can the encroachments of reason be met by temporary distinctions such as that between the natural and the supernatural. the antithesis to the natural is not the supernatural, but the unnatural. the antithesis to reason is not faith, but irrationality. the antithesis to human truth is not the divine truth. it is falsehood. [footnote : seth pringle-pattison, _the philosophical radicals_, p. .] when men have made this discovery, a revulsion carries their minds to the second position of which we spoke. this is, namely, the position of extreme denial. it is an attitude of negation toward revelation, such as prevailed in the barren and trivial rationalism of the end of the eighteenth century. the reason having been long repressed revenges itself, usurping everything. the explanation of the rise of positive religion and of the claim of revelation is sought in the hypothesis of deceit, of ambitious priestcraft and incurable credulity. the religion of those who thus argue, in so far as they claim any religion, is merely the current morality. their explanation of the religion of others is that it is merely the current morality plus certain unprovable assumptions. indeed, they may think it to be but the obstinate adherence to these assumptions minus the current morality. it is impossible that this shallow view should prevail. to overcome it, however, there is need of a philosophy which shall give not less, but greater scope to reason and at the same time an inward meaning to revelation. this brings us to the third possible position, to which the best thinkers of the nineteenth century have advanced. so long as deistic views of the relation of god to man and the world held the field, revelation meant something interjected _ab extra_ into the established order of things. the popular theology which so abhorred deism was yet essentially deistic in its notion of god and of his separation from the world. men did not perceive that by thus separating god from the world they set up alongside of him a sphere and an activity to which his relations were transient and accidental. no wonder that other men, finding their satisfying activity within the sphere which was thus separated from god, came to think of this absentee god as an appendage to the scheme of things. but if man himself be inexplicable, save as sharing in the wider life of universal reason, if the process of history be realised as but the working out of an inherent divine purpose, the manifestation of an indwelling divine force, then revelation denotes no longer an interference with that evolution. it is a factor in that evolution. it is but the normal relation of the immanent spirit of god to the children of men at the crises of their fate. then revelation is an experience of men precisely in the line and according to the method of all their nobler experiences. it is itself reasonable and moral. inspiration is the normal and continuous effect of the contact of the god who is spirit with man who is spirit too. the relation is never broken. but there are times in which it has been more particularly felt. there have been personalities to whom in eminent degree this depth of communion with god has been vouchsafed. to such persons and eras the religious sense of mankind, by a true instinct, has tended to restrict the words 'revelation' and 'inspiration.' this restriction, however, signifies the separation of the grand experience from the ordinary, only in degree and not in kind. such an experience was that of prophets and law-givers under the ancient covenant. such an experience, in immeasurably greater degree, was that of jesus himself. such a turning-point in the life of the race was the advent of christianity. the world has not been wrong in calling the documents of these revelations sacred books and in attributing to them divine authority. it has been largely wrong _in the manner in which it construed their authority_. it has been wholly wrong in imagining that the documents themselves were the revelation. they are merely the record _of a personal communion with the transcendent_. it was lessing who first cast these fertile ideas into the soil of modern thought. they were never heartily taken up by kant. one can think, however, with what enthusiasm men recurred to them after their postulates had been verified and the idea of god, of man and of the world which they implied, had been confirmed by fichte and schelling. in the philosophical movement, the outline of which we have suggested, what one may call the _nidus_ of a new faith in scripture had been prepared. the quality had been forecast which the scripture must be found to possess, if it were to retain its character as document of revelation. in those very same years the great movement of biblical criticism was gathering force which, in the course of the nineteenth century, was to prove by stringent literary and historical methods, what qualities the documents which we know as scripture do possess. it was to prove in the most objective fashion that the scripture does not possess those qualities which men had long assigned to it. it was to prove that, as a matter of fact, the literature does possess the qualities which the philosophic forecast, above hinted, required. it was thus actually to restore the bible to an age in which many reasonable men had lost their faith in it. it was to give a genetic reconstruction of the literature and show the progress of the history which the scripture enshrines. after a contest in which the very foundations of faith seemed to be removed, it was to afford a basis for a belief in scripture and revelation as positive and secure as any which men ever enjoyed, with the advantage that it is a foundation upon which the modern man can and does securely build. the synchronism of the two endeavours is remarkable. the convergence upon one point, of studies starting, so to say, from opposite poles and having no apparent interest in common, is instructive. it is an illustration of that which comte said, that all the great intellectual movements of a given time are but the manifestation of a common impulse, which pervades and possesses the minds of the men of that time. the attempt to rationalise the narrative of scripture was no new one. it grew in intensity in the early years of the nineteenth century. the conflict which was presently precipitated concerned primarily the gospels. it was natural that it should do so. these contain the most important scripture narrative, that of the life of jesus. strauss had in good faith turned his attention to the gospels, precisely because he felt their central importance. his generation was to learn that they presented also the greatest difficulties. the old rationalistic interpretation had started from the assumption that what we have in the gospel narrative is fact. yet, of course, for the rationalists, the facts must be natural. they had the appearance of being supernatural only through the erroneous judgment of the narrators. it was for the interpreter to reduce everything which is related to its simple, natural cause. the water at cana was certainly not turned into wine. it must have been brought by jesus as a present and opened thus in jest. jesus was, of course, begotten in the natural manner. a simple maiden must have been deceived. the execution of this task of the rationalising of the narratives by one dr. paulus, was the _reductio ad absurdum_ of the claim. the most spiritual of the narratives, the finest flower of religious poetry, was thus turned into the meanest and most trivial incident without any religious significance whatsoever. the obtuseness of the procedure was exceeded only by its vulgarity. strauss on the other hand, as pfleiderer has said, we must remember the difficulty which beset the men of that age. their general culture made it difficult for them to accept the miraculous element in the gospel narrative as it stood. yet their theory of scripture gave them no notion as to any other way in which the narratives might be understood. the men had never asked themselves how the narratives arose. in the preface to his _leben jesu_, strauss said: 'orthodox and rationalists alike proceed from the false assumption that we have always in the gospels testimony, sometimes even that of eye-witnesses, to fact. they are, therefore, reduced to asking themselves what can have been the real and natural fact which is here witnessed to in such extraordinary way. we have to realise,' strauss proceeds, 'that the narrators testify sometimes, not to outward facts, but to ideas, often most poetical and beautiful ideas, constructions which even eye-witnesses had unconsciously put upon facts, imagination concerning them, reflexions upon them, reflexions and imaginings such as were natural to the time and at the author's level of culture. what we have here is not falsehood, not misrepresentation of the truth. it is a plastic, naïve, and, at the same time, often most profound apprehension of truth, within the area of religious feeling and poetic insight. it results in narrative, legendary, mythical in nature, illustrative often of spiritual truth in a manner more perfect than any hard, prosaic statement could achieve.' before strauss men had appreciated that particular episodes, like the virgin birth and the bodily resurrection, might have some such explanation as this. no one had ever undertaken to apply this method consistently, from one end to the other of the gospel narrative. what was of more significance, no one had clearly defined the conception of legend. strauss was sure that in the application of this notion to certain portions of the scripture no irreverence was shown. no moral taint was involved. nothing which could detract from the reverence in which we hold the scripture was implied. rather, in his view, the history of jesus is more wonderful than ever, when some, at least, of its elements are viewed in this way, when they are seen as the product of the poetic spirit, working all unconsciously at a certain level of culture and under the impulse of a great enthusiasm. there is no doubt that strauss, who was at that time an earnest christian, felt the relief from certain difficulties in the biography of jesus which this theory affords. he put it forth in all sincerity as affording to others like relief. he said that while rationalists and supernaturalists alike, by their methods, sacrificed the divine content of the story and clung only to its form, his hypothesis sacrificed the historicity of the narrative form, but kept the eternal and spiritual truth. in his opinion, the lapse of a single generation was enough to give room for this process of the growth of the legendary elements which have found place in the written gospels which we have. ideas entertained by primitive christians relative to their lost master, have been, all unwittingly, transformed into facts and woven into the tale of his career. the legends of a people are in their basal elements never the work of a single individual. they are never intentionally produced. the imperceptible growth of a joint creative work of this kind was possible, however, only on the supposition that oral tradition was, for a time, the means of transmission of the reminiscences of jesus. strauss' explanation of his theory has been given above, to some extent in his own words. we may see how he understood himself. we may appreciate also the genuineness of the religious spirit of his work. at the same time the thorough-going way in which he applied his principle, the relentless march of his argument, the character of his results, must sometimes have been startling even to himself. they certainly startled others. the effect of his work was instantaneous and immense. it was not at all the effect which he anticipated. the issue of the furious controversy which broke out was disastrous both to strauss' professional career and to his whole temperament and character. david friedrich strauss was born in in ludwigsburg in württemberg. he studied in tübingen and in berlin. he became an instructor in the theological faculty in tübingen in . he published his _leben jesu_ in . he was almost at once removed from his portion. in he withdrew altogether from the professorial career. his answer to his critics, written in , was in bitter tone. more conciliatory was his book, _Über vergängliches und bleibendes im christenthum_, published in . indeed there were some concessions in the third edition of his _leben jesu_ in , but these were all repudiated in . his _leben jesu für das deutsche volk_, published in was the effort to popularise that which he had done. it is, however, in point of method, superior to his earlier work, comments were met with even greater bitterness. finally, not long before his death in , he published _der alte und der neue glaube_, in which he definitely broke with christianity altogether and went over to materialism and pessimism. pfleiderer, who had personal acquaintance with strauss and held him in regard, once wrote: 'strauss' error did not lie in his regarding some of the gospel stories as legends, and some of the narratives of the miraculous as symbols of ideal truths. so far strauss was right. the contribution which he made is one which we have all appropriated and built upon. his error lay in his looking for those religious truths which are thus symbolised, outside of religion itself, in adventurous metaphysical speculations. he did not seek them in the facts of the devout heart and moral will, as these are illustrated in the actual life of jesus.' if strauss, after the disintegration in criticism of certain elements in the biography of jesus, had given us a positive picture of jesus as the ideal of religious character and ethical force, his work would indeed have been attacked. but it would have outlived the attack and conferred a very great benefit. it conferred a great benefit as it was, although not the benefit which strauss supposed. the benefit which it really conferred was in its critical method, and not at all in its results. of the mass of polemic and apologetic literature which strauss' _leben jesu_ called forth, little is at this distance worth the mentioning. ullmann, who was far more appreciative than most of his adversaries, points out the real weakness of strauss' work. that weakness lay in the failure to draw any distinction between the historical and the mythical. he threatened to dissolve the whole history into myth. he had no sense for the ethical element in the personality and teaching of jesus nor of the creative force which this must have exerted. ullmann says with cogency that, according to strauss, the church created its christ virtually out of pure imagination. but we are then left with the query: what created the church? to this query strauss has absolutely no answer to give. the answer is, says ullmann, that the ethical personality of jesus created the church. this ethical personality is thus a supreme historic fact and a sublime historic cause, to which we must endeavour to penetrate, if need be through the veil of legend. the old rationalists had made themselves ridiculous by their effort to explain everything in some natural way. strauss and his followers often appeared frivolous, since, according to them, there was little left to be explained. if a portion of the narrative presented a difficulty, it was declared mythical. what was needed was such a discrimination between the legendary and historical elements in the gospels as could be reached only by patient, painstaking study of the actual historical quality and standing of the documents. no adequate study of this kind had ever been undertaken. strauss did not undertake it, nor even perceive that it was to be undertaken. there had been many men of vast learning in textual and philological criticism. here, however, a new sort of critique was applied to a problem which had but just now been revealed in all its length and breadth. the establishing of the principles of this historical criticism--the so-called higher criticism--was the herculean task of the generation following strauss. to the development of that science another tübingen professor, baur, made permanent contribution. with strauss himself, sadder than the ruin of his career, was the tragedy of the uprooting of his faith. this tragedy followed in many places in the wake of the recognition of strauss' fatal half-truth. baur baur, strauss' own teacher in tübingen, afterward famous as biblical critic and church-historian, said of strauss' book, that through it was revealed in startling fashion to that generation of scholars, how little real knowledge they had of the problem which the gospels present. to baur it was clear that if advance was to be made beyond strauss' negative results, the criticism of the gospel history must wait upon an adequate criticism of the documents which are our sources for that history. strauss' failure had brought home to the minds of men the fact that there were certain preliminary studies which must needs be taken up. meantime the other work must wait. as one surveys the literature of the next thirty years this fact stands out. many apologetic lives of jesus had to be written in reply to strauss. but they are almost completely negligible. no constructive work was done in this field until nearly a generation had passed. since all history, said baur, before it reaches us must pass through the medium of a narrator, our first question as to the gospel history is not, what objective reality can be accorded to the narrative itself. there is a previous question. this concerns the relation of the narrative to the narrator. it might be very difficult for us to make up our minds as to what it was that, in a given case, the witness saw. we have not material for such a judgment. we have probably much evidence, up and down his writings, as to what sort of man the witness was, in what manner he would be likely to see anything and with what personal equation he would relate that which he saw. baur would seem to have been the first vigorously and consistently to apply this principle to the gospel narratives. before we can penetrate deeply into the meaning of an author we must know, if we may, his purpose in writing. every author belongs to the time in which he lives. the greater the importance of his subject for the parties and struggles of his day, the safer is the assumption that both he and his work will bear the impress of these struggles. he will represent the interests of one or another of the parties. his work will have a tendency of some kind. this was one of baur's oft-used words--the tendency of a writer and of his work. we must ascertain that tendency. the explanation of many things both in the form and substance of a writing would be given could we but know that. the letters of paul, for example, are written in palpable advocacy of opinions which were bitterly opposed by other apostles. the biographies of jesus suggest that they also represent, the one this tendency, the other that. we have no cause to assert that this trait of which we speak implies conscious distortion of the facts which the author would relate. the simple-minded are generally those least aware of the bias in the working of their own minds. it is obvious that until we have reckoned with such elements as these, we cannot truly judge of that which the gospels say. to the elaboration of the principles of this historical criticism baur gave the labour of his life. his biblical work alone would have been epoch-making. ferdinand christian baur was born in in schmieden, near stuttgart. he became a professor in tübingen in and died there in . he was an ardent disciple of hegel. his greatest work was surely in the field of the history of dogma. his works, _die christliche lehre von der vereöhnung_, , _die christliche lehre von der dreieinigkeit und menschwerdung gottes_, - , his _lehrbuch der christlichen dogmengeschichte_, , together constitute a contribution to which harnack's work in our own time alone furnishes a parallel. baur had begun his thorough biblical studies before the publication of strauss' book. the direction of those studies was more than ever confirmed by his insight of the shortcomings of strauss' work. very characteristically also he had begun his investigations, not at the most difficult point, that of the gospels, as strauss had done, but at the easiest point, the epistles of paul. as early as he had published a tractate, _die christus-partei in der corinthischen gemeinde_. in that book he had delineated the bitter contest between paul and the judaising element in the apostolic church which opposed paul whithersoever he went. in his disquisition, _die sogenannten pastoral-briefe_, appeared. in the teachings of these letters he discovered the antithesis to the gnostic heresies of the second century. he thought also that the stage of organisation of the church which they imply, accorded better with this supposition than with that of their apostolic authorship. the same general theme is treated in a much larger way in baur's _paulus, der apostel jesu christi_, in . here the results of his study of the book of the acts are combined with those of his inquiries as to the pauline epistles. in the history of the apostolic age men had been accustomed to see the evidence only of peace and harmony. baur sought to show that the period had been one of fierce struggle, between the narrow judaic and legalistic form of faith in the messiah and that conception, introduced by paul, of a world-religion free from the law. out of this conflict, which lasted a hundred and fifty years, went forth the catholic church. the monuments of this struggle and witnesses of this process of growth are the new testament writings, most of which were produced in the second century. the only documents which we have which were written before a.d. , were the four great epistles of paul, those to the galatians, to the romans, and to the corinthians, together with the apocalypse. many details in baur's view are now seen to have been overstated and others false. yet this was the first time that a true historical method had been applied to the new testament literature as a whole. baur's contribution lay in the originality of his conception of christianity, in his emphasis upon paul, in his realisation of the magnitude of the struggle which paul inaugurated against jewish prejudices in the primitive church. in his idea, the issue of that struggle was, on the one hand, the freeing of christianity from judaism and on the other, the developing of christian thought into a system of dogma and of the scattered christian communities into an organised church. the fourth gospel contains, according to baur, a christian gnosis parallel to the gnosis which was more and more repudiated by the church as heresy. the logos, the divine principle of life and light, appears bodily in the phenomenal world in the person of jesus. it enters into conflict with the darkness and evil of the world. this speculation is but thinly clothed in the form of a biography of jesus. that an account completely dominated by speculative motives gives but slight guarantee of historical truth, was for baur self-evident. the author remains unknown, the age uncertain. the book, however, can hardly have appeared before the time of the montanist movement, that is, toward the end of the second century. scholars now rate far more highly than did baur the element of genuine johannine tradition which may lie behind the fourth gospel and account for its name. they do not find traces of montanism or of paschal controversies. but the main contention stands. the fourth gospel represents the beginning of elaborate reflexion upon the life and work of jesus. it is what it is because of the fusion of the ethical and spiritual content of the revelation in the personality of jesus, with metaphysical abstractions and philosophical interpretation. baur was by no means so fortunate in the solution which he offered of the problem which the synoptic gospels present. his opinions are of no interest except as showing that he too worked diligently upon a question which for a long time seemed only to grow in complexity and which has busied scholars practically from baur's day to our own. his zeal here also to discover dogmatic purposes led him astray. the _tendenzkritik_ had its own tendencies. the chief was to exaggeration and one-sidedness. baur had the kind of ear which hears grass grow. there is much overstrained acumen. many radically false conclusions are reached by prejudiced operation with an historical formula, which in the last analysis is that of hegel. everything is to be explained on the principle of antithesis. again, the assumption of conscious purpose in everything which men do or write is a grave exaggeration. it is often in contradiction of that wonderful unconsciousness with which men and institutions move to the fulfilment of a purpose for the good, the purpose of god, into which their own life is grandly taken up. to make each phase of such a movement the contribution of some one man's scheme or endeavour is, as was once said, to make god act like a professor. * * * * * the method of this book is that it seeks to deal only with men who have inaugurated movements, or marked some turning-point in their course which has proved of more than usual significance. the compass of the book demands such a limitation. but by this method whole chapters in the life of learning are passed over, in which the substance of achievement has been the carrying out of a plan of which we have been able to note only the inception. there is a sense in which the carrying out of a plan is both more difficult and more worthy than the mere setting it in motion. when one thinks of the labour and patience which have been expended, for example, upon the problem of the gospels in the past seventy years, those truths come home to us. when one reminds himself of the hypotheses which have been made but to be abandoned, which have yet had the value that they at least indicated the area within which solutions do not lie,--when one thinks of the wellnigh immeasurable toil by which we have been led to large results which now seem secure, one is made to realise that the conditions of the advance of science are, for theologians, not different from those which obtain for scholars who, in any other field, would establish truth and lead men. in a general way, however, it may be said that the course of opinion in these two generations, in reference to such questions as those of the dates and authorship of the new testament writings, has been one of rather noteworthy retrogression from many of the tübingen positions. harnack's _geschichte der altchristlichen literatur_, , and his _chronologie der altchristlichen literatur_, , present a marked contrast to baur's scheme. the canon the minds of new testament scholars in the last generation have been engaged with a question which, in its full significance, was hardly present to the attention of baur's school. it is the question of the new testament as a whole. it is the question as to the time and manner and motives of the gathering together of the separate writings into a canon of scripture which, despite the diversity of its elements, exerted its influence as a unit and to which an authority was ascribed, which the particular writings cannot originally have had. when and how did the christians come to have a sacred book which they placed on an equality with the old testament, which last they had taken over from the synagogue? how did they choose the writings which were to belong to this new collection? why did they reject books which we know were read for edification in the early churches? deeper even than the question of the growth of the collection is that of the growth of the apprehension concerning it. this apprehension of these twenty-seven different writings as constituting the sole document of christian revelation, given by the holy spirit, the identical holy book of the christian church, gave to the book a significance altogether different from that which its constituent elements must have had for men to whom they had appeared as but the natural literary deposit of the religious movement of the apostolic age. this apprehension took possession of the mind of the christian community. it was made the subject of deliverances by councils of the church. how did this great transformation take place? was it an isolated achievement, or was it part of a general movement? did not this development of life in the christian communities which gave them a new testament belong to an evolution which gave them also the so-called apostles' creed and a monarchical organisation of the church and the beginnings of a ritual of worship? it is clear that we have here a question of greatest moment. with the rise of this idea of the canon, with the assigning to this body of literature the character of scripture, we have the beginning of the larger mastery which the new testament has exerted over the minds and life of men. compared with this question, investigations as to the authorship and as to the time, place and circumstance of the production of particular books, came, for the time, to occupy a secondary rank. as they have emerged again, they wear a new aspect and are approached in a different spirit. the writings are revealed as belonging to a far larger context, that of the whole body of the christian literature of the age. it in no way follows from that which we have said that the body of documents, which ultimately found themselves together in the new testament, have not a unity other than the outward one which was by consensus of opinion or conciliar decree imposed upon them. they do represent, in the large and in varying degrees, an inward and spiritual unity. there was an inspiration of the main body of these writings, the outward condition of which, at all events, was the nearness of their writers to jesus or to his eye-witnesses, and the consequence of which was the unique relation which the more important of these documents historically bore to the formation of the christian church. there was a heaven which lay about the infancy of christianity which only slowly faded into the common light of day. that heaven was the spirit of the master himself. the chief of these writings do centrally enshrine the first pure illumination of that spirit. but the churchmen who made the canon and the fathers who argued about it very often gave mistaken reasons for facts in respect of which they nevertheless were right. they gave what they considered sound external reasons. they alleged apostolic authorship. they should have been content with internal evidence and spiritual effectiveness. the apostles had come, in the mind of the early church, to occupy a place of unique distinction. writings long enshrined in affection for their potent influence, but whose origin had not been much considered, were now assigned to apostles, that they might have authority and distinction. the theory of the canon came after the fact. the theory was often wrong. the canon had been, in the main and in its inward principle, soundly constituted. modern critics reversed the process. they began where the church fathers left off. they tore down first that which had been last built up. modern criticism, too, passed through a period in which points like those of authorship and date of gospels and epistles seemed the only ones to be considered. the results being here often negative, complete disintegration of the canon seemed threatened, through discovery of errors in the processes by which the canon had been outwardly built up. men realise now that that was a mistake. two things have been gained in this discussion. there is first the recognition that the canon is a growth. the holy book and the conception of its holiness, as well, were evolved. christianity was not primarily a book-religion save in the sense that almost all christians revered the old testament. other writings than those which we esteem canonical were long used in churches. some of those afterward canonical were not used in all the churches. in similar fashion we have learned that identical statements of faith were not current in the earliest churches. nor was there one uniform system of organisation and government. there was a time concerning which we cannot accurately use the word church. there were churches, very simple, worshipping communities. but the church, as outward magnitude, as triumphant organisation, grew. so there were many creeds or, at least, informally accredited and current beginnings of doctrine. by and by there was a formally accepted creed. so there were first dearly loved memorials of jesus and letters of apostolic men. only by and by was there a new testament. the first gain is the recognition of this state of things. the second follows. it is the recognition that, despite a sense in which this literature is unique, there is also a sense in which it is but a part of the whole body of early christian literature. from the exact and exhaustive study of the early christian literature as a whole, we are to expect a clearer understanding and a juster estimate of the canonical part of it. it is not easy to say to whom we have to ascribe the discovery and elaboration of these truths. the historians of dogma have done much for this body of opinion. the historians of christian literature have perhaps done more. students of institutions and of the canon law have had their share. baur had more than an inkling of the true state of things. but by far the most conspicuous teacher of our generation, in two at least of these particular fields, has been harnack. in his lifelong labour upon the sources of christian history, he had come upon this question of the canon again and again. in his _lehrbuch der dogmengeschichte_, - , te. aufl., , the view of the canon, which was given above, is absolutely fundamental. in his _geschichte der altchristlichen literatur bis eusebius_, , and _chronologic der allchristlichen literatur_, - , the evidence is offered in rich detail. it was in his tractate, _das neue testament um das jahr_ , , that he contended for the later date against zahn, who had urged that the outline of the new testament was established and the conception of it as scripture present, by the end of the first century. harnack argues that the decision practically shaped itself between the time of justin martyr, c. a.d. , and that of irenæus, c. a.d. . the studies of the last twenty years have more and more confirmed this view. life of jesus we said that the work of strauss revealed nothing so clearly as the ignorance of his time concerning the documents of the early christian movement. the labours of baur and of his followers were directed toward overcoming this difficulty. suddenly the public interest was stirred, and the earlier excitement recalled by the publication of a new life of jesus. the author was a frenchman, ernest renan, at one time a candidate for the priesthood in the roman church. he was a man of learning and literary skill, who made his _vie de jésus_, which appeared in , the starting-point for a series of historical works under the general title, _les origines de christianisme_. in the next year appeared strauss' popular work, _leben jesu für das deutsche volk_. in was published also weizsäcker's contribution to the life of christ, his _untersuchungen über die evangelische geschichte_. to the same year belonged schenkel's _charakterbild jesu_. in the years from - appeared keim's _geschichte jesu von nazara_. there is something very striking in this recurrence to the topic. after ail, this was the point for the sake of which those laborious investigations had been undertaken. this was and is the theme of undying religious interest, the character and career of the nazarene. renan's philosophical studies had been mainly in english, studies of locke and hume. but herder also had been his beloved guide. for his biblical and oriental studies he had turned almost exclusively to the germans. there is a deep religious spirit in the work of the period of his conflict with the church. the enthusiasm for christ sustained him in his struggle. of the days before he withdrew from the church he wrote: 'for two months i was a protestant like a professor in halle or tübingen.' french was at that time a language much better known in the world at large, particularly the english-speaking world, than was german. renan's book had great art and charm. it took a place almost at once as a bit of world-literature. the number of editions in french and of translations into other languages is amazing. beyond question, the critical position was made known through renan to multitudes who would never have been reached by the german works which were really renan's authorities. it is idle to say with pfleiderer that it is a pity that, having possessed so much learning, renan had not possessed more. that is not quite the point. the book has much breadth and solidity of learning. yet renan has scarcely the historian's quality. his work is a work of art. it has the halo of romance. imagination and poetical feeling make it in a measure what it is. renan was born in in treguier in brittany. he set out for the priesthood, but turned aside to the study of oriental languages and history. he made long sojourn in the east. he spoke of palestine as having been to him a fifth gospel. he became professor of hebrew in the _college de france_. he was suspended from his office in , and permitted to read again only in . he had formally separated himself from the roman church in . he was a member of the academy. his diction is unsurpassed. he died in . in his own phrase, he sought to bring jesus forth from the darkness of dogma into the midst of the life of his people. he paints him first as an idyllic national leader, then as a struggling and erring hero, always aiming at the highest, but doomed to tragic failure through the resistance offered by reality to his ideal. he calls the traditional christ an abstract being who never was alive. he would bring the marvellous human figure before our eyes. he heightens the brilliancy of his delineation by the deep shadows of mistakes and indiscretion upon jesus' part. in some respects an epic or an historical romance, without teaching us history in detail, may yet enable us by means of the artist's intuition to realise an event or period, or make presentation to ourselves of a personality, better than the scant records acknowledged by the strict historian could ever do. our materials for a real biography of jesus are inadequate. this was the fact which, by all these biographies of jesus, was brought home to men's minds. keim's book, the most learned of those mentioned, is hardly more than a vast collection of material for the history of jesus' age, which has now been largely superseded by schürer's _geschichte des judischen volkes im zeitalier jesu christi_, bde., - . there have been again, since the decade of the sixties, periods of approach to the great problem. weiss and beyschlag published at the end of the eighties lives of jesus which, especially the former, are noteworthy in their treatment of the critical material. they do not for a moment face the question of the person of christ. the same remark might be made, almost without exception, as to those lives of jesus which have appeared in numbers in england and america. the best books of recent years are albert reville's _jesus de nazareth_, , and oscar holtzmann's _leben jesu_, . so great are the difficulties and in such disheartening fashion are they urged from all sides, that one cannot withhold enthusiastic recognition of the service which holtzmann particularly has here rendered, in a calm, objective, and withal deeply devout handling of his theme. meantime new questions have arisen, questions of the relation of jesus to messianism, like those touched upon by wrede in his _das messias geheimniss in den evangelien_, , and questions as to the eschatological trait in jesus' own teaching. schweitzer's book, _von reimarus zu wrede: eine geschichte der leben jesu-forschung_, , not merely sets forth this deeply interesting chapter in the history of the thought of modern men, but has also serious interpretative value in itself. for english readers sanday's _life of christ in recent research_, , follows the descriptive aspect, at least, of the same purpose with schweitzer's book, covering, however, only the last twenty years. it is characteristic that ritschl, notwithstanding his emphasis upon the historical jesus, asserted the impossibility of a biography of jesus. the understanding of jesus is through faith. for wrede, on the other hand, such a biography is impossible because of the nature of our sources. not alone are they scant, but they are not biographical. they are apologetic, propagandist, interested in everything except those problems which a biographer must raise. the last few years have even conjured up the question whether jesus ever lived. one may say with all simplicity, that the question has, of course, as much rightfulness as has any other question any man could raise. the somewhat extended discussion has, however, done nothing to make evident how it could arise, save in minds unfamiliar with the materials and unskilled in historical research. the conditions which beset us when we ask for a biography of jesus that shall answer scientific requirement are not essentially different from those which meet us in the case of any other personage equally remote in point of time, and equally woven about--if any such have been--by the love and devotion of men. bousset's little book, _was wissen wir von jesus?_ , convinces a quiet mind that we know a good deal. qualities in the personality of jesus obviously worked in transcendent measure to call out devotion. no understanding of history is adequate which has no place for the unfathomed in personality. exactly because we ourselves share this devotion, we could earnestly wish that the situation as to the biography of jesus were other than it is. the old testament we have spoken thus far as if the whole biblical-critical problem had been that of the new testament. in reality the same impulses which had opened up that question to the minds of men had set them working upon the problem of the old testament as well. we have seen how the christians made for themselves a canon of the new testament. by the force of that conception of the canon, and through the belief that, almost in a literal sense, god was the author of the whole book, the obvious differences among the writings had been obscured. men forgot the evolution through which the writings had passed. the same thing had happened for the old testament in the jewish synagogues and for the rabbis before the christian movement. when the christians took over the old testament they took it over in this sense. it was a closed book wherein all appreciation of the long road which the religion of israel had traversed in its evolution had been lost. the relation of the old covenant to the new was obscured. the old testament became a christian book. not merely were the christian facts prophesied in the old testament, but its doctrines also were implied. almost down to modern times texts have been drawn indifferently from either testament to prove doctrine and sustain theology. moses and jesus, prophets and paul, are cited to support an argument, without any sense of difference. what we have said is hardly more true of augustine or anselm than of the classic puritan divines. this was the state of things which the critics faced. the old testament critical movement is a parallel at all points of the one which we have described in reference to the new. of course, elder scholars, even spinoza, had raised the question as to the mosaic authorship of certain portions of the pentateuch. roman catholic scholars in the seventeenth century, for whom the stringent theory of inspiration had less significance than for protestants, had set forth views which showed an awakening to the real condition. yet, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, no one would have forecast a revolution in opinion which would recognise the legendary quality of considerable portions of the pentateuch and historical books, which would leave but little that is of undisputed mosaic authorship, which would place the prophets before the law, which would concede the growth of the jewish canon, which would perceive the relation of judaism to the religions of the other semite peoples and would seek to establish the true relation of judaism to christianity. in the year , the same year in which strauss' _leben jesu_ saw the light, wilhelm vatke published his _religion des alten testaments_. vatke was born in , began to teach in berlin in , was professor extraordinarius there in and died in , not yet holding a full professorship. his book was obscurely written and scholastic. public attention was largely occupied by the conflict which strauss' work had caused. reuss in strassburg was working on the same lines, but published the main body of his results much later. the truth for which these scholars and others like them argued, worked its way slowly by force of its own merit. perhaps it was due to this fact that the development of old testament critical views was subject to a fluctuation less marked than that which characterised the case of the new testament. it is not necessary to describe the earlier stages of the discussion in vatke's own terms. to his honour be it said that the views which he thus early enunciated were in no small degree identical with those which were in masterful fashion substantiated in holland by kuenen about , in germany by wellhausen after , and made known to english readers by robertson smith in . budde has shown in his _kanon des alten testaments_, , that the old testament which lies before us finished and complete, assumed its present form only as the result of the growth of several centuries. at the beginning of this process of the canonisation stands that strange event, the sudden appearance of a holy book of the law under king josiah, in b.c. the end of the process, through the decisions of the scribes, falls after the destruction of jerusalem, possibly even in the second century. lagarde seems to have proved that the rabbis of the second century succeeded in destroying all copies of the scripture which differed from the standard then set up. this state of things has enormously increased a difficulty which was already great enough, that of the detection and separation of the various elements of which many of the books in this ancient literature are made up. certain books of the new testament also present the problem of the discrimination of elements of different ages, which have been wrought together into the documents as we now have them, in a way that almost defies our skill to disengage. the synoptic gospels are, of course, the great example. the book of the acts presents a problem of the same kind. but the pentateuch, or rather hexateuch, the historical books in less degree, the writings even of some of the prophets, the codes which formulate the law and ritual, are composites which have been whole centuries in the making and remaking. there was no such thing as right of authorship in ancient israel, little of it in the ancient world at all. what was once written was popular or priestly property. histories were newly narrated, laws enlarged and rearranged, prophecies attributed to conspicuous persons. all this took place not in deliberate intention to pervert historic truth, but because there was no interest in historic truth and no conception of it. the rewriting of a nation's history from the point of view of its priesthood bore, to the ancient israelite, beyond question, an aspect altogether different from that which the same transaction would bear to us. the difficulty of the separation of these materials, great in any case, is enhanced by the fact alluded to, that we have none but internal evidence. the success of the achievement, and the unanimity attained with reference to the most significant questions, is one of the marvels of the life of learning of our age. in the jewish tradition it had been assumed that the mosaic law was written down in the wilderness. then, in the times of the judges and of the kings, the historical books took shape, with david's psalms and the wise words of solomon. at the end of the period of the kings we have the prophetic literature and finally ezra and nehemiah. de wette had disputed this order, but wellhausen in his _prolegomena zur geshichte israels_, , may be said to have proved that this view was no longer tenable. men ask, could the law, or even any greater part of it, have been given to nomads in the wilderness? do not all parts of it assume a settled state of society and an agricultural life? do the historical books from judges to the ii. kings know anything about the law? are the practices of worship which they imply consonant with the supposition that the law was in force? how is it that that law appears both under josiah and again under ezra, as something new, thus far unknown, and yet as ruling the religious life of the people from that day forth? it seems impossible to escape the conclusion that only after josiah's reformation, more completely after the restoration under ezra, did the religion of the law exist. the centralisation of worship at one point, such as the book of deuteronomy demands, seems to have been the thing achieved by the reform under josiah. the establishment of the priestly hierarchy such as the code ordains was the issue of the religious revolution wrought in ezra's time. to put it differently, the so-called _book of the covenant, the nucleus of the law-giving_, itself implies the multiplicity of the places of worship. deuteronomy demands the centralisation of the worship as something which is yet to take place. the priestly code declares that the limitation of worship to one place was a fact already in the time of the journeys of israel in the wilderness. it is assumed that the hebrews in the time of moses shared the almost universal worship of the stars. moses may indeed have concluded a covenant between his people and jahve, their god, hallowing the judicial and moral life of the people, bringing these into relation to the divine will. jahve was a holy god whose will was to guide the people coming up out of the degradation of nature-worship. that part of the people held to the old nature-worship is evident in the time of elijah. the history of israel is not that of defection from a pure revelation. it is the history of a gradual attainment of purer revelation, of enlargement in the application of it, of discovery of new principles contained in it. it is the history also of the decline of spiritual religion. the zeal of the prophets against the ceremonial worship shows that. their protest reveals at that early date the beginning of that antithesis which had become so sharp in jesus' time. this determination of the relative positions of law and prophets was the first step in the reconstruction of the history, both of the nation of israel and of its literature. at the beginning, as in every literature, are songs of war and victory, of praise and grief, hymns, even riddles and phrases of magic. everywhere poetry precedes prose. then come myths relating to the worship and tales of the fathers and heroes. elements of both these sorts are embedded in the simple chronicles which began now to be written, primitive historical works, such as those of the jahvist and elohist, of the narrators of the deeds of the judges and of david and of saul. perhaps at this point belong the earliest attempts at fixing the tradition of family and clan rights, and of the regulation of personal conduct, as in the book of the covenant. then comes the great outburst of the prophetic spirit, the preaching of an age of great religious revival. then follows the law, with its minute regulation of all details of life upon which would depend the favour of the god who had brought punishment upon the people in the exile. the prophecy runs on into apocalyptic like that of the book of daniel. the contact with the outside world makes possible a phase of literature such as that to which the books of job and ecclesiastes belong. the deepening of the inner life gave the world the lyric of the psalms, some of which are credibly assigned to a period so late as that of the maccabees. in this which has been said of the literature we have the clue also for the reconstruction of the nation's history. the naïve assumption in the writing of all history had once been that one must begin with the beginning. but to wellhausen, stade, eduard meyer and kittel and cornill, it has been clear that the history of the earliest times is the most uncertain. it is the least adapted to furnish a secure point of departure for historical inquiry. there exist for it usually no contemporary authorities, or only such as are of problematical worth. this earliest period constitutes a problem, the solution of which, so far as any solution is possible, can be hoped for only through approach from the side of ascertained facts. we must start from a period which is historically known. for the history of the hebrews, this is the time of the first prophets of whom we have written records, or from whom we have written prophecies. we get from these, as also from the earliest direct attempts at history writing, only that conception of israel's pre-historic life which was entertained in prophetic circles in the eighth century. we learn the heroic legends in the interpretation which the prophets put upon them. we have still to seek to interpret them for ourselves. we must begin in the middle and work both backward and forward. such a view of the history of israel affords every opportunity for the connecting of the history and religion of israel with those of the other semite stocks. some of these have in recent years been discovered to offer extraordinary parallels to that which the old testament relates. the history of doctrine when speaking of baur's contribution to new testament criticism, we alluded to his historical works. he was in a distinct sense a reformer of the method of the writing of church history. to us the notions of the historical and of that which is genetic are identical. of course, naïve religious chronicles do not meet that test. a glance at the histories produced by the age of rationalism will show that these also fall short of it. the perception of the relativity of institutions like the papacy is here wholly wanting. men and things are brought summarily to the bar of the wisdom of the author's year of grace. they are approved or condemned by this criterion. for baur, all things had come to pass in the process of the great life of the world. there must have been a rationale of their becoming. it is for the historian with sympathy and imagination to find out what their inherent reason was. one other thing distinguishes baur as church historian from his predecessors. he realised that before one can delineate one must investigate. one must go to the sources. one must estimate the value of those sources. one must have ground in the sources for every judgment. baur was himself a great investigator. yet the movement for the investigation of the sources of biblical and ecclesiastical history which his generation initialed has gone on to such achievements that, in some respects, we can but view the foundations of baur's own work as precarious, the results at which he arrived as unwarranted. new documents have come to light since his day. forgeries have been proved to be such, the whole state of learning as to the literature of the christian origins has been vastly changed. there is still another other thing to say concerning baur. he was a hegelian. he has the disposition always to interpret the movements of the religious spirit in the sense of philosophical ideas. he frankly says that without speculation every historical investigation remains but a play upon the surface of things. baur's fault was that in his search for, or rather in his confident discovery of, the great connecting forces of history, the biographical element, the significance of personality, threatened altogether to disappear. the force in the history was the absolute, the immanent divine will. the method everywhere was that of advance by contrasts and antagonisms. one gets an impression, for example, that the nicene dogma became what it did by the might of the idea, that it could not by any possibility have had any other issue. the foil to much of this in baur's own age was represented in the work of neander, a converted jew, professor of church history in berlin, who exerted great influence upon a generation of english and american scholars. he was not an investigator of sources. he had no talent for the task. he was a delineator, one of the last of the great painters of history, if one may so describe the type. he had imagination, sympathy, a devout spirit. his great trait was his insight into personality. he wrote history with the biographical interest. he almost resolves history into a series of biographical types. he has too little sense for the connexion of things, for the laws of the evolution of the religious spirit. the great dramatic elements tend to disappear behind the emotions of individuals. the old delineators were before the age of investigation. since that impulse became masterful, some historians have been completely absorbed in the effort to make contribution to this investigation. others, with a sense of the impossibility of mastering the results of investigation in all fields, have lost the zeal for the writing of church history on a great scale. they have contented themselves with producing monographs upon some particular subject, in which, at the most, they may hope to embody all that is known as to some specific question. we spoke above of the new conception of the relation of the canonical literature of the new testament to the extracanonical. we alluded to the new sense of the continuity of the history of the apostolic churches with that of the church of the succeeding age. the influence of these ideas has been to set all problems here involved in a new light. until it might have been said with truth that we had no good history of the apostolic age. in that year weizsäcker's book, _das apostolische zeitalter der christlichen kirche_, admirably filled the place. a part of the problem of the historian of the apostolic age is difficult for the same reason which was given when we were speaking of the biography of jesus. our materials are inadequate. first with the beginning of the activities of paul have we sources of the first rank. the relation of statements in the pauline letters to data in the book of the acts was one of the earliest problems which the tübingen school set itself. an attempt to write the biography of paul reminds us sharply of our limitations. we know almost nothing of paul prior to his conversion, or subsequent to the enigmatical breaking off of the account of the beginnings of his work at rome. harnack's _mission und ausbreitung des christenthums_, (translated, moffatt, ), takes up the work of paul's successors in that cardinal activity. it offers, strange as it may seem, the first discussion of the dissemination of christianity which has dealt adequately with the sources. it gives also a picture of the world into which the christian movement went. it emphasises anew the truth which has for a generation past grown in men's apprehension that there is no possibility of understanding christianity, except against the background of the religious life and thought of the world into which it came. christianity had vital relation, at every step of its progress, to the religious movements and impulses of the ancient world, especially in those centres of civilisation which paul singled out for his endeavour and which remained the centres of the christian growth. it was an age which has often been summarily described as corrupt. despite its corruption, or possibly because it was corrupt, it gives evidence, however, of religious stirring, of strong ethical reaction, of spiritual endeavour rarely paralleled. in the roman empire everything travelled. religions travelled. in the centres of civilisation there was scarcely a faith of mankind which had not its votaries. it was an age of religious syncretism, of hospitality to diverse religious ideas, of the commingling of those ideas. these things facilitated the progress of christianity. they made certain that if the christian movement had in it the divine vitality which men claimed, it would one day conquer the world. equally, they made certain that, as the very condition of this conquest, christianity would be itself transformed. this it is which has happened in the evolution of christianity from its very earliest stages and in all phases of its life. of any given rite, opinion or institution, of the many which have passed for almost two millenniums unchallenged under the christian name, men about us are now asking: but how much of it is christian? in what measure have we to think of it as derived from some other source, and representing the accommodation and assimilation of christianity to its environment in process of its work? what is christianity? not unnaturally the ancient church looked with satisfaction upon the great change which passed over christianity when constantine suddenly made that which had been the faith of a despised and persecuted sect, the religion of the world. the fathers can have thought thus only because their minds rested upon that which was outward and spectacular. not unnaturally the metamorphosis in the inward nature of christianity which had taken place a century and a quarter earlier was hidden from their eyes. in truth, by that earlier and subtler transformation christianity had passed permanently beyond the stage in which it had been preponderantly a moral and spiritual enthusiasm, with its centre and authority in the person of jesus. it became a system and an institution, with a canon of new testament scripture, a monarchical organisation and a rule of faith which was formulated in the apostles' creed. to baur the truth as to the conflict of paul with the judaisers had meant much. he thought, therefore, with reference to the rise of priesthood and ritual among the christians, to the emphasis on scripture in the fashion of the scribes, to the insistence upon rules and dogmas after the manner of the pharisees, that they were but the evidence of the decline and defeat of paul's free spirit and of the resurgence of judaism in christianity. he sought to explain the rise of the episcopal organisation by the example of the synagogue. ritschl in his _entstehung der alt-catholischen kirche_, , had seen that baur's theory could not be true. christianity did not fall back into judaism. it went forward to embrace the hellenic and roman world. the institutions, dogmas, practices of that which, after a.d. , may with propriety be called the catholic church, are the fruit of that embrace. there was here a falling off from primitive and spiritual christianity. but it was not a falling back into judaism. there were priests and scribes and pharisees with other names elsewhere. the phenomenon of the waning of the original enthusiasm of a period of religious revelation has been a frequent one. christianity on a grand scale illustrated this phenomenon anew. harnack has elaborated this thesis with unexampled brilliancy and power. he has supported it with a learning in which he has no rival and with a religious interest which not even hostile critics would deny. the phrase, 'the hellenisation of christianity,' might almost be taken as the motto of the work to which he owes his fame. harnack adolf harnack was born in in dorpat, in one of the baltic provinces of russia. his father, theodosius harnack, was professor of pastoral theology in the university of dorpat. harnack studied in leipzig and began to teach there in . he was called to the chair of church history in giessen in . in he removed to marburg and in to berlin. harnack's earlier published work was almost entirely in the field of the study of the sources and materials of early church history. his first book, published in , was an inquiry as to the sources for the history of gnosticism. his _patrum apostolicorum opera_, , prepared by him jointly with von gehhardt and zahn, was in a way only a forecast of the great collection, _texte und untersuchungen zur geschickte der alt-christlichen literatur_, begun in , upon which numbers of scholars have worked together with him. the collection has already more than thirty-five volumes. in his own two works, _die geschichte der alt-christlichen literatur bis eusebius_, , and _die chronologie der alt-christlichen literatur bis eusebius_, , are deposited the results of his reflexion on the mass of this material. his _beitrage zur einleitung in das neue testament_, , etc., should not be overlooked. he has had the good fortune to be among those who have discovered manuscripts of importance. he has had to do with the prussian academy's edition of the greek fathers. a list of his published works, which was prepared in connexion with the celebration of his sixtieth birthday in , bears witness to his amazing diligence and fertility. he was for thirty-five years associated with schurer in the publication of the _theologische literaturzeitung_. he has filled important posts in the church and under the government. to this must be added an activity as a teacher which has placed a whole generation of students from every portion of the world under undying obligation. one speaks with reserve of the living, but surely no man of our generation has done more to make the history of which we write. harnack's epoch-making work was his _lehrbuch der dogmengeschichte_, - , fourth edition, . the book met, almost from the moment of its appearance, with the realisation of the magnitude of that which had been achieved. it rested upon a fresh and independent study of the sources. it departed from the mechanism which had made the old treatises upon the history of doctrine formal and lifeless. harnack realised to the full how many influences other than theological had had part in the development of doctrine. he recognised the reaction of modes of life and practice, and of external circumstances on the history of thought. his history of doctrine has thus a breadth and human quality never before attained. philosophy, worship, morals, the development of church government and of the canon, the common interests and passions of the age and those of the individual participants, are all made tributary to his delineation. harnack cannot share baur's view that the triumph of the logos-christology at nicæa and chalcedon was inevitable. a certain historic naturalness of the movement he would concede, the world on which christianity entered being what it was. he is aware, however, that many elements other than christian have entered into the development. he has phrased his apprehension thus. that hellenisation of christianity which gnosticism represented, and against which, in this, its acute form, the church contended was, after all, the same thing which, by slower process and more unconsciously, befell the church itself. that pure moral enthusiasm and inspiration which had been the gist of the christian movement, in its endeavour to appropriate the world, had been appropriated by the world in far greater measure than its adherents knew. it had taken up its mission to change the world. it had dreamed that while changing the world it had itself remained unchanged. the world was changed, the world of life, of feeling and of thought. but christianity was also changed. it had conquered the world. it had no perception of the fact that it illustrated the old law that the conquered give laws to the conquerors. it had fused the ancient culture with the flame of its inspiration. it did not appreciate the degree in which the elements of that ancient culture now coloured its far-shining flame. it had been a maker of history. meantime it had been unmade and remade by its own history. it confidently carried back its canon, dogma, organisation, to christ and the apostles. it did not realise that the very fact that it could find these things natural and declare them ancient, proved with conclusiveness that it had itself departed from the standard of christ and the apostles. it esteemed that these were its defences against the world. it little dreamed that they were, by their very existence, the evidence of the fact that the church had not defended itself against the world. its dogma was the hellenisation of its thought. its organisation was the romanising of its life. its canon and ritual were the externalising, and conventionalising of its spirit and enthusiasm. these are positive and constructive statements of harnack's main position. when, however, they are turned about and stated negatively, these statements all convey, more or less, the impression that the advance of christianity had been its destruction, and the evolution of dogma had been a defection from christ. this is the aspect of the contention which gave hostile critics opportunity to say that we have before us the history of the loss of christianity. harnack himself has many sentences which superficially will bear that construction. hatch had said in his brilliant book, _the influence of greek ideas and usages upon the christian church_, , that the domestication of greek philosophy in the church signified a defection from the sermon on the mount. the centre of gravity of the gospel was changed from life to doctrine, from morals to metaphysics, from goodness to orthodoxy. the change was portentous. the aspect of pessimism is, however, removed when one recognises the inevitableness of some such process, if christianity was ever to wield an influence in the world at all. again, one must consider that the process of the recovery of pure christianity must begin at exactly this point, namely, with the recognition of how much in current christianity is extraneous. it must begin with the sloughing off of these extraneous elements, with the recovery of the sense for that which original christianity was. such a recovery would be the setting free again of the power of the religion itself. the constant touchstone and point of reference for every stage of the history of the church must be the gospel of jesus. but what was the gospel of jesus? in what way did the very earliest christians apprehend that gospel? this question is far more difficult for us to answer than it was for those to whom the new testament was a closed body of literature, externally differentiated from all other, and with a miraculous inspiration extending uniformly to every phrase in any book. these men would have said that they had but to find the proper combination of the sacred phrases. but we acknowledge that the central inspiration was the personality of jesus. the books possess this inspiration in varying degree. certain of the books have distinctly begun the fusion of christian with other elements. they themselves represent the first stages of the history of doctrine. we acknowledge that those utterances of jesus which have been preserved for us, shaped themselves by the antitheses in which jesus stood. there is much about them that is palpably incidental, practically relevant and unquestionably only relative. in a large sense, much of the meaning of the gospel has to be gathered out of the evidence of the operation of its spirit in subsequent ages of the christian church, and from remoter aspects of the influence of jesus on the world. thus the very conception of the gospel of jesus becomes inevitably more or less subjective. it becomes an ideal construction. the identification of this ideal with the original gospel proclamation becomes precarious. we seem to move in a circle. we derive the ideal from the history, and then judge the history by the ideal. is there any escape from this situation, short of the return to the authority of church or scripture in the ancient sense? furthermore, even the men to whom the gospel was in the strictest sense a letter, identified the gospel with their own private interpretation of this letter. certainly the followers of ritschl who will acknowledge no traits of the gospel save those of which they find direct witness in the gospels, thus ignore that the gospels are themselves interpretations. this undue stress upon the documents which we are fortunate enough to possess, makes us forget the limitations of these documents. we tend thus to exaggerate that which must be only incidental, as, for example, the jewish element, in the teaching of jesus. we thus underrate phases of jesus' teaching which, no doubt, a man like paul would have apprehended better than did the evangelists themselves. in truth, in harnack's own delineation of the teaching of jesus, those elements of it which found their way to expression in paul, or again in the fourth gospel, are rather underrated than overstated, in the author's anxiety to exclude elements which are acknowledged to be interpretative in their nature. we are driven, in some measure, to seek to find out what the gospel was from the way in which the earliest christians took it up. we return ever afresh to questions nearly unanswerable from the materials at hand. what was the central principle in the shaping of the earliest stages of the new community, both as to its thought and life? was it the longing for the coming of the kingdom of god, the striving after the righteousness of the sermon on the mount? or was it the faith of the messiah, the reverence for the messiah, directed to the person of jesus? what word dominated the preaching? was it that the kingdom of god was near, that the son of man would come? or was it that in jesus messiah has come? what was the demand upon the hearer? was it, repent, or was it, believe on the lord jesus, or was it both, and which had the greater emphasis? was the name of jesus used in the formulas of worship before the time of paul? what do we know about prayer in the name of jesus, or baptism in that name, or miracles in the name of jesus, or of the lord's supper and the conception of the lord as present with his disciples in the rite? was this revering of jesus, which was fast moving toward a worship of him, the inner motive force of the whole construction of the dogma of his person and of the trinity? in the second volume harnack treats of the development primarily of the christological and trinitarian dogma, from the fourth to the seventh centuries. the dramatic interest of the narrative exceeds anything which has been written on this theme. a debate which to most modern men is remote and abstruse almost to the point of unintelligibility, and of which many of the external aspects are disheartening in the extreme, is here brought before us in something of the reasonableness which it must have had for those who took part in it. tertullian shaped the problem and established the nomenclature for the christological solution which the orient two hundred years later made its own. it was he who, from the point of view of the jurist, rather than of the philosopher, gave the words 'person' and 'substance,' which continually occur in this discussion, the meaning which in the nicene creed they bear. most brilliant is harnack's characterisation of arius and athanasius. in arius the notion of the son of god is altogether done away. only the name remains. the victory of arianism would have resolved christianity into cosmology and formal ethics. it would have destroyed it as religion. yet the perverse situation into which the long and fierce controversy had drifted cannot be better illustrated than by one undisputed fact. athanasius, who assured for christianity its character as a religion of the living communion of god with man, is yet the theologian in whose christology almost every possible trace of the recollection of the historic jesus has disappeared. the purpose of the redemption is to bring men into community of life with god. but athanasius apprehended this redemption as a conferment, from without and from above, of a divine nature. he subordinated everything to this idea. the whole narrative concerning jesus falls under the interpretation that the only quality requisite for the redeemer in his work was the possession in all fulness of the divine nature. his incarnation, his manifestation in real human life, held fast to in word, is reduced to a mere semblance. salvation is not an ethical process, but a miraculous endowment. the christ, who was god, lifts men up to godhood. they become god. these phrases are of course capable of ethical and intelligible meaning. the development of the doctrine, however, threw the emphasis upon the metaphysical and miraculous aspects of the work. it gloried in the fact that the presence of divine and human, two natures in one person forever, was unintelligible. in the end it came to pass that the enthusiastic assent to that which defied explanation became the very mark of a humble and submissive faith. one reads the so-called athanasian creed, and hears the ring of its determination to exact assent. it had long since been clear to these catholics and churchmen that, with the mere authority of scripture, it was not possible to defend christianity against the heretics. the heresies read their heresies out of the bible. the orthodox read orthodoxy from the same page. marcion had proved that, in the very days when the canon took its shape. there must be an authority to define the interpretation of the scripture. those who would share the benefits which the church dispensed must assent unconditionally to the terms of membership. all these questions were veiled for the early christians behind the question of the kind of christ in whom their hearts believed. with all that we have said about the reprehensible admixture of the metaphysical element in the dogma, with all the accusation which we bring concerning acute or gradual hellenisation, secularisation and defection from the christ, we ought not to hide from ourselves that in this gigantic struggle there were real religious interests at stake, and that for the men of both parties. dimly, or perhaps vividly, the man of either party felt that the conception of the christ which he was fighting for was congruous with the conception of religion which he had, or felt that he must have. it is this religious issue, everywhere present, which gives dignity to a struggle which otherwise does often sadly lack it. there are two religious views of the person of christ which have stood, from the beginning, the one over against the other.[ ] the one saw in jesus of nazareth a man, distinguished by his special calling as the messianic king, endued with special powers, lifted above all men ever known, yet a man, completely subject to god in faith, obedience and prayer. this view is surely sustained by many of jesus' own words and deeds. it shines through the testimony of the men who followed him. even the belief in his resurrection and his second coming did not altogether do away with it. the other view saw in him a new god who, descending from god, brought mysterious powers for the redemption of mankind into the world, and after short obscuring of his glory, returned to the abode of god, where he had been before. from this belief come all the hymns and prayers to jesus as to god, all miracles and exorcisms in his name. [footnote : wernle, _einfzhrung in das theologische studium_, , v. .] in the long run, the simpler view did not maintain itself. if false gods and demons were expelled, it was the god jesus who expelled them. the more modest faith believed that in the man jesus, being such an one as he was, men had received the greatest gift which the love of god had to bestow. in turn the believer felt the assurance that he also was a child of god, and in the spirit of jesus was to realise that sonship. syncretist religions suggested other thoughts. we see that already even in the synoptic tradition the calling upon the name of jesus had found place. one wonders whether that first apprehension ever stood alone in its purity. the gentile churches founded by paul, at all events, had no such simple trust. equally, the second form of faith seems never to have been able to stand alone in its peculiar quality. some of the gnostic sects had it. marcion again is our example. the new god jesus had nothing to do with the cruel god of the old testament. he supplanted the old god and became the only god. in the church the new god, come down from heaven, must be set in relation with the long-known god of israel. no less, must he stand in relation to the simple hero of the gospels with his human traits. the problem of theological reflexion was to find the right middle course, to keep the divine christ in harmony, on the one side, with monotheism, and on the other, with the picture which the gospels gave. belief knew nothing of these contradictions. the same simple soul thanked god for jesus with his sorrows and his sympathy, as man's guide and helper, and again prayed to jesus because he seemed too wonderful to be a man. the same kind of faith achieves the same wondering and touching combination to-day, after two thousand years. with thought comes trouble. reflexion wears itself out upon the insoluble difficulty, the impossible combination, the flat contradiction, which the two views present, so soon as they are clearly seen. in the earliest christian writings the fruit of this reflexion lies before us in this form:--the creator of worlds, the mediator, the lord of angels and demons, the logos which was god and is our saviour, was yet a humble son of man, undergoing suffering and death, having laid aside his divine glory. this picture is made with materials which the canonical writings themselves afford. theological study had henceforth nothing to do but to avoid extremes and seek to make this image, which reflexion upon two polar opposites had yielded, as nearly thinkable as possible. it has been said that the trinitarian doctrine is not in the new testament, that it was later elaborated by a different kind of mind. this is not true. but the inference is precisely the contrary of that which defenders of the dogma would formerly have drawn from this concession. the same kind of mind, or rather the same two kinds of mind, are at work in the new testament. both of the religious elements above suggested are in the gospels and epistles. the new testament presents attempts at their combination. either form may be found in the literature of the later age. if we ask ourselves, what is that in jesus which gives us the sense of redemption, surely we should answer, it is his glad and confident resting in the love of god the father. it is his courage, his faith in men, which becomes our faith in ourselves. it is his wonderful mingling of purity and love of righteousness with love of those who have sinned. you may find this in the ancient literature, as the fathers describe that to which their souls cling. but this is not the point of view from which the dogma is organised. the nicene christology is not to be understood from this approach. the cry of a dying civilisation after power and light and life, the feeling that these might come to it, streaming down as it were, from above, as a physical, a mechanical, a magical deliverance, this is the frame within which is set what is here said of the help and redemption wrought by christ. the resurrection and the incarnation are the points at which this streaming in of the divine light and power upon a darkened world is felt. that religion seemed the highest, that interpretation of christianity the truest, the absolute one, which could boast that it possessed the power of the almighty through his physical union with men. he who contended that jesus was god, contended therewith for a power which could come upon men and make them in some sense one with god. this is the view which has been almost exclusively held in the greek church. it is the view which has run under and through and around the other conception in the roman and protestant churches. the sense that salvation is inward, moral, spiritual, has rarely indeed been absent from christendom. it would be preposterous to allege that it had. yet this sense has been overlaid and underrun and shot through with that other and disparate idea of salvation, as of a pure bestowment, something achieved apart from us, or, if one may so say, some alteration of ourselves upon other than moral and spiritual terms. the conception of the person christ shows the same uncertainty. or rather, with a given view of the nature of religion and salvation, the corresponding view of christ is certain. in the age-long and world-wide contest over the trinitarian formula, with all that is saddening in the struggle and all that was misleading in the issue, it is because we see men struggling to come into the clear as to these two meanings of religion, that the contest has such absorbing interest. men have been right in declining to call that religion in which a man saves himself. they have been wrong in esteeming that they were then only saved of god or christ when they were saved by an obviously external process. even this antinomy is softened when one no longer holds that god and men are mutually exclusive conceptions. it is god working within us who saves, the god who in jesus worked such a wonder of righteousness and love as else the world has never seen. chapter v the contribution of the natural and social sciences by the middle of the nineteenth century the empirical sciences had undergone vast expansion in the study of detail and in the discovery of principles. men felt the necessity of some adequate discussion of the relation of these sciences one to another and of their unity. there was need of the organisation of the mass of knowledge, largely new and ever increasing, which the sciences furnished. it lay in the logic of the case that some of these attempts should advance the bold claim to deal with all knowledge whatsoever and to offer a theory of the universe as a whole. religion, both in its mythological and in its theological stages, had offered a theory of the universe as a whole. the great metaphysical systems had offered theories of the universe as a whole. both had professed to include all facts. notoriously both theology and metaphysics had dealt in most inadequate fashion with the material world, in the study of which the sciences were now achieving great results. indeed, the methods current and authoritative with theologians and metaphysicians had actually prevented study of the physical universe. both of these had invaded areas of fact to which their methods had no application and uttered dicta which had no relation to truth. the very life of the sciences depended upon deliverance from this bondage. the record of that deliverance is one of the most dramatic chapters in the history of thought. could one be surprised if, in the resentment which long oppression had engendered and in the joy which overwhelming victory had brought, scientific men now invaded the fields of their opponents? they repaid their enemies in their own coin. there was with some a disposition to deny that there exists an area of knowledge to which the methods of metaphysicians and theologians might apply. this was comte's contention. others conceded that there might be such an area, but claimed that we can have no knowledge of it. even the theologians, after their first shock, were disposed to concede that, concerning the magnitudes in which they were most interested, as for example, god and soul, we have no knowledge of the sort which the method of the physical sciences would give. they fell back upon kant's distinction of the two reasons and two worlds. they exaggerated the sharpness of that distinction. they learned that the claim of agnosticism was capable of being viewed as a line of defence, behind which the transcendental magnitudes might be secure. indeed, if one may take spencer as an example, it is not certain that this was not the intent of some of the scientists in their strong assertion of agnosticism. spencer's later work reveals that he had no disposition to deny that there are foundations for belief in a world lying behind the phenomenal, and from which the latter gets its meaning. meantime, after positivism was buried and agnosticism dead, a thing was achieved for which comte himself laid the foundation and in which spencer as he grew older was ever more deeply interested. this was the great development of the social sciences. every aspect of the life of man, including religion itself, has been drawn within the area of the social sciences. to all these subjects, including religion, there have been applied empirical methods which have the closest analogy with those which have reigned in the physical sciences. psychology has been made a science of experiment, and the psychology of religion has been given a place within the area of its observations and generalizations. the ethical, and again the religious consciousness has been subjected to the same kind of investigation to which all other aspects of consciousness are subjected. effort has been made to ascertain and classify the phenomena of the religious life of the race in all lands and in all ages. a science of religions is taking its place among the other sciences. it is as purely an inductive science as is any other. the history of religions and the philosophy of religion are being rewritten from this point of view. in the first lines of this chapter we spoke of the empirical sciences, meaning the sciences of the material world. it is clear, however, that the sciences of mind, of morals and of religion have now become empirical sciences. they have their basis in experience, the experience of individuals and the experience of masses of men, of ages of observable human life. they all proceed by the method of observation and inference, of hypothesis and verification. there is a unity of method as between the natural and social and psychical sciences, the reach of which is startling to reflect upon. indeed, the physiological aspects of psychology, the investigations of the relation of adolescence to conversion, suggest that the distinction between the physical and the psychical is a vanishing distinction. science comes nearer to offering an interpretation of the universe as a whole than the opening paragraphs of this chapter would imply. but it does so by including religion, not by excluding it. no one would any longer think of citing kant's distinction of two reasons and two worlds in the sense of establishing a city of refuge into which the persecuted might flee. kant rendered incomparable service by making clear two poles of thought. yet we must realise how the space between is filled with the gradations of an absolute continuity of activity. man has but one reason. this may conceivably operate upon appropriate material in one or the other of these polar fashions. it does operate in infinite variations of degree, in unity with itself, after both fashions, at all times and upon all materials. positivism was a system. agnosticism was at least a phase of thought. the broadening of the conception of science and the invasion of every area of life by a science thus broadly conceived, has been an influence less tangible than those others but not, therefore, less effective. positivism was bitterly hostile to christianity, though, in the mind of comte himself and of a few others, it produced a curious substitute, possessing many of the marks of roman catholicism. the name 'agnostic' was so loosely used that one must say that the contention was hostile to religion in the minds of some and not of others. the new movement for an inclusive science is not hostile to religion. yet it will transform current conceptions of religion as those others never did. in proportion as it is scientific, it cannot be hostile. it may at most be indifferent. nevertheless, in the long run, few will choose the theme of religion for the scientific labour of life who have not some interest in religion. men of these three classes have accepted the doctrine of evolution. comte thought he had discovered it. spencer and those for whom we have taken him as type, did service in the elaboration of it. to the men of our third group, the truth of evolution seems no longer debatable. here too, in the word 'evolution,' we have a term which has been used with laxity. it corresponds to a notion which has only gradually been evolved. its implications were at first by no means understood. it was associated with a mechanical view of the universe which was diametrically opposed to its truth. still, there could not be a doubt that the doctrine contravened those ideas as to the origin of the world, and more particularly of man, of the relations of species, and especially of the human species to other forms of animal life, which had immemorially prevailed in christian circles and which had the witness of the scriptures on their behalf. if we were to attempt, with acknowledged latitude, to name a book whose import might be said to be cardinal for the whole movement treated of in this chapter, that book would be darwin's _origin of species_, which was published in . long before darwin the creation legend had been recognised as such. the astronomy of the seventeenth century had removed the earth from its central position. the geology of the eighteenth had shown how long must have been the ages of the laying down of the earth's strata. the question of the descent of man, however, brought home the significance of evolution for religion more forcibly than any other aspect of the debate had done. there were scientific men of distinction who were not convinced of the truth of the evolutionary hypothesis. to most christian men the theory seemed to leave no unique distinction or spiritual quality for man. it seemed to render impossible faith in the scriptures as revelation. to many it seemed that the whole issue as between a spiritual and a purely materialistic view of the universe was involved. particularly was this true of the english-speaking peoples. one other factor in the transformation of the christian view needs to be dwelt upon. it is less theoretical than those upon which we have dwelt. it is the influence of socialism, taking that word in its largest sense. an industrial civilisation has developed both the good and the evil of individualism in incredible degree. the unity of society which the feudal system and the church gave to europe in the middle age had been destroyed. the individualism and democracy which were essential to protestantism notoriously aided the civil and social revolution, but the centrifugal forces were too great. initiative has been wonderful, but cohesion is lacking. democracy is yet far from being realised. the civil liberations which were the great crises of the western world from to appear now to many as deprived of their fruit. governments undertake on behalf of subjects that which formerly no government would have dreamed of doing. the demand is that the church, too, become a factor in the furtherance of the outward and present welfare of mankind. if that meant the call to love and charity it would be an old refrain. that is exactly what it does not mean. it means the attack upon evils which make charity necessary. it means the taking up into the idealisation of religion the endeavour to redress all wrongs, to do away with all evils, to confer all goods, to create a new world and not, as heretofore, mainly at least, a new soul in the midst of the old world. no one can deny either the magnitude of the evils which it is sought to remedy, or the greatness of the goal which is thus set before religion. the volume of religious and christian literature devoted to these social questions is immense. it is revolutionary in its effect. for, after all, the very gist of religion has been held to be that it deals primarily with the inner life and the transcendent world. that it has dealt with the problem of the inner life and transcendent world in such a manner as to retard, or even only not to further, the other aspects of man's life is indeed a grave indictment. that it should, however, see ends in the outer life and present world as ends fully sufficient in themselves, that it should cease to set these in the light of the eternal, is that it should cease to be religion. the physical and social sciences have given to men an outward setting in the world, a basis of power and happiness such as men never have enjoyed. yet the tragic failure of our civilisation to give to vast multitudes that power and happiness, is the proof that something more than the outward basis is needed. the success of our civilisation is its failure. this is by no means a recurrence to the old antithesis of religion and civilisation, as if these were contradictory elements. on the contrary, it is but to show that the present world of religion and of economics are not two worlds, but merely different aspects of the same world. therewith it is not alleged that religion has not a specific contribution to make. positivism the permanent influence of that phase of thought which called itself positivism has not been great. but a school of thought which numbered among its adherents such men and women as john stuart mill, george henry lewes, george eliot, frederic harrison, and matthew arnold, cannot be said to have been without significance. a book upon the translation of which harriet martinean worked with sustained enthusiasm cannot be dismissed as if it were merely a curiosity. comte's work, _coura de philosophie positive_, appeared between the years and . littré was his chief french interpreter. but the history of the positivist movement belongs to the history of english philosophical and religious thought, rather than to that of france. comte was born at montpellier in , of a family of intense roman catholic piety. he showed at school a precocity which might bear comparison with mill's. expelled from school, cast off by his parents, dismissed by the elder casimir perier, whose secretary he had been, he eked out a living by tutoring in mathematics. friends of his philosophy rallied to his support. he never occupied a post comparable with his genius. he was unhappy in his marriage. he passed through a period of mental aberration, due, perhaps, to the strain under which he worked. he did not regain his liberty without an experience which embittered him against the church. during the fourteen years of the production of his book he cut himself off from any reading save that of current scientific discovery. he came under the influence of madame vaux, whom, after her death, he idolised even more than before. for the problem which, in the earlier portion of his work, he set himself, that namely, of the organising of the sciences into a compact body of doctrine, he possessed extraordinary gifts. later, he took on rather the air of a high priest of humanity, legislating concerning a new religion. it is but fair to say that at this point littré and many others parted company with comte. he developed a habit and practice ascetic in its rigour and mystic in its devotion to the positivists' religion--the worship of humanity. he was the friend and counsellor of working-men and agitators, of little children, of the poor and miserable. he ended his rather pathetic and turbulent career in , gathering a few disciples about his bed as he remembered that socrates had done. comte begins with the natural sciences and postulates the doctrine of evolution. to the definition of this doctrine he makes some interesting approaches. the discussion of the order and arrangement of the various sciences and of their characteristic differences is wonderful in its insight and suggestiveness. he asserts that in the study of nature we are concerned solely with the facts before us and the relations which connect those facts. we have nothing to do with the supposed essence or hidden nature and meaning of those facts. facts and the invariable laws which govern them are the only legitimate objects of pursuit. comte infers that because we can know, in this sense, only phenomena and their relations, we should in consequence guard against illusions which creep in again if we so much as use the words principle, or cause, or will, or force. by phenomena must be understood objects of perception, to the exclusion, for example, of psychological changes reputed to be known in self-consciousness. that there is no knowledge but of the physical, that there is no knowing except by perception--this is ever reiterated as self-evident. even psychology, resting as it does largely upon the observation of the self by the self, must be illusive. physiology, or even phrenology, with the value of which comte was much impressed, must take its place. every object of knowledge is other than the knowing subject. whatever else the mind knows, it can never know itself. by invincible necessity the human mind can observe all phenomena except its own. commenting upon this, james martineau observed: 'we have had in the history of thought numerous forms of idealism which construed all outward phenomena as mere appearances within the mind. we have hitherto had no strictly corresponding materialism, which claimed certainty for the outer world precisely because it was foreign to ourselves.' man is the highest product of nature, the highest stage of nature's most mature and complex form. man as individual is nothing more. physiology gives us not merely his external constitution and one set of relations. it is the whole science of man. there is no study of mind in which its actions and states can be contemplated apart from the physical basis in conjunction with which mind exists. thus far man has been treated only biologically, as individual. we must advance to man in society. almost one half of comte's bulky work is devoted to this side of the inquiry. social phenomena are a class complex beyond any which have yet been investigated. so much is this the case and so difficult is the problem presented, that comte felt constrained in some degree to change his method. we proceed from experience, from data in fact, as before. but the facts are not mere illustrations of the so called laws of individual human nature. social facts are the results also of situations which represent the accumulated influence of past generations. in this, as against bentham, for example, with his endless recurrence to human nature, as he called it, comte was right. comte thus first gave the study of history its place in sociology. in this study of history and sociology, the collective phenomena are more accessible to us and better known by us, than are the parts of which they are composed. we therefore proceed here from the general to the particular, not from the particular to the general, as in research of the kinds previously named. the state of every part of the social organisation is ultimately connected with the contemporaneous state of all the other parts. philosophy, science, the fine arts, commerce, navigation, government, are all in close mutual dependence. when any considerable change takes place in one, we may know that a parallel change has preceded or will follow in the others. the progress of society is not the aggregate of partial changes, but the product of a single impulse acting through all the partial agencies. it can therefore be most easily traced by studying all together. these are the main principles of sociological investigation as set forth by comte, some of them as they have been phrased by mill. the most sweeping exemplification of the axiom last alluded to, as to parallel changes, is comte's so-called law of the three states of civilisation. under this law, he asserts, the whole historical evolution can be summed up. it is as certain as the law of gravitation. everything in human society has passed, as has the individual man, through the theological and then through the metaphysical stage, and so arrives at the positive stage. in this last stage of thought nothing either of superstition or of speculation will survive. theology and metaphysics comte repeatedly characterises as the two successive stages of nescience, unavoidable as preludes to science. equally unavoidable is it that science shall ultimately prevail in their place. the advance of science having once begun, there is no possibility but that it will ultimately possess itself of all. one hears the echo of this confidence in haeckel also. there is a persistence about the denial of any knowledge whatsoever that goes beyond external facts, which ill comports with the pretensions of positivism to be a philosophy. for its final claim is not that it is content to rest in experimental science. on the contrary, it would transform this science into a homogeneous doctrine which is able to explain everything in the universe. this is but a _tour de force_. the promise is fulfilled through the denial of the reality of everything which science cannot explain. comte was never willing to face the fact that the very existence of knowledge has a noumenal as well as a phenomenal side. the reasonableness of the universe is certainly a conception which we bring to the observation of nature. if we did not thus bring it with us, no mere observation of nature would ever give it to us. it is impossible for science to get rid of the conception of force, and ultimately of cause. there can be no phenomenon which is not a manifestation of something. the very nomenclature falls into hopeless confusion without these conceptions. yet the moment we touch them we transcend science and pass into the realm of philosophy. it is mere juggling with words to say that our science has now become a philosophy. the adjective 'positive' contains the same fallacy. apparently comte meant by the choice of it to convey the sense that he would limit research to phenomena in their orders of resemblance, co-existence and succession. but to call the inquiry into phenomena positive, in the sense that it alone deals with reality, to imply that the inquiry into causes deals with that which has no reality, is to beg the question. this is not a premise with which he may set out in the evolution of his system. comte denied the accusation of materialism and atheism. he did the first only by changing the meaning of the term materialism. materialism the world has supposed to be the view of man's condition and destiny which makes these to begin and end in nature. that certainly was comte's view. the accusation of atheism also he avoids by a mere play on words. he is not without a god. humanity is god. mankind is the positivist's supreme. altruism takes the place of devotion. the devotion so long wasted upon a mere creature of the imagination, to whom it could do no good, he would now give to men who sorely need it and can obviously profit by it. surely the antithesis between nature and the supernatural, in the form in which comte argues against it, is now abandoned by thoughtful people. equally the antithesis of altruism to the service of god is perverse. it arouses one's pity that comte should not have seen how, in true religion these two things coalesce. moreover, this deification of mankind, in so far as it is not a sounding phrase, is an absurdity. when comte says, for example, that the authority of humanity must take the place of that of god, he has recognised that religion must have authority. indeed, the whole social order must have authority. however, this is not for him, as we are accustomed to say, the authority of the truth and of the right. there is no such abstraction as the truth, coming to various manifestations. there is no such thing as right, apart from relatively right concrete measures. there is no larger being indwelling in men. society, humanity in its collective capacity, must, if need be, override the individual. yet comte despises the mere rule of majorities. the majority which he would have rule is that of those who have the scientific mind. we may admit that in this he aims at the supremacy of truth. but, in fact, he prepares the way for a doctrinaire tyranny which, of all forms of government, might easily turn out to be the worst which a long-suffering humanity has yet endured. in the end, we are told, love is to take the place of force. humanity is present to us first in our mothers, wives and daughters. for these it is present in their fathers, husbands, sons. from this primary circle love widens and worship extends as hearts enlarge. it is the prayer to humanity which first rises above the mere selfishness of the sort to get something out of god. remembrance in the hearts of those who loved us and owe something to us is the only worthy form of immortality. clearly it is only the caricature of prayer or of the desire of immortality which rises before comte's mind as the thing to be escaped. for this caricature religious men, both catholic and protestant, without doubt, gave him cause. there were to be seven sacraments, corresponding to seven significant epochs in a man's career. there were to be priests for the performance of these sacraments and for the inculcation of the doctrines of positivism. there were to be temples of humanity, affording opportunity for and reminder of this worship. in each temple there was to be set up the symbol of the positivist religion, a woman of thirty years with her little son in her arms. littré spoke bitterly of the positivist religion as a lapse of the author into his old aberration. this religion was certainly regarded as negligible by many to whom his system as a whole meant a great deal. at least, it is an interesting example, as is also his transformation of science into a philosophy, of the resurgence of valid elements in life, even in the case of a man who has made it his boast to do away with them. naturalism and agnosticism we may take spencer as representative of a group of men who, after the middle of the nineteenth century, laboured enthusiastically to set forth evolutionary and naturalistic theories of the universe. these theories had also, for the most part, the common trait that they professed agnosticism as to all that lay beyond the reach of the natural-scientific methods, in which the authors were adept. both ward and boutroux accept spencer as such a type. agnosticism for obvious reasons could be no system. naturalism is a tendency in interpretation of the universe which has many ramifications. there is no intention of making the reference to one man's work do more than serve as introduction to the field. spencer was eager in denial that he had been influenced by comte. yet there is a certain reminder of comte in spencer's monumental endeavour to systematise the whole mass of modern scientific knowledge, under the general title of 'a synthetic philosophy.' he would show the unity of the sciences and their common principles or, rather, the one great common principle which they all illustrate, the doctrine of evolution, as this had taken shape since the time of darwin. since we have an autobiography of herbert spencer, which, to be sure, seems largely to have been written prior to . the book is interesting, as well in the light which it throws upon the expansion of the sciences and the development of the doctrine of evolution in those years, as in the revelation of the personal traits of the man himself. concerning these tolstoi wrote to a friend, apropos of a gift of the book: 'in autobiographies the most important psychological phenomena are often revealed quite independently of the author's will.' spencer was born in in derby, the son of a schoolmaster. he came of nonconformist ancestry of most marked individuality. his early education was irregular and inadequate. before he reached the age of seventeen his reading had been immense. he worked with an engineer in the period of the building of the railways in the midlands. he always retained his interest in inventions. he wrote for the newspapers and magazines and definitely launched upon a literary career. at the age of thirty he published his first book, on _social statics_. he made friends among the most notable men and women of his age. so early as he was the victim of a disease of the heart which never left him. it was on his recovery from his first grave attack that he shaped the plan which henceforth held him, of organising the modern sciences and incorporating them into what he called a synthetic philosophy. there was immense increase in actual knowledge and in the power of his reflection on that knowledge, as the years went by. a generation elapsed between the publication of his _first principles_ and the conclusion of his more formal literary labours. there is something captivating about a man's life, the energy of which remains so little impaired that he esteems it better to write a new book, covering some untouched portion of his scheme, than to give to an earlier volume the revision which in the light of his matured convictions it may need. his philosophical limitations he never transcended. he does not so naïvely offer a substitute for philosophy as does comte. but he was no master in philosophy. there is a reflexion of the consciousness of this fact in his agnosticism. that the effort of the agnostic contention has been great, and on the whole salutary, few would deny. spencer's own later work shows that his declaration, that the absolute which lies behind the universe is unknowable, is to be taken with considerable qualification. it is only a relative unknowableness which he predicates. moreover, before spencer's death, the doctrine of evolution had made itself profoundly felt in the discussion of all aspects of life, including that of religion. there seemed no longer any reason for the barrier between science and religion which spencer had once thought requisite. the epithet agnostic, as applied to a certain attitude of scientific mind, is just, as over against excessive claims to valid knowledge made, now by theology and now by speculative philosophy. it is hardly descriptive in any absolute sense. spencer had coined the rather fortunate illustration which describes science as a gradually increasing sphere, such that every addition to its surface does but bring us into more extensive contact with surrounding nescience. even upon this illustration ward has commented that the metaphor is misleading. the continent of our knowledge is not merely bounded by an ocean of ignorance. it is intersected and cut up by straits and seas of ignorance. the author of _ecce coelum_ has declared: 'things die out under the microscope into the same unfathomed and, so far as we can see, unfathomable mystery, into which they die off beyond the range of our most powerful telescope.' this sense of the circumambient unknown has become cardinal with the best spirits of the age. men have a more rigorous sense of what constitutes knowledge. they have reckoned more strictly with the methods by which alone secure and solid knowledge may be attained. they have undisguised scepticism as to alleged knowledge not arrived at in those ways. it was the working of these motives which gave to the labours of the middle of the nineteenth century so prevailingly the aspect of denial, the character which carlyle described as an everlasting no. this was but a preparatory stage, a retrogression for a new and firmer advance. in the sense of the recognition of our ignorance and of a becoming modesty of affirmation, over against the mystery into which all our thought runs out, we cannot reject the correction which agnosticism has administered. it is a fact which has had disastrous consequences, that precisely the department of thought, namely the religious, which one might suppose would most have reminded men of the outlying mystery, that phase of life whose very atmosphere is mystery, has most often been guilty of arrant dogmatism. it has been thus guilty upon the basis of the claim that it possessed a revelation. it has allowed itself unlimited licence of affirmation concerning the most remote and difficult matters. it has alleged miraculously communicated information concerning those matters. it has clothed with a divine authoritativeness, overriding the mature reflexion and laborious investigation of learned men, that which was, after all, nothing but the innocent imaginings of the childhood of the race. in this good sense of a parallel to that agnosticism which scientists profess for themselves within their own appointed realm, there is a religious agnosticism which is one of the best fruits of the labour of the age. it is not that religious men have abandoned the thought of revelation. they apprehended more justly the nature of revelation. they confess that there is much ignorance which revelation does not mitigate. _exeunt omnia in mysterium_. they are prepared to say concerning many of the dicta of religiosity, that they cannot affirm their truth. they are prepared to say concerning the experience of god and the soul, that they know these with an indefeasible certitude. this just and wholesome attitude toward religious truth is only a corollary of the attitude which science has taught us toward all truth whatsoever. the strictly philosophic term phenomenon, to which science has taken so kindly, is in itself an explicit avowal of something beyond the phenomenal. spencer is careful to insist upon this relation of the phenomenal to the noumenal. his _synthetic philosophy_ opens with an exposition of this non-relative or absolute, without which the relative itself becomes contradictory. it is an essential part of spencer's doctrine to maintain that our consciousness of the absolute, indefinite as it is, is positive and not negative. 'though the absolute cannot in any manner or degree be known, in the strict sense of knowing, yet we find that its positive existence is a necessary datum of consciousness. the belief which this datum of consciousness constitutes has a higher warrant than any other belief whatsoever.' in short, the absolute or noumenal, according to spencer, though not known as the phenomenal or relative is known, is so far from being for knowledge a pure blank, that the phenomenal, which is said to be known, is in the strict sense inconceivable without it. this actuality behind appearances, without which appearances are unthinkable, is by spencer identified with that ultimate verity upon which religion ever insists. religion itself is a phenomenon, and the source and secret of most complex and interesting phenomena. it has always been of the greatest importance in the history of mankind. it has been able to hold its own in face of the attacks of science. it must contain an element of truth. all religions, however, assert that their god is for us not altogether cognisable, that god is a great mystery. the higher their rank, the more do they acknowledge this. it is by the flippant invasion of this mystery that the popular religiosity offends. it talks of god as if he were a man in the next street. it does not distinguish between merely imaginative fetches into the truth, and presumably accurate definition of that truth. equally, the attempts which are logically possible at metaphysical solutions of the problem, namely, theism, pantheism, and atheism, if they are consistently carried out, assert, each of them, more than we know and are involved in contradiction with themselves. but the results of modern physics and chemistry reveal, as the constant element in all phenomena, force. this manifests itself in various forms which are interchangeable, while amid all these changes the force remains the same. this latter must be regarded as the reality, and basis of all that is relative and phenomenal. the entire universe is to be explained from the movements of this absolute force. the phenomena of nature and of mental life come under the same general laws of matter, motion, and force. spencer's doctrine, as here stated, is not adequate to account for the world of mental life or adapted to serve as the basis of a reconciliation of science and religion. it does not carry us beyond materialism. spencer's real intention was directed to something higher than that. if the absolute is to be conceived at all, it is as a necessary correlative of our self-consciousness. if we get the idea of force from the experience of our own power of volition, is it not natural to think of mind-force as the prius of physical force, and not the reverse? accordingly, the absolute force, basis of all specific forces, would be mind and will. the doctrine of evolution would harmonise perfectly with these inferences. but it would have to become idealistic evolution, as in schelling, instead of materialistic, as in comte. we are obliged, spencer owns, to refer the phenomenal world of law and order to a first cause. he says that this first cause is incomprehensible. yet he further says, when the question of attributing personality to this first cause is raised, that the choice is not between personality and something lower. it is between personality and something higher. to this may belong a mode of being as much transcending intelligence and will as these transcend mechanical motion. it is strange, he says, that men should suppose the highest worship to lie in assimilating the object of worship to themselves. and yet, again, in one of the latest of his works he writes: 'unexpected as it will be to most of my readers, i must assert that the power which manifests itself in consciousness is but a differently conditioned form of the power which manifests itself beyond consciousness. the conception to which the exploration of nature everywhere tends is much less that of a universe of dead matter than that of a universe everywhere alive.' similar is the issue in the reflexion of huxley. agnosticism had at first been asserted in relation to the spiritual and the teleological. it ended in fastening upon the material and mechanical. after all, says huxley, in one of his essays:--'what do we know of this terrible matter, except as a name for an unknown and hypothetical cause of states of our own consciousness? again, what do we know of that spirit over whose threatened extinction by matter so great lamentation has now arisen, except that it is also a name for an unknown and hypothetical cause of states of our consciousness?' he concedes that matter is inconceivable apart from mind, but that mind is not inconceivable apart from matter. he concedes that the conception of universal and necessary law is an ideal. it is an invention of the mind's own devising. it is not a physical fact. in brief, taking agnostic naturalism just as it seemed disposed a generation ago to present itself, it now appears as if it had been turned exactly inside out. instead of the physical world being primary and fundamental and the mental world secondary, if not altogether problematical, the precise converse is true. nature, as science regards it, may be described as a system whose parts, be they simple or complex, are wholly governed by universal laws. knowledge of these laws is an indispensable condition of that control of nature upon which human welfare in so large degree depends. but this reign of law is an hypothesis. it is not an axiom which it would be absurd to deny. it is not an obvious fact, thrust upon us whether we will or no. experiences are possible without the conception of law and order. the fruit of experience in knowledge is not possible without it. that is only to say that the reason why we assume that nature is a connected system of uniform laws, lies in the fact that we ourselves are self-conscious personalities. when the naturalists say that the notion of cause is a fetish, an anthropomorphic superstition which we must eliminate, we have to answer: 'from the realm of empirical science perhaps, but not from experience as a whole.' indeed, a glance at the history, and particularly at the popular literature, of science affords the interesting spectacle of the rise of an hallucination, the growth of a habit of mythological speech, which is truly surprising. we begin to hear of self-existent laws which reign supreme and bind nature fast in fact. by this learned substitution for god, it was once confidently assumed that the race was to emerge from mythical dawn and metaphysical shadows into the noon-day of positive knowledge. rather, it would appear that at this point a part of the human race plunged into a new era of myth-making and fetish worship--the homage to the fetish of law. even the great minds do not altogether escape. 'fact i know and law i know,' says huxley, with a faint suggestion of sacred rhetoric. but surely we do not know law in the same sense in which we know fact. if there are no causes among our facts, then we do not know anything about the laws. if we do know laws it is because we assume causes. if, in the language of rational beings, laws of nature are to be spoken of as self-existent and independent of the phenomena which they are said to govern, such language must be merely analogous to the manner in which we often speak of the civil law. we say the law does that which we know the executive does. but the thorough-going naturalist cast off these implications as the last rags of a creed outworn. physicists were fond of talking of the movement of molecules, just as the ancient astrologers imagined that the planets had souls and guided their own courses. we had supposed that this was anthropomorphism. in truth, this would-be scientific mode of speech is as anthropomorphic as is the cosmogony of hesiod, only on a smaller scale. primitive religion ascribed life to everything of which it talked. polytheism in religion and independent forces and self-existent laws in science are thus upon a par. the gods many and lords many, so amenable to concrete presentation in poetry and art, have given place to one supreme being. so also light, heat, and other natural agencies, palpable and ready to hand for the explanation of everything, in the myth-making period of science which living men can still remember, have by this time paled. they have become simply various manifestations of one underlying spiritual energy, which is indeed beyond our perception.[ ] when comte said that the universe could not rest upon will, because then it would be arbitrary, incalculable, subject to caprice, one feels the humour and pathos of it. comte's experience with will, his own and that of others, had evidently been too largely of that sad sort. real freedom consists in conformity to what ought to be. in god, whom we conceive as perfect, this conformity is complete. with us it remains an ideal. were we the creatures of a blind mechanical necessity there could be no talk of ideal standards and no meaning in reason at all. [footnote : ward, _naturalism and agnosticism_, vol. ii. p. .] evolution in the progress of the thought of the generation, say, from to the present day, the conception of evolution has been much changed. the doctrine of evolution has itself been largely evolved within that period. the application of it has become familiar in fields of which there was at first no thought. the bearing of the acceptance of it upon religion has been seen to be quite different from that which was at first supposed. the advocacy of the doctrine was at first associated with the claims of naturalism or positivism. wider applications of the doctrine and deeper insight into its meaning have done away with this misunderstanding. evolution, as originally understood, was as far as possible from suggesting anything mechanical. by the term was meant primarily the gradual unfolding of a living germ from its embryonic beginning to its mature and final stage. this adult form was regarded not merely as the goal actually reached through successive stages of growth. it was conceived as the end aimed at, and achieved through the force of some vital or ideal principle shaping the plastic material and directing the process of growth. in short, evolution implied ideal ends controlling physical means. yet we find with spencer, as prevailingly also with others in the study of the natural sciences, the ideas of end and of cause looked at askance. they are regarded an outside the pale of the natural sciences. in a very definite sense that is true. the logical consequence of this admission should be merely the recognition that the idea of evolution as developed in the natural sciences cannot be the whole idea. the entire history of anything, spencer tells us, must include its appearance out of the imperceptible, and its disappearance again into the imperceptible. be it a single object, or the whole universe, an account which begins with it in a concrete form, or leaves off with its concrete form, is incomplete. he uses a familiar instance, that of a cloud appearing when vapour drifts over a cold mountain top, and again disappearing when it emerges into warmer air. the cloud emerges from the imperceptible as heat is dissipated. it is dissolved again as heat is absorbed and the watery particles evaporate. spencer esteems this an analogue of the appearance of the universe itself, according to the nebular hypothesis. yet assuredly, as the cloud presupposes vapours which had previously condensed, and the vapour clouds that had previously evaporated, and as clouds dissolve in one place even at the moment that they are forming in another, so we are told of nebulæ which are in every phase of advance or of decline. to ask which was first, solid masses or nebulous haze, is much like recurring to the riddle of the hen and the egg. still, we are told, we have but to extend our thought beyond this emergence and subsidence of sidereal systems, of continents, nations, men, to find a permanent totality made up of transient individuals in every stage of change. the physical assumption with which spencer sets out is that the mass of the universe and its energy are fixed in quantity. all the phenomena of evolution are included in the conservation of this matter and force. besides the criticism which was offered above, that the mere law of the persistence of force does not initiate our series, there is a further objection. even within the series, once it has been started, this law of the persistence of force is solely a quantitative law. when energy is transformed there is an equivalence between the new form and the old. of the reasons for the direction evolution takes, for the permanence of that direction once it has been taken, so that the sequence of forms is a progression, the explication of a latent nature--of all this, the mere law of the persistence of force gives us no explanation whatever. the change at random from one form of manifestation to another might be a striking illustration of the law of the persistence of force, but it would be the contradiction of evolution. the very notion of evolution is that of the sequence of forms, so that something is expressed or achieved. that achievement implies more than the mere force. or rather, it involves a quality of the force with which the language of mechanism does not reckon. it assumes the idea which gives direction to the force, an ideal quality of the force. unquestionably that which men sought to be rid of was the idea of purpose in nature, in the old sense of design in the mind of god, external to the material universe, of force exerted upon nature from without, so as to cause nature to conform to the design of its 'great original,' in addison's high phrase. in this effort, however, the reducing of all to mere force and permutation of force, not merely explains nothing, but contradicts facts which stare us in the face. it deprives evolution of the quality which makes it evolution. to put in this incongruous quality at the beginning, because we find it necessary at the end, is, to say the least, naïve. to deny that we have put it in, to insist that in the marvellous sequence we have only an illustration of mechanism and of conservation of force, is perverse. we passed through an era in which some said that they did not believe in god; everything was accounted for by evolution. in so far as they meant that they did not believe in the god of deism and of much traditional theology, they did not stand alone in this claim. in so far as they meant by evolution mere mechanism, they explained nothing and destroyed the notion of evolution besides. in so far as they meant more than mere mechanism, they lapsed into the company of the scientific myth-makers to whom we alluded above. they attributed to their abstraction, evolution, qualities which other people found in the forms of the universe viewed as the manifestation of an immanent god. only by so doing were they able to ascribe to evolution that which other people describe as the work of god. at this level the controversy becomes one simply about words. of course, the great illumination as to the meaning of evolution has come with its application to many fields besides the physical. darwin was certainly the great inaugurator of the evolutionary movement in england. still, darwin's problem was strictly limited. the impression is widespread that the biological evolutionary theories were first developed, and furnished the basis for the others. yet both hegel and comte, not to speak of schelling, were far more interested in the intellectual and historical, the ethical and social aspects of the question. both hegel and comte were, whether rightly or wrongly, rather contemptuous of the appeal to biology and organic life. both had the sense that they used a great figure of speech when they spoke of society as an organism, and compared the working of institutions to biological functions. this is indeed the question. it is a question over which spencer sets himself lightly. he passes back and forth between organic evolution and the ethical, economic, and social movements which are described by the same term, as if we were in possession of a perfectly safe analogy, or rather as if we were assured of an identical principle. much that is already archaic in spencer's economic and social, his historical and ethical, not to say his religious, chapters is due to the influence of this fact. of his own mind it was true that he had come to the doctrine of evolution from the physical side. he brought to his other subjects a more or less developed method of operating with the conception. he never fully realised how new subjects would alter the method and transform the conception. spencerian evolution is an assertion of the all-sufficiency of natural law. the authority of conscience is but the experience of law-abiding and dutiful generations flowing in our veins. the public weal has hold over us, because the happiness and misery of past ages are inherited by us. it marked a great departure when huxley began vigorously to dissent from these views. according to him evolutionary science has done nothing for ethics. men become ethical only as they set themselves against the principles embodied in the evolutionary process of the world. evolution is the struggle for existence. it is preposterous to say that man became good by succeeding in the struggle for existence. instead of the old single movement, as in spencer, straight from the nebula to the saint, huxley has place for suffering. suffering is most intense in man precisely under conditions most essential to the evolution of his nobler powers. the loss of ease or money may be gain in character. the cosmical process is not only full of pain. it is full of mercilessness and of wickedness. good has been evolved, but so has evil. the fittest may have survived. there is no guarantee that they are the best. the continual struggle against our fellows poisons our higher life. it will hardly do to say with huxley that the ethical struggle is the reverse of the cosmical process. nevertheless, we have here a most interesting transformation in thought. these ideas and principles, as is well known, were elaborated and advanced upon in a very popular book, drummond's _ascent of man_, . even the title was a happy and suggestive one. struggle for life is a fact, but it is not the whole fact. it is balanced by the struggle for the life of others. this latter reaches far down into the levels of what we call brute life. its divinest reach is only the fulfilment of the real nature of humanity. it is the living with men which develops the moral in man. the prolongation of infancy in the higher species has had to do with the development of moral nature. so only that we hold a sufficiently deep view of reason, provided we see clearly that reason transforms, perfects, makes new what we inherit from the beast, we need not fear for morality, though it should universally be taught that morality came into being by the slow and gradual fashioning of brute impulse. benjamin kidd in his _social evolution_, , has reverted again to extreme darwinism in morals and sociology. the law is that of unceasing struggle. reason does not teach us to moderate the struggle. it but sharpens the conflict. all religions are præter-rational, christianity most of all, in being the most altruistic. kidd, not without reason, comments bitterly upon spencer's utopia, the passage of militarism into industrialism. the struggle in industrialism is fiercer than ever. reason affects the animal nature of man for the worse. clearly conscious of what he is doing, man objects to sacrificing himself for his family or tribe. instinct might lead an ape to do that. intelligence warns a man against it. reason is cruel beyond anything dreamed of in the beast. that portion of the community which loves to hear the abuse of reason, rejoiced to hear this phrase. they rejoiced when they heard that religion was the only remedy, and that religion was ultra-rational, contra-rational, supernatural, in this new sense. how one comes by it, or how one can rationally justify the yielding of allegiance to it, is not clear. one must indeed have the will to believe if one believes on these terms. these again are but examples. they convey but a superficial impression of the effort to apply the conception of evolution to the moral and religious life of man. all this has taken place, of course, in a far larger setting that of the endeavour to elaborate the evolutionary view of politics and of the state, of economics and of trade, of social life and institutions, of culture and civilisation in every aspect. this elaboration and reiteration of the doctrine of evolution sometimes wearies us. it is but the unwearied following of the main clue to the riddle of the universe which the age has given us. it is nothing more and nothing less than the endeavour to apprehend the ideal life, no longer as something held out to us, set up before us, but also as something working within us, realising itself through us and among us. to deny the affinity of this with religion would be fatuous and also futile. temporarily, at least, and to many interests of religion, it would be fatal. miracles it must be evident that the total view of the universe which the acceptance of the doctrine of evolution implies, has had effect in the diminution of the acuteness of the question concerning miracles. it certainly gives to that question a new form. a philosophy which asserts the constant presence of god in nature and the whole life of the world, a criticism which has given us a truer notion of the documents which record the biblical miracles, the reverent sense of ignorance which our increasing knowledge affords, have tended to diminish the dogmatism of men on either side of the debate. the contention on behalf of the miracle, in the traditional sense of the word, once seemed the bulwark of positive religion, the distinction between the man who was satisfied with a naturalistic explanation of the universe and one whose devout soul asked for something more. on the other hand, the contention against the miracle appeared to be a necessary corollary of the notion of a law and order which are inviolable throughout the universe. furthermore, many men have come of themselves to the conclusion for which schleiermacher long ago contended. whatever may be theoretically determined concerning miracles, yet the miracle can never again be regarded as among the foundations of faith. this is for the simplest of reasons. the belief in a miracle presupposes faith. it is the faith which sustains the miracle, and not the miracle the faith. jesus is to men the incomparable moral and spiritual magnitude which he is, not on the evidence of some unparalleled things physical which it is alleged he did. quite the contrary, it is the immediate impression of the moral and spiritual wonder which jesus is, that prepares what credence we can gather for the wonders which it is declared he did. this is a transfer of emphasis, a redistribution of weight in the structure of our thought, the relief of which many appreciate who have not reasoned the matter through for themselves. schleiermacher had said, and herrmann and others repeat the thought, that, as the christian faith finds in christ the highest revelation, miracles may reasonably be expected of him. nevertheless, he adds, these deeds can be called miracles or esteemed extraordinary, only as containing something which was beyond contemporary knowledge of the regular and orderly connexion between physical and spiritual life. therewith, it must be evident, that the notion of the miraculous is fundamentally changed. so it comes to pass that we have a book like mackintosh's _natural history of the christian religion_, , whose avowed purpose is to do away with the miraculous altogether. of course, the author means the traditional notion of the miraculous, according to which it is the essence of arbitrariness and the negation of law. it is not that he has less sense for the divine life of the world, or for the quality of christianity as revelation. on the other hand, we have a book like percy gardner's _exploratio evangelica_, . with the most searching criticism of the narratives of some miracles, there is reverent confession, on the author's part, that he is baffled by the reports of others. there is recognition of unknown possibilities in the case of a character like that of jesus. it is not that gardner has a less stringent sense of fact and of the inexorableness of law than has mackintosh or an ardent physicist. the problem is reduced to that of the choice of expression. we are not able to withhold a justification of the scholar who declares: we must not say that we believe in the miraculous. this language is sure to be appropriated by those who still take their departure from the old dualism, now hopelessly obsolete, for which a breach of the law of nature was the crowning evidence of the love of god. on the other hand, the assertion that we do not believe in the miraculous will easily be taken by some to mean the denial of the whole sense of the nearness and power and love of god, and of the unimagined possibilities of such a moral nature as was that of christ. it is to be repeated that we have here a mere difference as to terms. the debate is no longer about ideas. the traditional notion of the miracle arose out of the confusion of two series of ideas which, in the last analysis, have nothing to do with each other. on the one hand, there is the conception of law and order, of cause and effect, of the unbroken connexion of nature. on the other hand is the thought of the divine purpose in the life of the world and of the individual. by the aid of that first sequence of thoughts we find ourselves in the universe and interpret the world of fact to ourselves. yet in the other sequence lies the essence of religion. the two sequences may perfectly well coexist in the same mind. out of the attempt to combine them nothing clear or satisfying can issue. if one should be, to-day, brought face to face with a fact which was alleged to be a miracle, his instinctive effort would be, nevertheless, to seek to find its cause, to establish for it a connexion in the natural order. in the ancient world men did not argue thus, nor in the modern world until less than two hundred years ago. the presumption of the order of nature had not assumed for them the proportions which it has for us. for us it is overwhelming, self-evident. therewith is not involved that we lack belief in a divine purpose for the world and for the individual life. we do not deny that there are laws of nature of which we have no experience, facts which we do not understand, events which, if they should occur, would stand before us as unique. still, the decisive thing is, that in face of such an event, instead of viewing it quite simply as a divine intervention, as men used to do, we, with equal simplicity and no less devoutness, conceive that same event as only an illustration of a connexion in nature which we do not understand. there is no inherent reason why we may not understand it. when we do understand it, there will be nothing more about it that is conceivably miraculous. there will be then no longer a unique quality attaching to the event. therewith ends the possible significance of such an event as proof of divine intervention for our especial help. we have but a connexion in nature such that, whether understood or not, if it were to recur, the event would recur. the miracles which are related in the scripture may be divided for our consideration into three classes. to the first class belong most of those which are related in the old testament, but some also which are conspicuous in the new testament. they are, in some cases, the poetical and imaginative representation of the profoundest religious ideas. so soon as one openly concedes this, when there is no longer any necessity either to attack or to defend the miracle in question, one is in a position to acknowledge how deep and wonderful the thoughts often are and how beautiful the form in which they are conveyed. it is through imagination and symbolism that we are able to convey the subtlest meanings which we have. still more was this the case with men of an earlier age. in the second place, the narratives of miracles are, some of them, of such a sort that we may say that an event or circumstance in nature has been obviously apprehended in naïve fashion. this by no means forbids us to interpret that same event in quite a different way. the men of former time, exactly in proportion as they had less sense of the order of nature than have we, so were they also far readier to assume the immediate forthputting of the power of god. this was true not merely of the uneducated. it is difficult, or even impossible, for us to find out what the event was. fact and apprehension are inextricably interwoven. that which really happened is concealed from us by the tale which had intended to reveal it. in the third place, there are many cases in the history of jesus, and some in that of the apostles and prophets, in which that which is related moves in the borderland between body and soul, spirit and matter, the region of the influence of will, one's own or that of another, over physical conditions. concerning such cases we are disposed, far more than were men even a few years ago, to concede that there is much that is by no means yet investigated, and the soundest judgment we can form is far from being sure. even if we recognise to the full the lamentable resurgence of outworn superstitions and stupidities, which again pass current among us for an unhappy moment, if we detect the questionable or manifestly evil consequences of certain uses made or alleged of psychic influence, yet still we are not always in a position to say, with certainty, what is true in tales of healing which we hear in our own day. there are certain of the statements concerning jesus' healing power and action which are absolutely baffling. they can be eliminated from the narrative only by a procedure which might just as well eliminate the narrative. in many of the narratives there may be much that is true. in some all may be as related. in jesus' time, on the witness of the scripture itself, it was assumed as something no one questioned, that miraculous deeds were performed, not alone by jesus and the apostles, but by many others, and not always even by the good. such deeds were performed through the power of evil spirits as well as by the power of god. to imagine that the working of miracles proved that jesus came from god, is the most patent importation of a modern apologetic notion into the area of ancient thought. we must remember that jesus himself laid no great weight upon the miracles which we assume that he believed he wrought, and some of which we may believe that he did work. many he performed with hesitation and desired so far as possible to conceal. even if we were in a position at one point or another in the life of jesus to defend the traditional assumptions concerning the miraculous, yet it must be evident how opposed it is to right reason, to lay stress on the abstract necessity of belief in the miraculous. the traditional conception of the miraculous is done away for us. this is not at all by the fact that we are in a position to say with matthew arnold: 'the trouble with miracles is that they never happen.' we do not know enough to say that. to stake all on the assertion of the impossibility of so-called miracles is as foolish as to stake much on the affirmation of their actuality. the connexion of nature is only an induction. this can never be complete. the real question is both more complex and also more simple. the question is whether, even if an event, the most unparalleled of those related in the gospels or outside of them, should be proved before our very eyes to have taken place, the question is whether we should believe it to have been a miracle in the traditional sense, an event in which the actual--not the known, but the possible--order of nature had been broken through, and in the old sense, god had arbitrarily supervened. allowed that the event were, in our own experience and in the known experience of the race, unparalleled, yet it would never occur to us to suppose but that there was a law of this case, also, a connexion in nature in which, as work of god, it occurred, and in which, if the conditions were repeated, it would recur. we should unceasingly endeavour through observation, reflexion, and new knowledge, to show how we might subordinate this event in the connexion of nature which we assume. we should feel that we knew more, and not less, of god, if we should succeed. and if our effort should prove altogether futile, we should be no less sure that such natural connexion exists. this is because nature is for us the revelation of the divine. the divine, we assume, has a natural order of working. its inviolability is the divinest thing about it. it is through this sequence of ideas that we are in a position to deny, not facts which may be inexplicable, but the traditional conception of the miracle. for surely no one needs to be told that this is not the conception of the miracle which has existed in the minds of the devout, and equally of the undevout, from the beginning of thought until the present day. however, there is nothing in all of this which hinders us from believing with a full heart in the love and grace and care of god, in his holy and redeeming purpose for mankind and for the individual. it is true that this belief cannot any longer retain its naïve and childish form. it is true that it demands of a man far more of moral force, of ethical and spiritual mastery, of insight and firm will, to sustain the belief in the purpose of god for himself and for all men, when a man believes that he sees and feels god only in and through nature and history, through personal consciousness and the personal consciousness of jesus. it is true that it has, apparently, been easier for men to think of god as outside and above his world, and of themselves as separated from their fellows by his special providence. it is more difficult, through glad and intelligent subjection to all laws of nature and of history, to achieve the education of one's spirit, to make good one's inner deliverance from the world, to aid others in the same struggle and to set them on their way to god. men grow uncertain within themselves, because they say that traditional religion has apprehended the matter in a different way. this is true. it is also misleading. whatever miracles jesus may have performed, no one can say that he performed them to make life easier for himself, to escape the common lot, to avoid struggle, to evade suffering and disgraceful death. on the contrary, in genuine human self-distrust, but also in genuine heroism, he gave himself to his vocation, accepting all that went therewith, and finished the work of god which he had made his own. this is the more wonderful because it lay so much nearer to him than it can lie to us, to pray for special evidence of the love of god and to set his faith on the receiving of it. he had not the conception of the relation of god to nature and history which we have. we may well view the modern tendency to belief in healings through prayer, suggestion and faith, as an intelligible, an interesting, and in part, a touching manifestation. of course there is mingled with it much dense ignorance, some superstition and even deception. yet behind such a phenomenon there is meaning. men of this mind make earnest with the thought that god cares for them. without that thought there is no religion. they have been taught to find the evidence of god's love and care in the unusual. they are quite logical. it has been a weak point of the traditional belief that men have said that in the time of christ there were miracles, but since that time, no more. why not, if we can only in spirit come near to christ and god? they are quite logical also in that they have repudiated modern science. to be sure, no inconsiderable part of them use the word science continually. but the very esoteric quality of their science is that it means something which no one else ever understood that it meant. in reality their breach with science is more radical than their breach with christianity. they feel the contradiction in which most men are bound fast, who will let science have its way, up to a certain point, but who beyond that, would retain the miracle. dimly the former appreciate that this position is impossible. they leave it to other men to become altogether scientific if they wish. for themselves they prefer to remain religious. what a revival of ancient superstitions they have brought to pass, is obvious. still we shall never get beyond such adventurous and preposterous endeavours to rescue that which is inestimably precious in religion, until the false antithesis between reason and faith, the lying contradiction between the providence of god and the order of nature, is overcome. some science mankind apparently must have. altogether without religion the majority, it would seem, will never be. how these are related, the one to the other, not every one sees. many attempt their admixture in unhappy ways. they might try letting them stand in peace as complement and supplement the one to the other. still better, they may perhaps some day see how each penetrates, permeates and glorifies the other. the social sciences we said that the last generation had been characterised by an unexampled concentration of intellectual interest upon problems presented by the social sciences. with this has gone an unrivalled earnestness in the interpretation of religion as a social force. the great religious enthusiasm has been that of the application of christianity to the social aspects of life. this effort has furnished most of the watchwords of religious teaching. it has laid vigorous, not to say violent, hands on religious institutions. it has given a new perspective to effort and a new impulse to devotion. the revival of religion in our age has taken this direction, with an exclusiveness which has had both good and evil consequences. yet, before all, it should be made clear that it constitutes a religious revival. some are deploring the prostrate condition of spiritual interests. if one judged only by conventional standards, they have much evidence upon their side. some are seeking to galvanise religious life by recurrence to evangelistic methods successfully operative half a century ago. the outstanding fact is that the age shows immense religious vitality, so soon as one concedes that it must be allowed to show its vitality in its own way. it is the age of the social question. one must be ignorant indeed of the activity of the churches and of the productivity of religious thinkers, if he does not own that in christian circles also no questions are so rife as these. whether the panaceas have been all wise or profitable may be questioned. whether the interest has not been even excessive and one-sided, whether the accusation has not been occasionally unjust and the self-accusation morbid, these are questions which it might be possible in some quarters to ask. this is, however, only another form of proof of what we say. the religious interest in social questions has not been aroused primarily by intellectual and scientific impulses, nor fostered mainly by doctrinaire discussion. on the contrary, the initiative has been from the practical side. it has been a question of life and service. if anything, one often misses the scientific note in the flood of semi-religious literature relating to this theme, the realisation that, to do well, it is often profitable to think. yet there is effort to mediate the best results of social-scientific thinking, through clerical education and directly to the laity. on the other hand, a deep sense of ethical and spiritual responsibility is prevalent among thinkers upon social topics. often indeed has the quality of christianity been observed which is here exemplified. each succeeding age has read into christ's teachings, or drawn out from his example, the special meaning which that generation, or that social level, or that individual man had need to draw. to them in their enthusiasm it has often seemed as if this were the only lesson reasonable men could draw. nothing could be more enlightening than is reflexion upon this reading of the ever-changing ideals of man's life into christianity, or of christianity into the ever-advancing ideals of man's life. this chameleonlike quality of christianity is the farthest possible remove from the changelessness which men love to attribute to religion. it is the most wonderful quality which christianity possesses. it is precisely because of the recognition of this capacity for change that one may safely argue the continuance of christianity in the world. yet also because of this recognition, one is put upon his guard against joining too easily in the clamour that a past apprehension of religion was altogether wrong, or that a new and urgent one, in its exclusive emphasis and its entirety, is right. our age is haunted by the sense of terrific social and economic inequalities which prevail. it has set its heart upon the elimination of those inequalities. it is an age whose disrespect for religion is in some part due to the fact that religion has not done away with these inequalities. it is an age which is immediately interested in an interpretation of religion which will make central the contention that, before all things else, these inequalities must be done away. if religion can be made a means of every man's getting his share of the blessings of this world, well and good. if not, there are many men and women to whom religion seems utterly meaningless. this sentence hardly overstates the case. it is the challenge of the age to religion to do something which the age profoundly needs, and which religion under its age-long dominant apprehension has not conspicuously done, nor even on a great scale attempted. it is the challenge to religion to undertake a work of surpassing grandeur--nothing less than the actualisation of the whole ideal of the life of man. religious men respond with the quickened and conscientious conviction, not indeed that they have laid too great an emphasis upon the spiritual, but that under a dualistic conception of god and man and world, they have never sufficiently realised that the spiritual is to be realised in the material, the ideal in and not apart from the actual, the eternal in and not after the temporal. yet with that oscillatory quality which belongs to human movements, especially where old wrongs and errors have come deeply to be felt, a part of the literature of the contention shows marked tendency to extremes. a religion in the body must become a religion of the body. a christianity of the social state runs risk of being apprehended as merely one more means for compassing outward and material ends. religion does stand for the inner life and the transcendent world, only not an inner life through the neglect of the outer, or a transcendent world in some far-off star or after an æon or two. there might be meaning in the argument that, exactly because so many other forces in our age do make for the realisation of the outer life and present world with an effectiveness and success which no previous age has ever dreamed, there is the more reason, and not the less, why religion should still be religion. exactly this is the contention of eueken in one of the most significant contributions of recent years to the philosophy of religion, his _wahrheitsgehalt der religion_, , transl. jones, . the very source and cause of the sure recovery of religion in our age will be the experience of the futility, the bankruptcy, of a civilisation without faith. no nobler argument has been heard in our time for the spiritual meaning of religion, with the fullest recognition of all its other meanings. the modern emphasis on the social aspects of religion may be said to have been first clearly expressed in seeley's _ecce homo_, . the pith of the book is in this phrase: 'to reorganise society and to bind the members of it together by the closest ties was the business of jesus' life.' allusion has been made to fremantle's _the world as the subject of redemption_, . worthy of note is also fairbairn's _religion in history and modern life_, ; pre-eminently so is bosanquet's _the civilisation of christendom_, . westcott's _incarnation and common life_, , contains utterances of weight. peabody, in his book, _jesus christ and the social question_, , has given, on the whole, the best résumé of the discussion. he conveys incidentally an impression of the body of literature produced in recent years, in which it is assumed, sometimes with embitterment, that the centre of gravity of christianity is outside the church. sell, in the very title of his illuminating little book, _christenthum und weltgeschichte seit der reformation: das christenthum in seiner entwickelung über die kirche hinaus_, , records an impression, which is widespread and true, that the characteristic mark of modern christianity is that it has transcended the organs and agencies officially created for it. it has become non-ecclesiastical, if not actually hostile to the church. it has permeated the world in unexpected fashion and does the deeds of christianity, though rather eager to avoid the name. the anti-clericalism of the latin countries is not unintelligible, the anti-ecclesiasticism of the teutonic not without a cause. german socialism, ever since karl marx, has been fundamentally antagonistic to any religion whatsoever. it is purely secularist in tone. this is also a strained situation, liable to become perverse. that part of the christian church which understands itself, rejoices in nothing so much as in the fact that the spirit of christ is so widely disseminated, his influence felt by many who do not know what influence it is which they feel, his work done by vast numbers who would never call themselves his workers. that part of the church is not therewith convinced but that there is need of the church as institution, and of those who are consciously disciples of jesus in the world. by far the largest question, however, which is raised in this connexion, is one different from any thus far intimated. it is, perhaps, the last question one would have expected the literature of the social movement to raise. it is, namely, the question of the individual. ever since the middle of the eighteenth century a sort of universalistic optimism, to which the individual is sacrificed, has obtained. within the period of which this book treats the world has won an enlargement of horizon of which it never dreamed. it has gained a forecast of the future of culture and civilisation which is beyond imagination. the access of comfort makes men at home in the world as they never were at home. there has been set a value on this life which life never had before. the succession of discoveries and applications of discovery makes it seem as if there were to be no end in this direction. from rousseau to spencer men have elaborated the view that the historical process cannot really issue in anything else than in ever higher stages of perfection and of happiness. they postulate a continuous enhancement of energy and a steady perfecting of intellectual and moral quality. as the goal of evolution appears an ideal condition which is either indefinitely remote, that is, which gives room for the bliss of infinite progress in its direction, or else a definitely attainable condition, which would have within itself the conditions of perpetuity. the resistlessness with which this new view of the life of civilisation has won acknowledgment from men of all classes is amazing. it rests upon a belief in the self-sufficiency and the all-sufficiency of the life of this world, of the bearings of which it may be assumed that few of its votaries are aware. in reality this view cannot by any possibility be described as the result of knowledge. on the contrary, it is a venture of faith. it is the peculiar, the very characteristic and suggestive form which the faith of our age takes. men believe in this indefinite progress of the world and of mankind, because without postulating such progress they do not see how they can assume the absolute worth of an activity which is yet the only thing which has any interest to most of them. under this view one can assign to the individual life a definite significance, only upon the supposition that the individual is the organ of realisation of a part of this progress of mankind. all happiness and suffering, all changes in knowledge and manner of conduct, are supposed to have no worth each for itself or for the sake of the individual, but only for their relation to the movement as a whole. surely this is an illusion. exactly that in which the characteristic quality of the world and of life is found, the individual personalities, the single generations, the concrete events--these lose, in this view, their own particular worth. what can possibly be the worth of a whole of which the parts have no worth? we have here but a parallel on a huge scale of that deadly trait in our own private lives, according to which it makes no difference what we are doing, so only that we are doing, or whither we are going, so only that we cease not to go, or what our noise is all about, so only that there be no end of the noise. certainly no one can establish the value of the evolutionary process in and of itself. if the movement as a whole has no definite end that has absolute worth, then it has no worth except as the stages, the individual factors included in it, attain to something within themselves which is of increasing worth. if the movement achieves this, then it has worth, not otherwise. we may illustrate this question by asking ourselves concerning the existence and significance of suffering and of the evil and of the bad which are in the world, in their relation to this tendency to indefinite progress which is supposed to be inherent in civilisation. on this theory we have to say that the suffering of the individual is necessary for the development and perfecting of the whole. as over against the whole the individual has no right to make demands as to welfare or happiness. the bad also becomes only relative. in the movement taken as a whole, it is probably unavoidable. in any case it is negligible, since the movement is irresistible. all ethical values are absorbed in the dynamic ones, all personal values in the collective ones. surely the sole intelligent question about any civilisation is, what sort of men does it produce. if it produces worthless individuals, it is so far forth a worthless civilisation. if it has sacrificed many worthy men in order to produce this ignoble result, then it is more obviously ignoble than ever. furthermore, this notion of an inherent necessity and an irresistible tendency to progress is a chimera. the progress of mankind is a task. it is something to which the worthy human spirit is called upon to make contribution. the unworthy never hear the call. progress is not a natural necessity. it is an ethical obligation. it is a task which has been fulfilled by previous generations in varying degrees of perfectness. it will be participated in by succeeding generations with varying degrees of wisdom and success. but as to there being anything autonomous about it, this is sheer hallucination, myth-making again, on the part of those who boast that they despise the myth, miracle-mongering on the part of those who have abjured the miracle, nonsense on the part of those who boast that they alone are sane. there is no ultimate source of civilisation but the individual, as there is also no issue of civilisation but in individuals. men, characters, personalities, are the makers of it. men are the product which is made. the higher stages and achievements of the life of society have come to pass always and only upon condition that single personalities have recognised the problem, seen their individual duty and known how to inspire others with enthusiasm. periods of decline are always those in which this personal element cannot make itself felt. democracies and periods of the intensity of emphasis upon the social movement, tend directly to the depression and suppression of personality.[ ] such reflexions will have served their purpose if they give us some clear sense of what we have to understand as the effect of the social movement on religion. they may give also some forecast of the effect of real religion on the social movement. for religion is the relation of god and personality. it can be social only in the sense that society, in all its normal relations, is the sphere within which that relation of god and personality is to be wrought out. [footnote : siebeck, _religionsphilosophie_, , s. .] chapter vi the english-speaking peoples: action and reaction in those aspects of our subject with which we have thus far dealt, leadership has been largely with the germans. effort was indeed made in the chapter on the sciences to illustrate the progress of thought by reference to british writers. in this department the original and creative contribution of british authors was great. there were, however, also in the earlier portion of the nineteenth century movements of religious thought in great britain and america related to some of those which we have previously considered. moreover, one of the most influential movements of english religious thought, the so-called oxford movement, with the anglo-catholic revival which it introduced, was of a reactionary tendency. it has seemed, therefore, feasible to append to this chapter that which we must briefly say concerning the general movement of reaction which marked the century. this reactionary movement has indeed everywhere run parallel to the one which we have endeavoured to record. it has often with vigour run counter to our movement. it has revealed the working of earnest and sometimes anxious minds in directions opposed to those which we have been studying. no one can fail to be aware that there has been a great catholic revival in the nineteenth century. that revival has had place in the roman catholic countries of the continent as well. it was in order to include the privilege of reference to these aspects of our subject that this chapter was given a double title. yet in no country has the nineteenth century so favourably altered the position of the roman catholic church as in england. in no country has a church which has been esteemed to be protestant been so much influenced by catholic ideas. this again is a reason for including our reference to the reaction here. according to pfleiderer, a new movement in philosophy may be said to have begun in great britain in the year , with the publication of coleridge's _aids to reflection_. in coleridge's _confessions of an enquiring spirit_, published six years after his death in , we have a suggestion of the biblical-critical movement which was beginning to shape itself in germany. in the same years we have evidence in the works of erskine and the early writings of campbell, that in scotland theologians were thinking on schleiermacher's lines. in those same years books of more or less marked rationalistic tendency were put forth by the oriel school. finally, with pusey's _assize sermon_, in , newman felt that the movement later to be called tractarian had begun. we shall not be wrong, therefore, in saying that the decade following saw the beginnings in britain of more formal reflexion upon all the aspects of the theme with which we are concerned. what went before that, however, in the way of liberal religious thinking, though informal in its nature, should not be ignored. it was the work of the poets of the end of the eighteenth and of the beginning of the nineteenth centuries. the culmination of the great revolt against the traditional in state and society and against the conventional in religion, had been voiced in britain largely by the poets. so vigorous was this utterance and so effective, that some have spoken of the contribution of the english poets to the theological reconstruction. it is certain that the utterances of the poets tended greatly to the dissemination of the new ideas. there was in great britain no such unity as we have observed among the germans, either of the movement as a whole or in its various parts. there was a consecution nothing less than marvellous in the work of the philosophers from kant to hegel. there was a theological sequence from schleiermacher to ritschl. there was an unceasing critical advance from the days of strauss. there was nothing resembling this in the work of the english-speaking people. the contributions were for a long time only sporadic. the movement had no inclusiveness. there was no aspect of a solid front in the advance. in the department of the sciences only was the situation different. in a way, therefore, it will be necessary in this chapter merely to single out individuals, to note points of conflict, one and another, all along the great line of advance. or, to put it differently, it will be possible to pursue a chronological arrangement which would have been bewildering in our study heretofore. with the one great division between the progressive spirits and the men of the reaction, it will be possible to speak of philosophers, critics and theologians together, among their own contemporaries, and so to follow the century as it advances. in the closing years of the eighteenth century in england what claimed to be a rational supernaturalism prevailed. men sought to combine faith in revealed religion with the empirical philosophy of locke. they conceived god and his relation to the world under deistical forms. the educated often lacked in singular degree all deeper religious feeling. they were averse to mysticism and spurned enthusiasm. utilitarian considerations, which formed the practical side of the empirical philosophy, played a prominent part also in orthodox belief. the theory of the universe which obtained among the religious is seen at its worst in some of the volumes of the warburton lectures, and at its best perhaps in butler's _analogy of natural and revealed religion_. the character and views of the clergy and of the ruling class among the laity of the church of england, early in the nineteenth century, are pictured with love and humour in trollope's novels. they form the background in many of george eliot's books, where, in more mordant manner, both their strength and weaknesses are shown. even the remarks which introduce dean church's _oxford movement_, , in which the churchly element is dealt with in deep affection, give anything but an inspiring view. the contrast with this would-be rational and unemotional religious respectability of the upper classes was furnished, for masses of the people, in the quickening of the consciousness of sin and grace after the manner of the methodists. but the methodism of the earlier age had as good as no intellectual relations whatsoever. the wesleys and whitefield had indeed influenced a considerable portion of the anglican communion. their pietistic trait, combined, for the most part, with a calvinism which wesley abhorred and an old-fashioned low church feeling with which also wesley had no sympathy, shows itself in the so-called evangelical party which was strong before . this evangelical movement in the church of england manifested deep religious feeling, it put forth zealous philanthropic effort, it had among its representatives men and women of great beauty of personal character and piety. yet it was completely cut off from any living relation to the thought of the age. there was among its representatives no spirit of theological inquiry. there was, if anything, less probability of theological reconstruction, from this quarter, than from the circles of the older german pietism, with which this english evangelicalism of the time of the later georges had not a little in common. there had been a great enthusiasm for humanity at the opening of the period of the french revolution, but the excesses and atrocities of the revolution had profoundly shocked the english mind. there was abroad something of the same sense for the return to nature, and of the greatness of man, which moved schiller and goethe. the exponents of it were, however, almost exclusively the poets, wordsworth, shelley, keats and byron. there was nothing which combined these various elements as parts of a great whole. britain had stood outside the area of the revolution, and yet had put forth stupendous efforts, ultimately successful, to make an end of the revolutionary era and of the napoleonic despotism. this tended perhaps to give to britons some natural satisfaction in the british constitution and the established church which flourished under it. finally, while men on the continent were devising holy alliances and other chimeras of the sort, england was precipitated into the earlier acute stages of the industrial revolution in which she has led the european nations and still leads. this fact explains a certain preoccupation of the british mind with questions remote from theological reconstruction or religious speculation. the poets it may now sound like a contradiction if we assert that the years from to constitute the era of the noblest english poetry since the times of great elizabeth. the social direction of the new theology of the present day, with its cry against every kind of injustice, with its claim of an equal opportunity for a happy life for every man--this was the forecast of cowper, as it had been of blake. to blake all outward infallible authority of books or churches was iniquitous. he was at daggers drawn with every doctrine which set limit to the freedom of all men to love god, or which could doubt that god had loved all men. jesus alone had seen the true thing. god was a father, every man his child. long before , burns was filled with the new ideas of the freedom and brotherhood of man, with zeal for the overthrow of unjust privilege. he had spoken in imperishable words of the holiness of the common life. he had come into contact with the most dreadful consequences of calvinism. he has pilloried these mercilessly in his 'holy tulzie' and in his 'holy willie's prayer.' such poems must have shaken calvinism more than a thousand liberal sermons could have done. what coleridge might have done in this field, had he not so early turned to prose, it is not easy to say. the verse of his early days rests upon the conviction, fundamental to his later philosophy, that all the new ideas concerning men and the world are a revelation of god. wordsworth seems never consciously to have broken with the current theology. his view of the natural glory and goodness of humanity, especially among the poor and simple, has not much relation to that theology. his view of nature, not as created of god. in the conventional sense, but as itself filled with god, of god as conscious of himself at every point of nature's being, has still less. man and nature are but different manifestations of the one soul of all. byron's contribution to christian thought, we need hardly say, was of a negative sort. it was destructive rather than constructive. among the conventions and hypocrisies of society there were none which he more utterly despised than those of religion and the church as he saw these. there is something volcanic, voltairean in his outbreaks. but there is a difference. both voltaire and byron knew that they had not the current religion. voltaire thought, nevertheless, that he had a religion. posterity has esteemed that he had little. byron thought he had none. posterity has felt that he had much. his attack was made in a reckless bitterness which lessened its effect. yet the truth of many things which he said is now overwhelmingly obvious. shelley began with being what he called an atheist. he ended with being what we call an agnostic, whose pure poetic spirit carried him far into the realm of the highest idealism. the existence of a conscious will within the universe is not quite thinkable. yet immortal love pervades the whole. immortality is improbable, but his highest flights continually imply it. he is sure that when any theology violates the primary human affections, it tramples into the dust all thoughts and feelings by which men may become good. the men who, about , stood paralysed between what strauss later called 'the old faith and the new,' or, as arnold phrased it, were 'between two worlds, one dead, the other powerless to be born,' found their inmost thoughts written broad for them in arthur clough. from the time of the opening of tennyson's work, the poets, not by destruction but by construction, not in opposition to religion but in harmony with it, have built up new doctrines of god and man and aided incalculably in preparing the way for a new and nobler theology. in the latter part of the nineteenth century there was perhaps no one man in england who did more to read all of the vast advance of knowledge in the light of higher faith, and to fill such a faith with the spirit of the glad advance of knowledge, than did browning. even arnold has voiced in his poetry not a little of the noblest conviction of the age. and what shall one say of mrs. browning, of the rossettis and william morris, of emerson and lowell, of lanier and whitman, who have spoken, often with consummate power and beauty, that which one never says at all without faith and rarely says well without art? coleridge samuel taylor coleridge was born in at his father's vicarage, ottery st. mary's, devonshire. he was the tenth child of his parents, weak in frame, always suffering much. he was a student at christ's hospital, london, where he was properly bullied, then at jesus college, cambridge, where he did not take his degree. for some happy years he lived in the lake region and was the friend of wordsworth and southey. he studied in göttingen, a thing almost unheard of in his time. the years to were indeed spent in utter misery, through the opium habit which he had contracted while seeking relief from rheumatic pain. he wrote and taught and talked in highgate from to . he had planned great works which never took shape. for a brief period he severed his connexion with the english church, coming under unitarian influence. he then reverted to the relation in which his ecclesiastical instincts were satisfied. we read his _aids to reflection_ and his _confessions of an enquiring spirit_, and wonder how they can ever have exerted a great influence. nevertheless, they were fresh and stimulating in their time. that coleridge was a power, we have testimony from men differing among themselves so widely as do hare, sterling, newman and john stuart mill. he was a master of style. he had insight and breadth. tulloch says of the _aids_, that it is a book which none but a thinker upon divine things will ever like. not all even of these have liked it. inexcusably fragmentary it sometimes seems. one is fain to ask: what right has any man to publish a scrap-book of his musings? coleridge had the ambition to lay anew the foundations of spiritual philosophy. the _aids_ were but of the nature of prolegomena. for substance his philosophy went back to locke and hume and to the cambridge platonists. he had learned of kant and schleiermacher as well. he was no metaphysician, but a keen interpreter of spiritual facts, who himself had been quickened by a particularly painful experience. he saw in christianity, rightly conceived, at once the true explanation of our spiritual being and the remedy for its disorder. the evangelical tradition brought religion to a man from without. it took no account of man's spiritual constitution, beyond the fact that he was a sinner and in danger of hell. coleridge set out, not from sin alone, but from the whole deep basis of spiritual capacity and responsibility upon which sin rests. he asserts experience. we are as sure of the capacity for the good and of the experience of the good as we can be of the evil. the case is similar as to the truth. there are aspects of truth which transcend our powers. we use words without meaning when we talk of the plans of a being who is neither an object for our senses nor a part of our self-consciousness. all truth must be capable of being rendered into words conformable to reason. theologians had declared their doctrines true or false without reference to the subjective standard of judgment. coleridge contended that faith must rest not merely upon objective data, but upon inward experience. the authority of scripture is in its truthfulness, its answer to the highest aspirations of the human reason and the most urgent necessities of the moral life. the doctrine of an atonement is intelligible only in so far as it too comes within the range of spiritual experience. the apostolic language took colour from the traditions concerning sacrifice. much has been taken by the church as literal dogmatic statement which should be taken as more figure of speech, borrowed from jewish sources. coleridge feared that his thoughts concerning scripture might, if published, do more harm than good. they were printed first in . their writing goes back into the period long before the conflict raised by strauss. there is not much here that one might not have learned from herder and lessing. utterances of whately and arnold showed that minds in england were waking. but coleridge's utterances rest consistently upon the philosophy of religion and theory of dogma which have been above implied. they are more significant than are mere flashes of generous insight, like those of the men named. the notion of verbal inspiration or infallible dictation of the holy scriptures could not possibly survive after the modern spirit of historical inquiry had made itself felt. the rabbinical idea was bound to disappear. a truer sense of the conditions attending the origins and progress of civilisation and of the immaturities through which religious as well as moral and social ideas advance, brought of necessity a changed idea of the nature of scripture and revelation. its literature must be read as literature, its history as history. for the answer in our hearts to the spirit in the book, coleridge used the phrase: 'it finds me.' 'whatever finds me bears witness to itself that it has proceeded from the holy ghost. in the bible there is more that finds me than in all the other books which i have read.' still, there is much in the bible that does not find me. it is full of contradictions, both moral and historical. are we to regard these as all equally inspired? the scripture itself does not claim that. besides, what good would it do us to claim that the original documents were inerrant, unless we could claim also that they had been inerrantly transmitted? apparently coleridge thought that no one would ever claim that. coleridge wrote also concerning the church. his volume on _the constitution of church and state_ appeared in . it is the least satisfactory of his works. the vacillation of coleridge's own course showed that upon this point his mind was never clear. arnold also, though in a somewhat different way, was zealous for the theory that church and state are really identical, the church being merely the state in its educational and religious aspect and organisation. if thomas arnold's moral earnestness and his generous spirit could not save this theory from being chimerical, no better result was to be expected from coleridge. the oriel school it has often happened in the history of the english universities that a given college has become, through its body of tutors and students, through its common-room talk and literary work, the centre, for the time, of a movement of thought which gives leadership to the college. in this manner it has been customary to speak of the group of men who, before the rise of the oxford movement, gathered at oriel college, as the oriel school. newman and keble were both oriel tutors. the oriel men were of distinctly liberal tendency. there were men of note among them. there was whately, archbishop of dublin after , and copleston, from whom both keble and newman owned that they learned much. there was arnold, subsequently headmaster of rugby. there was hampden, professor of divinity after . the school was called from its liberalism the noetic school. whether this epithet contained more of satire or of complacency it is difficult to say. these men arrested attention and filled some of the older academic and ecclesiastical heads with alarm. without disrespect one may say that it is difficult now to understand the commotion which they made. arnold had a truly beautiful character. what he might have done as professor of ecclesiastical history in oxford was never revealed, for he died in . whately, viewed as a noetic, appears commonplace. perhaps the only one of the group upon whom we need dwell was hampden. in his bampton lectures of , under the title of _the scholastic philosophy considered in its relation to christian theology_, he assailed what had long been the very bulwark of traditionalism. his idea was to show how the vast fabric of scholastic theology had grown up, particularly what contributions had been made to it in the middle age. the traditional dogma is a structure reared upon the logical terminology of the patristic and mediæval schools. it has little foundation in scripture and no response in the religious consciousness. we have here the application, within set limits, of the thesis which harnack in our own time has applied in a universal way. hampden's opponents were not wrong in saying that his method would dissolve, not merely that particular system of theology, but all creeds and theologies whatsoever. patristic, mediæval catholic theology and scholastic protestantism, no less, would go down before it. a pamphlet attributed to newman, published in , precipitated a discussion which, for bitterness, has rarely been surpassed in the melancholy history of theological dispute. the excitement went to almost unheard of lengths. in the controversy the archbishop, dr. howley, made but a poor figure. the duke of wellington did not add to his fame. wilberforce and newman never cleared themselves of the suspicion of indirectness. this was, however, after the opening of the oxford movement. erskine and campbell the period from to was one of religious and intellectual activity in scotland as well. tulloch depicts with a scotsman's patriotism the movement which centres about the names of erskine and campbell. pfleiderer also judges that their contribution was as significant as any made to dogmatic theology in great britain in the nineteenth century. they achieved the same reconstruction of the doctrine of salvation which had been effected by kant and schleiermacher. at their hands the doctrine was rescued from that forensic externality into which calvinism had degenerated. it was given again its quality of ethical inwardness, and based directly upon religious experience. high lutheranism had issued in the same externality in germany before kant and schleiermacher, and the new england theology before channing and bushnell. the merits of christ achieved an external salvation, of which a man became participant practically upon condition of assent to certain propositions. similarly, in the catholic revival, salvation was conceived as an external and future good, of which a man became participant through the sacraments applied to him by priests in apostolical succession. in point of externality there was not much to choose between views which were felt to be radically opposed the one to the other. erskine was not a man theologically educated. he led a peculiarly secluded life. he was an advocate by profession, but, withdrawing from that career, virtually gave himself up to meditation. campbell was a minister of the established church of scotland in a remote village, row, upon the gare loch. when he was convicted of heresy and driven from the ministry, he also devoted himself to study and authorship. both men seem to have come to their results largely from the application of their own sound religious sense to the scriptures. that the scottish church should have rejected the truth for which these men contended was the heaviest blow which it could have inflicted on itself. thereby it arrested its own healthy development. it perpetuated its traditional view, somewhat as new england orthodoxy was given a new lease of life through the partisanship which the unitarian schism engendered. the matter was not mended at the time of the great rupture of the scottish church in . that body which broke away from the establishment, and achieved a purely ecclesiastical control of its own clergy, won, indeed, by this means the name of the free church, though, in point of theological opinion, it was far from representing the more free and progressive element. tulloch pays a beautiful tribute to the character of erskine, whom he knew. quiet, brooding, introspective, he read his bible and his own soul, and with singular purity of intuition generalised from his own experience. therewith is described, however, both the power and the limitation of his work. his first book was entitled _remarks on the internal evidence for the truth of revealed religion_, . the title itself is suggestive of the revolution through which the mind both of erskine and of his age was passing. his book, _the unconditional freeness of the gospel_, appeared in ; _the brazen serpent_ in . men have confounded forgiveness and pardon. they have made pardon equivalent to salvation. but salvation is character. forgiveness is only one of the means of it. salvation is not a future good. it is a present fellowship with god. it is sanctification of character by means of our labour and god's love. the fall was the rise of the spirit of freedom. fallen man can never be saved except through glad surrender of his childish independence to the truth and goodness of god. yet that surrender is the preservation and enlargement of our independence. it is the secret of true self-realisation. the sufferings of christ reveal god's holy love. it is not as if god's love had been purchased by the sufferings of his son. on the contrary, it is man who needs to believe in god's love, and so be reconciled to the god whom he has feared and hated. christ overcomes sin by obediently enduring the suffering which sin naturally entails. he endures it in pure love of his brethren. man must overcome sin in the same way. campbell published, so late as , his great work _the nature of the atonement and its relation to the remission of sins and eternal life_. it was the matured result of the reflections of a quarter of a century, spent partly in enforced retirement after . campbell maintains unequivocally that the sacrifice of christ cannot be understood as a punishment due to man's sin, meted out to christ in man's stead. viewed retrospectively, christ's work in the atonement is but the highest example of a law otherwise universally operative. no man can work redemption for his fellows except by entering into their condition, as if everything in that condition were his own, though much of it may be in no sense his due. it is freely borne by him because of his identification of himself with them. campbell lingers in the myth of christ's being the federal head of the humanity. there is something pathetic in the struggle of his mind to save phrases and the paraphernalia of an ancient view which, however, his fundamental principle rendered obsolete, he struggles to save the word satisfaction, though it means nothing in his system save that god is satisfied as he contemplates the character of christ. prospectively considered, the sacrifice of christ effects salvation by its moral power over men in example and inspiration. vicarious sacrifice, the result of which was merely imputed, would leave the sinner just where he was before. it is an empty fiction. but the spectacle of suffering freely undertaken for our sakes discovers the treasures of the divine image in man. the love of god and a man's own resolve make him in the end, in fact, that which he has always been in capacity and destiny, a child of god, possessed of the secret of a growing righteousness, which is itself salvation. maurice scottish books seem to have been but little read in england in that day. it was maurice who first made the substance of campbell's teaching known in england. frederick denison maurice was the son of a unitarian minister, educated at trinity college, cambridge, at a time when it was impossible for a nonconformist to obtain a degree. he was ordained a priest of the church of england in , even suffering himself to be baptised again. he was chaplain of lincoln's inn and professor of theology in king's college, london. after he was professor of moral philosophy in cambridge, though his life-work was over. at the heart of maurice's theology lies the contention to which he gave the name of universal redemption. christ's work is for every man. every man is indeed in christ. man's unhappiness lies only in the fact that he will not own this fact and live accordingly. man as man is the child of god. he cannot undo that fact or alter that relation if he would. he does not need to become a child of god, as the phrase has been. he needs only to recognise that he already is such a child. he can never cease to bear this relationship. he can only refuse to fulfil it. with other words erskine and coleridge and schleiermacher had said this same thing. for the rest, one may speak briefly of maurice. he was animated by the strongest desire for church unity, but at the back of his mind lay a conception of the church and an insistence upon uniformity which made unity impossible. in the light of his own inheritance his ecclesiastical positivism seems strange. perhaps it was the course of his experience which made this irrational positivism natural. few men in his generation suffered greater persecutions under the unwarranted supposition on the part of contemporaries that he had a liberal mind. in reality, few men in his generation had less of a quality which, had he possessed it, would have given him peace and joy even in the midst of his persecutions. the casual remark above made concerning campbell is true in enhanced degree of maurice. a large part of the industry of a very industrious life was devoted to the effort to convince others and himself that those few really wonderful glimpses of spiritual truth which he had, had no disastrous consequences for an inherited system of thought in which they certainly did not take their rise. his name was connected with the social enthusiasm that inaugurated a new movement in england which will claim attention in another paragraph. channing allusion has been made to a revision of traditional theology which took place in america also, upon the same general lines which we have seen in schleiermacher and in campbell. the typical figure here, the protagonist of the movement, is william ellery channing. it may be doubted whether there has ever been a civilisation more completely controlled by its church and ministers, or a culture more entirely dominated by theology, than were those of new england until the middle of the eighteenth century. there had been indeed a marked decline in religious life. the history of the great awakening shows that. remonstrances against the great awakening show also how men's minds were moving away from the theory of the universe which the theology of that movement implied. one cannot say that in the preaching of hopkins there is an appreciable relaxation of the edwardsian scheme. interestingly enough, it was in newport that channing was born and with hopkins that he associated until the time of his licensure to preach in . many thought that channing would stand with the most stringent of the orthodox. deism and rationalism had made themselves felt in america after the revolution. channing, during his years in harvard college, can hardly have failed to come into contact with the criticism of religion from this side. there is no such clear influence of current rationalism upon channing as, for example, upon schleiermacher. yet here in the west, which most europeans thought of as a wilderness, circumstances brought about the launching of this man upon the career of a liberal religious thinker, when as yet schleiermacher had hardly advanced beyond the position of the _discourses_, when erskine had not yet written a line and campbell was still a child. channing became minister of the federal street church in boston in . the appointment of ware as hollis professor of divinity in harvard college took place in . that appointment was the first clear indication of the liberal party's strength. channing's baltimore address was delivered in . he died in . in the schism among the congregational churches in new england, which before apparently had come to be regarded by both parties as remediless, channing took the side of the opposition to calvinistic orthodoxy. he developed qualities as controversialist and leader which the gentler aspect of his early years had hardly led men to suspect. this american liberal movement had been referred to by belsham as related to english unitarianism. after , in this country, by its opponents at least, the movement was consistently called unitarian. channing did with zeal contend against the traditional doctrine of the atonement and of the trinity. on the other hand, he saw in christ the perfect revelation of god to humanity and at the same time the ideal of humanity. he believed in jesus' sinlessness and in his miracles, especially in his resurrection. the keynote of channing's character and convictions is found in his sense of the inherent greatness of man. of this feeling his entire system is but the unfolding. it was early and deliberately adopted by him as a fundamental faith. it remained the immovable centre of his reverence and trust amid all the inroads of doubt and sorrow. political interest was as natural to channing's earlier manhood as it had been to fichte in the emergency of the fatherland. similarly, in the later years of his life, when evils connected with slavery had made themselves felt, his participation in the abolitionist agitation showed the same enthusiasm and practical bent. he had his dream of communism, his perception of the evils of our industrial system, his contempt for charity in place of economic remedy. all was for man, all rested upon supreme faith in man. that man is endowed with knowledge of the right and with the power to realise it, was a fundamental maxim. hence arose channing's assertion of free-will. the denial of free-will renders the sentiment of duty but illusory. in the conscience there is both a revelation and a type of god. its suggestions, by the very authority they carry with them, declare themselves to be god's law. god, concurring with our highest nature, present in its action, can be thought of only after the pattern which he gives us in ourselves. whatever revelation god makes of himself, he must deal with us as with free beings living under natural laws. revelation must be merely supplementary to those laws. everything arbitrary and magical, everything which despairs of us or insults us as moral agents, everything which does not address itself to us through reason and conscience, must be excluded from the intercourse between god and man. what the doctrines of salvation and atonement, of the person of christ and of the influence of the holy spirit, as construed from this centre would be, may without difficulty be surmised. the whole of channing's teaching is bathed in an atmosphere of the reverent love of god which is the very source of his enthusiasm for man. bushnell a very different man was horace bushnell, born in the year of channing's licensure, . he was not bred under the influence of the strict calvinism of his day. his father was an arminian. edwards had made arminians detested in new england. his mother had been reared in the episcopal church. she was of huguenot origin. when about seventeen, while tending a carding-machine, he wrote a paper in which he endeavoured to bring calvinism into logical coherence and, in the interest of sound reason, to correct st. paul's willingness to be accursed for the sake of his brethren. he graduated from yale college in . he taught there while studying law after . he describes himself at this period as sound in ethics and sceptical in religion, the soundness of his morals being due to nature and training, the scepticism, to the theology in which he was involved. his law studies were complete, yet he turned to the ministry. he had been born on the orthodox side of the great contention in which channing was a leader of the liberals in the days of which we speak. he never saw any reason to change this relation. his clerical colleagues, for half a life-time, sought to change it for him. in he was ordained and installed as minister of the north church in hartford, a pastorate which he never left. the process of disintegration of the orthodox body was continuing. there was almost as much rancour between the old and the new orthodoxy as between orthodox and unitarians themselves. almost before his career was well begun an incurable disease fastened itself upon him. not much later, all the severity of theological strife befell him. between these two we have to think of him doing his work and keeping his sense of humour. his earliest book of consequence was on _christian nurture_, published in . consistent calvinism presupposes in its converts mature years. even an adult must pass through waters deep for him. he is not a sinful child of the father. he is a being totally depraved and damned to everlasting punishment. god becomes his father only after he is redeemed. the revivalists' theory bushnell bitterly opposed. it made of religion a transcendental matter which belonged on the outside of life, a kind of miraculous epidemic. he repudiated the prevailing individualism. he anticipated much that is now being said concerning heredity, environment and subconsciousness. he revived the sense of the church in which puritanism had been so sadly lacking. the book is a classic, one of the rich treasures which the nineteenth century offers to the twentieth. bushnell, so far as one can judge, had no knowledge of kant. he is, nevertheless, dealing with kant's own problem, of the theory of knowledge, in his rather diffuse 'dissertation on language,' which is prefixed to the volume which bears the title _god in christ_, . he was following his living principle, the reference of doctrine to conscience. god must be a 'right god.' dogma must make no assertion concerning god which will not stand this test. not alone does the dogma make such assertions. the scripture makes them as well. how can this be? what is the relation of language to thought and of thought to fact? how can the language of scripture be explained, and yet the reality of the revelation not be explained away? there is a touching interest which attaches to this hartford minister, working out, alone and clumsily, a problem the solution of which the greatest minds of the age had been gradually bringing to perfection for three-quarters of a century. in the year bushnell was invited to give addresses at the commencements of three divinity schools: that at harvard, then unqualifiedly unitarian; that at andover, where the battle with unitarianism had been fought; and that at yale, where bushnell had been trained. the address at cambridge was on the subject of _the atonement_; the one at new haven on _the divinity of christ_, including bushnell's doctrine of the trinity; the one at andover on _dogma and spirit_, a plea for the cessation of strife. he says squarely of the old school theories of the atonement, which represent christ as suffering the penalty of the law in our stead: 'they are capable, one and all of them, of no light in which they do not offend some right sentiment of our moral being. if the great redeemer, in the excess of his goodness, consents to receive the penal woes of the world in his person, and if that offer is accepted, what does it signify, save that god will have his modicum of suffering somehow; and if he lets the guilty go he will yet satisfy himself out of the innocent?' the vicariousness of love, the identification of the sufferer with the sinner, in the sense that the saviour is involved by his desire to help us in the woes which naturally follow sin, this bushnell mightily affirmed. yet there is no pretence that he used vicariousness or satisfaction in the same sense in which his adversaries did. he is magnificently free from all such indirection. in the new haven address there is this same combination of fire and light. the chief theological value of the doctrine of the trinity, as maintained by the new england calvinistic teachers, had been to furnish the _dramatis personæ_ for the doctrine of the atonement. in the speculation as to the negotiation of this substitutionary transaction, the language of the theologians had degenerated into stark tritheism. edwards, describing the councils of the trinity, spoke of the three persons as 'they.' bushnell saw that any proper view of the unity of god made the forensic idea of the atonement incredible. he sought to replace the ontological notion of the trinity by that of a trinity of revelation, which held for him the practical truths by which his faith was nourished, and yet avoided the contradictions which the other doctrine presented both to reason and faith. bushnell would have been far from claiming that he was the first to make this fight. the american unitarians had been making it for more than a generation. the unitarian protest was wholesome. it was magnificent. it was providential, but it paused in negation. it never advanced to construction. bushnell's significance is not that he fought this battle, but that he fought it from the ranks of the orthodox church. he fought it with a personal equipment which channing had not had. he was decades later in his work. he took up the central religious problem when channing's successors were following either emerson or parker. the andover address consisted in the statement of bushnell's views of the causes which had led to the schism in the new england church. a single quotation may give the key-note of the discourse:--'we had on our side an article of the creed which asserted a metaphysical trinity. that made the assertion of the metaphysical unity inevitable and desirable. we had theories of atonement, of depravity, of original sin, which required the appearance of antagonistic theories. on our side, theological culture was so limited that we took what was really only our own opinion for the unalterable truth of god. on the other side, it was so limited that men, perceiving the insufficiency of dogma, took the opposite contention with the same seriousness and totality of conviction. they asserted liberty, as indeed they must, to vindicate their revolt. they produced, meantime, the most intensely human and, in that sense, the most intensely opinionated religion ever invented.' the catholic revival the oxford movement has been spoken of as a reaction against the so-called oriel movement, a conservative tendency over against an intellectualist and progressive one. in a measure the personal animosities within the oxford circle may be accounted for in this way. the tractarian movement, however, which issued, on the one hand, in the going over of newman to the church of rome and, on the other, in a great revival of catholic principles within the anglican church itself, stands in a far larger setting. it was not merely an english or insular movement. it was a wave from a continental flood. on its own showing it was not merely an ecclesiastical movement. it had political and social aims as well. there was a universal european reaction against the enlightenment and the revolution. that reaction was not simple, but complex. it was a revolt of the conservative spirit from the new ideals which had been suddenly translated into portentous realities. it was marked everywhere by hatred of the eighteenth century with all its ways and works. on the one side we have the revolutionary thesis, the rights of man, the authority of reason, the watchwords liberty, equality, fraternity. on the other side stood forth those who were prepared to assert the meaning of community, the continuity of history, spiritual as well as civil authority as the basis of order, and order as the condition of the highest good. in literature the tendency appears as romanticism, in politics as legitimism, in religion as ultramontanism. le maistre with his _l'eglise gallicane du pape_; chateaubriand with his _génie du christianisme_; lamennais with his _essai sur l'indifference en matière, de religion_, were, from to , the exponents of a view which has had prodigious consequences for france and italy. the romantic movement arose outside of catholicism. it was impersonated in herder. friedrich schlegel, werner and others went over to the roman church. the political reaction was specifically latin and catholic. in the lurid light of anarchy rome seemed to have a mission again. divine right in the state must be restored through the church. the catholic apologetic saw the revolution as only the logical conclusion of the premises of the reformation. the religious revolt of the sixteenth century, the philosophical revolt of the seventeenth, the political revolt of the eighteenth, the social revolt of the nineteenth, are all parts of one dreadful sequence. as the church lifted up the world after the first flood of the barbarians, so must she again lift up the world after the devastations made by the more terrible barbarians of the eighteenth century. england had indeed stood a little outside of the cyclone which had devastated the world from coronna to moscow and from the channel to the pyramids, but she had been exhausted in putting down the revolution. only god's goodness had preserved england. the logic of puritanism would have been the same. indeed, in england the state was weaker and worse than were the states upon the continent. for since it had been a popular and constitutional monarchy. in frederick william's phrase, its sovereign took his crown from the gutter. the church was through and through erastian, a creature of the state. bishops were made by party representatives. acts like the reform bills, the course of the government in the matter of the irish church, were steps which would surely bring england to the pass which france had reached in . the source of such acts was wrong. it was with the people. it was in men, not in god. it was in reason, not in authority. it would be difficult to overstate the strength of this reactionary sentiment in important circles in england at the end of the third decade of the nineteenth century. the oxford movement in so far as that complex of causes just alluded to made of the oxford movement or the catholic revival a movement of life, ecclesiastical, social and political as well, its history falls outside the purpose of this book. we proposed to deal with the history of thought. reactionary movements have frequently got on without much thought. they have left little deposit of their own in the realm of ideas. their avowed principle has been that of recurrence to that which has already been thought, of fidelity to ideas which have long prevailed. this is the reason why the conservatives have not a large place in such a sketch as this. it is not that their writings have not often been full of high learning and of the subtlest of reasoning. it is only that the ideas about which they reason do not belong to the history of the nineteenth century. they belong, on the earnest contention of the conservatives themselves--those of protestants, to the history of the reformation--and of catholics, both anglican and roman, to the history of the early or mediæval church. nevertheless, when with passionate conviction a great man, taking the reactionary course, thinks the problem through again from his own point of view, then we have a real phenomenon in the history of contemporary thought. when such an one wrestles before god to give reason to himself and to his fellows for the faith that is in him, then the reactionary's reasoning is as imposing and suggestive as is any other. he leaves in his work an intellectual deposit which must be considered. he makes a contribution which must be reckoned with, even more seriously, perhaps, by those who dissent from it than by those who may agree with it. such deposit newman and the tractarian movement certainly did make. they offered a rationale of the reaction. they gave to the catholic revival a standing in the world of ideas, not merely in the world of action. whether their reasoning has weight to-day, is a question upon which opinion is divided. yet newman and his compeers, by their character and standing, by their distinctively english qualities and by the road of reason which they took in the defence of catholic principles, made catholicism english again, in a sense in which it had not been english for three hundred years. yet though newman brought to the roman church in england, on his conversion to it, a prestige and qualities which in that communion were unequalled, he was never _persona grata_ in that church. outwardly the roman catholic revival in england was not in large measure due to newman and his arguments. it was due far more to men like wiseman and manning, who were not men of argument but of deeds. newman john henry newman was born in , the son of a london banker. his mother was of huguenot descent. he came under calvinistic influence. through study especially, of romaine _on faith_ he became the subject of an inward conversion, of which in he wrote: 'i am still more certain of it than that i have hands and feet.' thomas scott, the evangelical, moved him. before he was sixteen he made a collection of scripture texts in proof of the doctrine of the trinity. from newton _on the prophecies_ he learned to identify the pope with anti-christ--a doctrine by which, he adds, his imagination was stained up to the year . in his _apologia_, , he declares: 'from the age of fifteen, dogma has been a fundamental principle of my religion. i cannot enter into the idea of any other sort of religion.' at the age of twenty-one, two years after he had taken his degree, he came under very different influences. he passed from trinity college to a fellowship in oriel. to use his own phrase, he drifted in the direction of liberalism. he was touched by whately. he was too logical, and also too dogmatic, to be satisfied with whately's position. of the years from to mozley says: 'probably no one who then knew newman could have told which way he would go. it is not certain that he himself knew.' francis w. newman, newman's brother, who later became a unitarian, remembering his own years of stress, speaks with embitterment of his elder brother, who was profoundly uncongenial to him. the year , in which keble's _christian year_ was published, saw another change in newman's views. illness and bereavement came to him with awakening effect. he made the acquaintance of hurrell froude. froude brought newman and keble together. henceforth newman bore no more traces either of evangelicalism or of liberalism. of froude it is difficult to speak with confidence. his brother, james anthony froude, the historian, author of the _nemesis of faith_, , says that he was gifted, brilliant, enthusiastic. newman speaks of him with almost boundless praise. two volumes of his sermons, published after his death in , make the impression neither of learning nor judgment. clearly he had charm. possibly he talked himself into a common-room reputation. newman says: 'froude made me look with admiration toward the church of rome.' keble never had felt the liberalism through which newman had passed. cradled as the church of england had been in puritanism, the latter was to him simply evil. opinions differing from his own were not simply mistaken, they were sinful. he conceived no religious truth outside the church of england. in the _christian year_ one perceives an influence which newman strongly felt. it was that of the idea of the sacramental significance of all natural objects or events. pusey became professor of hebrew in . he lent the movement academic standing, which the others could not give. he had been in germany, and had published an _inquiry into the rationalist character of german theology_, . he hardly did more than expose the ignorance of rose. he was himself denounced as a german rationalist who dared to speak of a new era in theology. pusey, mourning the defection of newman, whom he deeply loved, gathered in the forces of the anglo-catholics and continued in some sense a leader to the end of his long life in . the course of political events was fretting the conservatives intolerably. the agitation for the reform bill was taking shape. sir robert peel, the member for oxford, had introduced a bill for the emancipation of the roman catholics. there was violent commotion in oxford. keble and newman strenuously opposed the measure. in there was revolution in france. in england the whigs had come into power. newman's mind was excited in the last degree. 'the vital question,' he says, 'is this, how are we to keep the church of england from being liberalised?' at the end of newman and froude went abroad together. on this journey, as he lay becalmed in the straits of bonifacio, he wrote his immortal hymn, 'lead, kindly light.' he came home assured that he had a work to do. keble's assize sermon on the _national apostasy_, preached in july , on the sunday after newman's return to oxford, kindled the conflagration which had been long preparing. newman conceived the idea of the _tracts for the times_ as a means of expressing the feelings and propagating the opinions which deeply moved him. 'from the first,' he says, 'my battle was with liberalism. by liberalism i mean the anti-dogmatic principle. secondly, my aim was the assertion of the visible church with sacraments and rites and definite religious teaching on the foundation of dogma; and thirdly, the assertion of the anglican church as opposed to the church of rome.' newman grew greatly in personal influence. his afternoon sermons at st. mary's exerted spiritual power. they deserved so to do. here he was at his best. all of his strength and little of his weakness shows. his insight, his subtility, his pathos, his love of souls, his marvellous play of dramatic as well as of spiritual faculty, are in evidence. keble and pusey were busying themselves with the historical aspects of the question. pusey began the _library of the fathers_, the most elaborate literary monument of the movement. nothing could be more amazing than the uncritical quality of the whole performance. the first check to the movement came in , when the bishop of oxford animadverted upon the _tracts_. newman professed his willingness to stop them. the bishop did not insist. newman's own thought moved rapidly onward in the only course which was still open to it. newman had been bred in the deepest reverence for scripture. in a sense that reverence never left him, though it changed its form. he saw that it was absurd to appeal to the bible in the old way as an infallible source of doctrine. how could truth be infallibly conveyed in defective and fallible expressions? newman's own studies in criticism, by no means profound, led him to this correct conclusion. this was the end for him of evangelical protestantism. the recourse was then to the infallible church. infallible guide and authority one must have. without these there can be no religion. to trust to reason and conscience as conveying something of the light of god is impossible. to wait in patience and to labour in fortitude for the increase of that light is unendurable. one must have certainty. there can be no certainty by the processes of the mind from within. this can come only by miraculous certification from without. according to newman the authority of the church should never have been impaired in the reformation. or rather, in his view of that movement, this authority, for truly christian men, had never been impaired. the intellect is aggressive, capricious, untrustworthy. its action in religious matters is corrosive, dissolving, sceptical. 'man's energy of intellect must be smitten hard and thrown back by infallible authority, if religion is to be saved at all.' newman's philosophy was utterly sceptical, although, unlike most absolute philosophical sceptics, he had a deep religious experience. the most complete secularist, in his negation of religion, does not differ from newman in his low opinion of the value of the surmises of the mind as to the transcendental meaning of life and the world. he differs from newman only in lacking that which to newman was the most indefeasible thing which he had at all, namely, religious experience. newman was the child of his age, though no one ever abused more fiercely the age of which he was the child. he supposed that he believed in religion on the basis of authority. quite the contrary, he believed in religion because he had religion or, as he says, in a magnificent passage in one of his parochial sermons, because religion had him. his scepticism forbade him to recognise that this was the basis of his belief. his diremption of human nature was absolute. the soul was of god. the mind was of the devil. he dare not trust his own intellect concerning this inestimable treasure of his experience. he dare not trust intellect at all. he knew not whither it might lead him. the mind cannot be broken to the belief of a power above it. it must have its stiff neck bent to recognise its creator. his whole book, _the grammar of assent_, , is pervaded by the intensest philosophical scepticism. scepticism supplies its motives, determines its problems, necessitates its distinctions, rules over the succession and gradation of its arguments. the whole aim of the work is to withdraw religion and the proofs of it, from the region of reason into the realm of conscience and imagination, where the arguments which reign may satisfy personal experience without alleging objective validity or being able to bear the criticism which tests it. again, he is the perverse, unconscious child of the age which he curses. had not kant and schleiermacher, coleridge and channing sought, does not ritschl seek, to remove religion from the realm of metaphysics and to bring it within the realm of experience? they had, however, pursued the same end by different means. one is reminded of that saying of gretchen concerning mephistopheles: 'he says the same thing with the pastor, only in different words.' newman says the same words, but means a different thing. assuming the reduction of religion to experience, in which kant and schleiermacher would have agreed, and asserting the worthlessness of mentality, which they would have denied, we are not surprised to hear newman say that without catholicism doubt is invincible. 'the church's infallibility is the provision adopted by the mercy of the creator to preserve religion in the world. outside the catholic church all things tend to atheism. the catholic church is the one face to face antagonist, able to withstand and baffle the fierce energy of passion and the all-dissolving scepticism of the mind. i am a catholic by virtue of my belief in god. if i should be asked why i believe in god, i should answer, because i believe in myself. i find it impossible to believe in myself, without believing also in the existence of him who lives as a personal, all-seeing, all-judging being in my conscience.' these passages are mainly taken from the _apologia_, written long after newman had gone over to the roman church. they perfectly describe the attitude of his mind toward the anglican church, so long as he believed this, and not the roman, to be the true church. he had once thought that a man could hold a position midway between the protestantism which he repudiated and the romanism which he still resisted. he stayed in the _via media_ so long as he could. but in he began to have doubts about the anglican order of succession. the catholicity of rome began to overshadow the apostolicity of anglicanism. the anglican formularies cannot be at variance with the teachings of the authoritative and universal church. this is the problem which the last of the _tracts_, _tract ninety_, sets itself. it is one of those which newman wrote. one must find the sense of the roman church in the thirty-nine articles. this tract is prefaced by an extraordinary disquisition upon reserve in the communication of religious knowledge. god's revelations of himself to mankind have always been a kind of veil. truth is the reward of holiness. the fathers were holy men. therefore what the fathers said must be true. the principle of reserve the articles illustrate. they do not mean what they say. they were written in an uncatholic age, that is, in the age of the reformation. they were written by catholic men. else how can the church of england be now a catholic church? through their reserve they were acceptable in an uncatholic age. they cannot be uncatholic in spirit, else how should they be identical in meaning with the great catholic creeds? then follows an exposition of every important article of the thirty-nine, an effort to interpret each in the sense of the roman catholic church of to-day. four tutors published a protest against the tract. formal censure was passed upon it. it was now evident to newman that his place in the leadership of the oxford movement was gone. from this time, the spring of , he says he was on his deathbed as regards the church of england. he withdrew to littlemore and established a brotherhood there. in the autumn of he resigned the parochial charge of st. mary's at oxford. on the th of october he was formally admitted to the roman church. on the th of october ernest renan had formally severed his connexion with that church. it is a strange thing that in his _essay on the development of christian doctrine_, written in , newman himself should have advanced substantially hampden's contention. here are written many things concerning the development of doctrine which commend themselves to minds conversant with the application of historical criticism to the whole dogmatic structure of the christian ages. the purpose is with newman entirely polemical, the issue exactly that which one would not have foreseen. precisely because the development of doctrine is so obvious, because no historical point can be found at which the growth of doctrine ceased and the rule of faith was once for all settled, therefore an infallible authority outside of the development must have existed from the beginning, to provide a means of distinguishing true development from false. this infallible guide is, of course, the church. it seems incredible that newman could escape applying to the church the same argument which he had so skilfully applied to scripture and dogmatic history. similar is the case with the argument of the _grammar of assent_. 'no man is certain of a truth who can endure the thought of its contrary.' if the reason why i cannot endure the thought of the contradictory of a belief which i have made my own, is that so to think brings me pain and darkness, this does not prove my truth. if my belief ever had its origin in reason, it must be ever refutable by reason. it is not corroborated by the fact that i do not wish to see anything that would refute it.[ ] this last fact may be in the highest degree an act of arbitrariness. to make the impossibility of thinking the opposite, the test of truth, and then to shut one's eyes to those evidences which might compel one to think the opposite, is the essence of irrationality. one attains by this method indefinite assertiveness, but not certainty. newman lived in some seclusion in the oratory of st. philip neri in birmingham for many years. a few distinguished men, and a number of his followers, in all not more than a hundred and fifty, went over to the roman church after him. the defection was never so great as, in the first shock, it was supposed that it would be. the outward influence of newman upon the anglican church then ceased. but the ideas which he put forth have certainly been of great influence in that church to this day. most men know the portrait of the great cardinal, the wide forehead, ploughed deep with horizontal furrows, the pale cheek, down which 'long lines of shadow slope, which years and anxious thought and suffering give.' one looks into the wonderful face of those last days--newman lived to his ninetieth year--and wonders if he found in the infallible church the peace which he so earnestly sought. [footnote : fairbairn, _catholicism, roman and anglican_, p. .] modernism it was said that the oxford movement furnished the rationale of the reaction. many causes, of course, combine to make the situation of the roman church and the status of religion in the latin countries of the continent the lamentable one that it is. that position is worst in those countries where the roman church has most nearly had free play. the alienation both of the intellectual and civil life from organised religion is grave. that the roman church occupies in england to-day a position more favourable than in almost any nation on the continent, and better than it occupied in england at the beginning of the nineteenth century, is due in large measure to the general influence of the movement with which we have been dealing. the anglican church was at the beginning of the nineteenth century preponderantly evangelical, low-church and conscious of itself as protestant. at the beginning of the twentieth it is dominantly ritualistic and disposed to minimise its relation to the reformation. this resurgence of catholic principles is another effect of the movement of which we speak. other factors must have wrought for this result besides the body of arguments which newman and his compeers offered. the argument itself, the mere intellectual factor, is not adequate. there is an inherent contradiction in the effort to ground in reason an authority which is to take the place of reason. yet round and round this circle all the labours of john henry newman go. cardinal manning felt this. the victory of the church was not to be won by argument. it is well known that newman opposed the decree of infallibility. it cannot be said that upon this point his arguments had great weight. if one assumes that truth comes to us externally through representatives of god, and if the truth is that which they assert, then in the last analysis what they assert is truth. if one has given in to such authority because one distrusts his reason, then it is querulous to complain that the deliverances of authority do not comport with reason. there may be, of course, the greatest interest in the struggle as to the instance in which this authority is to be lodged. this interest attaches to the age-long struggle between pope and council. it attaches to the dramatic struggle of döllinger, dupanloup, lord acton and the rest, in . once the church has spoken there is, for the advocate of authoritative religion, no logic but to submit. similarly as to the _encyclical_ and _syllabus of errors_ of , which forecast the present conflict concerning modernism. the _syllabus_ had a different atmosphere from that which any englishman in the sixties would have given it. had not newman, however, made passionate warfare on the liberalism of the modern world? was it not merely a question of degrees? was gladstone's attitude intelligible? the contrast of two principles in life and religion, the principles of authority and of the spirit, is being brought home to men's consciousness as it has never been before. one reads _il santo_ and learns concerning the death of fogazzaro, one looks into the literature relating to tyrrell, one sees the fate of loisy, comparing the really majestic achievement in his works and the spirit of his _simple reflections_ with the _encyclical pascendi_, . one understands why these men have done what they could to remain within the roman church. one recalls the attitude of döllinger to the inauguration of the old catholic movement, reflects upon the relative futility of the old catholic church, and upon the position of hyacinthe loyson. one appreciates the feeling of these men that it is impossible, from without, to influence as they would the church which they have loved. the present difficulty of influencing it from within seems almost insuperable. the history of modernism as an effective contention in the world of christian thought seems scarcely begun. the opposition to modernism is not yet a part of the history of thought. robertson in no life are reflected more perfectly the spiritual conflicts of the fifth decade of the nineteenth century than in that of frederick w. robertson. no mind worked itself more triumphantly out of these difficulties. descended from a family of scottish soldiers, evangelical in piety, a student in oxford in , repelled by the oxford movement, he undertook his ministry under a morbid sense of responsibility. he reacted violently against his evangelicalism. he travelled abroad, read enormously, was plunged into an agony which threatened mentally to undo him. he took his charge at brighton in , still only thirty-one years old, and at once shone forth in the splendour of his genius. a martyr to disease and petty persecution, dying at thirty-seven, he yet left the impress of one of the greatest preachers whom the church of england has produced. he left no formal literary work such as he had designed. of his sermons we have almost none from his own manuscripts. yet his influence is to-day almost as intense as when the sermons were delivered. it is, before all, the wealth and depth of his thought, the reality of the content of the sermons, which commands admiration. they are a classic refutation of the remark that one cannot preach theology. out of them, even in their fragmentary state, a well-articulated system might be made. he brought to his age the living message of a man upon whom the best light of his age had shone. phillips brooks something of the same sort may be said concerning phillips brooks. he inherited on his father's side the sober rationalism and the humane and secular interest of the earlier unitarianism, on his mother's side the intensity of evangelical pietism with the calvinistic form of thought. the conflict of these opposing tendencies in new england was at that time so great that brooks's parents sought refuge with the low-church element in the episcopal church. brooks's education at harvard college, where he took his degree in , as also at alexandria, and still more, his reading and experience, made him sympathetic with that which, in england in those years, was called the broad church party. he was deeply influenced by campbell and maurice. later well known in england, he was the compeer of the best spirits of his generation there. deepened by the experience of the great war, he held in succession two pulpits of large influence, dying as bishop of massachusetts in . there is a theological note about his preaching, as in the case of robertson. often it is the same note. brooks had passed through no such crisis as had robertson. he had flowered into the greatness of rational belief. his sermons are a contribution to the thinking of his age. we have much finished material of this kind from his own hand, and a book or two besides. his service through many years as preacher to his university was of inestimable worth. the presentation of ever-advancing thought to a great public constituency is one of the most difficult of tasks. it is also one of the most necessary. the fusion of such thoughtfulness with spiritual impulse has rarely been more perfectly achieved than in the preaching of phillips brooks. the broad church we have used the phrase, the broad church party. stanley had employed the adjective to describe the real character of the english church, over against the antithesis of the low church and the high. the designation adhered to a group of which stanley was himself a type. they were not bound together in a party. they had no ecclesiastical end in view. they were of a common spirit. it was not the spirit of evangelicalism. still less was it that of the tractarians. it was that which robertson had manifested. it aimed to hold the faith with an open mind in all the intellectual movement of the age. maurice should be enumerated here, with reservations. kingsley beyond question belonged to this group. there was great ardour among them for the improvement of social conditions, a sense of the social mission of christianity. there grew up what was called a christian socialist movement, which, however, never attained or sought a political standing. the broad church movement seemed, at one time, assured of ascendancy in the church of england. its aims appeared congruous with the spirit of the times. yet dean fremantle esteems himself perhaps the last survivor of an illustrious company. the men who in published the volume known as _essays and reviews_ would be classed with the broad church. in its authorship were associated seven scholars, mostly oxford men. some one described _essays and reviews_ as the _tract ninety_ of the broad church. it stirred public sentiment and brought the authors into conflict with authority in a somewhat similar way. the living antagonism of the broad church was surely with the tractarians rather than with the evangelicals. yet the most significant of the essays, those on miracles and on prophecy, touched opinions common to both these groups. jowett, later master of balliol, contributed an essay on the 'interpretation of scripture.' it hardly belongs to jowett's best work. yet the controversy then precipitated may have had to do with jowett's adherence to platonic studies instead of his devoting himself to theology. the most decisive of the papers was that of baden powell on the 'study of the evidences of christianity.' it was mainly a discussion of the miracle. it was radical and conclusive. the essay closes with an allusion to darwin's _origin of species_, which had then just appeared. baden powell died shortly after its publication. the fight came on rowland williams's paper upon bunson's _biblical researches_. it was really upon the prophecies and their use in 'christian evidences.' baron bunsen was not a great archæologist, but he brought to the attention of english readers that which was being done in germany in this field. williams used the archæological material to rectify the current theological notions concerning ancient history. a certain type of english mind has always shown zeal for the interpretation of prophecy. williams's thesis, briefly put, was this: the bible does not always give the history of the past with accuracy; it does not give the history of the future at all; prophecy means spiritual teaching, not secular prognostication. a reader of our day may naturally feel that wilson, with his paper on the 'national church,' made the greatest contribution. he built indeed upon coleridge, but he had a larger horizon. he knew the arguments of the great frenchmen of his day and of their english imitators who, in benn's phrase, narrowed and perverted the ideal of a world-wide humanity into that of a church founded on dogmas and administered by clericals. wilson argued that in jesus' teaching the basis of the religious community is ethical. the church is but the instrument for carrying out the will of god as manifest in the moral law. the realisation of the will of god must extend beyond the limits of the church's activity, however widely these are drawn. there arose a violent agitation. williams and wilson were prosecuted. the case was tried in the court of arches. williams was defended by no less a person than fitzjames stephen. the two divines were sentenced to a year's suspension. this decision was reversed by the lord chancellor. fitzjames stephen had argued that if the men most interested in the church, namely, its clergy, are the only men who may be punished for serious discussion of the facts and truths of religion, then respect on the part of the world for the church is at an end. by this discussion the english clergy, even if anglo-catholic, are in a very different position from the roman priests, over whom encyclicals, even if not executed, are always suspended. similar was the issue in the case of colenso, bishop of natal. equipped mainly with cambridge mathematics added to purest self-devotion, he had been sent out as a missionary bishop. in the process of the translation of the pentateuch for his zulus, he had come to reflect upon the problem which the old testament presents. in a manner which is altogether marvellous he worked out critical conclusions parallel to those of old testament scholars on the continent. he was never really an expert, but in his main contention he was right. he adhered to his opinion despite severe pressure and was not removed from the episcopate. with such guarantees it would be strange indeed if we could not say that biblical studies entered in great britain, as also in america, on a development in which scholars of these nations are not behind the best scholars of the world. the trials for heresy of robertson smith in edinburgh and of dr. briggs in new york have now little living interest. yet biblical studies in scotland and america were incalculably furthered by those discussions. the publication of a book like _supernatural religion_, , illustrates a proclivity not uncommon in self-conscious liberal circles, for taking up a contention just when those who made it and have lived with it have decided to lay it down. however, the names of hatch and lightfoot alone, not to mention the living, are sufficient to warrant the assertions above made. * * * * * more than once in these chapters we have spoken of the service rendered to the progress of christian thought by the criticism and interpretation of religion at the hands of literary men. that country and age may be esteemed fortunate in which religion occupies a place such that it compels the attention of men of genius. in the history of culture this has by no means always been the case. that these men do not always speak the language of edification is of minor consequence. what is of infinite worth is that the largest minds of the generation shall engage themselves with the topic of religion. a history of thought concerning christianity cannot but reckon with the opinions, for example, of carlyle, of emerson, of matthew arnold--to mention only types. carlyle carlyle has pictured for us his early home at ecclefechan on the border; his father, a stone mason of the highest character; his mother with her frugal, pious ways; the minister, from whom he learned latin, 'the priestliest man i ever beheld in any ecclesiastical guise.' the picture of his mother never faded from his memory. carlyle was destined for the church. such had been his mother's prayer. he took his arts course in edinburgh. in the university, he says, 'there was much talk about progress of the species, dark ages, and the like, but the hungry young looked to their spiritual nurses and were bidden to eat the east wind.' he entered divinity hall, but already, in , prohibitive doubts had arisen in his mind. irving sought to help him. irving was not the man for the task. the christianity of the church had become intellectually incredible to carlyle. for a time he was acutely miserable, bordering upon despair. he has described his spiritual deliverance: 'precisely that befel me which the methodists call their conversion, the deliverance of their souls from the devil and the pit. there burst forth a sacred flame of joy in me.' with _sartor resartus_ his message to the world began. it was printed in _fraser's magazine_ in , but not published separately until . his difficulty in finding a publisher embittered him. style had something to do with this, the newness of his message had more. then for twenty years he poured forth his message. never did a man carry such a pair of eyes into the great world of london or set a more peremptory mark upon its notabilities. his best work was done before . his later years were darkened with much misery of body. no one can allege that he ever had a happy mind. he was a true prophet, but, elijah-like, he seemed to himself to be alone. his derision of the current religion seems sometimes needless. yet even that has the grand note of sincerity. what he desired he in no small measure achieved--that his readers should be arrested and feel themselves face to face with reality. his startling intuition, his intellectual uprightness, his grasp upon things as they are, his passion for what ought to be, made a great impression upon his age. it was in itself a religious influence. here was a mind of giant force, of sternest truthfulness. his untruths were those of exaggeration. his injustices were those of prejudice. he invested many questions of a social and moral, of a political and religious sort with a nobler meaning than they had had before. his _french revolution_, his papers on _chartism_, his unceasing comment on the troubled life of the years from to , are of highest moment for our understanding of the growth of that social feeling in the midst of which we live and work. in his brooding sympathy with the downtrodden he was a great inaugurator of the social movement. he felt the curse of an aristocratic society, yet no one has told us with more drastic truthfulness the evils of our democratic institutions. his word was a great corrective for much 'rose-water' optimism which prevailed in his day. the note of hope is, however, often lacking. the mythology of an absentee god had faded from him. yet the god who was clear to his mature consciousness, clear as the sun in the heavens, was a god over the world, to judge it inexorably. again, it is not difficult to accumulate evidence in his words which looks toward pantheism; but what one may call the religious benefit of pantheism, the sense that god is in his world, carlyle often loses. materialism is to-day so deeply discredited that we find it difficult to realise that sixty years ago the problem wore a different look. carlyle was never weary of pouring out the vials of his contempt on 'mud-philosophies' and exalting the spirit as against matter. never was a man more opposed to the idea of a godless world, in which man is his own chief end, and his sensual pleasures the main aims of his existence. his insight into the consequences of our commercialism and luxury and absorption in the outward never fails. man is god's son, but the effort to realise that sonship in the joy and trust of a devout heart and in the humble round of daily life sometimes seems to him cant or superstition. the humble life of godliness made an unspeakable appeal to him. he had known those who lived that life. his love for them was imperishable. yet he had so recoiled from the superstitions and hypocrisies of others, the eternal in his majesty was so ineffable, all effort to approach him so unworthy, that almost instinctively he would call upon the man who made the effort, to desist. so magnificent, all his life long, had been his protest against the credulity and stupidity of men, against beliefs which assert the impossible and blink the facts, that, for himself, the great objects of faith were held fast to, so to say, in their naked verity, with a giant's strength. they were half-querulously denied all garment and embodiment, lest he also should be found credulous and self-deceived. from this titan labouring at the foundations of the world, this samson pulling down temples of the philistines on his head, this cyclops heaving hills at ships as they pass by, it seems a long way to emerson. yet emerson was carlyle's friend. emerson arnold said in one of his american addresses: 'besides these voices--newman, carlyle, goethe--there came to us in the oxford of my youth a voice also from this side of the atlantic, a clear and pure voice which, for my ear at any rate, brought a strain as new and moving and unforgetable as those others. lowell has described the apparition of emerson to your young generation here. he was your newman, your man of soul and genius, speaking to your bodily ears, a present object for your heart and imagination.' then he quotes as one of the most memorable passages in english speech: 'trust thyself. accept the place which the divine providence has found for you, the society of your contemporaries, the connection of events. great men have always done so, confiding themselves childlike to the genius of their age, betraying a perception which was stirring in their hearts, working through their hands, dominating their whole being.' arnold speaks of carlyle's grim insistence upon labour and righteousness but of his scorn of happiness, and then says: 'but emerson taught happiness in labour, in righteousness and veracity. in all the life of the spirit, happiness and eternal hope, that was emerson's gospel. by his conviction that in the life of the spirit is happiness, by his hope and expectation that this life of the spirit will more and more be understood and will prevail, by this emerson was great.' seven of emerson's ancestors were ministers of new england churches. he inherited qualities of self-reliance, love of liberty, strenuous virtue, sincerity, sobriety and fearless loyalty to ideals. the form of his ideals was modified by the glow of transcendentalism which passed over parts of new england in the second quarter of the nineteenth century, but the spirit in which emerson conceived the laws of life, reverenced them and lived them, was the puritan spirit, only elevated, enlarged and beautified by the poetic temperament. taking his degree from harvard in , despising school teaching, stirred by the passion for spiritual leadership, the ministry seemed to offer the fairest field for its satisfaction. in he entered the divinity school in harvard to prepare himself for the unitarian ministry. in he became associate minister of the second unitarian church in boston. he arrived at the conviction that the lord's supper was not intended by jesus to be a permanent sacrament. he found his congregation, not unnaturally, reluctant to agree with him. he therefore retired from the pastoral office. he was always a preacher, though of a singular order. his task was to befriend and guide the inner life of man. the influences of this period in his life have been enumerated as the liberating philosophy of coleridge, the mystical vision of swedenborg, the intimate poetry of wordsworth, the stimulating essays of carlyle. his address before the graduating class of the divinity school at cambridge in was an impassioned protest against what he called the defects of historical christianity, its undue reliance upon the personal authority of jesus, its failure to explore the moral nature of man. he made a daring plea for absolute self-reliance and new inspiration in religion: 'in the soul let redemption be sought. refuse the good models, even those which are sacred in the imagination of men. cast conformity behind you. acquaint men at first hand with deity.' he never could have been the power he was by the force of his negations. his power lay in the wealth, the variety, the beauty and insight with which he set forth the positive side of his doctrine of the greatness of man, of the presence of god in man, of the divineness of life, of god's judgment and mercy in the order of the world. one sees both the power and the limitation of emerson's religious teaching. at the root of it lay a real philosophy. he could not philosophise. he was always passing from the principle to its application. he could not systematise. he speaks of his 'formidable tendency to the lapidary style.' granting that one finds his philosophy in fragments, just as one finds his interpretation of religion in flashes of marvellous insight, both are worth searching for, and either, in coleridge's phrase, finds us, whether we search for it or not. arnold what shall we say of matthew arnold himself? without doubt the twenty years by which arnold was newman's junior at oxford made a great difference in the intellectual atmosphere of that place, and of the english world of letters, at the time when arnold's mind was maturing. he was not too late to feel the spell of newman. his mind was hardly one to appreciate the whole force of that spell. he was at oxford too early for the full understanding of the limits within which alone the scientific conception of the world can be said to be true. arnold often boasted that he was no metaphysician. he really need never have mentioned the fact. the assumption that whatever is true can be verified in the sense of the precise kind of verification which science implies is a very serious mistake. yet his whole intellectual strength was devoted to the sustaining, one cannot say exactly the cause of religion, but certainly that of noble conduct, and to the assertion of the elation of duty and the joy of righteousness. with all the scorn that arnold pours upon the trust which we place in god's love, he yet holds to the conviction that 'the power without ourselves which makes for righteousness' is one upon which we may in rapture rely. arnold had convinced himself that in an ago such as ours, which will take nothing for granted, but must verify everything, christianity, in the old form of authoritative belief in supernatural beings and miraculous events, is no longer tenable. we must confine ourselves to such ethical truths as can be verified by experience. we must reject everything which goes beyond these. religion has no more to do with supernatural dogma than with metaphysical philosophy. it has nothing to do with either. it has to do with conduct. it is folly to make religion depend upon the conviction of the existence of an intelligent and moral governor of the universe, as the theologians have done. for the object of faith in the ethical sense arnold coined the phrase: 'the eternal not ourselves which makes for righteousness.' so soon as we go beyond this, we enter upon the region of fanciful anthropomorphism, of extra belief, _aberglaube_, which always revenges itself. these are the main contentions of his book, _literature and dogma_, . one feels the value of arnold's recall to the sense of the literary character of the scriptural documents, as urged in his book, _saint paul and protestantism_, , and again to the sense of the influence which the imagination of mankind has had upon religion. one feels the truth of his assertion of our ignorance. one feels arnold's own deep earnestness. it was his concern that reason and the will of god should prevail. though he was primarily a literary man, yet his great interest was in religion. one feels so sincerely that his main conclusion is sound, that it is the more trying that his statement of it should be often so perverse and his method of sustaining it so precarious. it is quite certain that the idea of the eternal not ourselves which makes for righteousness is far from being the clear idea which arnold claims. it is far from being an idea derived from experience or verifiable in experience, in the sense which he asserts. it seems positively incredible that arnold did not know that with this conception he passed the boundary of the realm of science and entered the realm of metaphysics, which he so abhorred. he was the eldest son of thomas arnold of rugby. he was educated at winchester and rugby and at balliol college. he was professor of poetry in oxford from to . he was an inspector of schools. the years of his best literary labour were much taken up in ways which were wasteful of his rare powers. he came by literary intuition to an idea of scripture which others had built up from the point of view of a theory of knowledge and by investigation of the facts. he is the helpless personification of a view of the relation of science and religion which has absolutely passed away. yet arnold died only in . how much a distinguished inheritance may mean is gathered from the fact that a grand-daughter of thomas arnold and niece of matthew arnold, mrs. humphry ward, in her novels, has dealt largely with problems of religious life, and more particularly of religious thoughtfulness. she has done for her generation, in her measure, that which george eliot did for hers. martineau as the chapter and the book draw to their close we can think of no man whose life more nearly spanned the century, or whose work touched more fruitfully almost every aspect of christian thoughtfulness than did that of james martineau. we can think of no man who gathered into himself more fully the significant theological tendencies of the age, or whose utterance entitles him to be listened to more reverently as seer and saint. he was born in . he was bred as an engineer. he fulfilled for years the calling of minister and preacher. he gradually exchanged this for the activity of a professor. he was a religious philosopher in the old sense, but he was also a critic and historian. his position with reference to the new testament was partly antiquated before his _seat of authority in religion_, , made its appearance. evolutionism never became with him a coherent and consistent assumption. ethics never altogether got rid of the innate ideas. the social movement left him almost untouched. yet, despite all this, he was in some sense a representative progressive theologian of the century. there is a parallel between newman and martineau. both busied themselves with the problem of authority. criticism had been fatal to the apprehension which both had inherited concerning the authority of scripture. from that point onward they took divergent courses. the arguments which touched the infallible and oracular authority of scripture, for newman established that of the church; for martineau they had destroyed that of the church four hundred years ago. martineau's sense, even of the authority of jesus, reverent as it is, is yet no pietistic and mystical view. the authority of jesus is that of the truth which he speaks, of the goodness which dwells in him, of god himself and god alone. a real interest in the sciences and true learning in some of them made martineau able to write that wonderful chapter in his _seat of authority_, which he entitled 'god in nature.' newman could see in nature, at most a sacramental suggestion, a symbol of transcendental truth. the martineaus came of old huguenot stock, which in england belonged to the liberal presbyterianism out of which much of british unitarianism came. the righteousness of a persecuted race had left an austere impress upon their domestic and social life. intellectually they inherited the advanced liberalism of their day. harriet martineau's earlier piety had been of the most fervent sort. she reacted violently against it in later years. she had little of the politic temper and gentleness of her brother. she described one of her own later works as the last word of philosophic atheism. james was, and always remained, of deepest sensitiveness and reverence and of a gentleness which stood in high contrast with his powers of conflict, if necessity arose. out of martineau's years as preacher in liverpool and london came two books of rare devotional quality, _endeavours after the christian life_, and , and _hours of thought on sacred things_, and . almost all his life he was identified with manchester college, as a student when the college was located at york, as a teacher when it returned to manchester and again when it was removed to london. with its removal to oxford, accomplished in , he had not fully sympathised. he believed that the university itself must some day do justice to the education of men for the ministry in other churches than the anglican. he was eighty years old when he published his _types of ethical theory_, eighty-two when he gave to the world his _study of religion_, eighty-five when his _seat of authority_ saw the light. the effect of this postponement of publication was not wholly good. the books represented marvellous learning and ripeness of reflection. but they belong to a period anterior to the dates they bear upon their title-pages. martineau's education and his early professional experience put him in touch with the advancing sciences. in the days when most men of progressive spirit were carried off their feet, when materialism was flaunted in men's faces and the defence of religion was largely in the hands of those who knew nothing of the sciences, martineau was not moved. he saw the end from the beginning. there is nothing finer in his latest work than his early essays--'nature and god,' 'science, nescience and faith,' and 'religion as affected by modern materialism.' he died in in his ninety-fifth year. it is difficult to speak of the living in these pages. personal relations enforce reserve and brevity. nevertheless, no one can think of manchester college and martineau without being reminded of mansfield college and of fairbairn, a scotchman, but of the independent church. he also was both teacher and preacher all his days, leader of the movement which brought mansfield college from birmingham to oxford, by the confession both of anglicans and of non-conformists the most learned man in his subjects in the oxford of his time, an historian, touched by the social enthusiasm, but a religious philosopher, _par excellence_. his _religion and modern life_, , his _catholicism, roman and anglican_, , his _place of christ in modern theology_, , his _philosophy of the christian religion_, , and his _studies in religion and theology_, , indicate the wideness of his sympathies and the scope of the application, of his powers. if imitation is homage, grateful acknowledgment is here made of rich spoil taken from his books. philosophy took a new turn in britain after the middle of the decade of the sixties. it began to be conceded that locke and hume were dead. had mill really appreciated that fact he might have been a philosopher more fruitful and influential than he was. sir william hamilton was dead. mansel's endeavour, out of agnosticism to conjure the most absurdly positivistic faith, had left thinking men more exposed to scepticism, if possible, than they had been before. when hegel was thought in germany to be obsolete, and everywhere the cry was 'back to kant,' some scotch and english scholars, the two cairds and seth pringle-pattison, with thomas hill green, made a modified hegelianism current in great britain. they led by this path in the introduction of their countrymen to later german idealism. by this introduction philosophy in both britain and america has greatly gained. despite these facts, john caird's _introduction to the philosophy of religion_, , is still only a religious philosophy. it is not a philosophy of religion. his _fundamental ideas of christianity_, , hardly escapes the old antitheses among which theological discussion moved, say, thirty years ago. edward caird's _critical philosophy of kant_, , and especially his _evolution of religion_, , marked the coming change more definitely than did any of the labours of his brother. thomas hill green gave great promise in his _introduction to hume_, , his _prolegomena to ethics_, , and still more in essays and papers scattered through the volumes edited by nettleship after green's death. his contribution to religious discussion was such as to make his untimely end to be deeply deplored. seth pringle-pattison's early work, _the development from kant to hegel_, , still has great worth. his _hegelianism and personality_, , deals with one aspect of the topic which needs ever again to be explored, because of the psychological basis which in religious discussion is now assumed. james the greatest contribution of america to religious discussion in recent years is surely william james's _varieties of religious experience_, . the book is unreservedly acknowledged in britain, and in germany as well, to be the best which we yet have upon the psychology of religion. not only so, it gives a new intimation as to what psychology of religion means. it blazes a path along which investigators are eagerly following. boyce, in his phi beta kappa address at harvard in , declared james to be the third representative philosopher whom america has produced. he had the form of philosophy as emerson never had. he could realise whither he was going, as emerson in his intuitiveness never did. he criticised the dominant monism in most pregnant way. he recurred to the problems which dualism owned but could not solve. we cannot call the new scheme dualism. the world does not go back. yet james made an over-confident generation feel that the centuries to which dualism had seemed reasonable were not so completely without intelligence as has been supposed by some. no philosophy may claim completeness as an interpretation of the universe. no more conclusive proof of this judgment could be asked than is given quite unintentionally in haeckel's _weltrãthsel_. at no point is this recall more earnest than in james's dealing with the antithesis of good and evil. the reaction of the mind of the race, and primarily of individuals, upon the fact of evil, men's consciousness of evil in themselves, their desire to be rid of it, their belief that there is a deliverance from it and that they have found that deliverance, is for james the point of departure for the study of the actual phenomena and the active principle of religion. the truest psychological and philosophical instinct of the ago thus sets the experience of conversion in the centre of discussion. apparently most men have, at some time and in some way, the consciousness of a capacity for god which is unfulfilled, of a relation to god unrealised, which is broken and resumed, or yet to be resumed. they have the sense that their own effort must contribute to this recovery. they have the sense also that something without themselves empowers them to attempt this recovery and to persevere in the attempt. the psychology of religion is thus put in the forefront. the vast masses of material of this sort which the religious world, both past and present, possesses, have been either actually unexplored, or else set forth in ways which distorted and obscured the facts. the experience is the fact. the best science the world knows is now to deal with it as it would deal with any other fact. this is the epoch-making thing, the contribution to method in james's book. james was born in new york in , the son of a swedenborgian theologian. he took his medical degree at harvard in . he began to lecture there in anatomy in and became professor of philosophy in . he was a gifford and a hibbert lecturer. he died in . when james's thesis shall have been fully worked out, much supposed investigation of primitive religions, which is really nothing but imagination concerning primitive religions, will be shown in its true worthlessness. we know very little about primitive man. what we learn as to primitive man, on the side of his religion, we must learn in part from the psychology of the matured and civilised, the present living, thinking, feeling man in contact with his religion. matured religion is not to be judged by the primitive, but the reverse. the real study of the history of religions, the study of the objective phenomena, from earliest to latest times, has its place. but the history of religions is perverted when it takes for fact in the life of primitive man that which never existed save in the imagination of twentieth century students. early christianity, on its inner and spiritual side, is to be judged by later christianity, by present christianity, by the christian experience which we see and know to-day, and not conversely, as men have always claimed. the modern man is not to be converted after the pattern which it is alleged that his grandfather followed. for, first, there is the question as to whether his grandfather did conform to this pattern. and beyond that, it is safer to try to understand the experience of the grandfather, whom we do not know, by the psychology and experience of the grandson, whom we do know, with, of course, a judicious admixture of knowledge of the history of the nineteenth century, which would occasion characteristic differences. the modern saint is not asked to be a saint like francis. in the first place, how do we know what francis was like? in the second place, the experience of francis may be most easily understood by the aid of modern experience of true revolt from worldliness and of consecration to self-sacrifice, as these exist among us, with, of course, the proper background furnished by the history of the thirteenth century. souls are one. our souls may be, at least in some measure, known to ourselves. even the souls of some of our fellows may be measurably known to us. what are the facts of the religious experience? how do souls react in face of the eternal? the experience of religion, the experience of the fatherhood of god, of the sonship of man, of the moving of the spirit, is surely one experience. how did even christ's great soul react, experience, work, will, and suffer? by what possible means can we ever know how he reacted, worked, willed, suffered? in the literature we learn only how men thought that he reacted. we must inquire of our own souls. to be sure, christ belonged to the first century, and we live in the twentieth. it is possible for us to learn something of the first century and of the concrete outward conditions which caused his life to take the shape which it did. we learn this by strict historical research. assuredly the supreme measure in which the spirit of all truth and goodness once took possession of the nazarene, remains to us a mystery unfathomed and unfathomable. dwelling in jesus, that spirit made through him a revelation of the divine such as the world has never seen. yet that mystery leads forth along the path of that which is intelligible. and, in another sense, even such religious experience as we ourselves may have, poor though it be and sadly limited, leads back into the same mystery. it was with this contention that religion is a fact of the inner life of man, that it is to be understood through consciousness, that it is essentially and absolutely reasonable and yet belongs to the transcendental world, it was with this contention that, in the person of immanuel kant, the history of modern religious thought began. it is with this contention, in one of its newest and most far-reaching applications in the work of william james, that this history continues. for no one can think of the number of questions which recent years have raised, without realising that this history is by no means concluded. it is conceivable that the changes which the twentieth century will bring may be as noteworthy as those which the nineteenth century has seen. at least we may be grateful that so great and sure a foundation has been laid. bibliography chapter i wernle, paul. _einführung in das theologische studium._ tübingen, . aufl., . die kultur der gegenwart. th. i., abth. iv. . _geschichte der christlichen religion_, v. wellhausen, jülieber, harnack u. a., . aufl. berlin, . die kultur der gegenwart. th. i., abth. iv. . _systematische christliche religion_, v. troeltsch, herrmann, holtzmann u. a., . aufl. berlin, . pfleiderer, otto. _the development of theology in germany since kant, and its progress in great britain since_ . transl., j. frederick smith. london, . lichtenberger, f. _histoire des idées religieuses en allemagne despuis le milieu du xviii' siécle à nos jours._ paris, . transl., with notes, w. hastie. edinburgh, . adeney, w.f. _a century of progress in religious life and thought._ london, . harnack, adolf. _das wesen des christenthums._ berlin, . transl., _what is christianity?_ t.b. saunders. london, . stephen, leslie. _history of english thought in the eighteenth century._ vols. london, rd ed., . troeltsch, ernst. art. 'deismus' in herzog-hauck, _realencyclopädie für protestantische theologie und kirche._ . aufl. leipzig, . bd., , s. f.: art. 'aufklärung,' . bd., , s. f.: art. 'idealismus, deutscher,' . bd., , s. f. mirbt, carl. art. 'pietiamus' in herzog-hauck, _realencydopädie_, . bd., , s. f. ritschl, albrecht. _geschichte des pietismus_, bde. bonn, - . chapter ii windelband, w. _die geschichte der neueren philosophie in ihrem zusammenhang mit der allgemeinen kultur und den besouderen wissenschaften._ bde. leipzig, . hÖffding, harold. _geschichte der neueren philosophie._ uebersetzt v. bendixen. bde. leipzig, . eucken, rudolf. _die lebensanschauungen der grossen denker._ . anfl. leipzig, . transl., _the problem of human life as viewed _by the great thinkers_, by w.s. hough and w.r. boyce gibson. new york, . pringle-pattison, a. seth. _the development from kant to hegel._ london, . drews, arthur. _die deutsche spekulation seit kant_ bde. berlin, . royce, josiah. _the spirit of modern philosophy._ boston, . _the religious aspect of philosophy._ boston, . _the world and the individual._ vols. new york, and . paulsen, friedrich. _immanuel kant, sein leben und seine lehre._ stuttgart, . aufl., . transl., creighton and lefever. new york, . caird, edward. _a critical account of the philosophy of kant_: with an historical introduction. glasgow, . fischer, kuno. _hegels leben, werke und lehre._ bde. heidelberg, . siebeck, hermann. _lehrbuch der religionsphilosophie._ freiburg, . eucken, rudolf. _der wahrheitsgehalt der religion._ leipzig, . aufl., . transl., jones. london, . tiele, c.p. _compendium der religionsgeschichte._ uebersetzt v. weber. . aufl. umgearbeitet v. söderblom. breslau, . chapter iii von frank, h.r. _geschichte und kritik der neueren theologie insbesondere der systematischen seit schleiermacher._ hrsg, v. schaarschmidt. eriangen, . schwarz, carl. _zur gesehichte der neuiten theologie._ leipzig, . aufl., . kattenbusch, ferdinand. _von schleiermacher zu ritschl._ giessen, . brown, william adams. _the essence of christianity: a study in the history of definition._ new york, . dilthey, wilhelm. _leben schleiermachers_, . bd. berlin, . gass, wilhelm. _geschichte der protestantischen dogmatik_, bde. leipzig, - . garvie, alfred. _the ritschlian theology_, nd ed. edinburgh, . herrmann, w. _der evangeliche glaube und die theologie albrecht ritschls._ marburg, . pfleiderer, otto. _die ritschlche theologie kritiech beleuchtet._ braunschweig, . kaftan, julius. _dogmatik._ tübingen, . aufl., . stevens, george b. _the christian doctrine of salvation._ new york, . chapter iv carpenter, j. estlin. _the bible in the nineteenth century._ london, . gardner, percy. _a historic view of the new testament._ london, . jÜlicher, adolf. _einleitung in das neue testament._ freiliurg, . aufl., . transl., miss janet ward. . moore, edward caldwell. _the new testament in the christian church._ new york, . liktzmann, hans. _wie wurden die bücher des neuen testaments heilige schrift?_ tübingen, . loisy, a. _l'ecangile el i'eglise._ paris, nd ed., . transl., london, . wernle, paul. _die anfänge unserer religion._ tübingen, . schweitzer, albert. _von reimarus zu wrede, eine geschichte der leben-jesu-forschung._ tübingen, . sanday, william. _the life of christ in recent research._ oxford, . holtzmann, oskar. _neu-testamentliche zeitgeschichte._ freiburg, . aufl., . driver, samuel b. _introduction to the literature of the old testament._ edinburgh, nd ed., . wellhausen, julius. _prolegomena sur geschichte israels._ berlin, . aufl., . budde, karl._the religion of israel to the exile._ new york, . kautsch, e. _abriss der geschichte des alt-tentamentlichen schriftthums in seiner 'heilige schrift des alten testaments.'_ freiburg, . transl., j.j. taylor, and published separately, new york, . smith, w. robertson. _the old testament in the jewish church._ glasgow, nd ed., . _the prophets of israel_, nd ed., . chapter v mehz, johh. _a history of european thought in the nineteenth century._ vols. and , edinburgh, and . white, andrew d. _the history of the warfare of science with theology in christendom._ vols. new york, . otto, rudolf. _naturalistisehe und religiöse weltansicht._ tübingen, . aufl., . ward, james. _naturalism and agnosticism._ vols. london, . flint, robert. _agnosticism._ edinburgh, . tulloch, john. _modern theories in philosophy and religion._ edinburgh, . martineau, james. _essays, reviews and addresses._ vols. and london, . boutroux, emile. _science et religion dans la philosophie contemporaine._ paris, . transl., nield. london, . flint, robert. _socialism._ london, . peabody, francis g. _jesus christ and the social question._ new york, . chapter vi hunt, john. _religious thought in england in the nineteenth century._ london, . tulloch, john. _movements of religious thought in britain during the nineteenth century._ london, . benn, alfred william. _the history of english rationalism in the nineteenth century._ vols. london, . hutton, richard h. _essays on some of the modern guides to english thought in matters of faith._ london, . mellone, sidney h. _leaders of religious thought in the nineteenth century._ edinburgh, . brooke, stopford a. _theology in the english poets._ london, . scudder, vida d. _the life of the spirit in the modern english poets_. boston, . church, r.w. _the oxford movement: twelve years, - ._ london, . fairbairn, andrew m. _catholicism, roman and anglican._ new york, . ward, wilfrid. _life and times of cardinal newman._ vols. th ed. london, . ward, wilfrid. _life of john henry, cardinal newman._ vols. london, . dollinger, j.j. ignaz von. _das papstthum; neubearbeitung von janus: der papst und das concil, von j. friedrich._ münchen, . gout, raoul. _l'affaire tyrrell._ paris, . sabatier, paul. _modernism_. transl., miles. new york, . stanley, arthur p. _the life and correspondence of thomas arnold._ vols. london, th ed., . brooke, stopford a. _life and letters of frederick w. robertson._ vols. london, . abbott, evelyn and campbell, lewis. _life and letters of benjamin jowett_. vols. london, . drummond, james, and upton, c.b. _life and letters of james martineau._ vols. london, . allen, alexander v.g. _life and letters of phillips brooks._ vols. new york, . munger, theodore t. _horace bushnell, preacher and theologian._ boston, . winds of doctrine studies in contemporary opinion by g. santayana late professor of philosophy in harvard university new york: charles scribner's sons first printed in contents i. the intellectual temper of the age ii. modernism and christianity iii. the philosophy of m. henri bergson iv. the philosophy of mr. bertrand russell-- i. a new scholasticism ii. the study of essence iii. the critique of pragmatism iv. hypostatic ethics v. shelley: or the poetic value of revolutionary principles vi. the genteel tradition in american philosophy winds of doctrine i the intellectual temper of the age the present age is a critical one and interesting to live in. the civilisation characteristic of christendom has not disappeared, yet another civilisation has begun to take its place. we still understand the value of religious faith; we still appreciate the pompous arts of our forefathers; we are brought up on academic architecture, sculpture, painting, poetry, and music. we still love monarchy and aristocracy, together with that picturesque and dutiful order which rested on local institutions, class privileges, and the authority of the family. we may even feel an organic need for all these things, cling to them tenaciously, and dream of rejuvenating them. on the other hand the shell of christendom is broken. the unconquerable mind of the east, the pagan past, the industrial socialistic future confront it with their equal authority. our whole life and mind is saturated with the slow upward filtration of a new spirit--that of an emancipated, atheistic, international democracy. these epithets may make us shudder; but what they describe is something positive and self-justified, something deeply rooted in our animal nature and inspiring to our hearts, something which, like every vital impulse, is pregnant with a morality of its own. in vain do we deprecate it; it has possession of us already through our propensities, fashions, and language. our very plutocrats and monarchs are at ease only when they are vulgar. even prelates and missionaries are hardly sincere or conscious of an honest function, save as they devote themselves to social work; for willy-nilly the new spirit has hold of our consciences as well. this spirit is amiable as well as disquieting, liberating as well as barbaric; and a philosopher in our day, conscious both of the old life and of the new, might repeat what goethe said of his successive love affairs--that it is sweet to see the moon rise while the sun is still mildly shining. meantime our bodies in this generation are generally safe, and often comfortable; and for those who can suspend their irrational labours long enough to look about them, the spectacle of the world, if not particularly beautiful or touching, presents a rapid and crowded drama and (what here concerns me most) one unusually intelligible. the nations, parties, and movements that divide the scene have a known history. we are not condemned, as most generations have been, to fight and believe without an inkling of the cause. the past lies before us; the history of everything is published. every one records his opinion, and loudly proclaims what he wants. in this babel of ideals few demands are ever literally satisfied; but many evaporate, merge together, and reach an unintended issue, with which they are content. the whole drift of things presents a huge, good-natured comedy to the observer. it stirs not unpleasantly a certain sturdy animality and hearty self-trust which lie at the base of human nature. a chief characteristic of the situation is that moral confusion is not limited to the world at large, always the scene of profound conflicts, but that it has penetrated to the mind and heart of the average individual. never perhaps were men so like one another and so divided within themselves. in other ages, even more than at present, different classes of men have stood at different levels of culture, with a magnificent readiness to persecute and to be martyred for their respective principles. these militant believers have been keenly conscious that they had enemies; but their enemies were strangers to them, whom they could think of merely as such, regarding them as blank negative forces, hateful black devils, whose existence might make life difficult but could not confuse the ideal of life. no one sought to understand these enemies of his, nor even to conciliate them, unless under compulsion or out of insidious policy, to convert them against their will; he merely pelted them with blind refutations and clumsy blows. every one sincerely felt that the right was entirely on his side, a proof that such intelligence as he had moved freely and exclusively within the lines of his faith. the result of this was that his faith was intelligent, i mean, that he understood it, and had a clear, almost instinctive perception of what was compatible or incompatible with it. he defended his walls and he cultivated his garden. his position and his possessions were unmistakable. when men and minds were so distinct it was possible to describe and to count them. during the reformation, when external confusion was at its height, you might have ascertained almost statistically what persons and what regions each side snatched from the other; it was not doubtful which was which. the history of their respective victories and defeats could consequently be written. so in the eighteenth century it was easy to perceive how many people voltaire and rousseau might be alienating from bossuet and fénelon. but how shall we satisfy ourselves now whether, for instance, christianity is holding its own? who can tell what vagary or what compromise may not be calling itself christianity? a bishop may be a modernist, a chemist may be a mystical theologian, a psychologist may be a believer in ghosts. for science, too, which had promised to supply a new and solid foundation for philosophy, has allowed philosophy rather to undermine its foundation, and is seen eating its own words, through the mouths of some of its accredited spokesmen, and reducing itself to something utterly conventional and insecure. it is characteristic of human nature to be as impatient of ignorance regarding what is not known as lazy in acquiring such knowledge as is at hand; and even those who have not been lazy sometimes take it into their heads to disparage their science and to outdo the professional philosophers in psychological scepticism, in order to plunge with them into the most vapid speculation. nor is this insecurity about first principles limited to abstract subjects. it reigns in politics as well. liberalism had been supposed to advocate liberty; but what the advanced parties that still call themselves liberal now advocate is control, control over property, trade, wages, hours of work, meat and drink, amusements, and in a truly advanced country like france control over education and religion; and it is only on the subject of marriage (if we ignore eugenics) that liberalism is growing more and more liberal. those who speak most of progress measure it by quantity and not by quality; how many people read and write, or how many people there are, or what is the annual value of their trade; whereas true progress would rather lie in reading or writing fewer and better things, and being fewer and better men, and enjoying life more. but the philanthropists are now preparing an absolute subjection of the individual, in soul and body, to the instincts of the majority--the most cruel and unprogressive of masters; and i am not sure that the liberal maxim, "the greatest happiness of the greatest number," has not lost whatever was just or generous in its intent and come to mean the greatest idleness of the largest possible population. nationality offers another occasion for strange moral confusion. it had seemed that an age that was levelling and connecting all nations, an age whose real achievements were of international application, was destined to establish the solidarity of mankind as a sort of axiom. the idea of solidarity is indeed often invoked in speeches, and there is an extreme socialistic party that--when a wave of national passion does not carry it the other way--believes in international brotherhood. but even here, black men and yellow men are generally excluded; and in higher circles, where history, literature, and political ambition dominate men's minds, nationalism has become of late an omnivorous all-permeating passion. local parliaments must be everywhere established, extinct or provincial dialects must be galvanised into national languages, philosophy must be made racial, religion must be fostered where it emphasises nationality and denounced where it transcends it. man is certainly an animal that, when he lives at all, lives for ideals. something must be found to occupy his imagination, to raise pleasure and pain into love and hatred, and change the prosaic alternative between comfort and discomfort into the tragic one between happiness and sorrow. now that the hue of daily adventure is so dull, when religion for the most part is so vague and accommodating, when even war is a vast impersonal business, nationality seems to have slipped into the place of honour. it has become the one eloquent, public, intrepid illusion. illusion, i mean, when it is taken for an ultimate good or a mystical essence, for of course nationality is a fact. people speak some particular language and are very uncomfortable where another is spoken or where their own is spoken differently. they have habits, judgments, assumptions to which they are wedded, and a society where all this is unheard of shocks them and puts them at a galling disadvantage. to ignorant people the foreigner as such is ridiculous, unless he is superior to them in numbers or prestige, when he becomes hateful. it is natural for a man to like to live at home, and to live long elsewhere without a sense of exile is not good for his moral integrity. it is right to feel a greater kinship and affection for what lies nearest to oneself. but this necessary fact and even duty of nationality is accidental; like age or sex it is a physical fatality which can be made the basis of specific and comely virtues; but it is not an end to pursue or a flag to flaunt or a privilege not balanced by a thousand incapacities. yet of this distinction our contemporaries tend to make an idol, perhaps because it is the only distinction they feel they have left. anomalies of this sort will never be properly understood until people accustom themselves to a theory to which they have always turned a deaf ear, because, though simple and true, it is materialistic: namely, that mind is not the cause of our actions but an effect, collateral with our actions, of bodily growth and organisation. it may therefore easily come about that the thoughts of men, tested by the principles that seem to rule their conduct, may be belated, or irrelevant, or premonitory; for the living organism has many strata, on any of which, at a given moment, activities may exist perfect enough to involve consciousness, yet too weak and isolated to control the organs of outer expression; so that (to speak geologically) our practice may be historic, our manners glacial, and our religion palæozoic. the ideals of the nineteenth century may be said to have been all belated; the age still yearned with rousseau or speculated with kant, while it moved with darwin, bismarck, and nietzsche: and to-day, in the half-educated classes, among the religious or revolutionary sects, we may observe quite modern methods of work allied with a somewhat antiquated mentality. the whole nineteenth century might well cry with faust: "two souls, alas, dwell in my bosom!" the revolutions it witnessed filled it with horror and made it fall in love romantically with the past and dote on ruins, because they were ruins; and the best learning and fiction of the time were historical, inspired by an unprecedented effort to understand remote forms of life and feeling, to appreciate exotic arts and religions, and to rethink the blameless thoughts of savages and criminals. this sympathetic labour and retrospect, however, was far from being merely sentimental; for the other half of this divided soul was looking ahead. those same revolutions, often so destructive, stupid, and bloody, filled it with pride, and prompted it to invent several incompatible theories concerning a steady and inevitable progress in the world. in the study of the past, side by side with romantic sympathy, there was a sort of realistic, scholarly intelligence and an adventurous love of truth; kindness too was often mingled with dramatic curiosity. the pathologists were usually healers, the philosophers of evolution were inventors or humanitarians or at least idealists: the historians of art (though optimism was impossible here) were also guides to taste, quickeners of moral sensibility, like ruskin, or enthusiasts for the irresponsibly beautiful, like pater and oscar wilde. everywhere in the nineteenth century we find a double preoccupation with the past and with the future, a longing to know what all experience might have been hitherto, and on the other hand to hasten to some wholly different experience, to be contrived immediately with a beating heart and with flying banners. the imagination of the age was intent on history; its conscience was intent on reform. reform! this magic word itself covers a great equivocation. to reform means to shatter one form and to create another; but the two sides of the act are not always equally intended nor equally successful. usually the movement starts from the mere sense of oppression, and people break down some established form, without any qualms about the capacity of their freed instincts to generate the new forms that may be needed. so the reformation, in destroying the traditional order, intended to secure truth, spontaneity, and profuseness of religious forms; the danger of course being that each form might become meagre and the sum of them chaotic. if the accent, however, could only be laid on the second phase of the transformation, reform might mean the creation of order where it did not sufficiently appear, so that diffuse life should be concentrated into a congenial form that should render it strong and self-conscious. in this sense, if we may trust mr. gilbert murray, it was a great wave of reform that created greece, or at least all that was characteristic and admirable in it--an effort to organise, train, simplify, purify, and make beautiful the chaos of barbaric customs and passions that had preceded. the clanger here, a danger to which greece actually succumbed, is that so refined an organism may be too fragile, not inclusive enough within, and not buttressed strongly enough without against the flux of the uncivilised world. christianity also, in the first formative centuries of its existence, was an integrating reform of the same sort, on a different scale and in a different sphere; but here too an enslaved rabble within the soul claiming the suffrage, and better equipped intellectual empires rising round about, seem to prove that the harmony which the christian system made for a moment out of nature and life was partial and insecure. it is a terrible dilemma in the life of reason whether it will sacrifice natural abundance to moral order, or moral order to natural abundance. whatever compromise we choose proves unstable, and forces us to a new experiment. perhaps in the century that has elapsed since the french revolution the pendulum has had time to swing as far as it will in the direction of negative reform, and may now begin to move towards that sort of reform which is integrating and creative. the veering of the advanced political parties from liberalism to socialism would seem to be a clear indication of this new tendency. it is manifest also in the love of nature, in athletics, in the new woman, and in a friendly medical attitude towards all the passions. in the fine arts, however, and in religion and philosophy, we are still in full career towards disintegration. it might have been thought that a germ of rational order would by this time have penetrated into fine art and speculation from the prosperous constructive arts that touch the one, and the prosperous natural and mathematical sciences that touch the other. but as yet there is little sign of it. since the beginning of the nineteenth century painting and sculpture have passed through several phases, representatives of each naturally surviving after the next had appeared. romanticism, half lurid, half effeminate, yielded to a brutal pursuit of material truth, and a pious preference for modern and humble sentiment. this realism had a romantic vein in it, and studied vice and crime, tedium and despair, with a very genuine horrified sympathy. some went in for a display of archaeological lore or for exotic _motifs_; others gave all their attention to rediscovering and emphasising abstract problems of execution, the highway of technical tradition having long been abandoned. beginners are still supposed to study their art, but they have no masters from whom to learn it. thus, when there seemed to be some danger that art should be drowned in science and history, the artists deftly eluded it by becoming amateurs. one gave himself to religious archaism, another to japanese composition, a third to barbaric symphonies of colour; sculptors tried to express dramatic climaxes, or inarticulate lyrical passion, such as music might better convey; and the latest whims are apparently to abandon painful observation altogether, to be merely decorative or frankly mystical, and to be satisfied with the childishness of hieroglyphics or the crudity of caricature. the arts are like truant children who think their life will be glorious if they only run away and play for ever; no need is felt of a dominant ideal passion and theme, nor of any moral interest in the interpretation of nature. artists have no less talent than ever; their taste, their vision, their sentiment are often interesting; they are mighty in their independence and feeble only in their works. in philosophy there are always the professors, as in art there are always the portrait painters and the makers of official sculpture; and both sorts of academicians are often very expert and well-educated. yet in philosophy, besides the survival of all the official and endowed systems, there has been of late a very interesting fresh movement, largely among the professors themselves, which in its various hues may be called irrationalism, vitalism, pragmatism, or pure empiricism. but this movement, far from being a reawakening of any organising instinct, is simply an extreme expression of romantic anarchy. it is in essence but a franker confession of the principle upon which modern philosophy has been building--or unbuilding--for these three hundred years, i mean the principle of subjectivity. berkeley and hume, the first prophets of the school, taught that experience is not a partial discovery of other things but is itself the only possible object of experience. therefore, said kant and the second generation of prophets, any world we may seem to live in, even those worlds of theology or of history which berkeley or hume had inadvertently left standing, must be an idea which our present experience suggests to us and which we frame as the principles of our mind allow and dictate that we should. but then, say the latest prophets--avenarius, william james, m. bergson--these mental principles are no antecedent necessities or duties imposed on our imagination; they are simply parts of flying experience itself, and the ideas--say of god or of matter--which they lead us to frame have nothing compulsory or fixed about them. their sole authority lies in the fact that they may be more or less congenial or convenient, by enriching the flying moment æsthetically, or helping it to slip prosperously into the next moment. immediate feeling, pure experience, is the only reality, the only _fact_: if notions which do not reproduce it fully as it flows are still called true (and they evidently ought not to be) it is only in a pragmatic sense of the word, in that while they present a false and heterogeneous image of reality they are not practically misleading; as, for instance, the letters on this page are no true image of the sounds they call up, nor the sounds of the thoughts, yet both may be correct enough if they lead the reader in the end to the things they symbolise. it is m. bergson, the most circumspect and best equipped thinker of this often scatter-brained school, who has put this view in a frank and tenable form, avoiding the bungling it has sometimes led to about the "meaning of truth." truth, according to m. bergson, is given only in intuitions which prolong experience just as it occurs, in its full immediacy; on the other hand, all representation, thought, theory, calculation, or discourse is so much mutilation of the truth, excusable only because imposed upon us by practical exigences. the world, being a feeling, must be felt to be known, and then the world and the knowledge of it are identical; but if it is talked about or thought about it is denaturalised, although convention and utility may compel the poor human being to talk and to think, exiled as he is from reality in his babylon of abstractions. life, like the porcupine when not ruffled by practical alarms, can let its fretful quills subside. the mystic can live happy in the droning consciousness of his own heart-beats and those of the universe. with this we seem to have reached the extreme of self-concentration and self-expansion, the perfect identity and involution of everything in oneself. and such indeed is the inevitable goal of the malicious theory of knowledge, to which this school is committed, remote as that goal may be from the boyish naturalism and innocent intent of many of its pupils. if all knowledge is of experience and experience cannot be knowledge of anything else, knowledge proper is evidently impossible. there can be only feeling; and the least self-transcendence, even in memory, must be an illusion. you may have the most complex images you will; but nothing pictured there can exist outside, not even past or alien experience, if you picture it.[ ] solipsism has always been the evident implication of idealism; but the idealists, when confronted with this consequence, which is dialectically inconvenient, have never been troubled at heart by it, for at heart they accept it. to the uninitiated they have merely murmured, with a pitying smile and a wave of the hand: what! are you still troubled by that? or if compelled to be so scholastic as to labour the point they have explained, as usual, that oneself cannot be the absolute because the _idea_ of oneself, to arise, must be contrasted with other ideas. therefore, you cannot well have the idea of a world in which nothing appears but the _idea_ of yourself. [footnote : perhaps some unsophisticated reader may wonder if i am not trying to mislead him, or if any mortal ever really maintained anything so absurd. strictly the idealistic principle does not justify a denial that independent things, by chance resembling my ideas, may actually exist; but it justifies the denial that these things, if they existed, could be those i know. my past would not be my past if i did not appropriate it; my ideas would not refer to their objects unless both were ideas identified in my mind. in practice, therefore, idealists feel free to ignore the gratuitous possibility of existences lying outside the circle of objects knowable to the thinker, which, according to them, is the circle of his ideas. in this way they turn a human method of approach into a charter for existence and non-existence, and their point of view becomes the creative power. when the idealist studies astronomy, does he learn anything about the stars that god made? far from him so naive a thought! his astronomy consists of two activities of his own (and he is very fond of activity): star-gazing and calculation. when he has become quite proficient he knows all about star-gazing and calculation; but he knows nothing of any stars that god made; for there are no stars except his visual images of stars, and there is no god but himself. it is true that to soften this hard saying a little he would correct me and say his _higher_ self; but as his lower self is only the idea of himself which he may have framed, it is his higher self that is himself simply: although whether he or his idea of himself is really the higher might seem doubtful to an outsider.] this explanation, in pretending to refute solipsism, of course assumes and confirms it; for all these _cans_ and _musts_ touch only your idea of yourself, not your actual being, and there is no thinkable world that is not within you, as you exist really. thus idealists are wedded to solipsism irrevocably; and it is a happy marriage, only the name of the lady has to be changed. nevertheless, lest peace should come (and peace nowadays is neither possible nor desired), a counter-current at once overtakes the philosophy of the immediate and carries it violently to the opposite pole of speculation--from mystic intuition to a commercial cult of action and a materialisation of the mind such as no materialist had ever dreamt of. the tenderness which the pragmatists feel for life in general, and especially for an accelerated modern life, has doubtless contributed to this revulsion, but the speculative consideration of the immediate might have led to it independently. for in the immediate there is marked expectancy, craving, prayer; nothing absorbs consciousness so much as what is not quite given. therefore it is a good reading of the immediate, as well as a congenial thing to say to the contemporary world, that reality is change, growth, action, creation. similarly the sudden materialisation of mind, the unlooked-for assertion that consciousness does not exist, has its justification in the same quarter. in the immediate what appears is the thing, not the mind to which the thing appears. even in the passions, when closely scanned introspectively, you will find a new sensitiveness or ebullition of the body, or a rush of images and words; you will hardly find a separate object called anger or love. the passions, therefore, when their moral essence is forgotten, may be said to be literally nothing but a movement of their organs and their objects, just as ideas may be said to be nothing but fragments or cross-threads of the material world. thus the mind and the object are rolled into one moving mass; motions are identified with passions, things are perceptions extended, perceptions are things cut down. and, by a curious revolution in sentiment, it is things and motions that are reputed to have the fuller and the nobler reality. under cover of a fusion or neutrality between idealism and realism, moral materialism, the reverence for mere existence and power, takes possession of the heart, and ethics becomes idolatrous. idolatry, however, is hardly possible if you have a cold and clear idea of blocks and stones, attributing to them only the motions they are capable of; and accordingly idealism, by way of compensation, has to take possession of physics. the idol begins to wink and drop tears under the wistful gaze of the worshipper. matter is felt to yearn, and evolution is held to be more divinely inspired than policy or reason could ever be. extremes meet, and the tendency to practical materialism was never wholly absent from the idealism of the moderns. certainly, the tumid respectability of anglo-german philosophy had somehow to be left behind; and darwinian england and bismarckian germany had another inspiration as well to guide them, if it could only come to consciousness in the professors. the worship of power is an old religion, and hegel, to go no farther back, is full of it; but like traditional religion his system qualified its veneration for success by attributing success, in the future at least, to what could really inspire veneration; and such a master in equivocation could have no difficulty in convincing himself that the good must conquer in the end if whatever conquers in the end is the good. among the pragmatists the worship of power is also optimistic, but it is not to logic that power is attributed. science, they say, is good as a help to industry, and philosophy is good for correcting whatever in science might disturb religious faith, which in turn is helpful in living. what industry or life are good for it would be unsympathetic to inquire: the stream is mighty, and we must swim with the stream. concern for survival, however, which seems to be the pragmatic principle in morals, does not afford a remedy for moral anarchy. to take firm hold on life, according to nietzsche, we should be imperious, poetical, atheistic; but according to william james we should be democratic, concrete, and credulous. it is hard to say whether pragmatism is come to emancipate the individual spirit and make it lord over things, or on the contrary to declare the spirit a mere instrument for the survival of the flesh. in italy, the mind seems to be raised deliriously into an absolute creator, evoking at will, at each moment, a new past, a new future, a new earth, and a new god. in america, however, the mind is recommended rather as an unpatented device for oiling the engine of the body and making it do double work. trustful faith in evolution and a longing for intense life are characteristic of contemporary sentiment; but they do not appear to be consistent with that contempt for the intellect which is no less characteristic of it. human intelligence is certainly a product, and a late and highly organised product, of evolution; it ought apparently to be as much admired as the eyes of molluscs or the antennae of ants. and if life is better the more intense and concentrated it is, intelligence would seem to be the best form of life. but the degree of intelligence which this age possesses makes it so very uncomfortable that, in this instance, it asks for something less vital, and sighs for what evolution has left behind. in the presence of such cruelly distinct things as astronomy or such cruelly confused things as theology it feels _la nostalgie de la boue_. it was only, m. bergson tells us, where dead matter oppressed life that life was forced to become intelligence; for this reason intelligence kills whatever it touches; it is the tribute that life pays to death. life would find it sweet to throw off that painful subjection to circumstance and bloom in some more congenial direction. m. bergson's own philosophy is an effort to realise this revulsion, to disintegrate intelligence and stimulate sympathetic experience. its charm lies in the relief which it brings to a stale imagination, an imagination from which religion has vanished and which is kept stretched on the machinery of business and society, or on small half-borrowed passions which we clothe in a mean rhetoric and dot with vulgar pleasures. finding their intelligence enslaved, our contemporaries suppose that intelligence is essentially servile; instead of freeing it, they try to elude it. not free enough themselves morally, but bound to the world partly by piety and partly by industrialism, they cannot think of rising to a detached contemplation of earthly things, and of life itself and evolution; they revert rather to sensibility, and seek some by-path of instinct or dramatic sympathy in which to wander. having no stomach for the ultimate, they burrow downwards towards the primitive. but the longing to be primitive is a disease of culture; it is archaism in morals. to be so preoccupied with vitality is a symptom of anaemia. when life was really vigorous and young, in homeric times for instance, no one seemed to fear that it might be squeezed out of existence either by the incubus of matter or by the petrifying blight of intelligence. life was like the light of day, something to use, or to waste, or to enjoy. it was not a thing to worship; and often the chief luxury of living consisted in dealing death about vigorously. life indeed was loved, and the beauty and pathos of it were felt exquisitely; but its beauty and pathos lay in the divineness of its model and in its own fragility. no one paid it the equivocal compliment of thinking it a substance or a material force. nobility was not then impossible in sentiment, because there were ideals in life higher and more indestructible than life itself, which life might illustrate and to which it might fitly be sacrificed. nothing can be meaner than the anxiety to live on, to live on anyhow and in any shape; a spirit with any honour is not willing to live except in its own way, and a spirit with any wisdom is not over-eager to live at all. in those days men recognised immortal gods and resigned themselves to being mortal. yet those were the truly vital and instinctive days of the human spirit. only when vitality is low do people find material things oppressive and ideal things unsubstantial. now there is more motion than life, and more haste than force; we are driven to distraction by the ticking of the tiresome clocks, material and social, by which we are obliged to regulate our existence. we need ministering angels to fly to us from somewhere, even if it be from the depths of protoplasm. we must bathe in the currents of some non-human vital flood, like consumptives in their last extremity who must bask in the sunshine and breathe the mountain air; and our disease is not without its sophistry to convince us that we were never so well before, or so mightily conscious of being alive. when chaos has penetrated so far into the moral being of nations they can hardly be expected to produce great men. a great man need not be virtuous, nor his opinions right, but he must have a firm mind, a distinctive, luminous character; if he is to dominate things, something must be dominant in him. we feel him to be great in that he clarifies and brings to expression something which was potential in the rest of us, but which with our burden of flesh and circumstance we were too torpid to utter. the great man is a spontaneous variation in humanity; but not in any direction. a spontaneous variation might be a mere madness or mutilation or monstrosity; in finding the variation admirable we evidently invoke some principle of order to which it conforms. perhaps it makes explicit what was preformed in us also; as when a poet finds the absolutely right phrase for a feeling, or when nature suddenly astonishes us with a form of absolute beauty. or perhaps it makes an unprecedented harmony out of things existing before, but jangled and detached. the first man was a great man for this latter reason; having been an ape perplexed and corrupted by his multiplying instincts, he suddenly found a new way of being decent, by harnessing all those instincts together, through memory and imagination, and giving each in turn a measure of its due; which is what we call being rational. it is a new road to happiness, if you have strength enough to castigate a little the various impulses that sway you in turn. why then is the martyr, who sacrifices everything to one attraction, distinguished from the criminal or the fool, who do the same thing? evidently because the spirit that in the martyr destroys the body is the very spirit which the body is stifling in the rest of us; and although his private inspiration may be irrational, the tendency of it is not, but reduces the public conscience to act before any one else has had the courage to do so. greatness is spontaneous; simplicity, trust in some one clear instinct, are essential to it; but the spontaneous variation must be in the direction of some possible sort of order; it must exclude and leave behind what is incapable of being moralised. how, then, should there be any great heroes, saints, artists, philosophers, or legislators in an age when nobody trusts himself, or feels any confidence in reason, in an age when the word _dogmatic_ is a term of reproach? greatness has character and severity, it is deep and sane, it is distinct and perfect. for this reason there is none of it to-day. there is indeed another kind of greatness, or rather largeness of mind, which consists in being a synthesis of humanity in its current phases, even if without prophetic emphasis or direction: the breadth of a goethe, rather than the fineness of a shelley or a leopardi. but such largeness of mind, not to be vulgar, must be impartial, comprehensive, olympian; it would not be greatness if its miscellany were not dominated by a clear genius and if before the confusion of things the poet or philosopher were not himself delighted, exalted, and by no means confused. nor does this presume omniscience on his part. it is not necessary to fathom the ground or the structure of everything in order to know what to make of it. stones do not disconcert a builder because he may not happen to know what they are chemically; and so the unsolved problems of life and nature, and the babel of society, need not disturb the genial observer, though he may be incapable of unravelling them. he may set these dark spots down in their places, like so many caves or wells in a landscape, without feeling bound to scrutinise their depths simply because their depths are obscure. unexplored they may have a sort of lustre, explored they might merely make him blind, and it may be a sufficient understanding of them to know that they are not worth investigating. in this way the most chaotic age and the most motley horrors might be mirrored limpidly in a great mind, as the renaissance was mirrored in the works of raphael and shakespeare; but the master's eye itself must be single, his style unmistakable, his visionary interest in what he depicts frank and supreme. hence this comprehensive sort of greatness too is impossible in an age when moral confusion is pervasive, when characters are complex, undecided, troubled by the mere existence of what is not congenial to them, eager to be not themselves; when, in a word, thought is weak and the flux of things overwhelms it. without great men and without clear convictions this age is nevertheless very active intellectually; it is studious, empirical, inventive, sympathetic. its wisdom consists in a certain contrite openness of mind; it flounders, but at least in floundering it has gained a sense of possible depths in all directions. under these circumstances, some triviality and great confusion in its positive achievements are not unpromising things, nor even unamiable. these are the _wanderjahre_ of faith; it looks smilingly at every new face, which might perhaps be that of a predestined friend; it chases after any engaging stranger; it even turns up again from time to time at home, full of a new tenderness for all it had abandoned there. but to settle down would be impossible now. the intellect, the judgment are in abeyance. life is running turbid and full; and it is no marvel that reason, after vainly supposing that it ruled the world, should abdicate as gracefully as possible, when the world is so obviously the sport of cruder powers--vested interests, tribal passions, stock sentiments, and chance majorities. having no responsibility laid upon it, reason has become irresponsible. many critics and philosophers seem to conceive that thinking aloud is itself literature. sometimes reason tries to lend some moral authority to its present masters, by proving how superior they are to itself; it worships evolution, instinct, novelty, action, as it does in modernism, pragmatism, and the philosophy of m. bergson. at other times it retires into the freehold of those temperaments whom this world has ostracised, the region of the non-existent, and comforts itself with its indubitable conquests there. this happened earlier to the romanticists (in a way which i have tried to describe in the subjoined paper on shelley) although their poetic and political illusions did not suffer them to perceive it. it is happening now, after disillusion, to some radicals and mathematicians like mr. bertrand russell, and to others of us who, perhaps without being mathematicians or even radicals, feel that the sphere of what happens to exist is too alien and accidental to absorb all the play of a free mind, whose function, after it has come to clearness and made its peace with things, is to touch them with its own moral and intellectual light, and to exist for its own sake. these are but gusts of doctrine; yet they prove that the spirit is not dead in the lull between its seasons of steady blowing. who knows which of them may not gather force presently and carry the mind of the coming age steadily before it? ii modernism and christianity prevalent winds of doctrine must needs penetrate at last into the cloister. social instability and moral confusion, reconstructions of history and efforts after reform, are things characteristic of the present age; and under the name of modernism they have made their appearance even in that institution which is constitutionally the most stable, of most explicit mind, least inclined to revise its collective memory or established usages--i mean the catholic church. even after this church was constituted by the fusion of many influences and by the gradual exclusion of those heresies--some of them older than explicit orthodoxy--which seemed to misrepresent its implications or spirit, there still remained an inevitable propensity among catholics to share the moods of their respective ages and countries, and to reconcile them if possible with their professed faith. often these cross influences were so strong that the profession of faith was changed frankly to suit them, and catholicism was openly abandoned; but even where this did not occur we may detect in the catholic minds of each age some strange conjunctions and compromises with the _zeitgeist_. thus the morality of chivalry and war, the ideals of foppishness and honour, have been long maintained side by side with the maxims of the gospel, which they entirely contradict. later the system of copernicus, incompatible at heart with the anthropocentric and moralistic view of the world which christianity implies, was accepted by the church with some lame attempt to render it innocuous; but it remains an alien and hostile element, like a spent bullet lodged in the flesh. in more recent times we have heard of liberal catholicism, the attitude assumed by some generous but divided minds, too much attached to their traditional religion to abandon it, but too weak and too hopeful not to glow also with enthusiasm for modern liberty and progress. had those minds been, i will not say intelligently catholic but radically christian, they would have felt that this liberty was simply liberty to be damned, and this progress not an advance towards the true good of man, but a lapse into endless and heathen wanderings. for christianity, in its essence and origin, was an urgent summons to repent and come out of just such a worldly life as modern liberty and progress hold up as an ideal to the nations. in the roman empire, as in the promised land of liberalism, each man sought to get and to enjoy as much as he could, and supported a ponderous government neutral as to religion and moral traditions, but favourable to the accumulation of riches; so that a certain enlightenment and cosmopolitanism were made possible, and private passions and tastes could be gratified without encountering persecution or public obloquy, though not without a general relaxation of society and a vulgarising of arts and manners. that something so self-indulgent and worldly as this ideal of liberalism could have been thought compatible with christianity, the first initiation into which, in baptism, involves renouncing the world, might well astonish us, had we not been rendered deaf to moral discords by the very din which from our birth they have been making in our ears. but this is not all. primitive christianity was not only a summons to turn one's heart and mind away from a corrupt world; it was a summons to do so under pain of instant and terrible punishment. it was the conviction of pious jews since the days of the prophets that mercilessness, avarice, and disobedience to revealed law were the direct path to ruin; a world so wicked as the liberal world against which st. john the baptist thundered was necessarily on the verge of destruction. sin, although we moderns may not think so, seemed to the ancient jews a fearful imprudence. the hand of the lord would descend on it heavily, and very soon. the whole roman civilisation was to be overthrown in the twinkling of an eye. those who hoped to be of the remnant and to be saved, so as to lead a clarified and heavenly life in the new jerusalem, must hasten to put on sackcloth and ashes, to fast and to pray, to watch with girded loins for the coming of the kingdom; it was superfluous for them to study the dead past or to take thought for the morrow. the cataclysm was at hand; a new heaven and a new earth--far more worthy of study--would be unrolled before that very generation. there was indeed something terribly levelling, revolutionary, serious, and expectant about that primitive gospel; and in so far as liberalism possessed similar qualities, in so far as it was moved by indignation, pity, and fervent hope, it could well preach on early christian texts. but the liberal catholics were liberals of the polite and governmental sort; they were shocked at suffering rather than at sin, and they feared not the lord but the movement of public opinion. some of them were vaguely pious men, whose conservativism in social and moral matters forbade them to acquiesce in the disappearance of the church altogether, and they thought it might be preserved, as the english church is, by making opportune concessions. others were simply aristocrats, desirous that the pacifying influence of religion should remain strong over the masses. the clergy was not, in any considerable measure, tossed by these opposing currents; the few priests who were liberals were themselves men of the world, patriots, and orators. such persons could not look forward to a fierce sifting of the wheat from the tares, or to any burning of whole bundles of nations, for they were nothing if not romantic nationalists, and the idea of faggots of any sort was most painful to their minds. they longed rather for a sweet cohabitation with everybody, and a mild tolerance of almost everything. a war for religion seemed to them a crime, but a war for nationality glorious and holy. no wonder that their work in nation-building has endured, while their sentiments in religion are scattered to the winds. the liberalism for the sake of which they were willing to eviscerate their christianity has already lost its vitality; it survives as a pale parliamentary tradition, impotent before the tide of socialism rising behind its back. the catholicism which they wished to see gently lingering is being driven out of national life by official spoliations and popular mockeries. it is fast becoming what it was in the beginning, a sect with more or less power to alienate the few who genuinely adhere to it from the pagan society in which they are forced to live. the question what is true or essential christianity is a thorny one, because each party gives the name of genuine christianity to what it happens to believe. thus professor harnack, not to mention less distinguished historians, makes the original essence of christianity coincide--what a miracle!--with his own lutheran and kantian sentiments. but the essence of christianity, as of everything else, is the whole of it; and the genuine nature of a seed is at least as well expressed by what it becomes in contact with the earth and air as by what it seems in its primitive minuteness. it is quite true, as the modernists tell us, that in the beginning christian faith was not a matter of scholastic definitions, nor even of intellectual dogmas. religions seldom begin in that form, and paganism was even less intellectual and less dogmatic than early christianity. the most primitive christian faith consisted in a conversion of the whole man--intellect, habits, and affections--from the life of the world to a new mystical life, in answer to a moral summons and a prophecy about destiny. the moral summons was to renounce home, kindred, possessions, the respect of men, the hypocrisies of the synagogue, and to devote oneself to a wandering and begging life, healing, praying, and preaching. and preaching what? preaching the prophecy about destiny which justified that conversion and renunciation; preaching that the world, in its present constitution, was about to be destroyed on account of its wickedness, and that the ignorant, the poor, and the down-trodden, if they trusted this prophecy, and turned their backs at once on all the world pursues, would be saved in the new deluge, and would form a new society, of a more or less supernatural kind, to be raised on the ruins of all present institutions. the poor were called, but the rich were called also, and perhaps even the heathen; for there was in all men, even in all nature (this is the one touch of speculative feeling in the gospel), a precious potentiality of goodness. all were essentially amiable, though accidentally wretched and depraved; and by the magic of a new faith and hope this soul of goodness in all living things might be freed from the hideous incubus of circumstance that now oppresses it, and might come to bloom openly as the penetrating eye of the lover, even now, sees that it could bloom. love, then, and sympathy, particularly towards the sinful and diseased, a love relieved of sentimentality by the deliberate practice of healing, warning, and comforting; a complete aversion from all the interests of political society, and a confident expectation of a cataclysm that should suddenly transfigure the world--such was christian religion in its origin. the primitive christian was filled with the sense of a special election and responsibility, and of a special hope. he was serene, abstracted, incorruptible, his inward eye fixed on a wonderful revelation. he was as incapable of attacking as of serving the state; he despised or ignored everything for which the state exists, labour, wealth, power, felicity, splendour, and learning. with christ the natural man in him had been crucified, and in christ he had risen again a spiritual man, to walk the earth, as a messenger from heaven, for a few more years. his whole life was an experience of perpetual graces and miracles. the prophecy about the speedy end of this wicked world was not fulfilled as the early christians expected; but this fact is less disconcerting to the christian than one would suppose. the spontaneous or instinctive christian--and there is such a type of mind, quite apart from any affiliation to historic christianity--takes a personal and dramatic view of the world; its values and even its reality are the values and reality which it may have for him. it would profit him nothing to win it, if he lost his own soul. that prophecy about the destruction of nature springs from this attitude; nature must be subservient to the human conscience; it must satisfy the hopes of the prophet and vindicate the saints. that the years should pass and nothing should seem to happen need not shatter the force of this prophecy for those whose imagination it excites. this world must actually vanish very soon for each of us; and this is the point of view that counts with the christian mind. even if we consider posterity, the kingdoms and arts and philosophies of this world are short lived; they shift their aims continually and shift their substance. the prophecy of their destruction is therefore being fulfilled continually; the need of repentance, if one would be saved, is truly urgent; and the means of that salvation cannot be an operation upon this world, but faith in another world that, in the experience of each soul, is to follow upon it. thus the summons to repent and the prophecy about destiny which were the root of christianity, can fully retain their spirit when for "this wicked world" we read "this transitory life" and for "the coming of the kingdom" we read "life everlasting." the change is important, but it affects the application rather than the nature of the gospel. morally there is a loss, because men will never take so hotly what concerns another life as what affects this one; speculatively, on the other hand, there is a gain, for the expectation of total transformations and millenniums on earth is a very crude illusion, while the relation of the soul to nature is an open question in philosophy, and there will always be a great loftiness and poetic sincerity in the feeling that the soul is a stranger in this world and has other destinies in store. what would make the preaching of the gospel utterly impossible would be the admission that it had no authority to proclaim what has happened or what is going to happen, either in this world or in another. a prophecy about destiny is an account, however vague, of events to be actually experienced, and of their causes. the whole inspiration of hebraic religion lies in that. it was not metaphorically that sodom and gomorrah were destroyed. the promised land was a piece of earth. the kingdom was an historical fact. it was not symbolically that israel was led into captivity, or that it returned and restored the temple. it was not ideally that a messiah was to come. memory of such events is in the same field as history; prophecy is in the same field as natural science. natural science too is an account of what will happen, and under what conditions. it too is a prophecy about destiny. accordingly, while it is quite true that speculations about nature and history are not contained explicitly in the religion of the gospel, yet the message of this religion is one which speculations about nature and reconstructions of history may extend congruously, or may contradict and totally annul. if physical science should remove those threats of destruction to follow upon sin which christian prophecy contains, or if it should prove that what brings destruction is just that unworldly, prayerful, all-forgiving, idle, and revolutionary attitude which the gospel enjoins, then physical science would be incompatible with christianity; not with this or that text of the bible merely, about the sun standing still or the dead rising again, but with the whole foundation of what christ himself, with john the baptist, st. paul, st. james, and st. john, preached to the world. even the pagan poets, when they devised a myth, half believed in it for a fact. what really lent some truth--moral truth only--to their imaginations was indeed the beauty of nature, the comedy of life, or the groans of mankind, crushed between the upper and the nether millstones; but being scientifically ignorant they allowed their pictorial wisdom to pass for a revealed science, for a physics of the unseen. if even among the pagans the poetic expression of human experience could be mistaken in this way for knowledge of occult existences, how much more must this have been the case among a more ignorant and a more intense nation like the jews? indeed, _events_ are what the jews have always remembered and hoped for; if their religion was not a guide to events, an assured means towards a positive and experimental salvation, it was nothing. their theology was meagre in the description of the lord's nature, but rich in the description of his ways. indeed, their belief in the existence and power of the lord, if we take it pragmatically and not imaginatively, was simply the belief in certain moral harmonies in destiny, in the sufficiency of conduct of a certain sort to secure success and good fortune, both national and personal. this faith was partly an experience and partly a demand; it turned on history and prophecy. history was interpreted by a prophetic insight into the moral principle, believed to govern it; and prophecy was a passionate demonstration of the same principles, at work in the catastrophes of the day or of the morrow. there is no doubt a platonic sort of religion, a worship of the ideal apart from its power to realise itself, which has entered largely into the life of christians; and the more mystical and disinterested they were, the more it has tended to take the place of hebraism. but the platonists, too, when left to their instincts, follow their master in attributing power and existence, by a sort of cumulative worship and imaginative hyperbole, to what in the first place they worship because it is good. to divorce, then, as the modernists do, the history of the world from the story of salvation, and god's government and the sanctions of religion from the operation of matter, is a _fundamental apostasy_ from christianity. christianity, being a practical and living faith in a possible eventual redemption from sin, from the punishment for sin, from the thousand circumstances that make the most brilliant worldly life a sham and a failure, essentially involves a faith in a supernatural physics, in such an economy of forces, behind, within, and around the discoverable forces of nature, that the destiny which nature seems to prepare for us may be reversed, that failures may be turned into successes, ignominy into glory, and humble faith into triumphant vision: and this not merely by a change in our point of view or estimation of things, but by an actual historical, physical transformation in the things themselves. to believe this in our day may require courage, even a certain childish simplicity; but were not courage and a certain childish simplicity always requisite for christian faith? it never was a religion for the rationalist and the worldling; it was based on alienation from the world, from the intellectual world no less than from the economic and political. it flourished in the oriental imagination that is able to treat all existence with disdain and to hold it superbly at arm's length, and at the same time is subject to visions and false memories, is swayed by the eloquence of private passion, and raises confidently to heaven the cry of the poor, the bereaved, and the distressed. its daily bread, from the beginning, was hope for a miraculous change of scene, for prison-walls falling to the ground about it, for a heart inwardly comforted, and a shower of good things from the sky. it is clear that a supernaturalistic faith of this sort, which might wholly inspire some revolutionary sect, can never wholly inspire human society. whenever a nation is converted to christianity, its christianity, in practice, must be largely converted into paganism. the true christian is in all countries a pilgrim and a stranger; not his kinsmen, but whoever does the will of his father who is in heaven is his brother and sister and mother and his real compatriot. in a nation that calls itself christian every child may be pledged, at baptism, to renounce the world, the flesh, and the devil; but the flesh will assert itself notwithstanding, the devil will have his due, and the nominal christian, become a man of business and the head of a family, will form an integral part of that very world which he will pledge his children to renounce in turn as he holds them over the font. the lips, even the intellect, may continue to profess the christian ideal; but public and social life will be guided by quite another. the ages of faith, the ages of christian unity, were such only superficially. when all men are christians only a small element can be christian in the average man. the thirteenth century, for instance, is supposed to be the golden age of catholicism; but what seems to have filled it, if we may judge by the witness of dante? little but bitter conflicts, racial and religious; faithless rebellions, both in states and in individuals, against the christian regimen; worldliness in the church, barbarism in the people, and a dawning of all sorts of scientific and æsthetic passions, in themselves quite pagan and contrary to the spirit of the gospel. christendom at that time was by no means a kingdom of god on earth; it was a conglomeration of incorrigible rascals, intellectually more or less christian. we may see the same thing under different circumstances in the spain of philip ii. here was a government consciously labouring in the service of the church, to resist turks, convert pagans, banish moslems, and crush protestants. yet the very forces engaged in defending the church, the army and the inquisition, were alien to the christian life; they were fit embodiments rather of chivalry and greed, or of policy and jealous dominion. the ecclesiastical forces also, theology, ritual, and hierarchy, employed in spreading the gospel were themselves alien to the gospel. an anti-worldly religion finds itself in fact in this dilemma: if it remains merely spiritual, developing no material organs, it cannot affect the world; while if it develops organs with which to operate on the world, these organs become a part of the world from which it is trying to wean the individual spirit, so that the moment it is armed for conflict such a religion has two enemies on its hands. it is stifled by its necessary armour, and adds treason in its members to hostility in its foes. the passions and arts it uses against its opponents are as fatal to itself as those which its opponents array against it. in every age in which a supernaturalistic system is preached we must accordingly expect to find the world standing up stubbornly against it, essentially unconverted and hostile, whatever name it may have been christened with; and we may expect the spirit of the world to find expression, not only in overt opposition to the supernaturalistic system, but also in the surviving or supervening worldliness of the faithful. such an insidious revulsion of the natural man against a religion he does not openly discard is what, in modern christendom, we call the renaissance. no less than the revolution (which is the later open rebellion against the same traditions) the renaissance is radically inimical to christianity. to say that christianity survives, even if weakened or disestablished, is to say that the renaissance and the revolution are still incomplete, far from being past events they are living programmes. the ideal of the renaissance is to restore pagan standards in polite learning, in philosophy, in sentiment, and in morals. it is to abandon and exactly reverse one's baptismal vows. instead of forsaking this wicked world, the men of the renaissance accept, love, and cultivate the world, with all its pomp and vanities; they believe in the blamelessness of natural life and in its perfectibility; or they cling at least to a noble ambition to perfect it and a glorious ability to enjoy it. instead of renouncing the flesh, they feed, refine, and adorn it; their arts glorify its beauty and its passions. and far from renouncing the devil--if we understand by the devil the proud assertion on the part of the finite of its autonomy, autonomy of the intellect in science, autonomy of the heart and will in morals--the men of the renaissance are possessed by the devil altogether. they worship nothing and acknowledge authority in nothing save in their own spirit. no opposition could be more radical and complete than that between the renaissance and the anti-worldly religion of the gospel. "i see a vision," nietzsche says somewhere, "so full of meaning, yet so wonderfully strange--cæsar borgia become pope! do you understand? ah, that would verily have been the triumph for which i am longing to-day. then christianity would have been done for." and nietzsche goes on to accuse luther of having spoiled this lovely possibility, which was about to be realised, by frightening the papacy out of its mellow paganism into something like a restoration of the old acrid christianity. a dream of this sort, even if less melodramatic than nietzsche's, has visited the mind of many a neo-catholic or neo-pagan. if the humanistic tendencies of the renaissance could have worked on unimpeded, might not a revolution from above, a gradual rationalisation, have transformed the church? its dogma might have been insensibly understood to be nothing but myth, its miracles nothing but legend, its sacraments mere symbols, its bible pure literature, its liturgy just poetry, its hierarchy an administrative convenience, its ethics an historical accident, and its whole function simply to lend a warm mystical aureole to human culture and ignorance. the reformation prevented this euthanasia of christianity. it re-expressed the unenlightened absolutism of the old religion; it insisted that dogma was scientifically true, that salvation was urgent and fearfully doubtful, that the world, and the worldly paganised church, were as sodom and gomorrah, and that sin, though natural to man, was to god an abomination. in fighting this movement, which soon became heretical, the catholic church had to fight it with its own weapons, and thereby reawakened in its own bosom the same sinister convictions. it did not have to dig deep to find them. even without luther, convinced catholics would have appeared in plenty to prevent cæsar borgia, had he secured the tiara, from being pope in any novel fashion or with any revolutionary result. the supernaturalism, the literal realism, the other-worldliness of the catholic church are too much the soul of it to depart without causing its dissolution. while the church lives at all, it must live on the strength which these principles can lend it. and they are not altogether weak. persons who feel themselves to be exiles in this world--and what noble mind, from empedocles down, has not had that feeling?--are mightily inclined to believe themselves citizens of another. there will always be spontaneous, instinctive christians; and when, under the oppression of sin, salvation is looked for and miracles are expected, the supernatural scheme of salvation which historical christianity offers will not always be despised. the modernists think the church is doomed if it turns a deaf ear to the higher criticism or ignores the philosophy of m. bergson. but it has outlived greater storms. a moment when any exotic superstition can find excitable minds to welcome it, when new and grotesque forms of faith can spread among the people, when the ultimate impotence of science is the theme of every cheap philosopher, when constructive philology is reefing its sails, when the judicious grieve at the portentous metaphysical shams of yesterday and smile at those of to-day--such a moment is rather ill chosen for prophesying the extinction of a deep-rooted system of religion because your own studies make it seem to you incredible; especially if you hold a theory of knowledge that regards all opinions as arbitrary postulates, which it may become convenient to abandon at any moment. modernism is the infiltration into minds that begin by being catholic and wish to remain so of two contemporary influences: one the rationalistic study of the bible and of church history, the other modern philosophy, especially in its mystical and idealistic forms. the sensitiveness of the modernists to these two influences is creditable to them as men, however perturbing it may be to them as catholics; for what makes them adopt the views of rationalistic historians is simply the fact that those views seem, in substance, convincingly true; and what makes them wander into transcendental speculations is the warmth of their souls, needing to express their faith anew, and to follow their inmost inspiration, wherever it may lead them. a scrupulous honesty in admitting the probable facts of history, and a fresh upwelling of mystical experience, these are the motives, creditable to any spiritual man, that have made modernists of so many. but these excellent things appear in the modernists under rather unfortunate circumstances. for the modernists to begin with are catholics, and usually priests; they are pledged to a fixed creed, touching matters both of history and of philosophy; and it would be a marvel if rationalistic criticism of the bible and rationalistic church history confirmed that creed on its historical side, or if irresponsible personal speculations, in the manner of ritschl or of m. bergson, confirmed its metaphysics. i am far from wishing to suggest that an orthodox christian cannot be scrupulously honest in admitting the probable facts, or cannot have a fresh spiritual experience, or frame an original philosophy. but what we think probable hangs on our standard of probability and of evidence; the spiritual experiences that come to us are according to our disposition and affections; and any new philosophy we frame will be an answer to the particular problems that beset us, and an expression of the solutions we hope for. now this standard of probability, this disposition, and these problems and hopes may be those of a christian or they may not. the true christian, for instance, will begin by regarding miracles as probable; he will either believe he has experienced them in his own person, or hope for them earnestly; nothing will seem to him more natural, more in consonance with the actual texture of life, than that they should have occurred abundantly and continuously in the past. when he finds the record of one he will not inquire, like the rationalist, how that false record could have been concocted; but rather he will ask how the rationalist, in spite of so many witnesses to the contrary, has acquired his fixed assurance of the universality of the commonplace. an answer perhaps could be offered of which the rationalist need not be ashamed. we might say that faith in the universality of the commonplace (in its origin, no doubt, simply an imaginative presumption) is justified by our systematic mastery of matter in the arts. the rejection of miracles _a priori_ expresses a conviction that the laws by which we can always control or predict the movement of matter govern that movement universally; and evidently, if the material course of history is fixed mechanically, the mental and moral course of it is thereby fixed on the same plan; for a mind not expressed somehow in matter cannot be revealed to the historian. this may be good philosophy, but we could not think so if we were good christians. we should then expect to move matter by prayer. rationalistic history and criticism are therefore based, as pius x. most accurately observed in his encyclical on modernism, on rationalistic philosophy; and we might add that rationalistic philosophy is based on practical art, and that practical art, by which we help ourselves, like prometheus, and make instruments of what religion worships, when this art is carried beyond the narrowest bounds, is the essence of pride and irreligion. miners, machinists, and artisans are irreligious by trade. religion is the love of life in the consciousness of impotence. similarly, the spontaneous insight of christians and their new philosophies will express a christian disposition. the chief problems in them will be sin and redemption; the conclusion will be some fresh intuition of divine love and heavenly beatitude. it would be no sign of originality in a christian to begin discoursing on love like ovid or on heaven like mohammed, or stop discoursing on them at all; it would be a sign of apostasy. now the modernists' criterion of probability in history or of worthiness in philosophy is not the christian criterion. it is that of their contemporaries outside the church, who are rationalists in history and egotists or voluntarists in philosophy. the biblical criticism and mystical speculations of the modernists call for no special remark; they are such as any studious or spiritual person, with no inherited religion, might compose in our day. but what is remarkable and well-nigh incredible is that even for a moment they should have supposed this non-christian criterion in history and this non-christian direction in metaphysics compatible with adherence to the catholic church. that seems to presuppose, in men who in fact are particularly thoughtful and learned, an inexplicable ignorance of history, of theology, and of the world. everything, however, has its explanation. in a catholic seminary, as the modernists bitterly complain, very little is heard of the views held in the learned world outside. it is not taught there that the christian religion is only one of many, some of them older and superior to it in certain respects; that it itself is eclectic and contains inward contradictions; that it is and always has been divided into rancorous sects; that its position in the world is precarious and its future hopeless. on the contrary, everything is so presented as to persuade the innocent student that all that is good or true anywhere is founded on the faith he is preparing to preach, that the historical evidences of its truth are irrefragable, that it is logically perfect and spiritually all-sufficing. these convictions, which no breath from the outside is allowed to ruffle, are deepened in the case of pensive and studious minds, like those of the leading modernists, by their own religious experience. they understand in what they are taught more, perhaps, than their teachers intend. they understand how those ideas originated, they can trace a similar revelation in their own lives. this (which a cynic might expect would be the beginning of disillusion) only deepens their religious faith and gives it a wider basis; report and experience seem to conspire. but trouble is brewing here; for a report that can be confirmed by experience can also be enlarged by it, and it is easy to see in traditional revelation itself many diverse sources; different temperaments and different types of thought have left their impress upon it. yet other temperaments and other types of thought might continue the task. revelation seems to be progressive; a part may fall to us also to furnish. this insight, for a christian, has its dangers. no doubt it gives him a key to the understanding and therefore, in one sense, to the acceptance of many a dogma. christian dogmas were not pieces of wanton information fallen from heaven; they were imaginative views, expressing now some primordial instinct in all men, now the national hopes and struggles of israel, now the moral or dialectical philosophy of the later jews and greeks. such a derivation does not, of itself, render these dogmas necessarily mythical. they might be ideal expressions of human experience and yet be literally true as well, provided we assume (what is assumed throughout in christianity) that the world is made for man, and that even god is just such a god as man would have wished him to be, the existent ideal of human nature and the foregone solution to all human problems. nevertheless, christian dogmas are definite,[ ] while human inspirations are potentially limitless; and if the object of the two is identical either the dogmas must be stretched and ultimately abandoned, or inspiration which does not conform to them must be denounced as illusory or diabolical. [footnote : at least in their devotional and moral import. i suggest this qualification in deference to m. le roy's interesting theory of dogma, viz., that the verbal or intellectual definition of a dogma may be changed without changing the dogma itself (as a sentence might be translated into a new language without altering the meaning) provided the suggested conduct and feeling in the presence of the mystery remained the same. thus the definition of transubstantiation might be modified to suit an idealistic philosophy, but the new definition would be no less orthodox than the old if it did not discourage the worship of the consecrated elements or the sense of mystical union with christ in the sacrament.] at this point the modernist first chooses the path which must lead him away, steadily and for ever, from the church which he did not think to desert. he chooses a personal, psychological, variable standard of inspiration; he becomes, in principle, a protestant. why does he not become one in name also? because, as one of the most distinguished modernists has said, the age of partial heresy is past. it is suicidal to make one part of an organic system the instrument for attacking another part; and it is also comic. what you appeal to and stand firmly rooted in is no more credible, no more authoritative, than what you challenge in its name. in vain will you pit the church against the pope; at once you will have to pit the bible against the church, and then the new testament against the old, or the genuine jesus against the new testament, or god revealed in nature against god revealed in the bible, or god revealed in your own conscience or transcendental self against god revealed in nature; and you will be lucky if your conscience and transcendental self can long hold their own against the flux of immediate experience. religion, the modernists feel, must be taken broadly and sympathetically, as a great human historical symbol for the truth. at least in christianity you should aspire to embrace and express the whole; to seize it in its deep inward sources and follow it on all sides in its vital development. but if the age of partial heresy is past, has not the age of total heresy succeeded? what is this whole phenomenon of religion but human experience interpreted by human imagination? and what is the modernist, who would embrace it all, but a freethinker, with a sympathetic interest in religious illusions? of course, that is just what he is; but it takes him a strangely long time to discover it. he fondly supposes (such is the prejudice imbibed by him in the cradle and in the seminary) that all human inspirations are necessarily similar and concurrent, that by trusting an inward light he cannot be led away from his particular religion, but on the contrary can only find confirmation for it, together with fresh spiritual energies. he has been reared in profound ignorance of other religions, which were presented to him, if at all, only in grotesque caricature; or if anything good had to be admitted in them, it was set down to a premonition of his own system or a derivation from it--a curious conceit, which seems somehow not to have wholly disappeared from the minds of protestants, or even of professors of philosophy. i need not observe how completely the secret of each alien religion is thereby missed and its native accent outraged: the most serious consequence, for the modernist, of this unconsciousness of whatever is not christian is an unconsciousness of what, in contrast to other religions, christianity itself is. he feels himself full of love--except for the pope--of mysticism, and of a sort of archaeological piety. he is learned and eloquent and wistful. why should he not remain in the church? why should he not bring all its cold and recalcitrant members up to his own level of insight? the modernist, like the protestants before him, is certainly justified in contrasting a certain essence or true life of religion with the formulas and practices, not all equally well-chosen, which have crystallised round it. in the routine of catholic teaching and worship there is notoriously a deal of mummery: phrases and ceremonies abound that have lost their meaning, and that people run through without even that general devout attitude and unction which, after all, is all that can be asked for in the presence of mysteries. not only is all sense of the historical or moral basis of dogma wanting, but the dogma itself is hardly conceived explicitly; all is despatched with a stock phrase, or a quotation from some theological compendium. ecclesiastical authority acts as if it felt that more profundity would be confusing and that more play of mind might be dangerous. this is that "scholasticism" and "mediævalism" against which the modernists inveigh or under which they groan; and to this intellectual barrenness may be added the offences against taste, verisimilitude, and justice which their more critical minds may discern in many an act and pronouncement of their official superiors. thus both their sense for historical truth and their spontaneous mysticism drive the modernists to contrast with the official religion what was pure and vital in the religion of their fathers. like the early protestants, they wish to revert to a more genuine christianity; but while their historical imagination is much more accurate and well-fed than that of any one in the sixteenth century could be, they have no hold on the protestant principle of faith. the protestants, taking the bible as an oracle which personal inspiration was to interpret, could reform tradition in any way and to any extent which their reason or feeling happened to prompt. but so long as their christianity was a positive faith, the residue, when all the dross had been criticised and burned away, was of divine authority. the bible never became for them merely an ancient jewish encyclopædia, often eloquent, often curious, and often barbarous. god never became a literary symbol, covering some problematical cosmic force, or some ideal of the conscience. but for the modernist this total transformation takes place at once. he keeps the whole catholic system, but he believes in no part of it as it demands to be believed. he understands and shares the moral experience that it enshrines; but the bubble has been pricked, the painted world has been discovered to be but painted. he has ceased to be a christian to become an amateur, or if you will a connoisseur, of christianity. he believes--and this unquestioningly, for he is a child of his age--in history, in philology, in evolution, perhaps in german idealism; he does not believe in sin, nor in salvation, nor in revelation. his study of history has disclosed christianity to him in its evolution and in its character of a myth; he wishes to keep it in its entirety precisely because he regards it as a convention, like a language or a school of art; whereas the protestants wished, on the contrary, to reduce it to its original substance, because they fondly supposed that that original substance was so much literal truth. modernism is accordingly an ambiguous and unstable thing. it is the love of all christianity in those who perceive that it is all a fable. it is the historic attachment to his church of a catholic who has discovered that he is a pagan. when the modernists are pressed to explain their apparently double allegiance, they end by saying that what historical and philological criticism conjectures to be the facts must be accepted as such; while the christian dogmas touching these things--the incarnation and resurrection of christ, for instance--must be taken in a purely symbolic or moral sense. in saying this they may be entirely right; it seems to many of us that christianity is indeed a fable, yet full of meaning if you take it as such; for what scraps of historical truth there may be in the bible or of metaphysical truth in theology are of little importance; whilst the true greatness and beauty of this, as of all religions, is to be found in its _moral idealism_, i mean, in the expression it gives, under cover of legends, prophecies, or mysteries, of the effort, the tragedy, and the consolations of human life. such a moral fable is what christianity is in fact; but it is far from what it is in intention. the modernist view, the view of a sympathetic rationalism, revokes the whole jewish tradition on which christianity is grafted; it takes the seriousness out of religion; it sweetens the pang of sin, which becomes misfortune; it removes the urgency of salvation; it steals empirical reality away from the last judgment, from hell, and from heaven; it steals historical reality away from the christ of religious tradition and personal devotion. the moral summons and the prophecy about destiny which were the soul of the gospel have lost all force for it and become fables. the modernist, then, starts with the orthodox but untenable persuasion that catholicism comprehends all that is good; he adds the heterodox though amiable sentiment that any well-meaning ambition of the mind, any hope, any illumination, any science, must be good, and therefore compatible with catholicism. he bathes himself in idealistic philosophy, he dabbles in liberal politics, he accepts and emulates rationalistic exegesis and anti-clerical church history. soon he finds himself, on every particular point, out of sympathy with the acts and tendencies of the church to which he belongs; and then he yields to the most pathetic of his many illusions--he sets about to purge this church, so as not to be compelled to abandon it; to purge it of its first principles, of its whole history, and of its sublime if chimerical ideal. the modernist wishes to reconcile the church and the world. therein he forgets what christianity came into the world to announce and why its message was believed. it came to announce salvation from the world; there should be no more need of just those things which the modernist so deeply loves and respects and blushes that his church should not be adorned with--emancipated science, free poetic religion, optimistic politics, and dissolute art. these things, according to the christian conscience, were all vanity and vexation of spirit, and the pagan world itself almost confessed as much. they were vexatious and vain because they were bred out of sin, out of ignoring the inward and the revealed law of god; and they would lead surely and quickly to destruction. the needful salvation from these follies, christianity went on to announce, had come through the cross of christ; whose grace, together with admission to his future heavenly kingdom, was offered freely to such as believed in him, separated themselves from the world, and lived in charity, humility, and innocence, waiting lamp in hand for the celestial bridegroom. these abstracted and elected spirits were the true disciples of christ and the church itself. having no ears for this essential message of christianity, the modernist also has no eyes for its history. the church converted the world only partially and inessentially; yet christianity was outwardly established as the traditional religion of many nations. and why? because, although the prophecies it relied on were strained and its miracles dubious, it furnished a needful sanctuary from the shames, sorrows, injustices, violence, and gathering darkness of earth; and not only a sanctuary one might fly to, but a holy precinct where one might live, where there was sacred learning, based on revelation and tradition, to occupy the inquisitive, and sacred philosophy to occupy the speculative; where there might be religious art, ministering to the faith, and a new life in the family or in the cloister, transformed by a permeating spirit of charity, sacrifice, soberness, and prayer. these principles by their very nature could not become those of the world, but they could remain in it as a leaven and an ideal. as such they remain to this day, and very efficaciously, in the catholic church. the modernists talk a great deal of development, and they do not see that what they detest in the church is a perfect development of its original essence; that monachism, scholasticism, jesuitism, ultramontanism, and vaticanism are all thoroughly apostolic; beneath the overtones imposed by a series of ages they give out the full and exact note of the new testament. much has been added, but nothing has been lost. development (though those who talk most of it seem to forget it) is not the same as flux and dissolution. it is not a continuity through changes of any sort, but the evolution of something latent and preformed, or else the creation of new instruments of defence for the same original life. in this sense there was an immense development of christianity during the first three centuries, and this development has continued, more slowly, ever since, but only in the roman church; for the eastern churches have refused themselves all new expressions, while the protestant churches have eaten more and more into the core. it is a striking proof of the preservative power of readjustment that the roman church, in the midst of so many external transformations as it has undergone, still demands the same kind of faith that john the baptist demanded, i mean faith in another world. the _mise-en-scène_ has changed immensely. the gospel has been encased in theology, in ritual, in ecclesiastical authority, in conventional forms of charity, like some small bone of a saint in a gilded reliquary; but the relic for once is genuine, and the gospel has been preserved by those thick incrustations. many an isolated fanatic or evangelical missionary in the slums shows a greater resemblance to the apostles in his outer situation than the pope does; but what mind-healer or revivalist nowadays preaches the doom of the natural world and its vanity, or the reversal of animal values, or the blessedness of poverty and chastity, or the inferiority of natural human bonds, or a contempt for lay philosophy? yet in his palace full of pagan marbles the pope actually preaches all this. it is here, and certainly not among the modernists, that the gospel is still believed. of course, it is open to any one to say that there is a nobler religion possible without these trammels and this officialdom, that there is a deeper philosophy than this supernaturalistic rationalism, that there is a sweeter life than this legal piety. perhaps: i think the pagan greeks, the buddhists, the mohammedans would have much to say for themselves before the impartial tribunal of human nature and reason. but they are not christians and do not wish to be. no more, in their hearts, are the modernists, and they should feel it beneath their dignity to pose as such; indeed the more sensitive of them already feel it. to say they are not christians at heart, but diametrically opposed to the fundamental faith and purpose of christianity, is not to say they may not be profound mystics (as many hindus, jews, and pagan greeks have been), or excellent scholars, or generous philanthropists. but the very motive that attaches them to christianity is worldly and un-christian. they wish to preserve the continuity of moral traditions; they wish the poetry of life to flow down to them uninterruptedly and copiously from all the ages. it is an amiable and wise desire; but it shows that they are men of the renaissance, pagan and pantheistic in their profounder sentiment, to whom the hard and narrow realism of official christianity is offensive just because it presupposes that christianity is true. yet even in this historical and poetical allegiance to christianity i suspect the modernists suffer from a serious illusion. they think the weakness of the church lies in its not following the inspirations of the age. but when this age is past, might not that weakness be a source of strength again? for an idea ever to be fashionable is ominous, since it must afterwards be always old-fashioned. no doubt it would be dishonest in any of us now, who see clearly that noah surely did not lead all the animals two by two into the ark, to say that we believe he did so, on the ground that stories of that kind are rather favourable to the spread of religion. no doubt such a story, and even the fables essential to christian theology, are now incredible to most of us. but on the other hand it would be stupid to assume that what is incredible to you or me now must always be incredible to mankind. what was foolishness to the greeks of st. paul's day spread mightily among them one or two hundred years later; and what is foolishness to the modernist of to-day may edify future generations. the imagination is suggestible and there is nothing men will not believe in matters of religion. these rational persuasions by which we are swayed, the conventions of unbelieving science and unbelieving history, are superficial growths; yesterday they did not exist, to-morrow they may have disappeared. this is a doctrine which the modernist philosophers themselves emphasise, as does m. bergson, whom some of them follow, and say the catholic church itself ought to follow in order to be saved--for prophets are constitutionally without a sense of humour. these philosophers maintain that intelligence is merely a convenient method of picking one's way through the world of matter, that it is a falsification of life, and wholly unfit to grasp the roots of it. we may well be of another opinion, if we think the roots of life are not in consciousness but in nature, which intelligence alone can reveal; but we must agree that in life itself intelligence is a superficial growth, and easily blighted, and that the experience of the vanity of the world, of sin, of salvation, of miracles, of strange revelations, and of mystic loves is a far deeper, more primitive, and therefore probably more lasting human possession than is that of clear historical or scientific ideas. now religious experience, as i have said, may take other forms than the christian, and within christianity it may take other forms than the catholic; but the catholic form is as good as any intrinsically for the devotee himself, and it has immense advantages over its probable rivals in charm, in comprehensiveness, in maturity, in internal rationality, in external adaptability; so much so that a strong anti-clerical government, like the french, cannot safely leave the church to be overwhelmed by the forces of science, good sense, ridicule, frivolity, and avarice (all strong forces in france), but must use violence as well to do it. in the english church, too, it is not those who accept the deluge, the resurrection, and the sacraments only as symbols that are the vital party, but those who accept them literally; for only these have anything to say to the poor, or to the rich, that can refresh them. in a frank supernaturalism, in a tight clericalism, not in a pleasant secularisation, lies the sole hope of the church. its sole dignity also lies there. it will not convert the world; it never did and it never could. it will remain a voice crying in the wilderness; but it will believe what it cries, and there will be some to listen to it in the future, as there have been many in the past. as to modernism, it is suicide. it is the last of those concessions to the spirit of the world which half-believers and double-minded prophets have always been found making; but it is a mortal concession. it concedes everything; for it concedes that everything in christianity, as christians hold it, is an illusion. iii the philosophy of m. henri bergson the most representative and remarkable of living philosophers is m. henri bergson. both the form and the substance of his works attract universal attention. his ideas are pleasing and bold, and at least in form wonderfully original; he is persuasive without argument and mystical without conventionality; he moves in the atmosphere of science and free thought, yet seems to transcend them and to be secretly religious. an undercurrent of zeal and even of prophecy seems to animate his subtle analyses and his surprising fancies. he is eloquent, and to a public rather sick of the half-education it has received and eager for some inspiriting novelty he seems more eloquent than he is. he uses the french language (and little else is french about him) in the manner of the more recent artists in words, retaining the precision of phrase and the measured judgments which are traditional in french literature, yet managing to envelop everything in a penumbra of emotional suggestion. each expression of an idea is complete in itself; yet these expressions are often varied and constantly metaphorical, so that we are led to feel that much in that idea has remained unexpressed and is indeed inexpressible. studied and insinuating as m. bergson is in his style, he is no less elaborate in his learning. in the history of philosophy, in mathematics and physics, and especially in natural history he has taken great pains to survey the ground and to assimilate the views and spirit of the most recent scholars. he might be called outright an expert in all these subjects, were it not for a certain externality and want of radical sympathy in his way of conceiving them. a genuine historian of philosophy, for instance, would love to rehearse the views of great thinkers, would feel their eternal plausibility, and in interpreting them would think of himself as little as they ever thought of him. but m. bergson evidently regards plato or kant as persons who did or did not prepare the way for some bergsonian insight. the theory of evolution, taken enthusiastically, is apt to exercise an evil influence on the moral estimation of things. first the evolutionist asserts that later things grow out of earlier, which is true of things in their causes and basis, but not in their values; as modern greece proceeds out of ancient greece materially but does not exactly crown it. the evolutionist, however, proceeds to assume that later things are necessarily better than what they have grown out of: and this is false altogether. this fallacy reinforces very unfortunately that inevitable esteem which people have for their own opinions, and which must always vitiate the history of philosophy when it is a philosopher that writes it. a false subordination comes to be established among systems, as if they moved in single file and all had the last, the author's system, for their secret goal. in hegel, for instance, this conceit is conspicuous, in spite of his mastery in the dramatic presentation of points of view, for his way of reconstructing history was, on the surface, very sympathetic. he too, like m. bergson, proceeded from learning to intuition, and feigned at every turn to identify himself with what he was describing, especially if this was a philosophical attitude or temper. yet in reality his historical judgments were forced and brutal: greece was but a stepping-stone to prussia, plato and spinoza found their higher synthesis in himself, and (though he may not say so frankly) jesus christ and st. francis realised their better selves in luther. actual spiritual life, the thoughts, affections, and pleasures of individuals, passed with hegel for so much moonshine; the true spirit was "objective," it was simply the movement of those circumstances in which actual spirit arose. he was accordingly contemptuous of everything intrinsically good, and his idealism consisted in forcing the natural world into a formula of evolution and then worshipping it as the embodiment of the living god. but under the guise of optimism and belief in a cosmic reason this is mere idolatry of success--a malign superstition, by which all moral independence is crushed out and conscience enslaved to chronology; and it is no marvel if, somewhat to relieve this subjection, history in turn was expurgated, marshalled, and distorted, that it might pass muster for the work of the holy ghost. in truth the value of spiritual life is intrinsic and centred at every point. it is never wholly recoverable. to recover it at all, an historian must have a certain detachment and ingenuousness; knowing the dignity and simplicity of his own mind, he must courteously attribute the same dignity and simplicity to others, unless their avowed attitude prevents; this is to be an intelligent critic and to write history like a gentleman. the truth, which all philosophers alike are seeking, is eternal. it lies as near to one age as to another; the means of discovery alone change, and not always for the better. the course of evolution is no test of what is true or good; else nothing could be good intrinsically nor true simply and ultimately; on the contrary, it is the approach to truth and excellence anywhere, like the approach of tree tops to the sky, that tests the value of evolution, and determines whether it is moving upward or downward or in a circle. m. bergson accordingly misses fire when, for instance, in order utterly to damn a view which he has been criticising, and which may be open to objection on other grounds, he cries that those who hold it "_retardent sur kant;_" as if a clock were the compass of the mind, and he who was one minute late was one point off the course. kant was a hard honest thinker, more sinned against than sinning, from whom a great many people in the nineteenth century have taken their point of departure, departing as far as they chose; but if a straight line of progress could be traced at all through the labyrinth of philosophy, kant would not lie in that line. his thought is essentially excentric and sophisticated, being largely based on two inherited blunders, which a truly progressive philosophy would have to begin by avoiding, thus leaving kant on one side, and weathering his philosophy, as one might scylla or charybdis. the one blunder was that of the english malicious psychology which had maintained since the time of locke that the ideas in the mind are the only objects of knowledge, instead of being the knowledge of objects. the other blunder was that of protestantism that, in groping after that moral freedom which is so ineradicable a need of a pure spirit, thought to find it in a revision of revelation, tradition, and prejudice, so as to be able to cling to these a little longer. how should a system so local, so accidental, and so unstable as kant's be prescribed as a sort of catechism for all humanity? the tree of knowledge has many branches, and all its fruits are not condemned to hang for ever from that one gnarled and contorted bough. m. bergson himself "lags behind" kant on those points on which his better insight requires it, as, for instance, on the reality of time; but with regard to his own philosophy i am afraid he thinks that all previous systems empty into it, which is hardly true, and that all future systems must flow out of it, which is hardly necessary. the embarrassment that qualifies m. bergson's attainments in mathematics and physics has another and more personal source. he understands, but he trembles. non-human immensities frighten him, as they did pascal. he suffers from cosmic agoraphobia. we might think empty space an innocent harmless thing, a mere opportunity to move, which ought to be highly prized by all devotees of motion. but m. bergson is instinctively a mystic, and his philosophy deliberately discredits the existence of anything except in immediacy, that is, as an experience of the heart. what he dreads in space is that the heart should be possessed by it, and transformed into it. he dreads that the imagination should be fascinated by the homogeneous and static, hypnotised by geometry, and actually lost in _auseinandersein_. this would be a real death and petrifaction of consciousness, frozen into contemplation of a monotonous infinite void. what is warm and desirable is rather the sense of variety and succession, as if all visions radiated from the occupied focus or hearth of the self. the more concentration at this habitable point, with the more mental perspectives opening backwards and forwards through time, in a word, the more personal and historical the apparition, the better it would be. things must be reduced again to what they seem; it is vain and terrible to take them for what we find they are. m. bergson is at bottom an apologist for very old human prejudices, an apologist for animal illusion. his whole labour is a plea for some vague but comfortable faith which he dreads to have stolen from him by the progress of art and knowledge. there is a certain trepidation, a certain suppressed instinct to snap at and sting the hated oppressor, as if some desperate small being were at bay before a horrible monster. m. bergson is afraid of space, of mathematics, of necessity, and of eternity; he is afraid of the intellect and the possible discoveries of science; he is afraid of nothingness and death. these fears may prevent him from being a philosopher in the old and noble sense of the word; but they sharpen his sense for many a psychological problem, and make him the spokesman of many an inarticulate soul. animal timidity and animal illusion are deep in the heart of all of us. practice may compel us to bow to the conventions of the intellect, as to those of polite society; but secretly, in our moments of immersion in ourselves, we may find them a great nuisance, even a vain nightmare. could we only listen undisturbed to the beat of protoplasm in our hearts, would not that oracle solve all the riddles of the universe, or at least avoid them? to protect this inner conviction, however, it is necessary for the mystic to sally forth and attack the enemy on his own ground. if he refuted physics and mathematics simply out of his own faith, he might be accused of ignorance of the subject. he will therefore study it conscientiously, yet with a certain irritation and haste to be done with it, somewhat as a jesuit might study protestant theology. such a student, however, is apt to lose his pains; for in retracing a free inquiry in his servile spirit, he remains deeply ignorant, not indeed of its form, but of its nature and value. why, for instance, has m. bergson such a horror of mechanical physics? he seems to think it a black art, dealing in unholy abstractions, and rather dangerous to salvation, and he keeps his metaphysical exorcisms and antidotes always at hand, to render it innocuous, at least to his own soul. but physical science never solicited of anybody that he should be wholly absorbed in the contemplation of atoms, and worship them; that we must worship and lose ourselves in reality, whatever reality may be, is a mystic aberration, which physical science does nothing to foster. nor does any critical physicist suppose that what he describes is the whole of the object; he merely notes the occasions on which its sensible qualities appear, and calculates events. because the calculable side of nature is his province, he does not deny that events have other aspects--the psychic and the moral, for instance--no less real in their way, in terms of which calculation would indeed be impossible. if he chances to call the calculable elements of nature her substance, as it is proper to do, that name is given without passion; he may perfectly well proclaim with goethe that it is in the accidents, in the _farbiger abglanz_, that we have our life. and if it be for his freedom that the mystic trembles, i imagine any man of science would be content with m. bergson's assertion that true freedom is the sense of freedom, and that in any intelligible statement of the situation, even the most indeterministic, this freedom disappears; for it is an immediate experience, not any scheme of relation between events. the horror of mechanical physics arises, then, from attributing to that science pretensions and extensions which it does not have; it arises from the habits of theology and metaphysics being imported inopportunely into science. similarly when m. bergson mentions mathematics, he seems to be thinking of the supposed authority it exercises--one of kant's confusions--over the empirical world, and trying to limit and subordinate that authority, lest movement should somehow be removed from nature, and vagueness from human thought. but nature and human thought are what they are; they have enough affinity to mathematics, as it happens, to suggest that study to our minds, and to give those who go deep into it a great, though partial, mastery over things. nevertheless a true mathematician is satisfied with the hypothetical and ideal cogency of his science, and puts its dignity in that. moreover, m. bergson has the too pragmatic notion that the use of mathematics is to keep our accounts straight in this business world; whereas its inherent use is emancipating and platonic, in that it shows us the possibility of other worlds, less contingent and perturbed than this one. if he allows himself any excursus from his beloved immediacy, it is only in the interests of practice; he little knows the pleasures of a liberal mind, ranging over the congenial realm of internal accuracy and ideal truth, where it can possess itself of what treasures it likes in perfect security and freedom. an artist in his workmanship, m. bergson is not an artist in his allegiance; he has no respect for what is merely ideal. for this very reason, perhaps, he is more at home in natural history than in the exact sciences. he has the gift of observation, and can suggest vividly the actual appearance of natural processes, in contrast to the verbal paraphrase of these processes which is sometimes taken to explain them. he is content to stop at habit without formulating laws; he refuses to assume that the large obvious cycles of change in things can be reduced to mechanism, that is, to minute included cycles repeated _ad libitum_. he may sometimes defend this refusal by sophistical arguments, as when he says that mechanism would require the last stage of the universe to be simultaneous with the first, forgetting that the unit of mechanism is not a mathematical equation but some observed typical event. the refusal itself, however, would be honest scepticism enough were it made with no _arrière pensée_, but simply in view of the immense complexity of the facts and the extreme simplicity of the mechanical hypothesis. in such a situation, to halt at appearances might seem the mark of a true naturalist and a true empiricist not misled by speculative haste and the human passion for system and simplification. at the first reading, m. bergson's _evolution créatrice_ may well dazzle the professional naturalist and seem to him an illuminating confession of the nature and limits of his science; yet a second reading, i have good authority for saying, may as easily reverse that impression. m. bergson never reviews his facts in order to understand them, but only if possible to discredit others who may have fancied they understood. he raises difficulties, he marks the problems that confront the naturalist, and the inadequacy of explanations that may have been suggested. such criticism would be a valuable beginning if it were followed by the suggestion of some new solution; but the suggestion only is that no solution is possible, that the phenomena of life are simply miraculous, and that it is in the tendency or vocation of the animal, not in its body or its past, that we must see the ground of what goes on before us. with such a philosophy of science, it is evident that all progress in the understanding of nature would cease, as it ceased after aristotle. the attempt would again be abandoned to reduce gross and obvious cycles of change, such as generation, growth, and death, to minute latent cycles, so that natural history should offer a picturesque approach to universal physics. if for the magic power of types, invoked by aristotle, we substituted with m. bergson the magic power of the _élan vital_, that is, of evolution in general, we should be referring events not to finer, more familiar, more pervasive processes, but to one all-embracing process, unique and always incomplete. our understanding would end in something far vaguer and looser than what our observation began with. aristotle at least could refer particulars to their specific types, as medicine and social science are still glad enough to do, to help them in guessing and in making a learned show before the public. but if divination and eloquence--for science is out of the question--were to invoke nothing but a fluid tendency to grow, we should be left with a flat history of phenomena and no means of prediction or even classification. all knowledge would be reduced to gossip, infinitely diffuse, perhaps enlisting our dramatic feelings, but yielding no intellectual mastery of experience, no practical competence, and no moral lesson. the world would be a serial novel, to be continued for ever, and all men mere novel-readers. nothing is more familiar to philosophers nowadays than that criticism of knowledge by which we are thrown back upon the appearances from which science starts, upon what is known to children and savages, whilst all that which long experience and reason may infer from those appearances is set down as so much hypothesis; and indeed it is through hypothesis that latent being, if such there be, comes before the mind at all. now such criticism of knowledge might have been straightforward and ingenuous. it might have simply disclosed the fact, very salutary to meditate upon, that the whole frame of nature, with the minds that animate it, is disclosed to us by intelligence; that if we were not intelligent our sensations would exist for us without meaning anything, as they exist for idiots. the criticism of knowledge, however, has usually been taken maliciously, in the sense that it is the idiots only that are not deceived; for any interpretation of sensation is a mental figment, and while experience may have any extent it will it cannot possibly, they say, have expressive value; it cannot reveal anything going on beneath. intelligence and science are accordingly declared to have no penetration, no power to disclose what is latent, for nothing latent exists; they can at best furnish symbols for past or future sensations and the order in which they arise; they can be seven-league boots for striding over the surface of sentience. this negative dogmatism as to knowledge was rendered harmless and futile by the english philosophers, in that they maintained at the same time that everything happens exactly _as if_ the intellect were a true instrument of discovery, and _as if_ a material world underlay our experience and furnished all its occasions. hume, mill, and huxley were scientific at heart, and full of the intelligence they dissected; they seemed to cry to nature: though thou dost not exist, yet will i trust in thee. their idealism was a theoretical scruple rather than a passionate superstition. not so m. bergson; he is not so simple as to invoke the malicious criticism of knowledge in order to go on thinking rationalistically. reason and science make him deeply uncomfortable. his point accordingly is not merely that mechanism is a hypothesis, but that it is a wrong hypothesis. events do not come as if mechanism brought them about; they come, at least in the organic world, as if a magic destiny, and inscrutable ungovernable effort, were driving them on. thus m. bergson introduces metaphysics into natural history; he invokes, in what is supposed to be science, the agency of a power, called the _élan vital,_ on a level with the "will" of schopenhauer or the "unknowable force" of herbert spencer. but there is a scientific vitalism also, which it is well to distinguish from the metaphysical sort. the point at issue between vitalism and mechanism in biology is whether the living processes in nature can be resolved into a combination of the material. the material processes will always remain vital, if we take this word in a descriptive and poetic sense; for they will contain a movement having a certain idiosyncrasy and taking a certain time, like the fall of an apple. the movement of nature is never dialectical; the first part of any event does not logically imply the last part of it. physics is descriptive, historical, reporting after the fact what are found to be the habits of matter. but if these habits are constant and calculable we call the vitality of them mechanical. thus the larger processes of nature, no matter how vital they may be and whatever consciousness may accompany them, will always be mechanical if they can be calculated and predicted, being a combination of the more minute and widespread processes which they contain. the only question therefore is: do processes such as nutrition and reproduction arise by a combination of such events as the fall of apples? or are they irreducible events, and units of mechanism by themselves? that is the dilemma as it appears in science. both possibilities will always remain open, because however far mechanical analysis may go, many phenomena, as human apprehension presents them, will always remain irreducible to any common denominator with the rest; and on the other hand, wherever the actual reduction of the habits of animals to those of matter may have stopped, we can never know that a further reduction is impossible. the balance of reasonable presumption, however, is not even. the most inclusive movements known to us in nature, the astronomical, are calculable, and so are the most minute and pervasive processes, the chemical. these are also, if evolution is to be accepted, the earliest processes upon which all others have supervened and out of which, as it were, they have grown. apart from miraculous intervention, therefore, the assumption seems to be inevitable that the intermediate processes are calculable too, and compounded out of the others. the appearance to the contrary presented in animal and social life is easily explicable on psychological grounds. we read inevitably in terms of our passions those things which affect them or are analogous to what involves passion in ourselves; and when the mechanism of them is hidden from us, as is that of our bodies, we suppose that these passions which we find on the surface in ourselves, or read into other creatures, are the substantial and only forces that carry on our part of the world. penetrating this illusion, dispassionate observers in all ages have received the general impression that nature is one and mechanical. this was, and still remains, a general impression only; but i suspect no one who walks the earth with his eyes open would be concerned to resist it, were it not for certain fond human conceits which such a view would rebuke and, if accepted, would tend to obliterate. the psychological illusion that our ideas and purposes are original facts and forces (instead of expressions in consciousness of facts and forces which are material) and the practical and optical illusion that everything wheels about us in this world--these are the primitive persuasions which the enemies of naturalism have always been concerned to protect. one might indeed be a vitalist in biology, out of pure caution and conscientiousness, without sharing those prejudices; and many a speculative philosopher has been free from them who has been a vitalist in metaphysics. schopenhauer, for instance, observed that the cannon-ball which, if self-conscious, would think it moved freely, would be quite right in thinking so. the "will" was as evident to him in mechanism as in animal life. m. bergson, in the more hidden reaches of his thought, seems to be a universal vitalist; apparently an _élan vital_ must have existed once to deposit in inorganic matter the energy stored there, and to set mechanism going. but he relies on biology alone to prove the present existence of an independent effort to live; this is needed to do what mechanism, as he thinks, could never do; it is not needed to do, as in schopenhauer, what mechanism does. m. bergson thus introduces his metaphysical force as a peculiar requirement of biology; he breaks the continuity of nature; he loses the poetic justification of a metaphysical vitalism; he asks us to believe that life is not a natural expression of material being, but an alien and ghostly madness descending into it--i say a ghostly madness, for why should disembodied life wish that the body should live? this vitalism is not a kind of biology more prudent and literal than the mechanical kind (as a scientific vitalism would be), but far less legitimately speculative. nor is it a frank and thorough mythology, such as the total spectacle of the universe might suggest to an imaginative genius. it is rather a popular animism, insisting on a sympathetic interpretation of nature where human sympathy is quick and easy, and turning this sympathy into a revelation of the absolute, but leaving the rest of nature cold, because to sympathise with its movement there is harder for anxious, self-centred mortals, and requires a disinterested mind. m. bergson would have us believe that mankind is what nature has set her heart on and the best she can do, for whose sake she has been long making very special efforts. we are fortunate that at least her darling is all mankind and not merely israel. in spite, then, of m. bergson's learning as a naturalist and his eye for the facts--things aristotle also possessed--he is like aristotle profoundly out of sympathy with nature. aristotle was alienated from nature and any penetrating study of it by the fact that he was a disciple of socrates, and therefore essentially a moralist and a logician. m. bergson is alienated from nature by something quite different; he is the adept of a very modern, very subtle, and very arbitrary art, that of literary psychology. in this art the imagination is invited to conceive things as if they were all centres of passion and sensation. literary psychology is not a science; it is practised by novelists and poets; yet if it is to be brilliantly executed it demands a minute and extended observation of life. unless your psychological novelist had crammed his memory with pictures of the ways and aspects of men he would have no starting-point for his psychological fictions; he would not be able to render them circumstantial and convincing. just so m. bergson's achievements in psychological fiction, to be so brilliantly executed as they are, required all his learning. the history of philosophy, mathematics, and physics, and above all natural history, had to supply him first with suggestions; and if he is not really a master in any of those fields, that is not to be wondered at. his heart is elsewhere. to write a universal biological romance, such as he has sketched for us in his system, he would ideally have required all scientific knowledge, but only as homer required the knowledge of seamanship, generalship, statecraft, augury, and charioteering, in order to turn the aspects of them into poetry, and not with that technical solidity which plato unjustly blames him for not possessing. just so m. bergson's proper achievement begins where his science ends, and his philosophy lies entirely beyond the horizon of possible discoveries or empirical probabilities. in essence, it is myth or fable; but in the texture and degree of its fabulousness it differs notably from the performances of previous metaphysicians. primitive poets, even ancient philosophers, were not psychologists; their fables were compacted out of elements found in practical life, and they reckoned in the units in which language and passion reckon--wooing, feasting, fighting, vice, virtue, happiness, justice. above all, they talked about persons or about ideals; this man, this woman, this typical thought or sentiment was what fixed their attention and seemed to them the ultimate thing. not so m. bergson: he is a microscopic psychologist, and even in man what he studies by preference is not some integrated passion or idea, but something far more recondite; the minute texture of sensation, memory, or impulse. sharp analysis is required to distinguish or arrest these elements, yet these are the predestined elements of his fable; and so his anthropomorphism is far less obvious than that of most poets and theologians, though no less real. this peculiarity in the terms of the myth carries with it a notable extension in its propriety. the social and moral phenomena of human life cannot be used in interpreting life elsewhere without a certain conscious humour. this makes the charm of avowed writers of fable; their playful travesty and dislocation of things human, which would be puerile if they meant to be naturalists, render them piquant moralists; for they are not really interpreting animals, but under the mask of animals maliciously painting men. such fables are morally interesting and plausible just because they are psychologically false. if Æsop could have reported what lions and lambs, ants and donkeys, really feel and think, his poems would have been perfect riddles to the public; and they would have had no human value except that of illustrating, to the truly speculative philosopher, the irresponsible variety of animal consciousness and its incommensurable types. now m. bergson's psychological fictions, being drawn from what is rudimentary in man, have a better chance of being literally true beyond man. indeed what he asks us to do, and wishes to do himself, is simply to absorb so completely the aspect and habit of things that the soul of them may take possession of us: that we may know by intuition the _élan vital_ which the world expresses, just as paolo, in dante, knew by intuition the _élan vital_ that the smile of francesca expressed. the correctness of such an intuition, however, rests on a circumstance which m. bergson does not notice, because his psychology is literary and not scientific. it rests on the possibility of imitation. when the organism observed and that of the observer have a similar structure and can imitate one another, the idea produced in the observer by intent contemplation is like the experience present to the person contemplated. but where this contagion of attitude, and therefore of feeling, is impossible, our intuition of our neighbours' souls remains subjective and has no value as a revelation. psychological novelists, when they describe people such as they themselves are or might have been, may describe them truly; but beyond that limit their personages are merely plausible, that is, such as might be conceived by an equally ignorant reader in the presence of the same external indications. so, for instance, the judgment which a superficial traveller passes on foreign manners or religions is plausible to him and to his compatriots just because it represents the feeling that such manifestations awaken in strangers and does not attempt to convey the very different feeling really involved for the natives; had the latter been discovered and expressed the traveller's book would have found little understanding and no sale in his own country. this plausibility to the ignorant is present in all spontaneous myth. nothing more need be demanded of irresponsible fiction, which makes no pretensions to be a human document, but is merely a human entertainment. now, a human psychology, even of the finest grain, when it is applied to the interpretation of the soul of matter, or of the soul of the whole universe, obviously yields a view of the irresponsible and subjective sort; for it is not based on any close similarity between the observed and the observer: man and the ether, man and cosmic evolution, cannot mimic one another, to discover mutually how they feel. but just because merely human, such an interpretation may remain always plausible to man; and it would be an admirable entertainment if there were no danger that it should be taken seriously. the idea paul has of peter, spinoza observes, expresses the nature of peter less than it betrays that of paul; and so an idea framed by a man of the consciousness of things in general reveals the mind of that man rather than the mind of the universe; but the mind of the man too may be worth knowing, and the illusive hope of discovering everything may lead him truly to disclose himself. such a disclosure of the lower depths of man by himself is m. bergson's psychology; and the psychological romance, purporting to describe the inward nature of the universe, which he has built out of that introspection, is his metaphysics. many a point in this metaphysics may seem strange, fantastic, and obscure; and so it really is, when dislocated and projected metaphysically; but not one will be found to be arbitrary; not one but is based on attentive introspection and perception of the immediate. take, for example, what is m. bergson's starting-point, his somewhat dazzling doctrine that to be is to last, or rather to feel oneself endure. this is a hypostasis of "true" (_i.e._ immediately felt) duration. in a sensuous day-dream past feelings survive in the present, images of the long ago are shuffled together with present sensations, the roving imagination leaves a bright wake behind it like a comet, and pushes a rising wave before it, like the bow of a ship; all is fluidity, continuity without identity, novelty without surprise. hence, too, the doctrine of freedom: the images that appear in such a day-dream are often congruous in character with those that preceded, and mere prolongations of them; but this prolongation itself modifies them, and what develops is in no way deducible or predictable out of what exists. this situation is perfectly explicable scientifically. the movement of consciousness will be self-congruous and sustained when it rests on continuous processes in the same tissues, and yet quite unpredictable from within, because the direct sensuous report of bodily processes (in nausea, for instance, or in hunger) contains no picture of their actual mechanism. even wholly new features, due to little crises in bodily life, may appear in a dream to flow out of what already exists, yet freely develop it; because in dreams comparison, the attempt to be consistent, is wholly in abeyance, and also because the new feature will come imbedded in others which are not new, but have dramatic relevance in the story. so immediate consciousness yields the two factors of bergsonian freedom, continuity and indetermination. again, take the somewhat disconcerting assertion that movement exists when there is nothing that moves, and no space that it moves through. in vision, perhaps, it is not easy to imagine a consciousness of motion without some presentation of a field, and of a distinguishable something in it; but if we descend to somatic feelings (and the more we descend, with m. bergson, the closer we are to reality), in shooting pains or the sense of intestinal movements, the feeling of a change and of a motion is certainly given in the absence of all idea of a _mobile_ or of distinct points (or even of a separate field) through which it moves; consciousness begins with the sense of change, and the terms of the felt process are only qualitative limits, bred out of the felt process itself. even a more paradoxical tenet of our philosopher's finds it justification here. he says that the units of motion are indivisible, that they are acts; so that to solve the riddle about achilles and the tortoise we need no mathematics of the infinitesimal, but only to ask achilles how he accomplishes the feat. achilles would reply that in so many strides he would do it; and we may be surprised to learn that these strides are indivisible, so that, apparently, achilles could not have stumbled in the middle of one, and taken only half of it. of course, in nature, in what non-bergsonians call reality, he could: but not in his immediate feeling, for if he had stumbled, the real stride, that which he was aware of taking, would have been complete at the stumbling-point. it is certain that consciousness comes in stretches, in breaths: all its data are æsthetic wholes, like visions or snatches of melody; and we should never be aware of anything were we not aware of something all at once. when a man has taught himself--and it is a difficult art--to revert in this way to rudimentary consciousness and to watch himself live, he will be able, if he likes, to add a plausible chapter to speculative psychology. he has unearthed in himself the animal sensibility which has thickened, budded, and crystallised into his present somewhat intellectual image of the world. he has touched again the vegetative stupor, the multiple disconnected landscapes, the "blooming buzzing confusion" which his reason has partly set in order. may he not have in all this a key to the consciousness of other creatures? animal psychology, and sympathy with the general life of nature, are vitiated both for naturalists and for poets by the human terms they must use, terms which presuppose distinctions which non-human beings probably have not made. these distinctions correct the illusions of immediate appearance in ways which only a long and special experience has imposed upon us, and they should not be imported into other souls. we are old men trying to sing the loves of children; we are wingless bipeds trying to understand the gods. but the data of the immediate are hardly human; it is probable that at that level all sentience is much alike. from that common ground our imagination can perhaps start safely, and follow such hints as observation furnishes, until we learn to live and feel as other living things do, or as nature may live and feel as a whole. instinct, for instance, need not be, as our human prejudice suggests, a rudimentary intelligence; it may be a parallel sort of sensibility, an imageless awareness of the presence and character of other things, with a superhuman ability to change oneself so as to meet them. do we not feel something of this sort ourselves in love, in art, in religion? m. bergson is a most delicate and charming poet on this theme, and a plausible psychologist; his method of accumulating and varying his metaphors, and leaving our intuition to itself under that artful stimulus, is the only judicious and persuasive method he could have employed, and his knack at it is wonderful. we recover, as we read, the innocence of the mind. it seems no longer impossible that we might, like the wise men in the story-books, learn the language of birds; we share for the moment the siestas of plants; and we catch the quick consciousness of the waves of light, vibrating at inconceivable rates, each throb forgotten as the next follows upon it; and we may be tempted to play on shakespeare and say: "like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore, so do _their spirits_ hasten to their end." some reader of m. bergson might say to himself: all this is ingenious introspection and divination; grant that it is true, and how does that lead to a new theory of the universe? you have been studying surface appearances and the texture of primitive consciousness; that is a part of the internal rumble of this great engine of the world. how should it loosen or dissolve that engine, as your philosophy evidently professes that it must? that nature exists we perceive whenever we resume our intellectual and practical life, interrupted for a moment by this interesting reversion to the immediate. the consciousness which in introspection we treat as an object is, in operation, a cognitive activity: it demonstrates the world. you would never yourself have conceived the minds of ethereal vibrations, or of birds, or of ants, or of men suspending their intelligence, if you had known of no men, ants, birds, or ether. it is the material objects that suggest to you their souls, and teach you how to conceive them. how then should the souls be substituted for the bodies, and abolish them? poor guileless reader! if philosophers were straightforward men of science, adding each his mite to the general store of knowledge, they would all substantially agree, and while they might make interesting discoveries, they would not herald each his new transformation of the whole universe. but philosophers are either revolutionists or apologists, and some of them, like m. bergson, are revolutionists in the interests of apologetics. their art is to create some surprising inversion of things, some system of the universe contrary to common apprehension, or to defend some such inverted system, propounded by poets long ago, and perhaps consecrated by religion. it would not require a great man to say calmly: men, birds, even ether-waves, if you will, feel after this and this fashion. the greatness and the excitement begin when he says: your common sense, your practical intellect, your boasted science have entirely deceived you; see what the real truth is instead! so m. bergson is bent on telling us that the immediate, as he describes it, is the sole reality; all else is unreal, artificial, and a more or less convenient symbol in discourse--discourse itself being taken, of course, for a movement in immediate sensibility, which is what it is existentially, but never for an excursion into an independent logical realm, which is what it is spiritually and in intent. so we must revise all our psychological observations, and turn them into metaphysical dogmas. it would be nothing to say simply: _for immediate feeling_ the past is contained in the present, movement is prior to that which moves, spaces are many, disconnected, and incommensurable, events are indivisible wholes, perception is in its object and identical with it, the future is unpredictable, the complex is bred out of the simple, and evolution is creative, its course being obedient to a general tendency or groping impulse, not to any exact law. no, we must say instead: _in the universe at large_ the whole past is preserved bodily in the present; duration is real and space is only imagined; all is motion, and there is nothing substantial that moves; times are incommensurable; men, birds, and waves are nothing but the images of them (our perceptions, like their spirits, being some compendium of these images); chance intervenes in the flux, but evolution is due to an absolute effort which exists _in vacuo_ and is simplicity itself; and this effort, without having an idea of what it pursues, nevertheless produces it out of nothing. the accuracy or the hollowness of m. bergson's doctrine, according as we take it for literary psychology or for natural philosophy, will appear clearly in the following instance. "any one," he writes,[ ] "who has ever practised literary composition knows very well that, after he has devoted long study to the subject, collected all the documents, and taken all his notes, one thing more is needful before he can actually embark on the work of composition; namely, an effort, often a very painful one, to plant himself all at once in the very heart of the subject, and to fetch from as profound a depth as possible the momentum by which he need simply let himself be borne along in the sequel. this momentum, as soon as it is acquired, carries the mind forward along a path where it recovers all the facts it had gathered together, and a thousand other details besides. the momentum develops and breaks up of itself into particulars that might be retailed _ad infinitum._ the more he advances the more he finds; he will never have exhausted the subject; and nevertheless if he turns round suddenly to face the momentum he feels at his back and see what it is, it eludes him; for it is not a thing but a direction of movement, and though capable of being extended indefinitely, it is simplicity itself." [footnote : "introduction a la métaphysique." _revue de métaphysique et de morale_, janvier, .] this is evidently well observed: heighten the tone a little, and you might have a poem on those joyful pangs of gestation and parturition which are not denied to a male animal. it is a description of the _sensation_ of literary composition, of the _immediate experience_ of a writer as words and images rise into his mind. he cannot summon his memories explicitly, for he would first have to remember them to do so; his consciousness of inspiration, of literary creation, is nothing but a consciousness of pregnancy and of a certain "direction of movement," as if he were being wafted in a balloon; and just in its moments of highest tension his mind is filled with mere expectancy and mere excitement, without images, plans, or motives; and what guides it is inwardly, as m. bergson says, simplicity itself. yet excellent as such a description is psychologically, it is a literary confession rather than a piece of science; for scientific psychology is a part of natural history, and when in nature we come upon such a notable phenomenon as this, that some men write and write eloquently, we should at once study the antecedents and the conditions under which this occurs; we should try, by experiment if possible, to see what variations in the result follow upon variations in the situation. at once we should begin to perceive how casual and superficial are those data of introspection which m. bergson's account reproduces. does that painful effort, for instance, occur always? is it the moral source, as he seems to suggest, of the good and miraculous fruits that follow? not at all: such an effort is required only when the writer is overworked, or driven to express himself under pressure; in the spontaneous talker or singer, in the orator surpassing himself and overflowing with eloquence, there is no effort at all; only facility, and joyous undirected abundance. we should further ask whether _all_ the facts previously gathered are recovered, and all correctly, and what relation the "thousand other details" have to them; and we should find that everything was controlled and supplied by the sensuous endowment of the literary man, his moral complexion, and his general circumstances. and we should perceive at the same time that the momentum which to introspection was so mysterious was in fact the discharge of many automatisms long imprinted on the system, a system (as growth and disease show) that has its internal vegetation and crises of maturity, to which facility and error in the recovery of the past, and creation also, are closely attached. thus we should utterly refuse to say that this momentum was capable of being extended indefinitely or was simplicity itself. it may be a good piece of literary psychology to say that simplicity precedes complexity, for it precedes complexity in consciousness. consciousness dwindles and flares up most irresponsibly, so long as its own flow alone is regarded, and it continually arises out of nothing, which indeed is simplicity itself. but it does not arise without real conditions outside, which cannot be discovered by introspection, nor divined by that literary psychology which proceeds by imagining what introspection might yield in others. there is a deeper mystification still in this passage, where a writer is said to "plant himself in the very heart of the subject." the general tenor of m. bergson's philosophy warrants us in taking this quite literally to mean that the field from which inspiration draws its materials is not the man's present memory nor even his past experience, but the subject itself which that experience and this memory regard: in other words, what we write about and our latent knowledge are the same thing. when shakespeare was composing his _antony and cleopatra,_ for instance, he planted himself in the very heart of rome and of egypt, and in the very heart of the queen of egypt herself; what he had gathered from plutarch and from elsewhere was, according to m. bergson's view, a sort of glimpse of the remote reality itself, as if by telepathy he had been made to witness some part of it; or rather as if the scope of his consciousness had been suddenly extended in one direction, so as to embrace and contain bodily a bit of that outlying experience. thus when the poet sifts his facts and sets his imagination to work at unifying and completing them, what he does is to pierce to egypt, rome, and the inner consciousness of cleopatra, to fetch _thence_ the profound momentum which is to guide him in composition; and it is there, not in the adventitious later parts of his own mind, that he should find the thousand other details which he may add to the picture. here again, in an exaggerated form, we have a transcript of the immediate, a piece of really wonderful introspection, spoiled by being projected into a theory of nature, which it spoils in its turn. doubtless shakespeare, in the heat of dramatic vision, lived his characters, transported himself to their environment, and felt the passion of each, as we do in a dream, dictating their unpremeditated words. but all this is in imagination; it is true only within the framework of our dream. in reality, of course, shakespeare never pierced to rome nor to egypt; his elaborations of his data are drawn from his own feelings and circumstances, not from those of cleopatra. this transporting oneself into the heart of a subject is a loose metaphor: the best one can do is to transplant the subject into one's own heart and draw _from oneself_ impulses as profound as possible with which to vivify tradition and make it over in one's own image. yet i fear that to speak so is rationalism, and would be found to involve, to the horror of our philosopher, that life is cognitive and spiritual, but dependent, discontinuous, and unsubstantial. what he conceives instead is that consciousness is a stuff out of which things are made, and has all the attributes, even the most material, of its several objects; and that there is no possibility of knowing, save by becoming what one is trying to know. so perception, for him, lies where its object does, and is some part of it; memory is the past experience itself, somehow shining through into the present; and shakespeare's cleopatra, i should infer, would have to be some part of cleopatra herself--in those moments when she spoke english. it is hard to be a just critic of mysticism because mysticism can never do itself justice in words. to conceive of an external actual cleopatra and an external actual mind of shakespeare is to betray the cause of pure immediacy; and i suspect that if m. bergson heard of such criticisms as i am making, he would brush them aside as utterly blind and scholastic. as the mystics have always said that god was not far from them, but dwelt in their hearts, meaning this pretty literally: so this mystical philosophy of the immediate, which talks sometimes so scientifically of things and with such intimacy of knowledge, feels that these things are not far from it, but dwell literally in its heart. the revelation and the sentiment of them, if it be thorough, is just what the things are. the total aspects to be discerned in a body _are_ that body; and the movement of those aspects, when you enact it, _is_ the spirit of that body, and at the same time a part of your own spirit. to suppose that a man's consciousness (either one's own or other people's) is a separate fact over and above the shuffling of the things he feels, or that these things are anything over and above the feeling of them which exists more or less everywhere in diffusion--that, for the mystic, is to be once for all hopelessly intellectual, dualistic, and diabolical. if you cannot shed the husk of those dead categories--space, matter, mind, truth, person--life is shut out of your heart. and the mystic, who always speaks out of experience, is certainly right in this, that a certain sort of life is shut out by reason, the sort that reason calls dreaming or madness; but he forgets that reason too is a kind of life, and that of all the kinds--mystical, passionate, practical, æsthetic, intellectual--with their various degrees of light and heat, the life of reason is that which some people may prefer. i confess i am one of these, and i am not inclined, even if i were able, to reproduce m. bergson's sentiments as he feels them. he is his own perfect expositor. all a critic can aim at is to understand these sentiments as existing facts, and to give them the place that belongs to them in the moral world. to understand, in most cases, is intimacy enough. herbert spencer says somewhere that the yolk of an egg is homogeneous, the highly heterogeneous bird being differentiated in it by the law of evolution. i cannot think what assured spencer of this homogeneity in the egg, except the fact that perhaps it all tasted alike, which might seem good proof to a pure empiricist. leibnitz, on the contrary, maintained that the organisation of nature was infinitely deep, every part consisting of an endless number of discrete elements. here we may observe the difference between good philosophy and bad. the idea of leibnitz is speculative and far outruns the evidence, but it is speculative in a well-advised, penetrating, humble, and noble fashion; while the idea of spencer is foolishly dogmatic, it is a piece of ignorant self-sufficiency, like that insular empiricism that would deny that chinamen were real until it had actually seen them. nature is richer than experience and wider than divination; and it is far rasher and more arrogant to declare that any part of nature is simple than to suggest the sort of complexity that perhaps it might have. m. bergson, however, is on the side of spencer. after studiously examining the egg on every side--for he would do more than taste it--and considering the source and destiny of it, he would summon his intuition to penetrate to the very heart of it, to its spirit, and then he would declare that this spirit was a vital momentum without parts and without ideas, and was simplicity itself. he would add that it was the free and original creator of the bird, because it is of the essence of spirit to bestow more than it possesses and to build better than it knows. undoubtedly actual spirit is simple and does not know how it builds; but for that very reason actual spirit does not really create or build anything, but merely watches, now with sympathetic, now with shocked attention, what is being created and built for it. doubtless new things are always arising, new islands, new persons, new philosophies; but that the real cause of them should be simpler than they, that their creator, if i may use this language, should be ignorant and give more than he has, who can stomach that? let us grant, however, since the thing is not abstractly inconceivable, that eggs really have no structure. to what, then, shall we attribute the formation of birds? will it follow that evolution, or differentiation, or the law of the passage from the homogeneous to the heterogeneous, or the dialectic of the concept of pure being, or the impulse towards life, or the vocation of spirit is what actually hatches them? alas, these words are but pedantic and rhetorical cloaks for our ignorance, and to project them behind the facts and regard them as presiding from thence over the course of nature is a piece of the most deplorable scholasticism. if eggs are really without structure, the true causes of the formation of birds are the last conditions, whatever they may be, that introduce that phenomenon and determine its character--the type of the parents, the act of fertilisation, the temperature, or whatever else observation might find regularly to precede and qualify that new birth in nature. these facts, if they were the ultimate and deepest facts in the case, would be the ultimate and only possible terms in which to explain it. they would constitute the mechanism of reproduction; and if nature were no finer than that in its structure, science could not go deeper than that in its discoveries. and although it is frivolous to suppose that nature ends in this way at the limits of our casual apprehension, and has no hidden roots, yet philosophically that would be as good a stopping place as any other. ultimately we should have to be satisfied with some factual conjunction and method in events. if atoms and their collisions, by any chance, were the ultimate and inmost facts discoverable, they would supply the explanation of everything, in the only sense in which anything existent can be explained at all. if somebody then came to us enthusiastically and added that the will of the atoms so to be and move was the true cause, or the will of god that they should move so, he would not be reputed, i suppose, to have thrown a bright light on the subject. yet this is what m. bergson does in his whole defence of metaphysical vitalism, and especially in the instance of the evolution of eyes by two different methods, which is his palmary argument. since in some molluscs and in vertebrates organs that coincide in being organs of vision are reached by distinct paths, it cannot have been the propulsion of mechanism in each case, he says, that guided the developments, which, being divergent, would never have led to coincident results, but the double development must have been guided by a common _tendency towards vision_. suppose (what some young man in a laboratory may by this time have shown to be false) that m. bergson's observations have sounded the facts to the bottom; it would then be of the ultimate nature of things that, given light and the other conditions, the two methods of development will end in eyes; just as, for a peasant, it is of the ultimate nature of things that puddles can be formed in two quite opposite ways, by rain falling from heaven and by springs issuing from the earth; but as the peasant would not have reached a profound insight into nature if he had proclaimed the presence in her of a _tendency to puddles_, to be formed in inexplicably different ways; so the philosopher attains to no profound insight when he proclaims in her a _tendency to vision._ if those words express more than ignorance, they express the love of it. even if the vitalists were right in despairing of further scientific discoveries, they would be wrong in offering their verbiage as a substitute. nature may possibly have only a very loose hazy constitution, to be watched and understood as sailors watch and understand the weather; but neptune and Æolus are not thereby proved to be the authors of storms. yet m. bergson thinks if life could only be safely shown to arise unaccountably, that would prove the invisible efficacy of a mighty tendency to life. but would the ultimate contexture and miracle of things be made less arbitrary, and less a matter of brute fact, by the presence behind them of an actual and arbitrary effort that such should be their nature? if this word "effort" is not a mere figure of rhetoric, a name for a movement in things of which the end happens to interest us more than the beginning, if it is meant to be an effort actually and consciously existing, then we must proceed to ask: why did this effort exist? why did it choose that particular end to strive for? how did it reach the conception of that end, which had never been realised before, and which no existent nature demanded for its fulfilment? how did the effort, once made specific, select the particular matter it was to transform? why did this matter respond to the disembodied effort that it should change its habits? not one of these questions is easier to answer than the question why nature is living or animals have eyes. yet without seeking to solve the only real problem, namely, how nature is actually constituted, this introduction of metaphysical powers raises all the others, artificially and without occasion. this side of m. bergson's philosophy illustrates the worst and most familiar vices of metaphysics. it marvels at some appearance, not to investigate it, but to give it an unctuous name. then it turns this name into a power, that by its operation creates the appearance. this is simply verbal mythology or the hypostasis of words, and there would be some excuse for a rude person who should call it rubbish. the metaphysical abuse of psychology is as extraordinary in modern europe as that of fancy ever was in india or of rhetoric in greece. we find, for instance, mr. bradley murmuring, as a matter almost too obvious to mention, that the existence of anything not sentience is unmeaning to him; or, if i may put this evident principle in other words, that nothing is able to exist unless something else is able to discover it. yet even if discovered the poor candidate for existence would be foiled, for it would turn out to be nothing but a modification of the mind falsely said to discover it. existence and discovery are conceptions which the malicious criticism of knowledge (which is the psychology of knowledge abused) pretends to have discarded and outgrown altogether; the conception of immediacy has taken their place. this malicious criticism of knowledge is based on the silent assumption that knowledge is impossible. whenever you mention anything, it baffles you by talking instead about your idea of what you mention; and if ever you describe the origin of anything it substitutes, as a counter-theory, its theory of the origin of your description. this, however, would not be a counter-theory at all if the criticism of knowledge had not been corrupted into a negative dogma, maintaining that ideas of things are the only things possible and that therefore only ideas and not things can have an origin. nothing could better illustrate how deep this cognitive impotence has got into people's bones than the manner in which, in the latest schools of philosophy, it is being disavowed; for unblushing idealism is distinctly out of fashion. m. bergson tells us he has solved a difficulty that seemed hopeless by avoiding a fallacy common to idealism and realism. the difficulty was that if you started with self-existent matter you could never arrive at mind, and if you started with self-existent mind you could never arrive at matter. the fallacy was that both schools innocently supposed there was an existing world to discover, and each thought it possible that its view should describe that world as it really was. what now is m. bergson's solution? that no articulated world, either material or psychical, exists at all, but only a tendency or enduring effort to evolve images of both sorts; or rather to evolve images which in their finer texture and vibration are images of matter, but which grouped and foreshortened in various ways are images of minds. the idea of nature and the idea of consciousness are two apperceptions or syntheses of the same stuff of experience. the two worlds thus become substantially identical, continuous, and superposable; each can merge insensibly into the other. "to perceive all the influences of all the points of all bodies would be to sink to the condition of a material object."[ ] to perceive some of these influences, by having created organs that shut out the others, is to be a mind. [footnote : _matière et mémoire_, p. .] this solution is obtained by substituting, as usual, the ideas of things for the things themselves and cheating the honest man who was talking about objects by answering him as if he were talking about himself. certainly, if we could limit ourselves to feeling life flow and the whole world vibrate, we should not raise the question debated between realists and idealists; but not to raise a question is one thing and to have solved it is another. what has really been done is to offer us a history, _on the assumption of idealism,_ of the idea of mind and the idea of matter. this history may be correct enough psychologically, and such as a student of the life of reason might possibly come to; but it is a mere evasion of the original question concerning the relation of this mental evolution to the world it occurs in. in truth, an enveloping world is assumed by these hereditary idealists not to exist; they rule it out _a priori,_ and the life of reason is supposed by them to constitute the whole universe. to be sure, they say they transcend idealism no less than realism, because they mark the point where, by contrast or selection from other objects, the mind has come to be distinguished: but the subterfuge is vain, because by "mind" they mean simply the idea of mind, and they give no name, except perhaps experience, to the mind that forms that idea. matter and mind, for these transcendentalists posing as realists, merge and flow so easily together only because both are images or groups of images in an original mind presupposed but never honestly posited. it is in this forgotten mind, also, as the professed idealists urge, that the relations of proximity and simultaneity between various lives can alone subsist, if to subsist is to be experienced. there is, however, one point of real difference, at least initially, between the idealism of m. bergson and that of his predecessors. the universal mind, for m. bergson, is in process of actual transformation. it is not an omniscient god but a cosmic sensibility. in this sensibility matter, with all its vibrations felt in detail, forms one moving panorama together with all minds, which are patterns visible at will from various points of view in that same woof of matter; and so the great experiment crawls and shoots on, the dream of a giant without a body, mindful of the past, uncertain of the future, shuffling his images, and threading his painful way through a labyrinth of cross-purposes. such at least is the notion which the reader gathers from the prevailing character of m. bergson's words; but i am not sure that it would be his ultimate conclusion. perhaps it is to be out of sympathy with his spirit to speak of an ultimate conclusion at all; nothing comes to a conclusion and nothing is ultimate. many dilemmas, however, are inevitable, and if the master does not make a choice himself, his pupils will divide and trace the alternative consequences for themselves in each direction. if they care most for a real fluidity, as william james did, they will stick to something like what i have just described; but if they care most for immediacy, as we may suspect that m. bergson does, they will transform that view into something far more orthodox. for a real fluidity and an absolute immediacy are not compatible. to believe in real change you must put some trust in representation, and if you posit a real past and a real future you posit independent objects. in absolute immediacy, on the contrary, instead of change taken realistically, you can have only a feeling of change. the flux becomes an idea in the absolute, like the image of a moving spiral, always flowing outwards or inwards, but with its centre and its circumference always immovable. duration, we must remember, is simply the sense of lasting; no time is real that is not lived through. therefore various lives cannot be dated in a common time, but have no temporal relations to one another. thus, if we insist on immediacy, the vaunted novelty of the future and the inestimable freedom of life threaten to become (like all else) the given _feeling_ of novelty or freedom, in passing from a given image of the past to a given image of the future--all these terms being contained in the present; and we have reverted to the familiar conception of absolute immutability in absolute life. m. bergson has studied plotinus and spinoza; i suspect he has not studied them in vain. nor is this the only point at which this philosophy, when we live a while with it, suddenly drops its mask of novelty and shows us a familiar face. it would seem, for instance, that beneath the drama of creative evolution there was a deeper nature of things. for apparently creative evolution (apart from the obstacle of matter, which may be explained away idealistically) has to submit to the following conditions: first, to create in sequence, not all at once; second, to create some particular sequence only, not all possible sequences side by side; and third, to continue the one sequence chosen, since if the additions of every new moment were irrelevant to the past, no sequence, no vital persistence or progress would be secured, and all effort would be wasted. these are compulsions; but it may also, i suppose, be thought a _duty_ on the part of the vital impulse to be true to its initial direction and not to halt, as it well might, like the self-reversing will of schopenhauer, on perceiving the result of its spontaneous efforts. necessity would thus appear behind liberty and duty before it. this summons to life to go on, and these conditions imposed upon it, might then very plausibly be attributed to a deity existing beyond the world, as is done in religious tradition; and such a doctrine, if m. bergson should happen to be holding it in reserve, would perhaps help to explain some obscurities in his system, such, for instance, as the power of potentiality to actualise itself, of equipoise to become suddenly emphasis on one particular part, and of spirit to pursue an end chosen before it is conceived, and when there is no nature to predetermine it. it has been said that m. bergson's system precludes ethics: i cannot think that observation just. apart from the moral inspiration which appears throughout his philosophy, which is indeed a passionate attempt to exalt (or debase) values into powers, it offers, i should say, two starting-points for ethics. in the first place, the _élan vital_ ought not to falter, although it can do so: therefore to persevere, labour, experiment, propagate, must be duties, and the opposite must be sins. in the second place, freedom, in adding uncaused increments to life, ought to do so in continuation of the whole past, though it might do so frivolously: therefore it is a duty to be studious, consecutive, loyal; you may move in any direction but you must carry the whole past with you. i will not say this suggests a sound system of ethics, because it would be extracted from dogmas which are physical and incidentally incredible; nor would it represent a mature and disillusioned morality, because it would look to the future and not to the eternal; nevertheless it would be deeply ethical, expressing the feelings that have always inspired hebraic morality. a good way of testing the calibre of a philosophy is to ask what it thinks of death. philosophy, said plato, is a meditation on death, or rather, if we would do justice to his thought, an aspiration to live disembodied; and schopenhauer said that the spectacle of death was the first provocation to philosophy. m. bergson has not yet treated of this subject; but we may perhaps perceive for ourselves the place that it might occupy in his system.[ ] life, according to him, is the original and absolute force. in the beginning, however, it was only a potentiality or tendency. to become specific lives, life had to emphasise and bring exclusively to consciousness, here and there, special possibilities of living; and where these special lives have their chosen boundary (if this way of putting it is not too fichtean) they posit or create a material environment. matter is the view each life takes of what for it are rejected or abandoned possibilities of living. this might show how the absolute will to live, if it was to be carried out, would have to begin by evoking a sense of dead or material things about it; it would not show how death could ever overtake the will itself. if matter were merely the periphery which life has to draw round itself, in order to be a definite life, matter could never abolish any life; as the ring of a circus or the sand of the arena can never abolish the show for which they have been prepared. life would then be fed and defined by matter, as an artist is served by the matter he needs to carry on his art. [footnote : m. bergson has shown at considerable length that the idea of non-existence is more complex, psychologically, than the idea of existence, and posterior to it. he evidently thinks this disposes of the reality of non-existence also: for it is the reality that he wishes to exorcise by his words. if, however, non-existence and the idea of non-existence were identical, it would have been impossible for me not to exist before i was born: my non-existence then would be more complex than my existence now, and posterior to it. the initiated would not recoil from this consequence, but it might open the eyes of some catechumens. it is a good test of the malicious theory of knowledge.] yet in actual life there is undeniably such a thing as danger and failure. m. bergson even thinks that the facing of increased dangers is one proof that vital force is an absolute thing; for if life were an equilibrium, it would not displace itself and run new risks of death, by making itself more complex and ticklish, as it does in the higher organisms and the finer arts.[ ] yet if life is the only substance, how is such a risk of death possible at all? i suppose the special life that arises about a given nucleus of feeling, by emphasising some of the relations which that feeling has in the world, might be abolished if a greater emphasis were laid on another set of its relations, starting from some other nucleus. we must remember that these selections, according to m. bergson, are not apperceptions merely. they are creative efforts. the future constitution of the flux will vary in response to them. each mind sucks the world, so far as it can, into its own vortex. a cross apperception will then amount to a contrary force. two souls will not be able to dominate the same matter in peace and friendship. being forces, they will pull that matter in different ways. each soul will tend to devour and to direct exclusively the movement influenced by the other soul. the one that succeeds in ruling that movement will live on; the other, i suppose, will die, although m. bergson may not like that painful word. he says the lower organisms store energy for the higher organisms to use; but when a sheep appropriates the energy stored up in grass, or a man that stored up in mutton, it looks as if the grass and the sheep had perished. their _élan vital_ is no longer theirs, for in this rough world to live is to kill. nothing arises in nature, lucretius says, save helped by the death of some other thing. of course, this is no defeat for the _élan vital_ in general; for according to our philosopher the whole universe from the beginning has been making for just that supreme sort of consciousness which man, who eats the mutton, now possesses. the sheep and the grass were only things by the way and scaffolding for our precious humanity. but would it not be better if some being should arise nobler than man, not requiring abstract intellect nor artificial weapons, but endowed with instinct and intuition and, let us say, the power of killing by radiating electricity? and might not men then turn out to have been mere explosives, in which energy was stored for convenient digestion by that superior creature? a shocking thought, no doubt, like the thought of death, and more distressing to our vital feelings than is the pleasing assimilation of grass and mutton in our bellies. yet i can see no ground, except a desire to flatter oneself, for not crediting the _élan vital_ with some such digestive intention. m. bergson's system would hardly be more speculative if it entertained this possibility, and it would seem more honest. [footnote : this argument against mechanism is a good instance of the difficulties which mythological habits of mind import unnecessarily into science. an equilibrium would not displace itself! but an equilibrium is a natural result, not a magical entity. it is continually displaced, as its constituents are modified by internal movements or external agencies; and while many a time the equilibrium is thereby destroyed altogether, sometimes it is replaced by a more elaborate and perilous equilibrium; as glaciers carry many rocks down, but leave some, here and there, piled in the most unlikely pinnacles and pagodas.] the vital impulse is certainly immortal; for if we take it in the naturalistic exoteric sense, for a force discovered in biology, it is an independent agent coming down into matter, organising it against its will, and stirring it like the angel the pool of bethesda. though the ripples die down, the angel is not affected. he has merely flown away. and if we take the vital impulse mystically and esoterically, as the _only_ primal force, creating matter in order to play with it, the immortality of life is even more obvious; for there is then nothing else in being that could possibly abolish it. but when we come to immortality for the individual, all grows obscure and ambiguous. the original tendency of life was certainly cosmic and not distinguished into persons: we are told it was like a wireless message sent at the creation which is being read off at last by the humanity of to-day. in the naturalistic view, the diversity of persons would seem to be due to the different material conditions under which one and the same spiritual purpose must fight its way towards realisation in different times and places. it is quite conceivable, however, that in the mystical view the very sense of the original message should comport this variety of interpretations, and that the purpose should always have been to produce diverse individuals. the first view, as usual, is the one which m. bergson has prevailingly in mind, and communicates most plausibly; while he holds to it he is still talking about the natural world, and so we still know what he is talking about. on this view, however, personal immortality would be impossible; it would be, if it were aimed at, a self-contradiction in the aim of life; for the diversity of persons would be due to impediments only, and souls would differ simply in so far as they mutilated the message which they were all alike trying to repeat. they would necessarily, when the spirit was victorious, be reabsorbed and identified in the universal spirit. this view also seems most consonant with m. bergson's theory of primitive reality, as a flux of fused images, or a mind lost in matter; to this view, too, is attributable his hostility to intelligence, in that it arrests the flux, divides the fused images, and thereby murders and devitalises reality. of course the destiny of spirit would not be to revert to that diffused materiality; for the original mind lost in matter had a very short memory; it was a sort of cosmic trepidation only, whereas the ultimate mind would remember all that, in its efforts after freedom, it had ever super added to that trepidation or made it turn into. even the abstract views of things taken by the practical intellect would, i fear, have to burden the universal memory to the end. we should be remembered, even if we could no longer exist. on the other more profound view, however, might not personal immortality be secured? suppose the original message said: translate me into a thousand tongues! in fulfilling its duty, the universe would then continue to divide its dream into phantom individuals; as it had to insulate its parts in the beginning in order to dominate and transform them freely, so it would always continue to insulate them, so as not to lose its cross-vistas and its mobility. there is no reason, then, why individuals should not live for ever. but a condition seems to be involved which may well make belief stagger. it would be impossible for the universe to divide its images into particular minds unless it preserved the images of their particular bodies also. particular minds arise, according to this philosophy, in the interests of practice: which means, biologically, to secure a better adjustment of the body to its environment, so that it may survive. mystically, too, the fundamental force is a half-conscious purpose that practice, or freedom, should come to be; or rather, that an apparition or experience of practice and freedom should arise; for in this philosophy appearance is all. to secure this desirable apparition of practice special tasks are set to various nuclei in felt space (such, for instance, as the task to see), and the image of a body (in this case that of an eye) is gradually formed, in order to execute that task; for evidently the absolute can see only if it looks, and to look it must first choose a point of view and an optical method. this point of view and this method posit the individual; they fix him in time and space, and determine the quality and range of his passive experience: they are his body. if the absolute, then, wishes to retain the individual not merely as one of its memories but as one of its organs of practical life, it must begin by retaining the image of his body. his body must continue to figure in that landscape of nature which the absolute life, as it pulses, keeps always composing and recomposing. otherwise a personal mind, a sketch of things made from the point of view and in the interests of that body, cannot be preserved. m. bergson, accordingly, should either tell us that our bodies are going to rise again, or he should not tell us, or give us to understand, that our minds are going to endure. i suppose he cannot venture to preach the resurrection of the body to this weak-kneed generation; he is too modern and plausible for that. yet he is too amiable to deny to our dilated nostrils some voluptuous whiffs of immortality. he asks if we are not "led to suppose" that consciousness passes through matter to be tempered like steel, to constitute distinct personalities, and prepare them for a higher existence. other animal minds are but human minds arrested; men at last (what men, i wonder?) are "capable of remembering all and willing all and controlling their past and their future," so that "we shall have no repugnance in admitting that in man, though perhaps in man alone, consciousness pursues its path beyond this earthly life." elsewhere he says, in a phrase already much quoted and perhaps destined to be famous, that in man the spirit can "spurn every kind of resistance and break through many an obstacle, perhaps even death." here the tenor has ended on the inevitable high note, and the gallery is delighted. but was that the note set down for him in the music? and has he not sung it in falsetto? the immediate knows nothing about death; it takes intelligence to conceive it; and that perhaps is why m. bergson says so little about it, and that little so far from serious. but he talks a great deal about life, he feels he has penetrated deeply into its nature; and yet death, together with birth, is the natural analysis of what life is. what is this creative purpose, that must wait for sun and rain to set it in motion? what is this life, that in any individual can be suddenly extinguished by a bullet? what is this _elan-vital_, that a little fall in temperature would banish altogether from the universe? the study of death may be out of fashion, but it is never out of season. the omission of this, which is almost the omission of wisdom from philosophy, warns us that in m. bergson's thought we have something occasional and partial, the work of an astute apologist, a party man, driven to desperate speculation by a timid attachment to prejudice. like other terrified idealisms, the system of m. bergson has neither good sense, nor rigour, nor candour, nor solidity. it is a brilliant attempt to confuse the lessons of experience by refining upon its texture, an attempt to make us halt, for the love of primitive illusions, in the path of discipline and reason. it is likely to prove a successful attempt, because it flatters the weaknesses of the moment, expresses them with emotion, and covers them with a feint at scientific speculation. it is not, however, a powerful system, like that of hegel, capable of bewildering and obsessing many who have no natural love for shams. m. bergson will hardly bewilder; his style is too clear, the field where his just observations lie--the immediate--is too well defined, and the mythology which results from projecting the terms of the immediate into the absolute, and turning them into powers, is too obviously verbal. he will not long impose on any save those who enjoy being imposed upon; but for a long time he may increase their number. his doctrine is indeed alluring. instead of telling us, as a stern and contrite philosophy would, that the truth is remote, difficult, and almost undiscoverable by human efforts, that the universe is vast and unfathomable, yet that the knowledge of its ways is precious to our better selves, if we would not live befooled, this philosophy rather tells us that nothing is truer or more precious than our rudimentary consciousness, with its vague instincts and premonitions, that everything ideal is fictitious, and that the universe, at heart, is as palpitating and irrational as ourselves. why then strain the inquiry? why seek to dominate passion by understanding it? rather live on; work, it matters little at what, and grow, it matters nothing in what direction. exert your instinctive powers of vegetation and emotion; let your philosophy itself be a frank expression of this flux, the roar of the ocean in your little sea-shell, a momentary posture of your living soul, not a stark adoration of things reputed eternal. so the intellectual faithlessness and the material servility of the age are flattered together and taught to justify themselves theoretically. they cry joyfully, _non peccavi_, which is the modern formula for confession. m. bergson's philosophy itself is a confession of a certain mystical rebellion and atavism in the contemporary mind. it will remain a beautiful monument to the passing moment, a capital film for the cinematography of history, full of psychological truth and of a kind of restrained sentimental piety. his thought has all the charm that can go without strength and all the competence that can go without mastery. this is not an age of mastery; it is confused with too much business; it has no brave simplicity. the mind has forgotten its proper function, which is to crown life by quickening it into intelligence, and thinks if it could only prove that it accelerated life, that might perhaps justify its existence; like a philosopher at sea who, to make himself useful, should blow into the sail. iv the philosophy of mr. bertrand russell i. a new scholasticism in its chase after idols this age has not wholly forgotten the gods, and reason and faith in reason are not left without advocates. some years ago, at trinity college, cambridge, mr. g.e. moore began to produce a very deep impression amongst the younger spirits by his powerful and luminous dialectic. like socrates, he used all the sharp arts of a disputant in the interests of common sense and of an almost archaic dogmatism. those who heard him felt how superior his position was, both in rigour and in force, to the prevailing inversions and idealisms. the abuse of psychology, rampant for two hundred years, seemed at last to be detected and challenged; and the impressionistic rhetoric that philosophy was saturated with began to be squeezed out by clear questions, and by a disconcerting demand for literal sincerity. german idealism, when we study it as a product of its own age and country, is a most engaging phenomenon; it is full of afflatus, sweep, and deep searchings of heart; but it is essentially romantic and egotistical, and all in it that is not soliloquy is mere system-making and sophistry. therefore when it is taught by unromantic people _ex cathedra,_ in stentorian tones, and represented as the rational foundation of science and religion, with neither of which it has any honest sympathy, it becomes positively odious--one of the worst imposture and blights to which a youthful imagination could be subjected. it is chiefly against the incubus of this celestial monster that mr. moore dared to lift up his eyes; and many a less courageous or less clear-sighted person was thankful to him for it. but a man with such a mission requires a certain narrowness and concentration of mind; he has to be intolerant and to pound a good deal on the same notes. we need not wonder if mr. moore has written rather meagerly, and with a certain vehemence and want of imagination. all this, however, was more than made up by the powerful ally who soon came to his aid. mr. bertrand russell began by adopting mr. moore's metaphysics, but he has given as much as he has received. apart from his well-known mathematical attainments, he possesses by inheritance the political and historical mind, and an intrepid determination to pierce convention and look to ultimate things. he has written abundantly and, where the subject permits, with a singular lucidity, candour, and charm. especially his _philosophical essays_ and his little book on _the problems of philosophy_ can be read with pleasure by any intelligent person, and give a tolerably rounded picture of the tenets of the school. yet it must be remembered that mr. russell, like mr. moore, is still young and his thoughts have not assumed their ultimate form. moreover, he lives in an atmosphere of academic disputation which makes one technical point after another acquire a preponderating influence in his thoughts. his book on _the problems of philosophy_ is admirable in style, temper, and insight, but it hardly deserves its title; it treats principally, in a somewhat personal and partial way, of the relation of knowledge to its objects, and it might rather have been called "the problems which moore and i have been agitating lately." indeed, his philosophy is so little settled as yet that every new article and every fresh conversation revokes some of his former opinions, and places the crux of philosophical controversy at a new point. we are soon made aware that exact thinking and true thinking are not synonymous, but that one exact thought, in the same mind, may be the exact opposite of the next. this inconstancy, which after all does not go very deep, is a sign of sincerity and pure love of truth; it marks the freshness, the vivacity, the self-forgetfulness, the logical ardour belonging to this delightful reformer. it may seem a paradox, but at bottom it is not, that the vitalists should be oppressed, womanish, and mystical, and only the intellectualists keen, argumentative, fearless, and full of life. i mention this casualness and inconstancy in mr. russell's utterances not to deride them, but to show the reader how impossible it is, at this juncture, to give a comprehensive account of his philosophy, much less a final judgment upon it. the principles most fundamental and dominant in his thought are perhaps the following: that the objects the mind deals with, whether material or ideal, are what and where the mind says they are, and independent of it; that some general principles and ideas have to be assumed to be valid not merely for thought but for things; that relations may subsist, arise, and disappear between things without at all affecting these things internally; and that the nature of everything is just what it is, and not to be confused either with its origin or with any opinion about it. these principles, joined with an obvious predilection for plato and leibnitz among philosophers, lead to the following doctrines, among others: that the mind or soul is an entity separate from its thoughts and pre-existent; that a material world exists in space and time; that its substantial elements may be infinite in number, having position and quality, but no extension, so that each mind or soul might well be one of them; that both the existent and the ideal worlds may be infinite, while the ideal world contains an infinity of things not realised in the actual world; and that this ideal world is knowable by a separate mental consideration, a consideration which is, however, empirical in spirit, since the ideal world of ethics, logic, and mathematics has a special and surprising constitution, which we do not make but must attentively discover. the reader will perceive, perhaps, that if the function of philosophy is really, as the saying goes, to give us assurance of god, freedom, and immortality, mr. russell's philosophy is a dire failure. in fact, its author sometimes gives vent to a rather emphatic pessimism about this world; he has a keen sense for the manifold absurdities of existence. but the sense for absurdities is not without its delights, and mr. russell's satirical wit is more constant and better grounded than his despair. i should be inclined to say of his philosophy what he himself has said of that of leibnitz, that it is at its best in those subjects which are most remote from human life. it needs to be very largely supplemented and much ripened and humanised before it can be called satisfactory or wise; but time may bring these fulfilments, and meantime i cannot help thinking it auspicious in the highest degree that, in a time of such impressionistic haste and plebeian looseness of thought, scholastic rigour should suddenly raise its head again, aspiring to seriousness, solidity, and perfection of doctrine: and this not in the interests of religious orthodoxy, but precisely in the most emancipated and unflinchingly radical quarter. it is refreshing and reassuring, after the confused, melodramatic ways of philosophising to which the idealists and the pragmatists have accustomed us, to breathe again the crisp air of scholastic common sense. it is good for us to be held down, as the platonic socrates would have held us, to saying what we really believe, and sticking to what we say. we seem to regain our intellectual birthright when we are allowed to declare our genuine intent, even in philosophy, instead of begging some kind psychologist to investigate our "meaning" for us, or even waiting for the flux of events to endow us with what "meaning" it will. it is also instructive to have the ethical attitude purified of all that is not ethical and turned explicitly into what, in its moral capacity, it essentially is: a groundless pronouncement upon the better and the worse. here a certain one-sidedness begins to make itself felt in mr. russell's views. the ethical attitude doubtless has no _ethical_ ground, but that fact does not prevent it from having a _natural_ ground; and the observer of the animate creation need not have much difficulty in seeing what that natural ground is. mr. russell, however, refuses to look also in that direction. he insists, rightly enough, that good is predicated categorically by the conscience; he will not remember that all life is not moral bias merely, and that, in the very act of recognising excellence and pursuing it, we may glance back over our shoulder and perceive how our moral bias is conditioned, and what basis it has in the physical order of things. this backward look, when the hand is on the plough, may indeed confuse our ethical self-expression, both in theory and in practice; and i am the last to deny the need of insisting, in ethics, on ethical judgments in all their purity and dogmatic sincerity. such insistence, if we had heard more of it in our youth, might have saved many of us from chronic entanglements; and there is nothing, next to plato, which ought to be more recommended to the young philosopher than the teachings of messrs. russell and moore, if he wishes to be a moralist and a logician, and not merely to seem one. yet this salutary doctrine, though correct, is inadequate. it is a monocular philosophy, seeing outlines clear, but missing the solid bulk and perspective of things. we need binocular vision to quicken the whole mind and yield a full image of reality. ethics should be controlled by a physics that perceives the material ground and the relative status of whatever is moral. otherwise ethics itself tends to grow narrow, strident, and fanatical; as may be observed in asceticism and puritanism, or, for the matter of that, in mr. moore's uncivilised leaning towards the doctrine of retributive punishment, or in mr. russell's intolerance of selfishness and patriotism, and in his refusal to entertain any pious reverence for the nature of things. the quality of wisdom, like that of mercy, is not strained. to choose, to love and hate, to have a moral life, is inevitable and legitimate in the part; but it is the function of the part as part, and we must keep it in its place if we wish to view the whole in its true proportions. even to express justly the aim of our own life we need to retain a constant sympathy with what is animal and fundamental in it, else we shall give a false place, and too loud an emphasis, to our definitions of the ideal. however, it would be much worse not to reach the ideal at all, or to confuse it for want of courage and sincerity in uttering our true mind; and it is in uttering our true mind that mr. russell can help us, even if our true mind should not always coincide with his. in the following pages i do not attempt to cover all mr. russell's doctrine (the deeper mathematical purls of it being beyond my comprehension), and the reader will find some speculations of my own interspersed in what i report of his. i merely traverse after him three subjects that seem of imaginative interest, to indicate the inspiration and the imprudence, as i think them, of this young philosophy. ii. the study of essence "the solution of the difficulties which formerly surrounded the mathematical infinite is probably," says mr. russell, "the greatest achievement of which our own age has to boast.... it was assumed as self-evident, until cantor and dedekind established the opposite, that if, from any collection of things, some were taken away, the number of things left must always be less than the original number of things. this assumption, as a matter of fact, holds only of finite collections; and the rejection of it, where the infinite is concerned, has been shown to remove all the difficulties that hitherto baffled human reason in this matter." and he adds in another place: "to reconcile us, by the exhibition of its awful beauty, to the reign of fate ... is the task of tragedy. but mathematics takes us still further from what is human, into the region of absolute necessity, to which not only the actual world, but every possible world, must conform; and even here it builds a habitation, or rather finds a habitation eternally standing, where our ideals are fully satisfied and our best hopes are not thwarted. it is only when we thoroughly understand the entire independence of ourselves, which belongs to this world that reason finds, that we can adequately realise the profound importance of its beauty." mathematics seems to have a value for mr. russell akin to that of religion. it affords a sanctuary to which to flee from the world, a heaven suffused with a serene radiance and full of a peculiar sweetness and consolation. "real life," he writes, "is to most men a long second-best, a perpetual compromise between the ideal and the possible; but the world of pure reason knows no compromise, no practical limitations, no barrier to the creative activity embodying in splendid edifices the passionate aspiration after the perfect from which all great work springs. remote from human passions, remote even from the pitiful laws of nature, the generations have gradually created an ordered cosmos where pure thought can dwell as in its natural home, and where one, at least, of our nobler impulses can escape from the dreary exile of the actual world." this study is one of "those elements in human life which merit a place in heaven." "the true spirit of delight, the exaltation, the sense of being more than man, which is the touchstone of the highest excellence, is to be found in mathematics as surely as in poetry." this enthusiastic language might have, i should think, an opposite effect upon some readers to that which mr. russell desires. it might make them suspect that the claim to know an absolute ideal necessity, so satisfying to one of our passionate impulses, might be prompted by the same conceit, and subject to the same illusion, as the claim to know absolute truth in religion. beauty, when attributed to necessary relations between logical entities, casts a net of subjectivity over them; and at this net the omnivorous empiricist might be tempted to haul, until he fancied he had landed the whole miraculous draught of fishes. the fish, however, would have slipped through the meshes; and it would be only his own vital emotion, projected for a moment into the mathematical world, that he would be able to draw back and hug to his bosom. eternal truth is as disconsolate as it is consoling, and as dreary as it is interesting: these moral values are, in fact, values which the activity of contemplating that sort of truth has for different minds; and it is no congruous homage offered to ideal necessity, but merely a private endearment, to call it beautiful or good. the case is not such as if we were dealing with existence. existence is arbitrary; it is a questionable thing needing justification; and we, at least, cannot justify it otherwise than by taking note of some affinity which it may show to human aspirations. therefore our private endearments, when we call some existing thing good or beautiful, are not impertinent; they assign to this chance thing its only assignable excuse for being, namely, the service it may chance to render to the spirit. but ideal necessity or, what is the same thing, essential possibility has its excuse for being in itself, since it is not contingent or questionable at all. the affinity which the human mind may develop to certain provinces of essence is adventitious to those essences, and hardly to be mentioned in their presence. it is something the mind has acquired, and may lose. it is an incident in the life of reason, and no inherent characteristic of eternal necessity. the realm of essence contains the infinite multitude of leibnitz's possible worlds, many of these worlds being very small and simple, and consisting merely of what might be presented in some isolated moment of feeling. if any such feeling, however, or its object, never in fact occurs, the essence that it would have presented if it had occurred remains possible merely; so that nothing can ever exist in nature or for consciousness which has not a prior and independent locus in the realm of essence. when a man lights upon a thought or is interested in tracing a relation, he does not introduce those objects into the realm of essence, but merely selects them from the plenitude of what lies there eternally. the ground of this selection lies, of course, in his human nature and circumstances; and the satisfaction he may find in so exercising his mind will be a consequence of his mental disposition and of the animal instincts beneath. two and two would still make four if i were incapable of counting, or if i found it extremely painful to do so, or if i thought it naive and pre-kantian of these numbers not to combine in a more vital fashion, and make five. so also, if i happen to enjoy counting, or to find the constancy of numbers sublime, and the reversibility of the processes connecting them consoling, in contrast to the irrevocable flux of living things, all this is due to my idiosyncrasy. it is no part of the essence of numbers to be congenial to me; but it has perhaps become a part of my genius to have affinity to them. and how, may i ask, has it become a part of my genius? simply because nature, of which i am a part, and to which all my ideas must refer if they are to be relevant to my destiny, happens to have mathematical form. nature had to have some form or other, if it was to exist at all; and whatever form it had happened to take would have had its prior place in the realm of essence, and its essential and logical relations there. that particular part of the realm of essence which nature chances to exemplify or to suggest is the part that may be revealed to me, and that is the predestined focus of all my admirations. essence as such has no power to reveal itself, or to take on existence; and the human mind has no power or interest to trace all essence. even the few essences which it has come to know, it cannot undertake to examine exhaustively; for there are many features nestling in them, and many relations radiating from them, which no one needs or cares to attend to. the implications which logicians and mathematicians actually observe in the terms they use are a small selection from all those that really obtain, even in their chosen field; so that, for instance, as mr. russell was telling us, it was only the other day that cantor and dedekind observed that although time continually eats up the days and years, the possible future always remains as long as it was before. this happens to be a fact interesting to mankind. apart from the mathematical puzzles it may help to solve, it opens before existence a vista of perpetual youth, and the vital stress in us leaps up in recognition of its inmost ambition. many other things are doubtless implied in infinity which, if we noticed them, would leave us quite cold; and still others, no doubt, are inapprehensible with our sort and degree of intellect. there is of course nothing in essence which an intellect postulated _ad hoc_ would not be able to apprehend; but the kind of intellect we know of and possess is an expression of vital adjustments, and is tethered to nature. that a few eternal essences, then, with a few of their necessary relations to one another, do actually appear to us, and do fascinate our attention and excite our wonder, is nothing paradoxical. this is merely what was bound to happen, if we became aware of anything at all; for the essence embodied in anything is eternal and has necessary relations to some other essences. the air of presumption which there might seem to be in proclaiming that mathematics reveals what has to be true always and everywhere, vanishes when we remember that everything that is true of any essence is true of it always and everywhere. the most trivial truths of logic are as necessary and eternal as the most important; so that it is less of an achievement than it sounds when we say we have grasped a truth that is eternal and necessary. this fact will be more clearly recognised, perhaps, if we remember that the cogency of our ideal knowledge follows upon our intent in fixing its object. it hangs on a virtual definition, and explicates it. we cannot oblige anybody or anything to reproduce the idea which we have chosen; but that idea will remain the idea it is whether forgotten or remembered, exemplified or not exemplified in things. to penetrate to the foundation of being is possible for us only because the foundation of being is distinguishable quality; were there no set of differing characteristics, one or more of which an existing thing might appropriate, existence would be altogether impossible. the realm of essence is merely the system or chaos of these fundamental possibilities, the catalogue of all exemplifiable natures; so that any experience whatsoever must tap the realm of essence, and throw the light of attention on one of its constituent forms. this is, if you will, a trivial achievement; what would be really a surprising feat, and hardly to be credited, would be that the human mind should grasp the _constitution of nature_; that is, should discover which is the particular essence, or the particular system of essences, which actual existence illustrates. in the matter of physics, truly, we are reduced to skimming the surface, since we have to start from our casual experiences, which form the most superficial stratum of nature, and the most unstable. yet these casual experiences, while they leave us so much in the dark as to their natural basis and environment, necessarily reveal each its ideal object, its specific essence; and we need only arrest our attention upon it, and define it to ourselves, for an eternal possibility, and some of its intrinsic characters, to have been revealed to our thought. whatever, then, a man's mental and moral habit might be, it would perforce have affinity to some essence or other; his life would revolve about some congenial ideal object; he would find some sorts of form, some types of relation, more visible, beautiful, and satisfying than others. mr. russell happens to have a mathematical genius, and to find comfort in laying up his treasures in the mathematical heaven. it would be highly desirable that this temperament should be more common; but even if it were universal it would not reduce mathematical essence to a product of human attention, nor raise the "beauty" of mathematics to part of its essence. i do not mean to suggest that mr. russell attempts to do the latter; he speaks explicitly of the _value_ of mathematical study, a point in ethics and not directly in logic; yet his moral philosophy is itself so much assimilated to logic that the distinction between the two becomes somewhat dubious; and as mr. russell will never succeed in convincing us that moral values are independent of life, he may, quite against his will, lead us to question the independence of essence, with that blind gregarious drift of all ideas, in this direction or in that, which is characteristic of human philosophising. iii. the critique of pragmatism the time has not yet come when a just and synthetic account of what is called pragmatism can be expected of any man. the movement is still in a nebulous state, a state from which, perhaps, it is never destined to issue. the various tendencies that compose it may soon cease to appear together; each may detach itself and be lost in the earlier system with which it has most affinity. a good critic has enumerated "thirteen pragmatisms;" and besides such distinguishable tenets, there are in pragmatism echoes of various popular moral forces, like democracy, impressionism, love of the concrete, respect for success, trust in will and action, and the habit of relying on the future, rather than on the past, to justify one's methods and opinions. most of these things are characteristically american; and mr. russell touches on some of them with more wit than sympathy. thus he writes: "the influence of democracy in promoting pragmatism is visible in almost every page of william james's writing. there is an impatience of authority, an unwillingness to condemn widespread prejudices, a tendency to decide philosophical questions by putting them to a vote, which contrast curiously with the usual dictatorial tone of philosophic writings.... a thing which simply is true, whether you like it or not, is to him as hateful as a russian autocracy; he feels that he is escaping from a prison, made not by stone walls but by 'hard facts,' when he has humanised truth, and made it, like the police force in a democracy, the servant of the people instead of their master. the democratic temper pervades even the religion of the pragmatists; they have the religion they have chosen, and the traditional reverence is changed into satisfaction with their own handiwork. 'the prince of darkness,' james says, 'may be a gentleman, as we are told he is, but whatever the god of earth and heaven is, he can surely be no gentleman,' he is rather, we should say, conceived by pragmatists as an elected president, to whom we give a respect which is really a tribute to the wisdom of our own choice. a government in which we have no voice is repugnant to the democratic temper. william james carries up to heaven the revolt of his new england ancestors: the power to which we can yield respect must be a george washington rather than a george iii." a point of fundamental importance, about which pragmatists have been far from clear, and perhaps not in agreement with one another, is the sense in which their psychology is to be taken. "the facts that fill the imaginations of pragmatists," mr. russell writes, "are psychical facts; where others might think of the starry heavens, pragmatists think of the perception of the starry heavens; where others think of god, pragmatists think of the belief in god, and so on. in discussing the sciences, they never think, like scientific specialists, about the facts upon which scientific theories are based; they think about the theories themselves. thus their initial question and their habitual imaginative background are both psychological." this is so true that unless we make the substitution into psychic terms instinctively, the whole pragmatic view of things will seem paradoxical, if not actually unthinkable. for instance, pragmatists might protest against the accusation that "they never think about the facts upon which scientific theories are based," for they lay a great emphasis on facts. facts are the cash which the credit of theories hangs upon. yet this protest, though sincere, would be inconclusive, and in the end it would illustrate mr. russell's observation, rather than refute it. for we should presently learn that these facts can be made by thinking, that our faith in them may contribute to their reality, and may modify their nature; in other words, these facts are our immediate apprehensions of fact, which it is indeed conceivable that our temperaments, expectations, and opinions should modify. thus the pragmatist's reliance on facts does not carry him beyond the psychic sphere; his facts are only his personal experiences. personal experiences may well be the basis for no less personal myths; but the effort of intelligence and of science is rather to find the basis of the personal experiences themselves; and this non-psychic basis of experience is what common sense calls the facts, and what practice is concerned with. yet these are not the _pragmata_ of the pragmatist, for it is only the despicable intellectualist that can arrive at them; and the bed-rock of facts that the pragmatist builds upon is avowedly drifting sand. hence the odd expressions, new to literature and even to grammar, which bubble up continually in pragmatist writings. "for illustration take the former fact that the earth is flat," says one, quite innocently; and another observes that "two centuries later, nominalism was evidently true, because it alone would legitimise the local independence of cities." lest we should suppose that the historical sequence of these "truths" or illusions is, at least, fixed and irreversible, we are soon informed that the past is always changing, too; that is (if i may rationalise this mystical dictum), that history is always being rewritten, and that the growing present adds new relations to the past, which lead us to conceive or to describe it in some new fashion. even if the ultimate inference is not drawn, and we are not told that this changing idea of the past is the only past that exists--the real past being unattainable and therefore, for personal idealism, non-existent--it is abundantly clear that the effort to distinguish fact from theory cannot be successful, so long as the psychological way of thinking prevails; for a theory, psychologically considered, is a bare fact in the experience of the theorist, and the other facts of his experience are so many other momentary views, so many scant theories, to be immediately superseded by other "truths in the plural." sensations and ideas are really distinguishable only by reference to what is assumed to lie without; of which external reality experience is always an effect (and in that capacity is called sensation) and often at the same time an apprehension (and in that capacity is called idea). it is a crucial question, then, in the interpretation of pragmatism, whether the psychological point of view, undoubtedly prevalent in that school, is the only or the ultimate point of view which it admits. the habit of studying ideas rather than their objects might be simply a matter of emphasis or predilection. it might merely indicate a special interest in the life of reason, and be an effort, legitimate under any system of philosophy, to recount the stages by which human thought, developing in the bosom of nature, may have reached its present degree of articulation. i myself, for instance, like to look at things from this angle: not that i have ever doubted the reality of the natural world, or been able to take very seriously any philosophy that denied it, but precisely because, when we take the natural world for granted, it becomes a possible and enlightening inquiry to ask how the human animal has come to discover his real environment, in so far as he has done so, and what dreams have intervened or supervened in the course of his rational awakening. on the other hand, a psychological point of view might be equivalent to the idealistic doctrine that the articulation of human thought constitutes the only structure of the universe, and its whole history. according to this view, pragmatism would seem to be a revised version of the transcendental logic, leaving logic still transcendental, that is, still concerned with the evolution of the categories. the revision would consist chiefly in this, that empirical verification, utility, and survival would take the place of dialectical irony as the force governing the evolution. it would still remain possible for other methods of approach than this transcendental pragmatism, for instinct, perhaps, or for revelation, to bring us into contact with things-in-themselves. a junction might thus be effected with the system of m. bergson, which would lead to this curious result: that pragmatic logic would be the method of intelligence, because intelligence is merely a method, useful in practice, for the symbolic and improper representation of reality; while another non-pragmatic method--sympathy and dream--would alone be able to put us in possession of direct knowledge and genuine truth. so that, after all, the pragmatic "truth" of working ideas would turn out to be what it has seemed hitherto to mankind, namely, no real truth, but rather a convenient sort of fiction, which ceases to deceive when once its merely pragmatic value is discounted by criticism. i remember once putting a question on this subject to professor james; and his answer was one which i am glad to be able to record. in relation to his having said that "as far as the past facts go, there is no difference ... be the atoms or be the god their cause,"[ ] i asked whether, if god had been the cause, apart from the value of the idea of him in our calculations, his existence would not have made a difference to him, as he would be presumably self-conscious. "of course," said professor james, "but i wasn't considering that side of the matter; i was thinking of our idea." the choice of the subjective point of view, then, was deliberate here, and frankly arbitrary; it was not intended to exclude the possibility or legitimacy of the objective attitude. and the original reason for deliberately ignoring, in this way, the realistic way of thinking, even while admitting that it represents the real state of affairs, would have been, i suppose, that what could be verified was always some further effect of the real objects, and never those real objects themselves; so that for interpreting and predicting our personal experience only the hypothesis of objects was pertinent, while the objects themselves, except as so represented, were useless and unattainable. the case, if i may adapt a comparison of mr. russell's, was as if we possessed a catalogue of the library at alexandria, all the books being lost for ever; it would be only in the catalogue that we could practically verify their existence or character, though doubtless, by some idle flight of imagination, we might continue to think of the books, as well as of those titles in the catalogue which alone could appear to us in experience. pragmatism, approached from this side, would then seem to express an acute critical conscience, a sort of will not to believe; not to believe, i mean, more than is absolutely necessary for solipsistic practice. [footnote : _pragmatism_, p. .] such economical faith, enabling one to dissolve the hard materialistic world into a work of mind, which mind might outflank, was traditional in the radical emersonian circles in which pragmatism sprang up. it is one of the approaches to the movement; yet we may safely regard the ancestral transcendentalism of the pragmatists as something which they have turned their back upon, and mean to disown. it is destined to play no part in the ultimate result of pragmatism. this ultimate result promises to be, on the contrary, a direct materialistic sort of realism. this alone is congruous with the scientific affinities of the school and its young-american temper. nor is the transformation very hard to effect. the world of solipsistic practice, if you remove the romantic self that was supposed to evoke it, becomes at once the sensible world; and the problem is only to find a place in the mosaic of objects of sensation for those cognitive and moral functions which the soul was once supposed to exercise in the presence of an independent reality. but this problem is precisely the one that pragmatists boast they have already solved; for they have declared that consciousness does not exist, and that objects of sensation (which at first were called feelings, experiences, or "truths") know or mean one another when they lead to one another, when they are poles, so to speak, in the same vital circuit. the spiritual act which was supposed to take things for its object is to be turned into "objective spirit," that is, into dynamic relations between things. the philosopher will deny that he has any other sort of mind himself, lest he should be shut up in it again, like a sceptical and disconsolate child; while if there threatens to be any covert or superfluous reality in the self-consciousness of god, nothing will be easier than to deny that god is self-conscious; for indeed, if there is no consciousness on earth, why should we imagine that there is any in heaven? the psychologism with which the pragmatists started seems to be passing in this way, in the very effort to formulate it pragmatically, into something which, whatever it may be, is certainly not psychologism. but the bewildered public may well ask whether it is pragmatism either. there is another crucial point in pragmatism which the defenders of the system are apt to pass over lightly, but which mr. russell regards (justly, i think) as of decisive importance. is, namely, the pragmatic account of truth intended to cover all knowledge, or one kind of knowledge only? apparently the most authoritative pragmatists admit that it covers one kind only; for there are two sorts of self-evidence in which, they say, it is not concerned: first, the dialectical relation between essences; and second, the known occurrence or experience of facts. there are obvious reasons why these two kinds of cognitions, so interesting to mr. russell, are not felt by pragmatists to constitute exceptions worth considering. dialectical relations, they will say, are verbal only; that is, they define ideal objects, and certainty in these cases does not coerce existence, or touch contingent fact at all. on the other hand, such apprehension as seizes on some matter of fact, as, for instance, "i feel pain," or "i expected to feel this pain, and it is now verifying my expectation," though often true propositions, are not _theoretical_ truths; they are not, it is supposed, questionable beliefs but rather immediate observations. yet many of these apprehensions of fact (or all, perhaps, if we examine them scrupulously) involve the veracity of memory, surely a highly questionable sort of truth; and, moreover, verification, the pragmatic test of truth, would be obviously impossible to apply, if the prophecy supposed to be verified were not assumed to be truly remembered. how shall we know that our expectation is fulfilled, if we do not know directly that we had such an expectation? but if we know our past experience directly--not merely knew it when present, but know now what it was, and how it has led down to the present--this amounts to enough knowledge to make up a tolerable system of the universe, without invoking pragmatic verification or "truth" at all. i have never been able to discover whether, by that perception of fact which is not "truth" but fact itself, pragmatists meant each human apprehension taken singly, or the whole series of these apprehensions. in the latter case, as in the philosophy of m. bergson, all past reality might constantly lie open to retentive intuition, a form of knowledge soaring quite over the head of any pragmatic method or pragmatic "truth." it looks, indeed, as if the history of at least personal experience were commonly taken for granted by pragmatists, as a basis on which to rear their method. their readiness to make so capital an assumption is a part of their heritage from romantic idealism. to the romantic idealist science and theology are tales which ought to be reduced to an empirical equivalent in his personal experience; but the tale of his personal experience itself is a sacred figment, the one precious conviction of the romantic heart, which it would be heartless to question. yet here is a kind of assumed truth which cannot be reduced to its pragmatic meaning, because it must be true literally in order that the pragmatic meaning of other beliefs may be conceived or tested at all. now, if it be admitted that the pragmatic theory of truth does not touch our knowledge either of matters of fact or of the necessary implications of ideas, the question arises: what sort of knowledge remains for pragmatic theory to apply to? simply, mr. russell answers, those "working hypotheses" to which "prudent people give only a low degree of belief." for "we hold different beliefs with very different degrees of conviction. some--such as the belief that i am sitting in a chair, or that + = --can be doubted by few except those who have had a long training in philosophy. such beliefs are held so firmly that non-philosophers who deny them are put into lunatic asylums. other beliefs, such as the facts of history, are held rather less firmly.... beliefs about the future, as that the sun will rise to-morrow and that the trains will run approximately as in bradshaw, may be held with almost as great conviction as beliefs about the past. scientific laws are generally believed less firmly.... philosophical beliefs, finally, will, with most people, take a still lower place, since the opposite beliefs of others can hardly fail to induce doubt. belief, therefore, is a matter of degree. to speak of belief, disbelief, doubt, and suspense of judgment as the only possibilities is as if, from the writing on the thermometer, we were to suppose that blood heat, summer heat, temperate, and freezing were the only temperatures." beliefs which require to be confirmed by future experience, or which actually refer to it, are evidently only presumptions; it is merely the truth of presumptions that empirical logic applies to, and only so long as they remain presumptions. presumptions may be held with very different degrees of assurance, and yet be acted upon, in the absence of any strong counter-suggestion; as the confidence of lovers or of religious enthusiasts may be at blood heat at one moment and freezing at the next, without a change in anything save in the will to believe. the truth of such presumptions, whatever may be the ground of them, depends in fact on whether they are to lead (or, rather, whether the general course of events is to lead) to the further things presumed; for these things are what presumptions refer to explicitly. it sometimes happens, however, that presumptions (being based on voluminous blind instinct rather than on distinct repeated observations) are expressed in consciousness by some symbol or myth, as when a man says he believes in his luck; the presumption really regards particular future chances and throws of the dice, but the emotional and verbal mist in which the presumption is wrapped, veils the pragmatic burden of it; and a metaphysical entity arises, called luck, in which a man may think he believes rather than in a particular career that may be awaiting him. now since this entity, luck, is a mere word, confidence in it, to be justified at all, must be transferred to the concrete facts it stands for. faith in one's luck must be pragmatic, but simply because faith in such an entity is not needful nor philosophical at all. the case is the same with working hypotheses, when that is all they are; for on this point there is some confusion. whether an idea is a working hypothesis merely or an anticipation of matters open to eventual inspection may not always be clear. thus the atomic theory, in the sense in which most philosophers entertain it to-day, seems to be a working hypothesis only; for they do not seriously believe that there are atoms, but in their ignorance of the precise composition of matter, they find it convenient to speak of it as if it were composed of indestructible particles. but for democritus and for many modern men of science the atomic theory is not a working hypothesis merely; they do not regard it as a provisional makeshift; they regard it as a probable, if not a certain, anticipation of what inspection would discover to be the fact, could inspection be carried so far; in other words, they believe the atomic theory is true. if they are right, the validity of this theory would not be that of pragmatic "truth" but of pragmatic "fact"; for it would be a view, such as memory or intuition or sensation might give us, of experienced objects in their experienced relations; it would be the communication to us, in a momentary dream, of what would be the experience of a universal observer. it would be knowledge of reality in m. bergson's sense. pragmatic "truth," on the contrary, is the relative and provisional justification of fiction; and pragmatism is not a theory of truth at all, but a theory of theory, when theory is instrumental. for theory too has more than one signification. it may mean such a symbolic or foreshortened view, such a working hypothesis, as true and full knowledge might supersede; or it may mean this true and full knowledge itself, a synthetic survey of objects of experience in their experimental character. algebra and language are theoretical in the first sense, as when a man believes in his luck; historical and scientific imagination are theoretical in the second sense, when they gather objects of experience together without distorting them. but it is only to the first sort of theory that pragmatism can be reasonably applied; to apply it also to the second would be to retire into that extreme subjectivism which the leading pragmatists have so hotly disclaimed. we find, accordingly, that it is only when a theory is avowedly unreal, and does not ask to be believed, that the value of it is pragmatic; since in that case belief passes consciously from the symbols used to the eventual facts in which the symbolism terminates, and for which it stands. it may seem strange that a definition of truth should have been based on the consideration of those ideas exclusively for which truth is not claimed by any critical person, such ideas, namely, as religious myths or the graphic and verbal machinery of science. yet the fact is patent, and if we considered the matter historically it might not prove inexplicable. theology has long applied the name truth pre-eminently to fiction. when the conviction first dawned upon pragmatists that there was no absolute or eternal truth, what they evidently were thinking of was that it is folly, in this changing world, to pledge oneself to any final and inflexible creed. the pursuit of truth, since nothing better was possible, was to be accepted instead of the possession of it. but it is characteristic of protestantism that, when it gives up anything, it transfers to what remains the unction, and often the name, proper to what it has abandoned. so, if truth was no longer to be claimed or even hoped for, the value and the name of truth could be instinctively transferred to what was to take its place--spontaneous, honest, variable conviction. and the sanctions of this conviction were to be looked for, not in the objective reality, since it was an idle illusion to fancy we could get at that, but in the growth of this conviction itself, and in the prosperous adventure of the whole soul, so courageous in its self-trust, and so modest in its dogmas. science, too, has often been identified, not with the knowledge men of science possess, but with the language they use. if science meant knowledge, the science of darwin, for instance, would lie in his observations of plants and animals, and in his thoughts about the probable ancestors of the human race--all knowledge of actual or possible facts. it would not be knowledge of selection or of spontaneous variation, terms which are mere verbal bridges over the gaps in that knowledge, and mark the _lacunae_ and unsolved problems of the science. yet it is just such terms that seem to clothe "science" in its pontifical garb; the cowl is taken for the monk; and when a penetrating critic, like m. henri poincaré, turned his subtle irony upon them, the public cried that he had announced the "bankruptcy of science," whereas it is merely the language of science that he had reduced to its pragmatic value--to convenience and economy in the registering of facts--and had by no means questioned that positive and cumulative knowledge of facts which science is attaining. it is an incident in the same general confusion that a critical epistemology, like pragmatism, analysing these figments of scientific or theological theory, should innocently suppose that it was analysing truth; while the only view to which it really attributes truth is its view of the system of facts open to possible experience, a system which those figments presuppose and which they may help us in part to divine, where it is accidentally hidden from human inspection. iv. hypostatic ethics if mr. russell, in his essay on "the elements of ethics," had wished to propitiate the unregenerate naturalist, before trying to convert him, he could not have chosen a more skilful procedure; for he begins by telling us that "what is called good conduct is conduct which is a means to other things which are good on their own account; and hence ... the study of what is good or bad on its own account must be included in ethics." two consequences are involved in this: first, that ethics is concerned with the economy of all values, and not with "moral" goods only, or with duty; and second, that values may and do inhere in a great variety of things and relations, all of which it is the part of wisdom to respect, and if possible to establish. in this matter, according to our author, the general philosopher is prone to one error and the professed moralist to another. "the philosopher, bent on the construction of a system, is inclined to simplify the facts unduly ... and to twist them into a form in which they can all be deduced from one or two general principles. the moralist, on the other hand, being primarily concerned with conduct, tends to become absorbed in means, to value the actions men ought to perform more than the ends which such actions serve.... hence most of what they value in this world would have to be omitted by many moralists from any imagined heaven, because there such things as self-denial and effort and courage and pity could find no place.... kant has the bad eminence of combining both errors in the highest possible degree, since he holds that there is nothing good except the virtuous will--a view which simplifies the good as much as any philosopher could wish, and mistakes means for ends as completely as any moralist could enjoin." those of us who are what mr. russell would call ethical sceptics will be delighted at this way of clearing the ground; it opens before us the prospect of a moral philosophy that should estimate the various values of things known and of things imaginable, showing what combinations of goods are possible in any one rational system, and (if fancy could stretch so far) what different rational systems would be possible in places and times remote enough from one another not to come into physical conflict. such ethics, since it would express in reflection the dumb but actual interests of men, might have both influence and authority over them; two things which an alien and dogmatic ethics necessarily lacks. the joy of the ethical sceptic in mr. russell is destined, however, to be short-lived. before proceeding to the expression of concrete ideals, he thinks it necessary to ask a preliminary and quite abstract question, to which his essay is chiefly devoted; namely, what is the right definition of the predicate "good," which we hope to apply in the sequel to such a variety of things? and he answers at once: the predicate "good" is indefinable. this answer he shows to be unavoidable, and so evidently unavoidable that we might perhaps have been absolved from asking the question; for, as he says, the so-called definitions of "good"--that it is pleasure, the desired, and so forth--are not definitions of the predicate "good," but designations of the things to which this predicate is applied by different persons. pleasure, and its rivals, are not synonyms for the abstract quality "good," but names for classes of concrete facts that are supposed to possess that quality. from this correct, if somewhat trifling, observation, however, mr. russell, like mr. moore before him, evokes a portentous dogma. not being able to define good, he hypostasises it. "good and bad," he says, "are qualities which belong to objects independently of our opinions, just as much as round and square do; and when two people differ as to whether a thing is good, only one of them can be right, though it may be very hard to know which is right." "we cannot maintain that for me a thing ought to exist on its own account, while for you it ought not; that would merely mean that one of us is mistaken, since in fact everything either ought to exist, or ought not." thus we are asked to believe that good attaches to things for no reason or cause, and according to no principles of distribution; that it must be found there by a sort of receptive exploration in each separate case; in other words, that it is an absolute, not a relative thing, a primary and not a secondary quality. that the quality "good" is indefinable is one assertion, and obvious; but that the presence of this quality is unconditioned is another, and astonishing. my logic, i am well aware, is not very accurate or subtle; and i wish mr. russell had not left it to me to discover the connection between these two propositions. green is an indefinable predicate, and the specific quality of it can be given only in intuition; but it is a quality that things acquire under certain conditions, so much so that the same bit of grass, at the same moment, may have it from one point of view and not from another. right and left are indefinable; the difference could not be explained without being invoked in the explanation; yet everything that is to the right is not to the right on no condition, but obviously on the condition that some one is looking in a certain direction; and if some one else at the same time is looking in the opposite direction, what is truly to the right will be truly to the left also. if mr. russell thinks this is a contradiction, i understand why the universe does not please him. the contradiction would be real, undoubtedly, if we suggested that the idea of good was at any time or in any relation the idea of evil, or the intuition of right that of left, or the quality of green that of yellow; these disembodied essences are fixed by the intent that selects them, and in that ideal realm they can never have any relations except the dialectical ones implied in their nature, and these relations they must always retain. but the contradiction disappears when, instead of considering the qualities in themselves, we consider the things of which those qualities are aspects; for the qualities of things are not compacted by implication, but are conjoined irrationally by nature, as she will; and the same thing may be, and is, at once yellow and green, to the left and to the right, good and evil, many and one, large and small; and whatever verbal paradox there may be in this way of speaking (for from the point of view of nature it is natural enough) had been thoroughly explained and talked out by the time of plato, who complained that people should still raise a difficulty so trite and exploded.[ ] indeed, while square is always square, and round round, a thing that is round may actually be square also, if we allow it to have a little body, and to be a cylinder. [footnote : plato, _philebus_, , d. the dialectical element in this dialogue is evidently the basis of mr. russell's, as of mr. moore's, ethics; but they have not adopted the other elements in it, i mean the political and the theological. as to the political element, plato everywhere conceives the good as the eligible in life, and refers it to human nature and to the pursuit of happiness--that happiness which mr. russell, in a rash moment, says is but a name which some people prefer to give to pleasure. thus in the _philebus_ ( , d) the good looked for is declared to be "some state and disposition of the soul which has the property of making all men happy"; and later ( , d) the conclusion is that insight is better than pleasure "as an element in human life." as to the theological element, plato, in hypostasising the good, does not hypostasise it as good, but as cause or power, which is, it seems to me, the sole category that justifies hypostasis, and logically involves it; for if things have a ground at all, that ground must exist before them and beyond them. hence the whole platonic and christian scheme, in making the good independent of private will and opinion, by no means makes it independent of the direction of nature in general and of human nature in particular; for all things have been created with an innate predisposition towards the creative good, and are capable of finding happiness in nothing else. obligation, in this system, remains internal and vital. plato attributes a single vital direction and a single moral source to the cosmos. this is what determines and narrows the scope of the true good; for the true good is that relevant to nature. plato would not have been a dogmatic moralist, had he not been a theist.] but perhaps what suggests this hypostasis of good is rather the fact that what others find good, or what we ourselves have found good in moods with which we retain no sympathy, is sometimes pronounced by us to be bad; and far from inferring from this diversity of experience that the present good, like the others, corresponds to a particular attitude or interest of ours, and is dependent upon it, mr. russell and mr. moore infer instead that the presence of the good must be independent of all interests, attitudes, and opinions. they imagine that the truth of a proposition attributing a certain relative quality to an object contradicts the truth of another proposition, attributing to the same object an opposite relative quality. thus if a man here and another man at the antipodes call opposite directions up, "only one of them can be right, though it may be very hard to know which is right." to protect the belated innocence of this state of mind, mr. russell, so far as i can see, has only one argument, and one analogy. the argument is that "if this were not the case, we could not reason with a man as to what is right." "we do in fact hold that when one man approves of a certain act, while another disapproves, one of them is mistaken, which would not be the case with a mere emotion. if one man likes oysters and another dislikes them, we do not say that either of them is mistaken." in other words, we are to maintain our prejudices, however absurd, lest it should become unnecessary to quarrel about them! truly the debating society has its idols, no less than the cave and the theatre. the analogy that comes to buttress somewhat this singular argument is the analogy between ethical propriety and physical or logical truth. an ethical proposition may be correct or incorrect, in a sense justifying argument, when it touches what is good as a means, that is, when it is not intrinsically ethical, but deals with causes and effects, or with matters of fact or necessity. but to speak of the truth of an ultimate good would be a false collocation of terms; an ultimate good is chosen, found, or aimed at; it is not opined. the ultimate intuitions on which ethics rests are not debatable, for they are not opinions we hazard but preferences we feel; and it can be neither correct nor incorrect to feel them. we may assert these preferences fiercely or with sweet reasonableness, and we may be more or less incapable of sympathising with the different preferences of others; about oysters we may be tolerant, like mr. russell, and about character intolerant; but that is already a great advance in enlightenment, since the majority of mankind have regarded as hateful in the highest degree any one who indulged in pork, or beans, or frogs' legs, or who had a weakness for anything called "unnatural"; for it is the things that offend their animal instincts that intense natures have always found to be, intrinsically and _par excellence_, abominations. i am not sure whether mr. russell thinks he has disposed of this view where he discusses the proposition that the good is the desired and refutes it on the ground that "it is commonly admitted that there are bad desires; and when people speak of bad desires, they seem to mean desires for what is bad." most people undoubtedly call desires bad when they are generically contrary to their own desires, and call objects that disgust them bad, even when other people covet them. this human weakness is not, however, a very high authority for a logician to appeal to, being too like the attitude of the german lady who said that englishmen called a certain object _bread_, and frenchmen called it _pain_, but that it really was _brod_. scholastic philosophy is inclined to this way of asserting itself; and mr. russell, though he candidly admits that there are ultimate differences of opinion about good and evil, would gladly minimise these differences, and thinks he triumphs when he feels that the prejudices of his readers will agree with his own; as if the constitutional unanimity of all human animals, supposing it existed, could tend to show that the good they agreed to recognise was independent of their constitution. in a somewhat worthier sense, however, we may admit that there are desires for what is bad, since desire and will, in the proper psychological sense of these words, are incidental phases of consciousness, expressing but not constituting those natural relations that make one thing good for another. at the same time the words desire and will are often used, in a mythical or transcendental sense, for those material dispositions and instincts by which vital and moral units are constituted. it is in reference to such constitutional interests that things are "really" good or bad; interests which may not be fairly represented by any incidental conscious desire. no doubt any desire, however capricious, represents some momentary and partial interest, which lends to its objects a certain real and inalienable value; yet when we consider, as we do in human society, the interests of men, whom reflection and settled purposes have raised more or less to the ideal dignity of individuals, then passing fancies and passions may indeed have bad objects, and be bad themselves, in that they thwart the more comprehensive interests of the soul that entertains them. food and poison are such only relatively, and in view of particular bodies, and the same material thing may be food and poison at once; the child, and even the doctor, may easily mistake one for the other. for the human system whiskey is truly more intoxicating than coffee, and the contrary opinion would be an error; but what a strange way of vindicating this real, though relative, distinction, to insist that whiskey is more intoxicating in itself, without reference to any animal; that it is pervaded, as it were, by an inherent intoxication, and stands dead drunk in its bottle! yet just in this way mr. russell and mr. moore conceive things to be dead good and dead bad. it is such a view, rather than the naturalistic one, that renders reasoning and self-criticism impossible in morals; for wrong desires, and false opinions as to value, are conceivable only because a point of reference or criterion is available to prove them such. if no point of reference and no criterion were admitted to be relevant, nothing but physical stress could give to one assertion of value greater force than to another. the shouting moralist no doubt has his place, but not in philosophy. that good is not an intrinsic or primary quality, but relative and adventitious, is clearly betrayed by mr. russell's own way of arguing, whenever he approaches some concrete ethical question. for instance, to show that the good is not pleasure, he can avowedly do nothing but appeal "to ethical judgments with which almost every one would agree." he repeats, in effect, plato's argument about the life of the oyster, having pleasure with no knowledge. imagine such mindless pleasure, as intense and prolonged as you please, and would you choose it? is it your good? here the british reader, like the blushing greek youth, is expected to answer instinctively, no! it is an _argumentum ad hominem_ (and there can be no other kind of argument in ethics); but the man who gives the required answer does so not because the answer is self-evident, which it is not, but because he is the required sort of man. he is shocked at the idea of resembling an oyster. yet changeless pleasure, without memory or reflection, without the wearisome intermixture of arbitrary images, is just what the mystic, the voluptuary, and perhaps the oyster find to be good. ideas, in their origin, are probably signals of alarm; and the distress which they marked in the beginning always clings to them in some measure, and causes many a soul, far more profound than that of the young protarchus or of the british reader, to long for them to cease altogether. such a radical hedonism is indeed inhuman; it undermines all conventional ambitions, and is not a possible foundation for political or artistic life. but that is all we can say against it. our humanity cannot annul the incommensurable sorts of good that may be pursued in the world, though it cannot itself pursue them. the impossibility which people labour under of being satisfied with pure pleasure as a goal is due to their want of imagination, or rather to their being dominated by an imagination which is exclusively human. the author's estrangement from reality reappears in his treatment of egoism, and most of all in his "free man's religion." egoism, he thinks, is untenable because "if i am right in thinking that my good is the only good, then every one else is mistaken unless he admits that my good, not his, is the only good." "most people ... would admit that it is better two people's desires should be satisfied than only one person's.... then what is good is not good _for me_ or _for you_, but is simply good." "it is, indeed, so evident that it is better to secure a greater good for _a_ than a lesser good for _b_, that it is hard to find any still more evident principle by which to prove this. and if _a_ happens to be some one else, and _b_ to be myself, that cannot affect the question, since it is irrelevant to the general question who _a_ and _b_ may be." to the question, as the logician states it after transforming men into letters, it is certainly irrelevant; but it is not irrelevant to the case as it arises in nature. if two goods are somehow rightly pronounced to be equally good, no circumstance can render one better than the other. and if the locus in which the good is to arise is somehow pronounced to be indifferent, it will certainly be indifferent whether that good arises in me or in you. but how shall these two pronouncements be made? in practice, values cannot be compared save as represented or enacted in the private imagination of somebody: for we could not conceive that an alien good _was_ a good (as mr. russell cannot conceive that the life of an ecstatic oyster is a good) unless we could sympathise with it in some way in our own persons; and on the warmth which we felt in so representing the alien good would hang our conviction that it was truly valuable, and had worth in comparison with our own good. the voice of reason, bidding us prefer the greater good, no matter who is to enjoy it, is also nothing but the force of sympathy, bringing a remote existence before us vividly _sub specie boni_. capacity for such sympathy measures the capacity to recognise duty and therefore, in a moral sense, to have it. doubtless it is conceivable that all wills should become co-operative, and that nature should be ruled magically by an exact and universal sympathy; but this situation must be actually attained in part, before it can be conceived or judged to be an authoritative ideal. the tigers cannot regard it as such, for it would suppress the tragic good called ferocity, which makes, in their eyes, the chief glory of the universe. therefore the inertia of nature, the ferocity of beasts, the optimism of mystics, and the selfishness of men and nations must all be accepted as conditions for the peculiar goods, essentially incommensurable, which they can generate severally. it is misplaced vehemence to call them intrinsically detestable, because they do not (as they cannot) generate or recognise the goods we prize. in the real world, persons are not abstract egos, like _a_ and _b_, so that to benefit one is clearly as good as to benefit another. indeed, abstract egos could not be benefited, for they could not be modified at all, even if somehow they could be distinguished. it would be the qualities or objects distributed among them that would carry, wherever they went, each its inalienable cargo of value, like ships sailing from sea to sea. but it is quite vain and artificial to imagine different goods charged with such absolute and comparable weights; and actual egoism is not the thin and refutable thing that mr. russell makes of it. what it really holds is that a given man, oneself, and those akin to him, are qualitatively better than other beings; that the things they prize are intrinsically better than the things prized by others; and that therefore there is no injustice in treating these chosen interests as supreme. the injustice, it is felt, would lie rather in not treating things so unequal unequally. this feeling may, in many cases, amuse the impartial observer, or make him indignant; yet it may, in every case, according to mr. russell, be absolutely just. the refutation he gives of egoism would not dissuade any fanatic from exterminating all his enemies with a good conscience; it would merely encourage him to assert that what he was ruthlessly establishing was the absolute good. doubtless such conscientious tyrants would be wretched themselves, and compelled to make sacrifices which would cost them dear; but that would only extend, as it were, the pernicious egoism of that part of their being which they had allowed to usurp a universal empire. the twang of intolerance and of self-mutilation is not absent from the ethics of mr. russell and mr. moore, even as it stands; and one trembles to think what it may become in the mouths of their disciples. intolerance itself is a form of egoism, and to condemn egoism intolerantly is to share it. i cannot help thinking that a consciousness of the relativity of values, if it became prevalent, would tend to render people more truly social than would a belief that things have intrinsic and unchangeable values, no matter what the attitude of any one to them may be. if we said that goods, including the right distribution of goods, are relative to specific natures, moral warfare would continue, but not with poisoned arrows. our private sense of justice itself would be acknowledged to have but a relative authority, and while we could not have a higher duty than to follow it, we should seek to meet those whose aims were incompatible with it as we meet things physically inconvenient, without insulting them as if they were morally vile or logically contemptible. real unselfishness consists in sharing the interests of others. beyond the pale of actual unanimity the only possible unselfishness is chivalry--a recognition of the inward right and justification of our enemies fighting against us. this chivalry has long been practised in the battle-field without abolishing the causes of war; and it might conceivably be extended to all the conflicts of men with one another, and of the warring elements within each breast. policy, hypnotisation, and even surgery may be practised without exorcisms or anathemas. when a man has decided on a course of action, it is a vain indulgence in expletives to declare that he is sure that course is absolutely right. his moral dogma expresses its natural origin all the more clearly the more hotly it is proclaimed; and ethical absolutism, being a mental grimace of passion, refutes what it says by what it is. sweeter and more profound, to my sense, is the philosophy of homer, whose every line seems to breathe the conviction that what is beautiful or precious has not thereby any right to existence; nothing has such a right; nor is it given us to condemn absolutely any force--god or man--that destroys what is beautiful or precious, for it has doubtless something beautiful or precious of its own to achieve. the consequences of a hypostasis of the good are no less interesting than its causes. if the good were independent of nature, it might still be conceived as relevant to nature, by being its creator or mover; but mr. russell is not a theist after the manner of socrates; his good is not a power. nor would representing it to be such long help his case; for an ideal hypostasised into a cause achieves only a mythical independence. the least criticism discloses that it is natural laws, zoological species, and human ideals, that have been projected into the empyrean; and it is no marvel that the good should attract the world where the good, by definition, is whatever the world is aiming at. the hypostasis accomplished by mr. russell is more serious, and therefore more paradoxical. if i understand it, it may be expressed as follows: in the realm of eternal essences, before anything exists, there are certain essences that have this remarkable property, that they ought to exist, or at least that, if anything exists, it ought to conform to them. what exists, however, is deaf to this moral emphasis in the eternal; nature exists for no reason; and, indeed, why should she have subordinated her own arbitrariness to a good that is no less arbitrary? this good, however, is somehow good notwithstanding; so that there is an abysmal wrong in its not being obeyed. the world is, in principle, totally depraved; but as the good is not a power, there is no one to redeem the world. the saints are those who, imitating the impotent dogmatism on high, and despising their sinful natural propensities, keep asserting that certain things are in themselves good and others bad, and declaring to be detestable any other saint who dogmatises differently. in this system the calvinistic god has lost his creative and punitive functions, but continues to decree groundlessly what is good and what evil, and to love the one and hate the other with an infinite love or hatred. meanwhile the reprobate need not fear hell in the next world, but the elect are sure to find it here. what shall we say of this strangely unreal and strangely personal religion? is it a ghost of calvinism, returned with none of its old force but with its old aspect of rigidity? perhaps: but then, in losing its force, in abandoning its myths, and threats, and rhetoric, this religion has lost its deceptive sanctimony and hypocrisy; and in retaining its rigidity it has kept what made it noble and pathetic; for it is a clear dramatic expression of that human spirit--in this case a most pure and heroic spirit--which it strives so hard to dethrone. after all, the hypostasis of the good is only an unfortunate incident in a great accomplishment, which is the discernment of the good. i have dwelt chiefly on this incident, because in academic circles it is the abuses incidental to true philosophy that create controversy and form schools. artificial systems, even when they prevail, after a while fatigue their adherents, without ever having convinced or refuted their opponents, and they fade out of existence not by being refuted in their turn, but simply by a tacit agreement to ignore their claims: so that the true insight they were based on is too often buried under them. the hypostasis of philosophical terms is an abuse incidental to the forthright, unchecked use of the intellect; it substitutes for things the limits and distinctions that divide them. so physics is corrupted by logic; but the logic that corrupts physics is perhaps correct, and when it is moral dialectic, it is more important than physics itself. mr. russell's ethics _is_ ethics. when we mortals have once assumed the moral attitude, it is certain that an indefinable value accrues to some things as opposed to others, that these things are many, that combinations of them have values not belonging to their parts, and that these valuable things are far more specific than abstract pleasure, and far more diffused than one's personal life. what a pity if this pure morality, in detaching itself impetuously from the earth, whose bright satellite it might be, should fly into the abyss at a tangent, and leave us as much in the dark as before! v shelley: or the poetic value of revolutionary principles it is possible to advocate anarchy in criticism as in politics, and there is perhaps nothing coercive to urge against a man who maintains that any work of art is good enough, intrinsically and incommensurably, if it pleased anybody at any time for any reason. in practice, however, the ideal of anarchy is unstable. irrefutable by argument, it is readily overcome by nature. it melts away before the dogmatic operation of the anarchist's own will, as soon as he allows himself the least creative endeavour. in spite of the infinite variety of what is merely possible, human nature and will have a somewhat definite constitution, and only what is harmonious with their actual constitution can long maintain itself in the moral world. hence it is a safe principle in the criticism of art that technical proficiency, and brilliancy of fancy or execution, cannot avail to establish a great reputation. they may dazzle for a moment, but they cannot absolve an artist from the need of having an important subject-matter and a sane humanity. if this principle is accepted, however, it might seem that certain artists, and perhaps the greatest, might not fare well at our hands. how would shelley, for instance, stand such a test? every one knows the judgment passed on shelley by matthew arnold, a critic who evidently relied on this principle, even if he preferred to speak only in the name of his personal tact and literary experience. shelley, matthew arnold said, was "a beautiful and ineffectual angel, beating his wings in a luminous void in vain." in consequence he declared that shelley was not a classic, especially as his private circle had had an unsavoury morality, to be expressed only by the french word _sale_, and as moreover shelley himself occasionally showed a distressing want of the sense of humour, which could only be called _bête_. these strictures, if a bit incoherent, are separately remarkably just. they unmask essential weaknesses not only in shelley, but in all revolutionary people. the life of reason is a heritage and exists only through tradition. half of it is an art, an adjustment to an alien reality, which only a long experience can teach: and even the other half, the inward inspiration and ideal of reason, must be also a common inheritance in the race, if people are to work together or so much as to understand one another. now the misfortune of revolutionists is that they are disinherited, and their folly is that they wish to be disinherited even more than they are. hence, in the midst of their passionate and even heroic idealisms, there is commonly a strange poverty in their minds, many an ugly turn in their lives, and an ostentatious vileness in their manners. they wish to be the leaders of mankind, but they are wretched representatives of humanity. in the concert of nature it is hard to keep in tune with oneself if one is out of tune with everything. we should not then be yielding to any private bias, but simply noting the conditions under which art may exist and may be appreciated, if we accepted the classical principle of criticism and asserted that substance, sanity, and even a sort of pervasive wisdom are requisite for supreme works of art. on the other hand--who can honestly doubt it?--the rebels and individualists are the men of direct insight and vital hope. the poetry of shelley in particular is typically poetical. it is poetry divinely inspired; and shelley himself is perhaps no more ineffectual or more lacking in humour than an angel properly should be. nor is his greatness all a matter of æsthetic abstraction and wild music. it is a fact of capital importance in the development of human genius that the great revolution in christendom against christianity, a revolution that began with the renaissance and is not yet completed, should have found angels to herald it, no less than that other revolution did which began at bethlehem; and that among these new angels there should have been one so winsome, pure, and rapturous as shelley. how shall we reconcile these conflicting impressions? shall we force ourselves to call the genius of shelley second rate because it was revolutionary, and shall we attribute all enthusiasm for him to literary affectation or political prejudice? or shall we rather abandon the orthodox principle that an important subject-matter and a sane spirit are essential to great works? or shall we look for a different issue out of our perplexity, by asking if the analysis and comprehension are not perhaps at fault which declare that these things are not present in shelley's poetry? this last is the direction in which i conceive the truth to lie. a little consideration will show us that shelley really has a great subject-matter--what ought to be; and that he has a real humanity--though it is humanity in the seed, humanity in its internal principle, rather than in those deformed expressions of it which can flourish in the world. shelley seems hardly to have been brought up; he grew up in the nursery among his young sisters, at school among the rude boys, without any affectionate guidance, without imbibing any religious or social tradition. if he received any formal training or correction, he instantly rejected it inwardly, set it down as unjust and absurd, and turned instead to sailing paper boats, to reading romances or to writing them, or to watching with delight the magic of chemical experiments. thus the mind of shelley was thoroughly disinherited; but not, like the minds of most revolutionists, by accident and through the niggardliness of fortune, for few revolutionists would be such if they were heirs to a baronetcy. shelley's mind disinherited itself out of allegiance to itself, because it was too sensitive and too highly endowed for the world into which it had descended. it rejected ordinary education, because it was incapable of assimilating it. education is suitable to those few animals whose faculties are not completely innate, animals that, like most men, may be perfected by experience because they are born with various imperfect alternative instincts rooted equally in their system. but most animals, and a few men, are not of this sort. they cannot be educated, because they are born complete. full of predeterminate intuitions, they are without intelligence, which is the power of seeing things as they are. endowed with a specific, unshakable faith, they are impervious to experience: and as they burst the womb they bring ready-made with them their final and only possible system of philosophy. shelley was one of these spokesmen of the _a priori_, one of these nurslings of the womb, like a bee or a butterfly; a dogmatic, inspired, perfect, and incorrigible creature. he was innocent and cruel, swift and wayward, illuminated and blind. being a finished child of nature, not a joint product, like most of us, of nature, history, and society, he abounded miraculously in his own clear sense, but was obtuse to the droll, miscellaneous lessons of fortune. the cannonade of hard, inexplicable facts that knocks into most of us what little wisdom we have left shelley dazed and sore, perhaps, but uninstructed. when the storm was over, he began chirping again his own natural note. if the world continued to confine and obsess him, he hated the world, and gasped for freedom. being incapable of understanding reality, he revelled in creating world after world in idea. for his nature was not merely predetermined and obdurate, it was also sensitive, vehement, and fertile. with the soul of a bird, he had the senses of a man-child; the instinct of the butterfly was united in him with the instinct of the brooding fowl and of the pelican. this winged spirit had a heart. it darted swiftly on its appointed course, neither expecting nor understanding opposition; but when it met opposition it did not merely flutter and collapse; it was inwardly outraged, it protested proudly against fate, it cried aloud for liberty and justice. the consequence was that shelley, having a nature preformed but at the same time tender, passionate, and moral, was exposed to early and continual suffering. when the world violated the ideal which lay so clear before his eyes, that violation filled him with horror. if to the irrepressible gushing of life from within we add the suffering and horror that continually checked it, we shall have in hand, i think, the chief elements of his genius. love of the ideal, passionate apprehension of what ought to be, has for its necessary counterpart condemnation of the actual, wherever the actual does not conform to that ideal. the spontaneous soul, the soul of the child, is naturally revolutionary; and when the revolution fails, the soul of the youth becomes naturally pessimistic. all moral life and moral judgment have this deeply romantic character; they venture to assert a private ideal in the face of an intractable and omnipotent world. some moralists begin by feeling the attraction of untasted and ideal perfection. these, like plato, excel in elevation, and they are apt to despise rather than to reform the world. other moralists begin by a revolt against the actual, at some point where they find the actual particularly galling. these excel in sincerity; their purblind conscience is urgent, and they are reformers in intent and sometimes even in action. but the ideals they frame are fragmentary and shallow, often mere provisional vague watchwords, like liberty, equality, and fraternity; they possess no positive visions or plans for moral life as a whole, like plato's _republic_. the utopian or visionary moralists are often rather dazed by this wicked world; being well-intentioned but impotent, they often take comfort in fancying that the ideal they pine for is already actually embodied on earth, or is about to be embodied on earth in a decade or two, or at least is embodied eternally in a sphere immediately above the earth, to which we shall presently climb, and be happy for ever. lovers of the ideal who thus hastily believe in its reality are called idealists, and shelley was an idealist in almost every sense of that hard-used word. he early became an idealist after berkeley's fashion, in that he discredited the existence of matter and embraced a psychological or (as it was called) intellectual system of the universe. in his drama _hellas_ he puts this view with evident approval into the mouth of ahasuerus: "this whole of suns and worlds and men and beasts and flowers, with all the silent or tempestuous workings by which they have been, are, or cease to be, is but a vision;--all that it inherits are motes of a sick eye, bubbles and dreams. thought is its cradle and its grave; nor less the future and the past are idle shadows of thought's eternal flight--they have no being: nought is but that which feels itself to be." but shelley was even more deeply and constantly an idealist after the manner of plato; for he regarded the good as a magnet (inexplicably not working for the moment) that draws all life and motion after it; and he looked on the types and ideals of things as on eternal realities that subsist, beautiful and untarnished, when the glimmerings that reveal them to our senses have died away. from the infinite potentialities of beauty in the abstract, articulate mind draws certain bright forms--the platonic ideas--"the gathered rays which are reality," as shelley called them: and it is the light of these ideals cast on objects of sense that lends to these objects some degree of reality and value, making out of them "lovely apparitions, dim at first, then radiant ... the progeny immortal of painting, sculpture, and rapt poesy." the only kind of idealism that shelley had nothing to do with is the kind that prevails in some universities, that hegelian idealism which teaches that perfect good is a vicious abstraction, and maintains that all the evil that has been, is, and ever shall be is indispensable to make the universe as good as it possibly could be. in this form, idealism is simply contempt for all ideals, and a hearty adoration of things as they are; and as such it appeals mightily to the powers that be, in church and in state; but in that capacity it would have been as hateful to shelley as the powers that be always were, and as the philosophy was that flattered them. for his moral feeling was based on suffering and horror at what is actual, no less than on love of a visioned good. his conscience was, to a most unusual degree, at once elevated and sincere. it was inspired in equal measure by prophecy and by indignation. he was carried away in turn by enthusiasm for what his ethereal and fertile fancy pictured as possible, and by detestation of the reality forced upon him instead. hence that extraordinary moral fervour which is the soul of his poetry. his imagination is no playful undirected kaleidoscope; the images, often so tenuous and metaphysical, that crowd upon him, are all sparks thrown off at white heat, embodiments of a fervent, definite, unswerving inspiration. if we think that the _cloud_ or the _west wind_ or the _witch of the atlas_ are mere fireworks, poetic dust, a sort of _bataille des fleurs_ in which we are pelted by a shower of images--we have not understood the passion that overflows in them, as any long-nursed passion may, in any of us, suddenly overflow in an unwonted profusion of words. this is a point at which francis thompson's understanding of shelley, generally so perfect, seems to me to go astray. the universe, thompson tells us, was shelley's box of toys. "he gets between the feet of the horses of the sun. he stands in the lap of patient nature, and twines her loosened tresses after a hundred wilful fashions, to see how she will look nicest in his song." this last is not, i think, shelley's motive; it is not the truth about the spring of his genius. he undoubtedly shatters the world to bits, but only to build it nearer to the heart's desire, only to make out of its coloured fragments some more elysian home for love, or some more dazzling symbol for that infinite beauty which is the need--the profound, aching, imperative need--of the human soul. this recreative impulse of the poet's is not wilful, as thompson calls it: it is moral. like the _sensitive plant_ "it loves even like love,--its deep heart is full; it desires what it has not, the beautiful." the question for shelley is not at all what will look nicest in his song; that is the preoccupation of mincing rhymesters, whose well is soon dry. shelley's abundance has a more generous source; it springs from his passion for picturing what would be best, not in the picture, but in the world. hence, when he feels he has pictured or divined it, he can exclaim: "the joy, the triumph, the delight, the madness, the boundless, overflowing, bursting gladness, the vaporous exultation, not to be confined! ha! ha! the animation of delight, which wraps me like an atmosphere of light, and bears me as a cloud is borne by its own wind!" to match this gift of bodying forth the ideal shelley had his vehement sense of wrong; and as he seized upon and recast all images of beauty, to make them more perfectly beautiful, so, to vent his infinite horror of evil, he seized on all the worst images of crime or torture that he could find, and recast them so as to reach the quintessence of distilled badness. his pictures of war, famine, lust, and cruelty are, or seem, forced, although perhaps, as in the _cenci_, he might urge that he had historical warrant for his descriptions, far better historical warrant, no doubt, than the beauty and happiness actually to be found in the world could give him for his _skylark_, his _epipsychidion_, or his _prometheus_. but to exaggerate good is to vivify, to enhance our sense of moral coherence and beautiful naturalness; it is to render things more graceful, intelligible, and congenial to the spirit which they ought to serve. to aggravate evil, on the contrary, is to darken counsel--already dark enough--and the want of truth to nature in this pessimistic sort of exaggeration is not compensated for by any advantage. the violence and, to my feeling, the wantonness of these invectives--for they are invectives in intention and in effect--may have seemed justified to shelley by his political purpose. he was thirsting to destroy kings, priests, soldiers, parents, and heads of colleges--to destroy them, i mean, in their official capacity; and the exhibition of their vileness in all its diabolical purity might serve to remove scruples in the half-hearted. we, whom the nineteenth century has left so tender to historical rights and historical beauties, may wonder that a poet, an impassioned lover of the beautiful, could have been such a leveller, and such a vandal in his theoretical destructiveness. but here the legacy of the eighteenth century was speaking in shelley, as that of the nineteenth is speaking in us: and moreover, in his own person, the very fertility of imagination could be a cause of blindness to the past and its contingent sanctities. shelley was not left standing aghast, like a philistine, before the threatened destruction of all traditional order. he had, and knew he had, the seeds of a far lovelier order in his own soul; there he found the plan or memory of a perfect commonwealth of nature ready to rise at once on the ruins of this sad world, and to make regret for it impossible. so much for what i take to be the double foundation of shelley's genius, a vivid love of ideal good on the one hand, and on the other, what is complementary to that vivid love, much suffering and horror at the touch of actual evils. on this double foundation he based an opinion which had the greatest influence on his poetry, not merely on the subject-matter of it, but also on the exuberance and urgency of emotion which suffuses it. this opinion was that all that caused suffering and horror in the world could be readily destroyed: it was the belief in perfectibility. an animal that has rigid instincts and an _a priori_ mind is probably very imperfectly adapted to the world he comes into: his organs cannot be moulded by experience and use; unless they are fitted by some miraculous pre-established harmony, or by natural selection, to things as they are, they will never be reconciled with them, and an eternal war will ensue between what the animal needs, loves, and can understand and what the outer reality offers. so long as such a creature lives--and his life will be difficult and short--events will continually disconcert and puzzle him; everything will seem to him unaccountable, inexplicable, unnatural. he will not be able to conceive the real order and connection of things sympathetically, by assimilating his habits of thought to their habits of evolution. his faculties being innate and unadaptable will not allow him to correct his presumptions and axioms; he will never be able to make nature the standard of naturalness. what contradicts his private impulses will seem to him to contradict reason, beauty, and necessity. in this paradoxical situation he will probably take refuge in the conviction that what he finds to exist is an illusion, or at least not a fair sample of reality. being so perverse, absurd, and repugnant, the given state of things must be, he will say, only accidental and temporary. he will be sure that his own _a priori_ imagination is the mirror of all the eternal proprieties, and that as his mind can move only in one predetermined way, things cannot be prevented from moving in that same way save by some strange violence done to their nature. it would be easy, therefore, to set everything right again: nay, everything must be on the point of righting itself spontaneously. wrong, of its very essence, must be in unstable equilibrium. the conflict between what such a man feels ought to exist and what he finds actually existing must, he will feel sure, end by a speedy revolution in things, and by the removal of all scandals; that it should end by the speedy removal of his own person, or by such a revolution in his demands as might reconcile him to existence, will never occur to him; or, if the thought occurs to him, it will seem too horrible to be true. such a creature cannot adapt himself to things by education, and consequently he cannot adapt things to himself by industry. his choice lies absolutely between victory and martyrdom. but at the very moment of martyrdom, martyrs, as is well known, usually feel assured of victory. the _a priori_ spirit will therefore be always a prophet of victory, so long as it subsists at all. the vision of a better world at hand absorbed the israelites in exile, st. john the baptist in the desert, and christ on the cross. the martyred spirit always says to the world it leaves, "this day thou shall be with me in paradise." in just this way, shelley believed in perfectibility. in his latest poems--in _hellas_, in _adonais_--he was perhaps a little inclined to remove the scene of perfectibility to a metaphysical region, as the christian church soon removed it to the other world. indeed, an earth really made perfect is hardly distinguishable from a posthumous heaven: so profoundly must everything in it be changed, and so angel-like must every one in it become. shelley's earthly paradise, as described in _prometheus_ and in _epipsychidion_, is too festival-like> too much of a mere culmination, not to be fugitive: it cries aloud to be translated into a changeless and metaphysical heaven, which to shelley's mind could be nothing but the realm of platonic ideas, where "life, like a dome of many-coloured glass," no longer "stains the white radiance of eternity." but the age had been an age of revolution and, in spite of disappointments, retained its faith in revolution; and the young shelley was not satisfied with a paradise removed to the intangible realms of poetry or of religion; he hoped, like the old hebrews, for a paradise on earth. his notion was that eloquence could change the heart of man, and that love, kindled there by the force of reason and of example, would transform society. he believed, mrs. shelley tells us, "that mankind had only to will that there should be no evil, and there would be none." and she adds: "that man could be so perfectionised as to be able to expel evil from his own nature, and from the greater part of creation, was the cardinal point of his system." this cosmic extension of the conversion of men reminds one of the cosmic extension of the fall conceived by st. augustine; and in the _prometheus_ shelley has allowed his fancy, half in symbol, half in glorious physical hyperbole, to carry the warm contagion of love into the very bowels of the earth, and even the moon, by reflection, to catch the light of love, and be alive again. shelley, we may safely say, did not understand the real constitution of nature. it was hidden from him by a cloud, all woven of shifting rainbows and bright tears. only his emotional haste made it possible for him to entertain such, opinions as he did entertain; or rather, it was inevitable that the mechanism of nature, as it is in its depths, should remain in his pictures only the shadowiest of backgrounds. his poetry is accordingly a part of the poetry of illusion; the poetry of truth, if we have the courage to hope for such a thing, is reserved for far different and yet unborn poets. but it is only fair to shelley to remember that the moral being of mankind is as yet in its childhood; all poets play with images not understood; they touch on emotions sharply, at random, as in a dream; they suffer each successive vision, each poignant sentiment, to evaporate into nothing, or to leave behind only a heart vaguely softened and fatigued, a gentle languor, or a tearful hope. every modern school of poets, once out of fashion, proves itself to have been sadly romantic and sentimental. none has done better than to spangle a confused sensuous pageant with some sparks of truth, or to give it some symbolic relation to moral experience. and this shelley has done as well as anybody: all other poets also have been poets of illusion. the distinction of shelley is that his illusions are so wonderfully fine, subtle, and palpitating; that they betray passions and mental habits so singularly generous and pure. and why? because he did not believe in the necessity of what is vulgar, and did not pay that demoralising respect to it, under the title of fact or of custom, which it exacts from most of us. the past seemed to him no valid precedent, the present no final instance. as he believed in the imminence of an overturn that should make all things new, he was not checked by any divided allegiance, by any sense that he was straying into the vapid or fanciful, when he created what he justly calls "beautiful idealisms of moral excellence." that is what his poems are fundamentally--the _skylark_, and the _witch of the atlas_, and the _sensitive plant_ no less than the grander pieces. he infused into his gossamer world the strength of his heroic conscience. he felt that what his imagination pictured was a true symbol of what human experience should and might pass into. otherwise he would have been aware of playing with idle images; his poetry would have been mere millinery and his politics mere business; he would have been a worldling in art and in morals. the clear fire, the sustained breath, the fervent accent of his poetry are due to his faith in his philosophy. as mrs. shelley expressed it, he "had no care for any of his poems that did not emanate from the depths of his mind, and develop some high and abstruse truth." had his poetry not dealt with what was supreme in his own eyes, and dearest to his heart, it could never have been the exquisite and entrancing poetry that it is. it would not have had an adequate subject-matter, as, in spite of matthew arnold, i think it had; for nothing can be empty that contains such a soul. an angel cannot be ineffectual if the standard of efficiency is moral; he is what all other things bring about, when they are effectual. and a void that is alive with the beating of luminous wings, and of a luminous heart, is quite sufficiently peopled. shelley's mind was angelic not merely in its purity and fervour, but also in its moral authority, in its prophetic strain. what was conscience in his generation was life in him. the mind of man is not merely a sensorium. his intelligence is not merely an instrument for adaptation. there is a germ within, a nucleus of force and organisation, which can be unfolded, under favourable circumstances, into a perfection inwardly determined. man's constitution is a fountain from which to draw an infinity of gushing music, not representing anything external, yet not unmeaning on that account, since it represents the capacities and passions latent in him from the beginning. these potentialities, however, are no oracles of truth. being innate they are arbitrary; being _a priori_ they are subjective; but they are good principles for fiction, for poetry, for morals, for religion. they are principles for the true expression of man, but not for the true description of the universe. when they are taken for the latter, fiction becomes deception, poetry illusion, morals fanaticism, and religion bad science. the orgy of delusion into which we are then plunged comes from supposing the _a priori_ to be capable of controlling the actual, and the innate to be a standard for the true. that rich and definite endowment which might have made the distinction of the poet, then makes the narrowness of the philosopher. so shelley, with a sort of tyranny of which he does not suspect the possible cruelty, would impose his ideal of love and equality upon all creatures; he would make enthusiasts of clowns and doves of vultures. in him, as in many people, too intense a need of loving excludes the capacity for intelligent sympathy. his feeling cannot accommodate itself to the inequalities of human nature: his good will is a geyser, and will not consent to grow cool, and to water the flat and vulgar reaches of life. shelley is blind to the excellences of what he despises, as he is blind to the impossibility of realising what he wants. his sympathies are narrow as his politics are visionary, so that there is a certain moral incompetence in his moral intensity. yet his abstraction from half of life, or from nine-tenths of it, was perhaps necessary if silence and space were to be won in his mind for its own upwelling, ecstatic harmonies. the world we have always with us, but such spirits we have not always. and the spirit has fire enough within to make a second stellar universe. an instance of shelley's moral incompetence in moral intensity is to be found in his view of selfishness and evil. from the point of view of pure spirit, selfishness is quite absurd. as a contemporary of ours has put it: "it is so evident that it is better to secure a greater good for a than a lesser good for b that it is hard to find any still more evident principle by which to prove this. and if a happens to be some one else, and b to be myself, that cannot affect the question." it is very foolish not to love your neighbour as yourself, since his good is no less good than yours. convince people of this--and who can resist such perfect logic?--and _presto_ all property in things has disappeared, all jealousy in love, and all rivalry in honour. how happy and secure every one will suddenly be, and how much richer than in our mean, blind, competitive society! the single word love--and we have just seen that love is a logical necessity--offers an easy and final solution to all moral and political problems. shelley cannot imagine why this solution is not accepted, and why logic does not produce love. he can only wonder and grieve that it does not; and since selfishness and ill-will seem to him quite gratuitous, his ire is aroused; he thinks them unnatural and monstrous. he could not in the least understand evil, even when he did it himself; all villainy seemed to him wanton, all lust frigid, all hatred insane. all was an abomination alike that was not the lovely spirit of love. now this is a very unintelligent view of evil; and if shelley had had time to read spinoza--an author with whom he would have found himself largely in sympathy--he might have learned that nothing is evil in itself, and that what is evil in things is not due to any accident in creation, nor to groundless malice in man. evil is an inevitable aspect which things put on when they are struggling to preserve themselves in the same habitat, in which there is not room or matter enough for them to prosper equally side by side. under these circumstances the partial success of any creature--say, the cancer-microbe--is an evil from the point of view of those other creatures--say, men--to whom that success is a defeat. shelley sometimes half perceived this inevitable tragedy. so he says of the fair lady in the _sensitive plant_: "all killing insects and gnawing worms, and things of obscene and unlovely forms, she bore in a basket of indian woof, into the rough woods far aloof-- in a basket of grasses and wild flowers full, the freshest her gentle hands could pull for the poor banished insects, whose intent, although they did ill, was innocent." now it is all very well to ask cancer-microbes to be reasonable, and go feed on oak-leaves, if the oak-leaves do not object; oak-leaves might be poison for them, and in any case cancer-microbes cannot listen to reason; they must go on propagating where they are, unless they are quickly and utterly exterminated. and fundamentally men are subject to the same fatality exactly; they cannot listen to reason unless they are reasonable; and it is unreasonable to expect that, being animals, they should be reasonable exclusively. imagination is indeed at work in them, and makes them capable of sacrificing themselves for any idea that appeals to them, for their children, perhaps, or for their religion. but they are not more capable of sacrificing themselves to what does not interest them than the cancer-microbes are of sacrificing themselves to men. when shelley marvels at the perversity of the world, he shows his ignorance of the world. the illusion he suffers from is constitutional, and such as larks and sensitive plants are possibly subject to in their way: what he is marvelling at is really that anything should exist at all not a creature of his own moral disposition. consequently the more he misunderstands the world and bids it change its nature, the more he expresses his own nature: so that all is not vanity in his illusion, nor night in his blindness. the poet sees most clearly what his ideal is; he suffers no illusion in the expression of his own soul. his political utopias, his belief in the power of love, and his cryingly subjective and inconstant way of judging people are one side of the picture; the other is his lyrical power, wealth, and ecstasy. if he had understood universal nature, he would not have so glorified in his own. and his own nature was worth glorifying; it was, i think, the purest, tenderest, richest, most rational nature ever poured forth in verse. i have not read in any language such a full expression of the unadulterated instincts of the mind. the world of shelley is that which the vital monad within many of us--i will not say within all, for who shall set bounds to the variations of human nature?--the world which the vital monad within many of us, i say, would gladly live in if it could have its way. matthew arnold said that shelley was not quite sane; and certainly he was not quite sane, if we place sanity in justness of external perception, adaptation to matter, and docility to the facts; but his lack of sanity was not due to any internal corruption; it was not even an internal eccentricity. he was like a child, like a platonic soul just fallen from the empyrean; and the child may be dazed, credulous, and fanciful; but he is not mad. on the contrary, his earnest playfulness, the constant distraction of his attention from observation to daydreams, is the sign of an inward order and fecundity appropriate to his age. if children did not see visions, good men would have nothing to work for. it is the soul of observant persons, like matthew arnold, that is apt not to be quite sane and whole inwardly, but somewhat warped by familiarity with the perversities of real things, and forced to misrepresent its true ideal, like a tree bent by too prevalent a wind. half the fertility of such a soul is lost, and the other half is denaturalised. no doubt, in its sturdy deformity, the practical mind is an instructive and not unpleasing object, an excellent, if somewhat pathetic, expression of the climate in which it is condemned to grow, and of its dogged clinging to an ingrate soil; but it is a wretched expression of its innate possibilities. shelley, on the contrary, is like a palm-tree in the desert or a star in the sky; he is perfect in the midst of the void. his obtuseness to things dynamic--to the material order--leaves his whole mind free to develop things æsthetic after their own kind; his abstraction permits purity, his playfulness makes room for creative freedom, his ethereal quality is only humanity having its way. we perhaps do ourselves an injustice when we think that the heart of us is sordid; what is sordid is rather the situation that cramps or stifles the heart. in itself our generative principle is surely no less fertile and generous than the generative principle of crystals or flowers. as it can produce a more complex body, it is capable of producing a more complex mind; and the beauty and life of this mind, like that of the body, is all predetermined in the seed. circumstances may suffer the organism to develop, or prevent it from doing so; they cannot change its plan without making it ugly and deformed. what shelley's mind draws from the outside, its fund of images, is like what the germ of the body draws from the outside, its food--a mass of mere materials to transform and reorganise. with these images shelley constructs a world determined by his native genius, as the seed organises out of its food a predetermined system of nerves and muscles. shelley's poetry shows us the perfect but naked body of human happiness. what clothes circumstances may compel most of us to add may be a necessary concession to climate, to custom, or to shame; they can hardly add a new vitality or any beauty comparable to that which they hide. when the soul, as in shelley's case, is all goodness, and when the world seems all illegitimacy and obstruction, we need not wonder that _freedom_ should be regarded as a panacea. even if freedom had not been the idol of shelley's times, he would have made an idol of it for himself. "i never could discern in him," says his friend hogg, "any more than two principles. the first was a strong, irrepressible love of liberty.... the second was an equally ardent love of toleration ... and ... an intense abhorrence of persecution." we all fancy nowadays that we believe in liberty and abhor persecution; but the liberty we approve of is usually only a variation in social compulsions, to make them less galling to our latest sentiments than the old compulsions would be if we retained them. liberty of the press and liberty to vote do not greatly help us in living after our own mind, which is, i suppose, the only positive sort of liberty. from the point of view of a poet, there can be little essential freedom so long as he is forbidden to live with the people he likes, and compelled to live with the people he does not like. this, to shelley, seemed the most galling of tyrannies; and free love was, to his feeling, the essence and test of freedom. love must be spontaneous to be a spiritual bond in the beginning and it must remain spontaneous if it is to remain spiritual. to be bound by one's past is as great a tyranny to pure spirit as to be bound by the sin of adam, or by the laws of artaxerxes; and those of us who do not believe in the possibility of free love ought to declare frankly that we do not, at bottom, believe in the possibility of freedom. "i never was attached to that great sect whose doctrine is that each one should select, out of the crowd, a mistress or a friend and all the rest, though fair and wise, commend to cold oblivion; though it is the code of modern morals, and the beaten road which those poor slaves with weary footsteps tread who travel to their home among the dead by the broad highway of the world, and so with one chained friend, perhaps a jealous foe, the dreariest and the longest journey go. true love in this differs from gold and clay, that to divide is not to take away. love is like understanding that grows bright gazing on many truths.... narrow the heart that loves, the brain that contemplates, the life that wears, the spirit that creates one object and one form, and builds thereby a sepulchre for its eternity!" the difficulties in reducing this charming theory of love to practice are well exemplified in shelley's own life. he ran away with his first wife not because she inspired any uncontrollable passion, but because she declared she was a victim of domestic oppression and threw herself upon him for protection. nevertheless, when he discovered that his best friend was making love to her, in spite of his free-love principles, he was very seriously annoyed. when he presently abandoned her, feeling a spiritual affinity in another direction, she drowned herself in the serpentine: and his second wife needed all her natural sweetness and all her inherited philosophy to reconcile her to the waves of platonic enthusiasm for other ladies which periodically swept the too sensitive heart of her husband. free love would not, then, secure freedom from complications; it would not remove the present occasion for jealousy, reproaches, tragedies, and the dragging of a lengthening chain. freedom of spirit cannot be translated into freedom of action; you may amend laws, and customs, and social entanglements, but you will still have them; for this world is a lumbering mechanism and not, like love, a plastic dream. wisdom is very old and therefore often ironical, and it has long taught that it is well for those who would live in the spirit to keep as clear as possible of the world: and that marriage, especially a free-love marriage, is a snare for poets. let them endure to love freely, hopelessly, and infinitely, after the manner of plato and dante, and even of goethe, when goethe really loved: that exquisite sacrifice will improve their verse, and it will not kill them. let them follow in the traces of shelley when he wrote in his youth: "i have been most of the night pacing a church-yard. i must now engage in scenes of strong interest.... i expect to gratify some of this insatiable feeling in poetry.... i slept with a loaded pistol and some poison last night, but did not die," happy man if he had been able to add, "and did not marry!" last among the elements of shelley's thought i may perhaps mention his atheism. shelley called himself an atheist in his youth; his biographers and critics usually say that he was, or that he became, a pantheist. he was an atheist in the sense that he denied the orthodox conception of a deity who is a voluntary creator, a legislator, and a judge; but his aversion to christianity was not founded on any sympathetic or imaginative knowledge of it; and a man who preferred the _paradiso_ of dante to almost any other poem, and preferred it to the popular _inferno_ itself, could evidently be attracted by christian ideas and sentiment the moment they were presented to him as expressions of moral truth rather than as gratuitous dogmas. a pantheist he was in the sense that he felt how fluid and vital this whole world is; but he seems to have had no tendency to conceive any conscious plan or logical necessity connecting the different parts of the whole; so that rather than a pantheist he might be called a panpsychist; especially as he did not subordinate morally the individual to the cosmos. he did not surrender the authority of moral ideals in the face of physical necessity, which is properly the essence of pantheism. he did the exact opposite; so much so that the chief characteristic of his philosophy is its promethean spirit. he maintained that the basis of moral authority was internal, diffused among all individuals; that it was the natural love of the beautiful and the good wherever it might spring, and however fate might oppose it. "to suffer ... to forgive ... to defy power ... to love and bear; to hope, till hope creates from its own wreck the thing it contemplates; neither to change, nor falter, nor repent; this ... is to be good, great and joyous, beautiful and free." shelley was also removed from any ordinary atheism by his truly speculative sense for eternity. he was a thorough platonist all metaphysics perhaps is poetry, but platonic metaphysics is good poetry, and to this class shelley's belongs. for instance: "the pure spirit shall flow back to the burning fountain whence it came, a portion of the eternal, which must glow through time and change, unquenchably the same. peace, peace! he is not dead, he doth not sleep! he hath awakened from the dream of life. 'tis we who, lost in stormy visions, keep with phantoms an unprofitable strife. "he is made one with nature. there is heard his voice in all her music, from the moan of thunder, to the song of night's sweet bird. "he is a portion of the loveliness which once he made more lovely. "the splendours of the firmament of time may be eclipsed, but are extinguished not: like stars to their appointed height they climb, and death is a low mist which cannot blot the brightness it may veil. when lofty thought lifts a young heart above its mortal lair, ... the dead live there." atheism or pantheism of this stamp cannot be taxed with being gross or materialistic; the trouble is rather that it is too hazy in its sublimity. the poet has not perceived the natural relation between facts and ideals so clearly or correctly as he has felt the moral relation between them. but his allegiance to the intuition which defies, for the sake of felt excellence, every form of idolatry or cowardice wearing the mask of religion--this allegiance is itself the purest religion; and it is capable of inspiring the sweetest and most absolute poetry. in daring to lay bare the truths of fate, the poet creates for himself the subtlest and most heroic harmonies; and he is comforted for the illusions he has lost by being made incapable of desiring them. we have seen that shelley, being unteachable, could never put together any just idea of the world: he merely collected images and emotions, and out of them made worlds of his own. his poetry accordingly does not well express history, nor human character, nor the constitution of nature. what he unrolls before us instead is, in a sense, fantastic; it is a series of landscapes, passions, and cataclysms such as never were on earth, and never will be. if you are seriously interested only in what belongs to earth you will not be seriously interested in shelley. literature, according to matthew arnold, should be criticism of life, and shelley did not criticise life; so that his poetry had no solidity. but is life, we may ask, the same thing as the circumstances of life on earth? is the spirit of life, that marks and judges those circumstances, itself nothing? music is surely no description of the circumstances of life; yet it is relevant to life unmistakably, for it stimulates by means of a torrent of abstract movements and images the formal and emotional possibilities of living which lie in the spirit. by so doing music becomes a part of life, a congruous addition, a parallel life, as it were, to the vulgar one. i see no reason, in the analogies of the natural world, for supposing that the circumstances of human life are the only circumstances in which the spirit of life can disport itself. even on this planet, there are sea-animals and air-animals, ephemeral beings and self-centred beings, as well as persons who can grow as old as matthew arnold, and be as fond as he was of classifying other people. and beyond this planet, and in the interstices of what our limited senses can perceive, there are probably many forms of life not criticised in any of the books which matthew arnold said we should read in order to know the best that has been thought and said in the world. the future, too, even among men, may contain, as shelley puts it, many "arts, though unimagined, yet to be." the divination of poets cannot, of course, be expected to reveal any of these hidden regions as they actually exist or will exist; but what would be the advantage of revealing them? it could only be what the advantage of criticising human life would be also, to improve subsequent life indirectly by turning it towards attainable goods, and is it not as important a thing to improve life directly and in the present, if one has the gift, by enriching rather than criticising it? besides, there is need of fixing the ideal by which criticism is to be guided. if you have no image of happiness or beauty or perfect goodness before you, how are you to judge what portions of life are important, and what rendering of them is appropriate? being a singer inwardly inspired, shelley could picture the ideal goals of life, the ultimate joys of experience, better than a discursive critic or observer could have done. the circumstances of life are only the bases or instruments of life: the fruition of life is not in retrospect, not in description of the instruments, but in expression of the spirit itself, to which those instruments may prove useful; as music is not a criticism of violins, but a playing upon them. this expression need not resemble its ground. experience is diversified by colours that are not produced by colours, sounds that are not conditioned by sounds, names that are not symbols for other names, fixed ideal objects that stand for ever-changing material processes. the mind is fundamentally lyrical, inventive, redundant. its visions are its own offspring, hatched in the warmth of some favourable cosmic gale. the ambient weather may vary, and these visions be scattered; but the ideal world they pictured may some day be revealed again to some other poet similarly inspired; the possibility of restoring it, or something like it, is perpetual. it is precisely because shelley's sense for things is so fluid, so illusive, that it opens to us emotionally what is a serious scientific probability; namely, that human life is not all life, nor the landscape of earth the only admired landscape in the universe; that the ancients who believed in gods and spirits were nearer the virtual truth (however anthropomorphically they may have expressed themselves) than any philosophy or religion that makes human affairs the centre and aim of the world. such moral imagination is to be gained by sinking into oneself, rather than by observing remote happenings, because it is at its heart, not at its fingertips, that the human soul touches matter, and is akin to whatever other centres of life may people the infinite. for this reason the masters of spontaneity, the prophets, the inspired poets, the saints, the mystics, the musicians are welcome and most appealing companions. in their simplicity and abstraction from the world they come very near the heart. they say little and help much. they do not picture life, but have life, and give it. so we may say, i think, of shelley's magic universe what he said of greece; if it "must be a wreck, yet shall its fragments re-assemble, and build themselves again impregnably in a diviner clime, to amphionic music, on some cape sublime which frowns above the idle foam of time." "frowns," says shelley rhetorically, as if he thought that something timeless, something merely ideal, could be formidable, or could threaten existing things with any but an ideal defeat. tremendous error! eternal possibilities may indeed beckon; they may attract those who instinctively pursue them as a star may guide those who wish to reach the place over which it happens to shine. but an eternal possibility has no material power. it is only one of an infinity of other things equally possible intrinsically, yet most of them quite unrealisable in this world of blood and mire. the realm of eternal essences rains down no jovian thunderbolts, but only a ghostly uranian calm. there is no frown there; rather, a passive and universal welcome to any who may have in them the will and the power to climb. whether any one has the will depends on his material constitution, and whether he has the power depends on the firm texture of that constitution and on circumstances happening to be favourable to its operation. otherwise what the rebel or the visionary hails as his ideal will be no picture of his destiny or of that of the world. it will be, and will always remain, merely a picture of his heart. this picture, indestructible in its ideal essence, will mirror also the hearts of those who may share, or may have shared, the nature of the poet who drew it. so purely ideal and so deeply human are the visions of shelley. so truly does he deserve the epitaph which a clear-sighted friend wrote upon his tomb: _cor cordium_, the heart of hearts. vi the genteel tradition in american philosophy _address delivered before the philosophical union of the university of california, august_ , . ladies and gentlemen,--the privilege of addressing you to-day is very welcome to me, not merely for the honour of it, which is great, nor for the pleasures of travel, which are many, when it is california that one is visiting for the first time, but also because there is something i have long wanted to say which this occasion seems particularly favourable for saying. america is still a young country, and this part of it is especially so; and it would have been nothing extraordinary if, in this young country, material preoccupations had altogether absorbed people's minds, and they had been too much engrossed in living to reflect upon life, or to have any philosophy. the opposite, however, is the case. not only have you already found time to philosophise in california, as your society proves, but the eastern colonists from the very beginning were a sophisticated race. as much as in clearing the land and fighting the indians they were occupied, as they expressed it, in wrestling with the lord. the country was new, but the race was tried, chastened, and full of solemn memories. it was an old wine in new bottles; and america did not have to wait for its present universities, with their departments of academic philosophy, in order to possess a living philosophy--to have a distinct vision of the universe and definite convictions about human destiny. now this situation is a singular and remarkable one, and has many consequences, not all of which are equally fortunate. america is a young country with an old mentality: it has enjoyed the advantages of a child carefully brought up and thoroughly indoctrinated; it has been a wise child. but a wise child, an old head on young shoulders, always has a comic and an unpromising side. the wisdom is a little thin and verbal, not aware of its full meaning and grounds; and physical and emotional growth may be stunted by it, or even deranged. or when the child is too vigorous for that, he will develop a fresh mentality of his own, out of his observations and actual instincts; and this fresh mentality will interfere with the traditional mentality, and tend to reduce it to something perfunctory, conventional, and perhaps secretly despised. a philosophy is not genuine unless it inspires and expresses the life of those who cherish it. i do not think the hereditary philosophy of america has done much to atrophy the natural activities of the inhabitants; the wise child has not missed the joys of youth or of manhood; but what has happened is that the hereditary philosophy has grown stale, and that the academic philosophy afterwards developed has caught the stale odour from it. america is not simply, as i said a moment ago, a young country with an old mentality: it is a country with two mentalities, one a survival of the beliefs and standards of the fathers, the other an expression of the instincts, practice, and discoveries of the younger generations. in all the higher things of the mind--in religion, in literature, in the moral emotions--it is the hereditary spirit that still prevails, so much so that mr. bernard shaw finds that america is a hundred years behind the times. the truth is that one-half of the american mind, that not occupied intensely in practical affairs, has remained, i will not say high-and-dry, but slightly becalmed; it has floated gently in the back-water, while, alongside, in invention and industry and social organisation, the other half of the mind was leaping down a sort of niagara rapids. this division may be found symbolised in american architecture: a neat reproduction of the colonial mansion--with some modern comforts introduced surreptitiously--stands beside the sky-scraper. the american will inhabits the sky-scraper; the american intellect inhabits the colonial mansion. the one is the sphere of the american man; the other, at least predominantly, of the american woman. the one is all aggressive enterprise; the other is all genteel tradition. now, with your permission, i should like to analyse more fully how this interesting situation has arisen, how it is qualified, and whither it tends. and in the first place we should remember what, precisely, that philosophy was which the first settlers brought with them into the country. in strictness there was more than one; but we may confine our attention to what i will call calvinism, since it is on this that the current academic philosophy has been grafted. i do not mean exactly the calvinism of calvin, or even of jonathan edwards; for in their systems there was much that was not pure philosophy, but rather faith in the externals and history of revelation. jewish and christian revelation was interpreted by these men, however, in the spirit of a particular philosophy, which might have arisen under any sky, and been associated with any other religion as well as with protestant christianity. in fact, the philosophical principle of calvinism appears also in the koran, in spinoza, and in cardinal newman; and persons with no very distinctive christian belief, like carlyle or like professor royce, may be nevertheless, philosophically, perfect calvinists. calvinism, taken in this sense, is an expression of the agonised conscience. it is a view of the world which an agonised conscience readily embraces, if it takes itself seriously, as, being agonised, of course it must. calvinism, essentially, asserts three things: that sin exists, that sin is punished, and that it is beautiful that sin should exist to be punished. the heart of the calvinist is therefore divided between tragic concern at his own miserable condition, and tragic exultation about the universe at large. he oscillates between a profound abasement and a paradoxical elation of the spirit. to be a calvinist philosophically is to feel a fierce pleasure in the existence of misery, especially of one's own, in that this misery seems to manifest the fact that the absolute is irresponsible or infinite or holy. human nature, it feels, is totally depraved: to have the instincts and motives that we necessarily have is a great scandal, and we must suffer for it; but that scandal is requisite, since otherwise the serious importance of being as we ought to be would not have been vindicated. to those of us who have not an agonised conscience this system may seem fantastic and even unintelligible; yet it is logically and intently thought out from its emotional premises. it can take permanent possession of a deep mind here and there, and under certain conditions it can become epidemic. imagine, for instance, a small nation with an intense vitality, but on the verge of ruin, ecstatic and distressful, having a strict and minute code of laws, that paints life in sharp and violent chiaroscuro, all pure righteousness and black abominations, and exaggerating the consequences of both perhaps to infinity. such a people were the jews after the exile, and again the early protestants. if such a people is philosophical at all, it will not improbably be calvinistic. even in the early american communities many of these conditions were fulfilled. the nation was small and isolated; it lived under pressure and constant trial; it was acquainted with but a small range of goods and evils. vigilance over conduct and an absolute demand for personal integrity were not merely traditional things, but things that practical sages, like franklin and washington, recommended to their countrymen, because they were virtues that justified themselves visibly by their fruits. but soon these happy results themselves helped to relax the pressure of external circumstances, and indirectly the pressure of the agonised conscience within. the nation became numerous; it ceased to be either ecstatic or distressful; the high social morality which on the whole it preserved took another colour; people remained honest and helpful out of good sense and good will rather than out of scrupulous adherence to any fixed principles. they retained their instinct for order, and often created order with surprising quickness; but the sanctity of law, to be obeyed for its own sake, began to escape them; it seemed too unpractical a notion, and not quite serious. in fact, the second and native-born american mentality began to take shape. the sense of sin totally evaporated. nature, in the words of emerson, was all beauty and commodity; and while operating on it laboriously, and drawing quick returns, the american began to drink in inspiration from it æsthetically. at the same time, in so broad a continent, he had elbow-room. his neighbours helped more than they hindered him; he wished their number to increase. good will became the great american virtue; and a passion arose for counting heads, and square miles, and cubic feet, and minutes saved--as if there had been anything to save them for. how strange to the american now that saying of jonathan edwards, that men are naturally god's enemies! yet that is an axiom to any intelligent calvinist, though the words he uses may be different. if you told the modern american that he is totally depraved, he would think you were joking, as he himself usually is. he is convinced that he always has been, and always will be, victorious and blameless. calvinism thus lost its basis in american life. some emotional natures, indeed, reverted in their religious revivals or private searchings of heart to the sources of the tradition; for any of the radical points of view in philosophy may cease to be prevalent, but none can cease to be possible. other natures, more sensitive to the moral and literary influences of the world, preferred to abandon parts of their philosophy, hoping thus to reduce the distance which should separate the remainder from real life. meantime, if anybody arose with a special sensibility or a technical genius, he was in great straits; not being fed sufficiently by the world, he was driven in upon his own resources. the three american writers whose personal endowment was perhaps the finest--poe, hawthorne, and emerson--had all a certain starved and abstract quality. they could not retail the genteel tradition; they were too keen, too perceptive, and too independent for that. but life offered them little digestible material, nor were they naturally voracious. they were fastidious, and under the circumstances they were starved. emerson, to be sure, fed on books. there was a great catholicity in his reading; and he showed a fine tact in his comments, and in his way of appropriating what he read. but he read transcendentally, not historically, to learn what he himself felt, not what others might have felt before him. and to feed on books, for a philosopher or a poet, is still to starve. books can help him to acquire form, or to avoid pitfalls; they cannot supply him with substance, if he is to have any. therefore the genius of poe and hawthorne, and even of emerson, was employed on a sort of inner play, or digestion of vacancy. it was a refined labour, but it was in danger of being morbid, or tinkling, or self-indulgent. it was a play of intra-mental rhymes. their mind was like an old music-box, full of tender echoes and quaint fancies. these fancies expressed their personal genius sincerely, as dreams may; but they were arbitrary fancies in comparison with what a real observer would have said in the premises. their manner, in a word, was subjective. in their own persons they escaped the mediocrity of the genteel tradition, but they supplied nothing to supplant it in other minds. the churches, likewise, although they modified their spirit, had no philosophy to offer save a new emphasis on parts of what calvinism contained. the theology of calvin, we must remember, had much in it besides philosophical calvinism. a christian tenderness, and a hope of grace for the individual, came to mitigate its sardonic optimism; and it was these evangelical elements that the calvinistic churches now emphasised, seldom and with blushes referring to hell-fire or infant damnation. yet philosophic calvinism, with a theory of life that would perfectly justify hell-fire and infant damnation if they happened to exist, still dominates the traditional metaphysics. it is an ingredient, and the decisive ingredient, in what calls itself idealism. but in order to see just what part calvinism plays in current idealism, it will be necessary to distinguish the other chief element in that complex system, namely, transcendentalism. transcendentalism is the philosophy which the romantic era produced in germany, and independently, i believe, in america also. transcendentalism proper, like romanticism, is not any particular set of dogmas about what things exist; it is not a system of the universe regarded as a fact, or as a collection of facts. it is a method, a point of view, from which any world, no matter what it might contain, could be approached by a self-conscious observer. transcendentalism is systematic subjectivism. it studies the perspectives of knowledge as they radiate from the self; it is a plan of those avenues of inference by which our ideas of things must be reached, if they are to afford any systematic or distant vistas. in other words, transcendentalism is the critical logic of science. knowledge, it says, has a station, as in a watch-tower; it is always seated here and now, in the self of the moment. the past and the future, things inferred and things conceived, lie around it, painted as upon a panorama. they cannot be lighted up save by some centrifugal ray of attention and present interest, by some active operation of the mind. this is hardly the occasion for developing or explaining this delicate insight; suffice it to say, lest you should think later that i disparage transcendentalism, that as a method i regard it as correct and, when once suggested, unforgettable. i regard it as the chief contribution made in modern times to speculation. but it is a method only, an attitude we may always assume if we like and that will always be legitimate. it is no answer, and involves no particular answer, to the question: what exists; in what order is what exists produced; what is to exist in the future? this question must be answered by observing the object, and tracing humbly the movement of the object. it cannot be answered at all by harping on the fact that this object, if discovered, must be discovered by somebody, and by somebody who has an interest in discovering it. yet the germans who first gained the full transcendental insight were romantic people; they were more or less frankly poets; they were colossal egotists, and wished to make not only their own knowledge but the whole universe centre about themselves. and full as they were of their romantic isolation and romantic liberty, it occurred to them to imagine that all reality might be a transcendental self and a romantic dreamer like themselves; nay, that it might be just their own transcendental self and their own romantic dreams extended indefinitely. transcendental logic, the method of discovery for the mind, was to become also the method of evolution in nature and history. transcendental method, so abused, produced transcendental myth. a conscientious critique of knowledge was turned into a sham system of nature. we must therefore distinguish sharply the transcendental grammar of the intellect, which is significant and potentially correct, from the various transcendental systems of the universe, which are chimeras. in both its parts, however, transcendentalism had much to recommend it to american philosophers, for the transcendental method appealed to the individualistic and revolutionary temper of their youth, while transcendental myths enabled them to find a new status for their inherited theology, and to give what parts of it they cared to preserve some semblance of philosophical backing. this last was the use to which the transcendental method was put by kant himself, who first brought it into vogue, before the terrible weapon had got out of hand, and become the instrument of pure romanticism. kant came, he himself said, to remove knowledge in order to make room for faith, which in his case meant faith in calvinism. in other words, he applied the transcendental method to matters of fact, reducing them thereby to human ideas, in order to give to the calvinistic postulates of conscience a metaphysical validity. for kant had a genteel tradition of his own, which he wished to remove to a place of safety, feeling that the empirical world had become too hot for it; and this place of safety was the region of transcendental myth. i need hardly say how perfectly this expedient suited the needs of philosophers in america, and it is no accident if the influence of kant soon became dominant here. to embrace this philosophy was regarded as a sign of profound metaphysical insight, although the most mediocre minds found no difficulty in embracing it. in truth it was a sign of having been brought up in the genteel tradition, of feeling it weak, and of wishing to save it. but the transcendental method, in its way, was also sympathetic to the american mind. it embodied, in a radical form, the spirit of protestantism as distinguished from its inherited doctrines; it was autonomous, undismayed, calmly revolutionary; it felt that will was deeper than intellect; it focussed everything here and now, and asked all things to show their credentials at the bar of the young self, and to prove their value for this latest born moment. these things are truly american; they would be characteristic of any young society with a keen and discursive intelligence, and they are strikingly exemplified in the thought and in the person of emerson. they constitute what he called self-trust. self-trust, like other transcendental attitudes, may be expressed in metaphysical fables. the romantic spirit may imagine itself to be an absolute force, evoking and moulding the plastic world to express its varying moods. but for a pioneer who is actually a world-builder this metaphysical illusion has a partial warrant in historical fact; far more warrant than it could boast of in the fixed and articulated society of europe, among the moonstruck rebels and sulking poets of the romantic era. emerson was a shrewd yankee, by instinct on the winning side; he was a cheery, child-like soul, impervious to the evidence of evil, as of everything that it did not suit his transcendental individuality to appreciate or to notice. more, perhaps, than anybody that has ever lived, he practised the transcendental method in all its purity. he had no system. he opened his eyes on the world every morning with a fresh sincerity, marking how things seemed to him then, or what they suggested to his spontaneous fancy. this fancy, for being spontaneous, was not always novel; it was guided by the habits and training of his mind, which were those of a preacher. yet he never insisted on his notions so as to turn them into settled dogmas; he felt in his bones that they were myths. sometimes, indeed, the bad example of other transcendentalists, less true than he to their method, or the pressing questions of unintelligent people, or the instinct we all have to think our ideas final, led him to the very verge of system-making; but he stopped short. had he made a system out of his notion of compensation, or the over-soul, or spiritual laws, the result would have been as thin and forced as it is in other transcendental systems. but he coveted truth; and he returned to experience, to history, to poetry, to the natural science of his day, for new starting-points and hints toward fresh transcendental musings. to covet truth is a very distinguished passion. every philosopher says he is pursuing the truth, but this is seldom the case. as mr. bertrand russell has observed, one reason why philosophers often fail to reach the truth is that often they do not desire to reach it. those who are genuinely concerned in discovering what happens to be true are rather the men of science, the naturalists, the historians; and ordinarily they discover it, according to their lights. the truths they find are never complete, and are not always important; but they are integral parts of the truth, facts and circumstances that help to fill in the picture, and that no later interpretation can invalidate or afford to contradict. but professional philosophers are usually only apologists: that is, they are absorbed in defending some vested illusion or some eloquent idea. like lawyers or detectives, they study the case for which they are retained, to see how much evidence or semblance of evidence they can gather for the defence, and how much prejudice they can raise against the witnesses for the prosecution; for they know they are defending prisoners suspected by the world, and perhaps by their own good sense, of falsification. they do not covet truth, but victory and the dispelling of their own doubts. what they defend is some system, that is, some view about the totality of things, of which men are actually ignorant. no system would have ever been framed if people had been simply interested in knowing what is true, whatever it may be. what produces systems is the interest in maintaining against all comers that some favourite or inherited idea of ours is sufficient and right. a system may contain an account of many things which, in detail, are true enough; but as a system, covering infinite possibilities that neither our experience nor our logic can prejudge, it must be a work of imagination and a piece of human soliloquy. it may be expressive of human experience, it may be poetical; but how should anyone who really coveted truth suppose that it was true? emerson had no system; and his coveting truth had another exceptional consequence: he was detached, unworldly, contemplative. when he came out of the conventicle or the reform meeting, or out of the rapturous close atmosphere of the lecture-room, he heard nature whispering to him: "why so hot, little sir?" no doubt the spirit or energy of the world is what is acting in us, as the sea is what rises in every little wave; but it passes through us, and cry out as we may, it will move on. our privilege is to have perceived it as it moves. our dignity is not in what we do, but in what we understand. the whole world is doing things. we are turning in that vortex; yet within us is silent observation, the speculative eye before which all passes, which bridges the distances and compares the combatants. on this side of his genius emerson broke away from all conditions of age or country and represented nothing except intelligence itself. there was another element in emerson, curiously combined with transcendentalism, namely, his love and respect for nature. nature, for the transcendentalist, is precious because it is his own work, a mirror in which he looks at himself and says (like a poet relishing his own verses), "what a genius i am! who would have thought there was such stuff in me?" and the philosophical egotist finds in his doctrine a ready explanation of whatever beauty and commodity nature actually has. no wonder, he says to himself, that nature is sympathetic, since i made it. and such a view, one-sided and even fatuous as it may be, undoubtedly sharpens the vision of a poet and a moralist to all that is inspiriting and symbolic in the natural world. emerson was particularly ingenious and clear-sighted in feeling the spiritual uses of fellowship with the elements. this is something in which all teutonic poetry is rich and which forms, i think, the most genuine and spontaneous part of modern taste, and especially of american taste. just as some people are naturally enthralled and refreshed by music, so others are by landscape. music and landscape make up the spiritual resources of those who cannot or dare not express their unfulfilled ideals in words. serious poetry, profound religion (calvinism, for instance), are the joys of an unhappiness that confesses itself; but when a genteel tradition forbids people to confess that they are unhappy, serious poetry and profound religion are closed to them by that; and since human life, in its depths, cannot then express itself openly, imagination is driven for comfort into abstract arts, where human circumstances are lost sight of, and human problems dissolve in a purer medium. the pressure of care is thus relieved, without its quietus being found in intelligence. to understand oneself is the classic form of consolation; to elude oneself is the romantic. in the presence of music or landscape human experience eludes itself; and thus romanticism is the bond between transcendental and naturalistic sentiment. the winds and clouds come to minister to the solitary ego. have there been, we may ask, any successful efforts to escape from the genteel tradition, and to express something worth expressing behind its back? this might well not have occurred as yet; but america is so precocious, it has been trained by the genteel tradition to be so wise for its years, that some indications of a truly native philosophy and poetry are already to be found. i might mention the humorists, of whom you here in california have had your share. the humorists, however, only half escape the genteel tradition; their humour would lose its savour if they had wholly escaped it. they point to what contradicts it in the facts; but not in order to abandon the genteel tradition, for they have nothing solid to put in its place. when they point out how ill many facts fit into it, they do not clearly conceive that this militates against the standard, but think it a funny perversity in the facts. of course, did they earnestly respect the genteel tradition, such an incongruity would seem to them sad, rather than ludicrous. perhaps the prevalence of humour in america, in and out of season, may be taken as one more evidence that the genteel tradition is present pervasively, but everywhere weak. similarly in italy, during the renaissance, the catholic tradition could not be banished from the intellect, since there was nothing articulate to take its place; yet its hold on the heart was singularly relaxed. the consequence was that humorists could regale themselves with the foibles of monks and of cardinals, with the credulity of fools, and the bogus miracles of the saints; not intending to deny the theory of the church, but caring for it so little at heart that they could find it infinitely amusing that it should be contradicted in men's lives and that no harm should come of it. so when mark twain says, "i was born of poor but dishonest parents," the humour depends on the parody of the genteel anglo-saxon convention that it is disreputable to be poor; but to hint at the hollowness of it would not be amusing if it did not remain at bottom one's habitual conviction. the one american writer who has left the genteel tradition entirely behind is perhaps walt whitman. for this reason educated americans find him rather an unpalatable person, who they sincerely protest ought not to be taken for a representative of their culture; and he certainly should not, because their culture is so genteel and traditional. but the foreigner may sometimes think otherwise, since he is looking for what may have arisen in america to express, not the polite and conventional american mind, but the spirit and the inarticulate principles that animate the community, on which its own genteel mentality seems to sit rather lightly. when the foreigner opens the pages of walt whitman, he thinks that he has come at last upon something representative and original. in walt whitman democracy is carried into psychology and morals. the various sights, moods, and emotions are given each one vote; they are declared to be all free and equal, and the innumerable commonplace moments of life are suffered to speak like the others. those moments formerly reputed great are not excluded, but they are made to march in the ranks with their companions--plain foot-soldiers and servants of the hour. nor does the refusal to discriminate stop there; we must carry our principle further down, to the animals, to inanimate nature, to the cosmos as a whole. whitman became a pantheist; but his pantheism, unlike that of the stoics and of spinoza, was unintellectual, lazy, and self-indulgent; for he simply felt jovially that everything real was good enough, and that he was good enough himself. in him bohemia rebelled against the genteel tradition; but the reconstruction that alone can justify revolution did not ensue. his attitude, in principle, was utterly disintegrating; his poetic genius fell back to the lowest level, perhaps, to which it is possible for poetic genius to fall. he reduced his imagination to a passive sensorium for the registering of impressions. no element of construction remained in it, and therefore no element of penetration. but his scope was wide; and his lazy, desultory apprehension was poetical. his work, for the very reason that it is so rudimentary, contains a beginning, or rather many beginnings, that might possibly grow into a noble moral imagination, a worthy filling for the human mind. an american in the nineteenth century who completely disregarded the genteel tradition could hardly have done more. but there is another distinguished man, lately lost to this country, who has given some rude shocks to this tradition and who, as much as whitman, may be regarded as representing the genuine, the long silent american mind--i mean william james. he and his brother henry were as tightly swaddled in the genteel tradition as any infant geniuses could be, for they were born before , and in a swedenborgian household. yet they burst those bands almost entirely. the ways in which the two brothers freed themselves, however, are interestingly different. mr. henry james has done it by adopting the point of view of the outer world, and by turning the genteel american tradition, as he turns everything else, into a subject-matter for analysis. for him it is a curious habit of mind, intimately comprehended, to be compared with other habits of mind, also well known to him. thus he has overcome the genteel tradition in the classic way, by understanding it. with william james too this infusion of worldly insight and european sympathies was a potent influence, especially in his earlier days; but the chief source of his liberty was another. it was his personal spontaneity, similar to that of emerson, and his personal vitality, similar to that of nobody else. convictions and ideas came to him, so to speak, from the subsoil. he had a prophetic sympathy with the dawning sentiments of the age, with the moods of the dumb majority. his scattered words caught fire in many parts of the world. his way of thinking and feeling represented the true america, and represented in a measure the whole ultra-modern, radical world. thus he eluded the genteel tradition in the romantic way, by continuing it into its opposite. the romantic mind, glorified in hegel's dialectic (which is not dialectic at all, but a sort of tragi-comic history of experience), is always rendering its thoughts unrecognisable through the infusion of new insights, and through the insensible transformation of the moral feeling that accompanies them, till at last it has completely reversed its old judgments under cover of expanding them. thus the genteel tradition was led a merry dance when it fell again into the hands of a genuine and vigorous romanticist like william james. he restored their revolutionary force to its neutralised elements, by picking them out afresh, and emphasising them separately, according to his personal predilections. for one thing, william james kept his mind and heart wide open to all that might seem, to polite minds, odd, personal, or visionary in religion and philosophy. he gave a sincerely respectful hearing to sentimentalists, mystics, spiritualists, wizards, cranks, quacks, and impostors--for it is hard to draw the line, and james was not willing to draw it prematurely. he thought, with his usual modesty, that any of these might have something to teach him. the lame, the halt, the blind, and those speaking with tongues could come to him with the certainty of finding sympathy; and if they were not healed, at least they were comforted, that a famous professor should take them so seriously; and they began to feel that after all to have only one leg, or one hand, or one eye, or to have three, might be in itself no less beauteous than to have just two, like the stolid majority. thus william james became the friend and helper of those groping, nervous, half-educated, spiritually disinherited, passionately hungry individuals of which america is full. he became, at the same time, their spokesman and representative before the learned world; and he made it a chief part of his vocation to recast what the learned world has to offer, so that as far as possible it might serve the needs and interests of these people. yet the normal practical masculine american, too, had a friend in william james. there is a feeling abroad now, to which biology and darwinism lend some colour, that theory is simply an instrument for practice, and intelligence merely a help toward material survival. bears, it is said, have fur and claws, but poor naked man is condemned to be intelligent, or he will perish. this feeling william james embodied in that theory of thought and of truth which he called pragmatism. intelligence, he thought, is no miraculous, idle faculty, by which we mirror passively any or everything that happens to be true, reduplicating the real world to no purpose. intelligence has its roots and its issue in the context of events; it is one kind of practical adjustment, an experimental act, a form of vital tension. it does not essentially serve to picture other parts of reality, but to connect them. this view was not worked out by william james in its psychological and historical details; unfortunately he developed it chiefly in controversy against its opposite, which he called intellectualism, and which he hated with all the hatred of which his kind heart was capable. intellectualism, as he conceived it, was pure pedantry; it impoverished and verbalised everything, and tied up nature in red tape. ideas and rules that may have been occasionally useful it put in the place of the full-blooded irrational movement of life which had called them into being; and these abstractions, so soon obsolete, it strove to fix and to worship for ever. thus all creeds and theories and all formal precepts sink in the estimation of the pragmatist to a local and temporary grammar of action; a grammar that must be changed slowly by time, and may be changed quickly by genius. to know things as a whole, or as they are eternally, if there is anything eternal in them, is not only beyond our powers, but would prove worthless, and perhaps even fatal to our lives. ideas are not mirrors, they are weapons; their function is to prepare us to meet events, as future experience may unroll them. those ideas that disappoint us are false ideas; those to which events are true are true themselves. this may seem a very utilitarian view of the mind; and i confess i think it a partial one, since the logical force of beliefs and ideas, their truth or falsehood as assertions, has been overlooked altogether, or confused with the vital force of the material processes which these ideas express. it is an external view only, which marks the place and conditions of the mind in nature, but neglects its specific essence; as if a jewel were defined as a round hole in a ring. nevertheless, the more materialistic the pragmatist's theory of the mind is, the more vitalistic his theory of nature will have to become. if the intellect is a device produced in organic bodies to expedite their processes, these organic bodies must have interests and a chosen direction in their life; otherwise their life could not be expedited, nor could anything be useful to it. in other words--and this is a third point at which the philosophy of william james has played havoc with the genteel tradition, while ostensibly defending it--nature must be conceived anthropomorphically and in psychological terms. its purposes are not to be static harmonies, self-unfolding destinies, the logic of spirit, the spirit of logic, or any other formal method and abstract law; its purposes are to be concrete endeavours, finite efforts of souls living in an environment which they transform and by which they, too, are affected. a spirit, the divine spirit as much as the human, as this new animism conceives it, is a romantic adventurer. its future is undetermined. its scope, its duration, and the quality of its life are all contingent. this spirit grows; it buds and sends forth feelers, sounding the depths around for such other centres of force or life as may exist there. it has a vital momentum, but no predetermined goal. it uses its past as a stepping-stone, or rather as a diving-board, but has an absolutely fresh will at each moment to plunge this way or that into the unknown. the universe is an experiment; it is unfinished. it has no ultimate or total nature, because it has no end. it embodies no formula or statable law; any formula is at best a poor abstraction, describing what, in some region and for some time, may be the most striking characteristic of existence; the law is a description _a posteriori_ of the habit things have chosen to acquire, and which they may possibly throw off altogether. what a day may bring forth is uncertain; uncertain even to god. omniscience is impossible; time is real; what had been omniscience hitherto might discover something more to-day. "there shall be news," william james was fond of saying with rapture, quoting from the unpublished poem of an obscure friend, "there shall be news in heaven!" there is almost certainly, he thought, a god now; there may be several gods, who might exist together, or one after the other. we might, by our conspiring sympathies, help to make a new one. much in us is doubtless immortal; we survive death for some time in a recognisable form; but what our career and transformations may be in the sequel we cannot tell, although we may help to determine them by our daily choices. observation must be continual if our ideas are to remain true. eternal vigilance is the price of knowledge; perpetual hazard, perpetual experiment keep quick the edge of life. this is, so far as i know, a new philosophical vista; it is a conception never before presented, although implied, perhaps, in various quarters, as in norse and even greek mythology. it is a vision radically empirical and radically romantic; and as william james himself used to say, the visions and not the arguments of a philosopher are the interesting and influential things about him. william james, rather too generously, attributed this vision to m. bergson, and regarded him in consequence as a philosopher of the first rank, whose thought was to be one of the turning-points in history. m. bergson had killed intellectualism. it was his book on creative evolution, said james with humorous emphasis, that had come at last to "_écraser l'infâme_." we may suspect, notwithstanding, that intellectualism, infamous and crushed, will survive the blow; and if the author of the book of ecclesiastes were now alive, and heard that there shall be news in heaven, he would doubtless say that there may possibly be news there, but that under the sun there is nothing new--not even radical empiricism or radical romanticism, which from the beginning of the world has been the philosophy of those who as yet had had little experience; for to the blinking little child it is not merely something in the world that is new daily, but everything is new all day. i am not concerned with the rights and wrongs of that controversy; my point is only that william james, in this genial evolutionary view of the world, has given a rude shock to the genteel tradition. what! the world a gradual improvisation? creation unpremeditated? god a sort of young poet or struggling artist? william james is an advocate of theism; pragmatism adds one to the evidences of religion; that is excellent. but is not the cool abstract piety of the genteel getting more than it asks for? this empirical naturalistic god is too crude and positive a force; he will work miracles, he will answer prayers, he may inhabit distinct places, and have distinct conditions under which alone he can operate; he is a neighbouring being, whom we can act upon, and rely upon for specific aids, as upon a personal friend, or a physician, or an insurance company. how disconcerting! is not this new theology a little like superstition? and yet how interesting, how exciting, if it should happen to be true! i am far from wishing to suggest that such a view seems to me more probable than conventional idealism or than christian orthodoxy. all three are in the region of dramatic system-making and myth to which probabilities are irrelevant. if one man says the moon is sister to the sun, and another that she is his daughter, the question is not which notion is more probable, but whether either of them is at all expressive. the so-called evidences are devised afterwards, when faith and imagination have prejudged the issue. the force of william james's new theology, or romantic cosmology, lies only in this: that it has broken the spell of the genteel tradition, and enticed faith in a new direction, which on second thoughts may prove no less alluring than the old. the important fact is not that the new fancy might possibly be true--who shall know that?--but that it has entered the heart of a leading american to conceive and to cherish it. the genteel tradition cannot be dislodged by these insurrections; there are circles to which it is still congenial, and where it will be preserved. but it has been challenged and (what is perhaps more insidious) it has been discovered. no one need be browbeaten any longer into accepting it. no one need be afraid, for instance, that his fate is sealed because some young prig may call him a dualist; the pint would call the quart a dualist, if you tried to pour the quart into him. we need not be afraid of being less profound, for being direct and sincere. the intellectual world may be traversed in many directions; the whole has not been surveyed; there is a great career in it open to talent. that is a sort of knell, that tolls the passing of the genteel tradition. something else is now in the field; something else can appeal to the imagination, and be a thousand times more idealistic than academic idealism, which is often simply a way of white-washing and adoring things as they are. the illegitimate monopoly which the genteel tradition had established over what ought to be assumed and what ought to be hoped for has been broken down by the first-born of the family, by the genius of the race. henceforth there can hardly be the same peace and the same pleasure in hugging the old proprieties. hegel will be to the next generation what sir william hamilton was to the last. nothing will have been disproved, but everything will have been abandoned. an honest man has spoken, and the cant of the genteel tradition has become harder for young lips to repeat. with this i have finished such a sketch as i am here able to offer you of the genteel tradition in american philosophy. the subject is complex, and calls for many an excursus and qualifying footnote; yet i think the main outlines are clear enough. the chief fountains of this tradition were calvinism and transcendentalism. both were living fountains; but to keep them alive they required, one an agonised conscience, and the other a radical subjective criticism of knowledge. when these rare metaphysical preoccupations disappeared--and the american atmosphere is not favourable to either of them--the two systems ceased to be inwardly understood; they subsisted as sacred mysteries only; and the combination of the two in some transcendental system of the universe (a contradiction in principle) was doubly artificial. besides, it could hardly be held with a single mind. natural science, history, the beliefs implied in labour and invention, could not be disregarded altogether; so that the transcendental philosopher was condemned to a double allegiance, and to not letting his left hand know the bluff that his right hand was making. nevertheless, the difficulty in bringing practical inarticulate convictions to expression is very great, and the genteel tradition has subsisted in the academic mind for want of anything equally academic to take its place. the academic mind, however, has had its flanks turned. on the one side came the revolt of the bohemian temperament, with its poetry of crude naturalism; on the other side came an impassioned empiricism, welcoming popular religious witnesses to the unseen, reducing science to an instrument of success in action, and declaring the universe to be wild and young, and not to be harnessed by the logic of any school. this revolution, i should think, might well find an echo among you, who live in a thriving society, and in the presence of a virgin and prodigious world. when you transform nature to your uses, when you experiment with her forces, and reduce them to industrial agents, you cannot feel that nature was made by you or for you, for then these adjustments would have been pre-established. much less can you feel it when she destroys your labour of years in a momentary spasm. you must feel, rather, that you are an offshoot of her life; one brave little force among her immense forces. when you escape, as you love to do, to your forests and your sierras, i am sure again that you do not feel you made them, or that they were made for you. they have grown, as you have grown, only more massively and more slowly. in their non-human beauty and peace they stir the sub-human depths and the superhuman possibilities of your own spirit. it is no transcendental logic that they teach; and they give no sign of any deliberate morality seated in the world. it is rather the vanity and superficiality of all logic, the needlessness of argument, the relativity of morals, the strength of time, the fertility of matter, the variety, the unspeakable variety, of possible life. everything is measurable and conditioned, indefinitely repeated, yet, in repetition, twisted somewhat from its old form. everywhere is beauty and nowhere permanence, everywhere an incipient harmony, nowhere an intention, nor a responsibility, nor a plan. it is the irresistible suasion of this daily spectacle, it is the daily discipline of contact with things, so different from the verbal discipline of the schools, that will, i trust, inspire the philosophy of your children. a californian whom i had recently the pleasure of meeting observed that, if the philosophers had lived among your mountains their systems would have been different from what they are. certainly, i should say, very different from what those systems are which the european genteel tradition has handed down since socrates; for these systems are egotistical; directly or indirectly they are anthropocentric, and inspired by the conceited notion that man, or human reason, or the human distinction between good and evil, is the centre and pivot of the universe. that is what the mountains and the woods should make you at last ashamed to assert. from what, indeed, does the society of nature liberate you, that you find it so sweet? it is hardly (is it?) that you wish to forget your past, or your friends, or that you have any secret contempt for your present ambitions. you respect these, you respect them perhaps too much; you are not suffered by the genteel tradition to criticise or to reform them at all radically. no; it is the yoke of this genteel tradition itself that these primeval solitudes lift from your shoulders. they suspend your forced sense of your own importance not merely as individuals, but even as men. they allow you, in one happy moment, at once to play and to worship, to take yourselves simply, humbly, for what you are, and to salute the wild, indifferent, non-censorious infinity of nature. you are admonished that what you can do avails little materially, and in the end nothing. at the same time, through wonder and pleasure, you are taught speculation. you learn what you are really fitted to do, and where lie your natural dignity and joy, namely, in representing many things, without being them, and in letting your imagination, through sympathy, celebrate and echo their life. because the peculiarity of man is that his machinery for reaction on external things has involved an imaginative transcript of these things, which is preserved and suspended in his fancy; and the interest and beauty of this inward landscape, rather than any fortunes that may await his body in the outer world, constitute his proper happiness. by their mind, its scope, quality, and temper, we estimate men, for by the mind only do we exist as men, and are more than so many storage-batteries for material energy. let us therefore be frankly human. let us be content to live in the mind. * * * * * some turns of thought in modern philosophy _five essays_ by george santayana new york charles scribner's sons published under the auspices of the royal society of literature printed in great britain contents i. locke and the frontiers of common sense page paper read before the royal society of literature on the occasion of the tercentenary of the birth of john locke. with some supplementary notes ii. fifty years of british idealism reflections on the republication of bradley's _ethical studies_ iii. revolutions in science some comments on the theory of relativity and the new physics iv. a long way round to nirvana development of a suggestion found in freud's _beyond the pleasure principle_ v. the prestige of the infinite a review of julien benda's _sketch of a consistent theory of the relations between god and the world_ the author's acknowledgments are due to the editors of _the new adelphi_, _the dial_, and the _journal of philosophy_, in which one or more of these essays originally appeared. i locke and the frontiers of common sense[ ] a good portrait of locke would require an elaborate background. his is not a figure to stand statuesquely in a void: the pose might not seem grand enough for bronze or marble. rather he should be painted in the manner of the dutch masters, in a sunny interior, scrupulously furnished with all the implements of domestic comfort and philosophic enquiry: the holy bible open majestically before him, and beside it that other revelation--the terrestrial globe. his hand might be pointing to a microscope set for examining the internal constitution of a beetle: but for the moment his eye should be seen wandering through the open window, to admire the blessings of thrift and liberty manifest in the people so worthily busy in the market-place, wrong as many a monkish notion might be that still troubled their poor heads. from them his enlarged thoughts would easily pass to the stout carved ships in the river beyond, intrepidly setting sail for the indies, or for savage america. yes, he too had travelled, and not only in thought. he knew how many strange nations and false religions lodged in this round earth, itself but a speck in the universe. there were few ingenious authors that he had not perused, or philosophical instruments that he had not, as far as possible, examined and tested; and no man better than he could understand and prize the recent discoveries of "the incomparable mr newton". nevertheless, a certain uneasiness in that spare frame, a certain knitting of the brows in that aquiline countenance, would suggest that in the midst of their earnest eloquence the philosopher's thoughts might sometimes come to a stand. indeed, the visible scene did not exhaust the complexity of his problem; for there was also what he called "the scene of ideas", immaterial and private, but often more crowded and pressing than the public scene. locke was the father of modern psychology, and the birth of this airy monster, this half-natural changeling, was not altogether easy or fortunate.[ ] i wish my erudition allowed me to fill in this picture as the subject deserves, and to trace home the sources of locke's opinions, and their immense influence. unfortunately, i can consider him--what is hardly fair--only as a pure philosopher: for had locke's mind been more profound, it might have been less influential. he was in sympathy with the coming age, and was able to guide it: an age that confided in easy, eloquent reasoning, and proposed to be saved, in this world and the next, with as little philosophy and as little religion as possible. locke played in the eighteenth century very much the part that fell to kant in the nineteenth. when quarrelled with, no less than when embraced, his opinions became a point of departure for universal developments. the more we look into the matter, the more we are impressed by the patriarchal dignity of locke's mind. father of psychology, father of the criticism of knowledge, father of theoretical liberalism, god-father at least of the american political system, of voltaire and the encyclopaedia, at home he was the ancestor of that whole school of polite moderate opinion which can unite liberal christianity with mechanical science and with psychological idealism. he was invincibly rooted in a prudential morality, in a rationalised protestantism, in respect for liberty and law: above all he was deeply convinced, as he puts it, "that the handsome conveniences of life are better than nasty penury". locke still speaks, or spoke until lately, through many a modern mind, when this mind was most sincere; and two hundred years before queen victoria he was a victorian in essence. a chief element in this modernness of locke was something that had hardly appeared before in pure philosophy, although common in religion: i mean, the tendency to deny one's own presuppositions--not by accident or inadvertently, but proudly and with an air of triumph. presuppositions are imposed on all of us by life itself: for instance the presupposition that life is to continue, and that it is worth living. belief is born on the wing and awakes to many tacit commitments. afterwards, in reflection, we may wonder at finding these presuppositions on our hands and, being ignorant of the natural causes which have imposed them on the animal mind, we may be offended at them. their arbitrary and dogmatic character will tempt us to condemn them, and to take for granted that the analysis which undermines them is justified, and will prove fruitful. but this critical assurance in its turn seems to rely on a dubious presupposition, namely, that human opinion must always evolve in a single line, dialectically, providentially, and irresistibly. it is at least conceivable that the opposite should sometimes be the case. some of the primitive presuppositions of human reason might have been correct and inevitable, whilst the tendency to deny them might have sprung from a plausible misunderstanding, or the exaggeration of a half-truth: so that the critical opinion itself, after destroying the spontaneous assumptions on which it rested, might be incapable of subsisting. in locke the central presuppositions, which he embraced heartily and without question, were those of common sense. he adopted what he calls a "plain, historical method", fit, in his own words, "to be brought into well-bred company and polite conversation". men, "barely by the use of their natural faculties", might attain to all the knowledge possible or worth having. all children, he writes, "that are born into this world, being surrounded with bodies that perpetually and diversely affect them" have "a variety of ideas imprinted" on their minds. "external material things as objects of sensation, and the operations of our own minds as objects of reflection, are to me", he continues, "the only originals from which all our ideas take their beginnings." "every act of sensation", he writes elsewhere, "when duly considered, gives us an equal view of both parts of nature, the corporeal and the spiritual. for whilst i know, by seeing or hearing,... that there is some corporeal being without me, the object of that sensation, i do more certainly know that there is some spiritual being within me that sees and hears." resting on these clear perceptions, the natural philosophy of locke falls into two parts, one strictly physical and scientific, the other critical and psychological. in respect to the composition of matter, locke accepted the most advanced theory of his day, which happened to be a very old one: the theory of democritus that the material universe contains nothing but a multitude of solid atoms coursing through infinite space: but locke added a religious note to this materialism by suggesting that infinite space, in its sublimity, must be an attribute of god. he also believed what few materialists would venture to assert, that if we could thoroughly examine the cosmic mechanism we should see the demonstrable necessity of every complication that ensues, even of the existence and character of mind: for it was no harder for god to endow matter with the power of thinking than to endow it with the power of moving. in the atomic theory we have a graphic image asserted to describe accurately, or even exhaustively, the intrinsic constitution of things, or their primary qualities. perhaps, in so far as physical hypotheses must remain graphic at all, it is an inevitable theory. it was first suggested by the wearing out and dissolution of all material objects, and by the specks of dust floating in a sunbeam; and it is confirmed, on an enlarged scale, by the stellar universe as conceived by modern astronomy. when today we talk of nuclei and electrons, if we imagine them at all, we imagine them as atoms. but it is all a picture, prophesying what we might see through a sufficiently powerful microscope; the important philosophical question is the one raised by the other half of locke's natural philosophy, by optics and the general criticism of perception. how far, if at all, may we trust the images in our minds to reveal the nature of external things? on this point the doctrine of locke, through descartes,[ ] was also derived from democritus. it was that all the sensible qualities of things, except position, shape, solidity, number and motion, were only ideas in us, projected and falsely regarded as lodged in things. in the things, these imputed or secondary qualities were simply powers, inherent in their atomic constitution, and calculated to excite sensations of that character in our bodies. this doctrine is readily established by locke's plain historical method, when applied to the study of rainbows, mirrors, effects of perspective, dreams, jaundice, madness, and the will to believe: all of which go to convince us that the ideas which we impulsively assume to be qualities of objects are always, in their seat and origin, evolved in our own heads. these two parts of locke's natural philosophy, however, are not in perfect equilibrium. _all_ the feelings and ideas of an animal must be equally conditioned by his organs and passions,[ ] and he cannot be aware of what goes on beyond him, except as it affects his own life.[ ] how then could locke, or could democritus, suppose that his ideas of space and atoms were less human, less graphic, summary, and symbolic, than his sensations of sound or colour? the language of science, no less than that of sense, should have been recognised to be a human language; and the nature of anything existent collateral with ourselves, be that collateral existence material or mental, should have been confessed to be a subject for faith and for hypothesis, never, by any possibility, for absolute or direct intuition. there is no occasion to take alarm at this doctrine as if it condemned us to solitary confinement, and to ignorance of the world in which we live. we see and know the world through our eyes and our intelligence, in visual and in intellectual terms: how else should a world be seen or known which is not the figment of a dream, but a collateral power, pressing and alien? in the cognisance which an animal may take of his surroundings--and surely all animals take such cognisance--the subjective and moral character of his feelings, on finding himself so surrounded, does not destroy their cognitive value. these feelings, as locke says, are signs: to take them for signs is the essence of intelligence. animals that are sensitive physically are also sensitive morally, and feel the friendliness or hostility which surrounds them. even pain and pleasure are no idle sensations, satisfied with their own presence: they violently summon attention to the objects that are their source. can love or hate be felt without being felt towards something--something near and potent, yet external, uncontrolled, and mysterious? when i dodge a missile or pick a berry, is it likely that my mind should stop to dwell on its pure sensations or ideas without recognising or pursuing something material? analytic reflection often ignores the essential energy of mind, which is originally more intelligent than sensuous, more appetitive and dogmatic than aesthetic. but the feelings and ideas of an active animal cannot help uniting internal moral intensity with external physical reference; and the natural conditions of sensibility require that perceptions should owe their existence and quality to the living organism with its moral bias, and that at the same time they should be addressed to the external objects which entice that organism or threaten it. all ambitions must be defeated when they ask for the impossible. the ambition to know is not an exception; and certainly our perceptions cannot tell us how the world would look if nobody saw it, or how valuable it would be if nobody cared for it. but our perceptions, as locke again said, are sufficient for our welfare and appropriate to our condition. they are not only a wonderful entertainment in themselves, but apart from their sensuous and grammatical quality, by their distribution and method of variation, they may inform us most exactly about the order and mechanism of nature. we see in the science of today how completely the most accurate knowledge--proved to be accurate by its application in the arts--may shed every pictorial element, and the whole language of experience, to become a pure method of calculation and control. and by a pleasant compensation, our aesthetic life may become freer, more self-sufficing, more humbly happy in itself: and without trespassing in any way beyond the modesty of nature, we may consent to be like little children, chirping our human note; since the life of reason in us may well become science in its validity, whilst remaining poetry in its texture. i think, then, that by a slight re-arrangement of locke's pronouncements in natural philosophy, they could be made inwardly consistent, and still faithful to the first presuppositions of common sense, although certainly far more chastened and sceptical than impulsive opinion is likely to be in the first instance. there were other presuppositions in the philosophy of locke besides his fundamental naturalism; and in his private mind probably the most important was his christian faith, which was not only confident and sincere, but prompted him at times to high speculation. he had friends among the cambridge platonists, and he found in newton a brilliant example of scientific rigour capped with mystical insights. yet if we consider locke's philosophical position in the abstract, his christianity almost disappears. in form his theology and ethics were strictly rationalistic; yet one who was a deist in philosophy might remain a christian in religion. there was no great harm in a special revelation, provided it were simple and short, and left the broad field of truth open in almost every direction to free and personal investigation. a free man and a good man would certainly never admit, as coming from god, any doctrine contrary to his private reason or political interest; and the moral precepts actually vouchsafed to us in the gospels were most acceptable, seeing that they added a sublime eloquence to maxims which sound reason would have arrived at in any case. evidently common sense had nothing to fear from religious faith of this character; but the matter could not end there. common sense is not more convinced of anything than of the difference between good and evil, advantage and disaster; and it cannot dispense with a moral interpretation of the universe. socrates, who spoke initially for common sense, even thought the moral interpretation of existence the whole of philosophy. he would not have seen anything comic in the satire of molière making his chorus of young doctors chant in unison that opium causes sleep because it has a dormitive virtue. the virtues or moral uses of things, according to socrates, were the reason why the things had been created and were what they were; the admirable virtues of opium defined its perfection, and the perfection of a thing was the full manifestation of its deepest nature. doubtless this moral interpretation of the universe had been overdone, and it had been a capital error in socrates to make that interpretation exclusive and to substitute it for natural philosophy. locke, who was himself a medical man, knew what a black cloak for ignorance and villainy scholastic verbiage might be in that profession. he also knew, being an enthusiast for experimental science, that in order to control the movement of matter--which is to realise those virtues and perfections--it is better to trace the movement of matter materialistically; for it is in the act of manifesting its own powers, and not, as socrates and the scholastics fancied, by obeying a foreign magic, that matter sometimes assumes or restores the forms so precious in the healer's or the moralist's eyes. at the same time, the manner in which the moral world rests upon the natural, though divined, perhaps, by a few philosophers, has not been generally understood; and locke, whose broad humanity could not exclude the moral interpretation of nature, was driven in the end to the view of socrates. he seriously invoked the scholastic maxim that nothing can produce that which it does not contain. for this reason the unconscious, after all, could never have given rise to consciousness. observation and experiment could not be allowed to decide this point: the moral interpretation of things, because more deeply rooted in human experience, must envelop the physical interpretation, and must have the last word. it was characteristic of locke's simplicity and intensity that he retained these insulated sympathies in various quarters. a further instance of his many-sidedness was his fidelity to pure intuition, his respect for the infallible revelation of ideal being, such as we have of sensible qualities or of mathematical relations. in dreams and in hallucinations appearances may deceive us, and the objects we think we see may not exist at all. yet in suffering an illusion we must entertain an idea; and the manifest character of these ideas is that of which alone, locke thinks, we can have certain "knowledge". "these", he writes, "are two very different things and carefully to be distinguished: it being one thing to perceive and know the idea of white or black, and quite another to examine what kind of particles they must be, and how arranged ... to make any object appear white or black." "a man infallibly knows, as soon as ever he has them in his mind, that the ideas he calls white and round are the very ideas they are, and that they are not other ideas which he calls red or square.... this ... the mind ... always perceives at first sight; and if ever there happen any doubt about it, it will always be found to be about the names and not the ideas themselves." this sounds like high platonic doctrine for a philosopher of the left; but locke's utilitarian temper very soon reasserted itself in this subject. mathematical ideas were not only lucid but true: and he demanded this truth, which he called "reality", of all ideas worthy of consideration: mere ideas would be worthless. very likely he forgot, in his philosophic puritanism, that fiction and music might have an intrinsic charm. where the frontier of human wisdom should be drawn in this direction was clearly indicated, in locke's day, by spinoza, who says: "if, in keeping non-existent things present to the imagination, the mind were at the same time aware that those things did not exist, surely it would regard this gift of imagination as a virtue in its own constitution, not as a vice: especially if such an imaginative faculty depended on nothing except the mind's own nature: that is to say, if this mental faculty of imagination were free". but locke had not so firm a hold on truth that he could afford to play with fancy; and as he pushed forward the claims of human jurisdiction rather too far in physics, by assuming the current science to be literally true, so, in the realm of imagination, he retrenched somewhat illiberally our legitimate possessions. strange that as modern philosophy transfers the visible wealth of nature more and more to the mind, the mind should seem to lose courage and to become ashamed of its own fertility. the hard-pressed natural man will not indulge his imagination unless it poses for truth; and being half aware of this imposition, he is more troubled at the thought of being deceived than at the fact of being mechanised or being bored: and he would wish to escape imagination altogether. a good god, he murmurs, could not have made us poets against our will. against his will, however, locke was drawn to enlarge the subjective sphere. the actual existence of mind was evident: you had only to notice the fact that you were thinking. conscious mind, being thus known to exist directly and independently of the body, was a primary constituent of reality: it was a fact on its own account.[ ] common sense seemed to testify to this, not only when confronted with the "i think, therefore i am" of descartes, but whenever a thought produced an action. since mind and body interacted,[ ] each must be as real as the other and, as it were, on the same plane of being. locke, like a good protestant, felt the right of the conscious inner man to assert himself: and when he looked into his own mind, he found nothing to define this mind except the ideas which occupied it. the existence which he was so sure of in himself was therefore the existence of his ideas. here, by an insensible shift in the meaning of the word "idea", a momentous revolution had taken place in psychology. ideas had originally meant objective terms distinguished in thought-images, qualities, concepts, propositions. but now ideas began to mean living thoughts, moments or states of consciousness. they became atoms of mind, constituents of experience, very much as material atoms were conceived to be constituents of natural objects. sensations became the only objects of sensation, and ideas the only objects of ideas; so that the material world was rendered superfluous, and the only scientific problem was now to construct a universe in terms of analytic psychology. locke himself did not go so far, and continued to assign physical causes and physical objects to some, at least, of his mental units; and indeed sensations and ideas could not very well have other than physical causes, the existence of which this new psychology was soon to deny: so that about the origin of its data it was afterwards compelled to preserve a discreet silence. but as to their combinations and reappearances, it was able to invoke the principle of association: a thread on which many shrewd observations may be strung, but which also, when pressed, appears to be nothing but a verbal mask for organic habits in matter. the fact is that there are two sorts of unobjectionable psychology, neither of which describes a mechanism of disembodied mental states, such as the followers of locke developed into modern idealism, to the confusion of common sense.[ ] one unobjectionable sort of psychology is biological, and studies life from the outside. the other sort, relying on memory and dramatic imagination, reproduces life from the inside, and is literary. if the literary psychologist is a man of genius, by the clearness and range of his memory, by quickness of sympathy and power of suggestion, he may come very near to the truth of experience, as it has been or might be unrolled in a human being.[ ] the ideas with which locke operates are simply high lights picked out by attention in this nebulous continuum, and identified by names. ideas, in the original ideal sense of the word, are indeed the only definite terms which attention can discriminate and rest upon; but the unity of these units is specious, not existential. if ideas were not logical or aesthetic essences but self-subsisting feelings, each knowing itself, they would be insulated for ever; no spirit could ever survey, recognise, or compare them; and mind would have disappeared in the analysis of mind. these considerations might enable us, i think, to mark the just frontier of common sense even in this debatable land of psychology. all that is biological, observable, and documentary in psychology falls within the lines of physical science and offers no difficulty in principle. nor need literary psychology form a dangerous salient in the circuit of nature. the dramatic poet or dramatic historian necessarily retains the presupposition of a material world, since beyond his personal memory (and even within it) he has nothing to stimulate and control his dramatic imagination save knowledge of the material circumstances in which people live, and of the material expression in action or words which they give to their feelings. his moral insight simply vivifies the scene that nature and the sciences of nature spread out before him: they tell him what has happened, and his heart tells him what has been felt. only literature can describe experience for the excellent reason that the terms of experience are moral and literary from the beginning. mind is incorrigibly poetical: not because it is not attentive to material facts and practical exigencies, but because, being intensely attentive to them, it turns them into pleasures and pains, and into many-coloured ideas. yet at every turn there is a possibility and an occasion for transmuting this poetry into science, because ideas and emotions, being caused by material events, refer to these events, and record their order. all philosophies are frail, in that they are products of the human mind, in which everything is essentially reactive, spontaneous, and volatile: but as in passion and in language, so in philosophy, there are certain comparatively steady and hereditary principles, forming a sort of orthodox reason, which is or which may become the current grammar of mankind. of philosophers who are orthodox in this sense, only the earliest or the most powerful, an aristotle or a spinoza, need to be remembered, in that they stamp their language and temper upon human reason itself. the rest of the orthodox are justly lost in the crowd and relegated to the chorus. the frailty of heretical philosophers is more conspicuous and interesting: it makes up the _chronique scandaleuse_ of the mind, or the history of philosophy. locke belongs to both camps: he was restive in his orthodoxy and timid in his heresies; and like so many other initiators of revolutions, he would be dismayed at the result of his work. in intention locke occupied an almost normal philosophic position, rendered precarious not by what was traditional in it, like the categories of substance and power, but rather by certain incidental errors--notably by admitting an experience independent of bodily life, yet compounded and evolving in a mechanical fashion. but i do not find in him a prickly nest of obsolete notions and contradictions from which, fledged at last, we have flown to our present enlightenment. in his person, in his temper, in his allegiances and hopes, he was the prototype of a race of philosophers native and dominant among people of english speech, if not in academic circles, at least in the national mind. if we make allowance for a greater personal subtlety, and for the diffidence and perplexity inevitable in the present moral anarchy of the world, we may find this same lockian eclecticism and prudence in the late lord balfour: and i have myself had the advantage of being the pupil of a gifted successor and, in many ways, emulator, of locke, i mean william james. so great, at bottom, does their spiritual kinship seem to me to be, that i can hardly conceive locke vividly without seeing him as a sort of william james of the seventeenth century. and who of you has not known some other spontaneous, inquisitive, unsettled genius, no less preoccupied with the marvellous intelligence of some brazilian parrot, than with the sad obstinacy of some bishop of worcester? here is eternal freshness of conviction and ardour for reform; great keenness of perception in spots, and in other spots lacunae and impulsive judgments; distrust of tradition, of words, of constructive argument; horror of vested interests and of their smooth defenders; a love of navigating alone and exploring for oneself even the coasts already well charted by others. here is romanticism united with a scientific conscience and power of destructive analysis balanced by moral enthusiasm. doubtless locke might have dug his foundations deeper and integrated his faith better. his system was no metaphysical castle, no theological acropolis: rather a homely ancestral manor house built in several styles of architecture: a tudor chapel, a palladian front toward the new geometrical garden, a jacobean parlour for political consultation and learned disputes, and even--since we are almost in the eighteenth century--a chinese cabinet full of curios. it was a habitable philosophy, and not too inharmonious. there was no greater incongruity in its parts than in the gentle variations of english weather or in the qualified moods and insights of a civilised mind. impoverished as we are, morally and humanly, we can no longer live in such a rambling mansion. it has become a national monument. on the days when it is open we revisit it with admiration; and those chambers and garden walks re-echo to us the clear dogmas and savoury diction of the sage--omnivorous, artless, loquacious--whose dwelling it was. [ ] paper read before the royal society of literature on the occasion of the tercentenary of the birth of john locke. [ ] see note i, p. . [ ] see note ii, p. . [ ] see note iii, p. . [ ] see note iv, p. . [ ] see note v, p. . [ ] see note vi, p. . [ ] see note vii, p. . [ ] see note viii, p. . supplementary notes i page . _this airy monster, this half-natural changeling._ monsters and changelings were pointed to by locke with a certain controversial relish: they proved that nature was not compressed or compressible within aristotelian genera and species, but was a free mechanism subject to indefinite change. mechanism in physics is favourable to liberty in politics and morals: each creature has a right to be what it spontaneously is, and not what some previous classification alleges that it ought to have been. the protestant and revolutionary independence of locke's mind here gives us a foretaste of darwin and even of nietzsche. but locke was moderate even in his radicalisms. a human nature totally fluid would of itself have proved anarchical; but in order to stem that natural anarchy it was fortunately possible to invoke the conditions of prosperity and happiness strictly laid down by the creator. the improvidence and naughtiness of nature was called to book at every turn by the pleasures and pains divinely appended to things enjoined and to things forbidden, and ultimately by hell and by heaven. yet if rewards and punishments were attached to human action and feeling in this perfectly external and arbitrary fashion, whilst the feelings and actions spontaneous in mankind counted for nothing in the rule of morals and of wisdom, we should be living under the most cruel and artificial of tyrannies; and it would not be long before the authority of such a code would be called in question and the reality of those arbitrary rewards and punishments would be denied, both for this world and for any other. in a truly rational morality moral sanctions would have to vary with the variation of species, each new race or individual or mode of feeling finding its natural joy in a new way of life. the monsters would not be monsters except to rustic prejudice, and the changelings would be simply experiments in creation. the glee of locke in seeing nature elude scholastic conventions would then lose its savour, since those staid conventions themselves would have become obsolete. nature would henceforth present nothing but pervasive metamorphosis, irresponsible and endless. to correct the weariness of such pure flux we might indeed invoke the idea of a progress or evolution towards something always higher and better; but this idea simply reinstates, under a temporal form, the dominance of a specific standard, to which nature is asked to conform. genera and species might shift and glide into one another at will, but always in the authorised direction. if, on the contrary, transformation had no predetermined direction, we should be driven back, for a moral principle, to each of the particular types of life generated on the way: as in estimating the correctness or beauty of language we appeal to the speech and genius of each nation at each epoch, without imposing the grammar of one language or age upon another. it is only in so far as, in the midst of the flux, certain tropes become organised and recurrent, that any interests or beauties can be transmitted from moment to moment or from generation to generation. physical integration is a prerequisite to moral integrity; and unless an individual or a species is sufficiently organised and determinate to aspire to a distinguishable form of life, eschewing all others, that individual or species can bear no significant name, can achieve no progress, and can approach no beauty or perfection. thus, so long as in a fluid world there is some measure of life and organisation, monsters and changelings will always remain possible physically and regrettable morally. small deviations from the chosen type or the chosen direction of progress will continue to be called morbid and ugly, and great deviations or reversals will continue to be called monstrous. this is but the seamy side of that spontaneous predilection, grounded in our deepest nature, by which we recognise beauty and nobleness at first sight, with immense refreshment and perfect certitude. ii page . _through descartes._ very characteristic was the tireless polemic which locke carried on against descartes. the outraged plain facts had to be defended against sweeping and arbitrary theories. there were no innate ideas or maxims: children were not born murmuring that things equal to the same thing were equal to one another: and an urchin knew that pain was caused by the paternal slipper before he reflected philosophically that everything must have a cause. again, extension was not the essence of matter, which must be solid as well, to be distinguishable from empty space. finally, thinking was not the essence of the soul: a man, without dying, might lose consciousness: this often happened, or at least could not be prevented from happening by a definition framed by a french philosopher. these protests were evidently justified by common sense: yet they missed the speculative radicalism and depth of the cartesian doctrines, which had struck the keynotes of all modern philosophy and science: for they assumed, for the first time in history, the transcendental point of view. no wonder that locke could not do justice to this great novelty: descartes himself did not do so, but ignored his subjective first principles in the development of his system; and it was not until adopted by kant, or rather by fichte, that the transcendental method showed its true colours. even today philosophers fumble with it, patching soliloquy with physics and physics with soliloquy. moreover, locke's misunderstandings of descartes were partly justified by the latter's verbal concessions to tradition and authority. a man who has a clear head, and like descartes is rendered by his aristocratic pride both courteous and disdainful, may readily conform to usage in his language, and even in his personal sentiments, without taking either too seriously: he is not struggling to free his own mind, which is free already, nor very hopeful of freeing that of most people. the innate ideas were not explicit thoughts but categories employed unwittingly, as people in speaking conform to the grammar of the vernacular without being aware that they do so. as for extension being the essence of matter, since matter existed and was a substance, it would always have been more than its essence: a sort of ether the parts of which might move and might have different and calculable dynamic values. the gist of this definition of matter was to clear the decks for scientific calculation, by removing from nature the moral density and moral magic with which the socratic philosophy had encumbered it. science would be employed in describing the movements of bodies, leaving it for the senses and feelings to appreciate the cross-lights that might be generated in the process. though not following the technique of descartes, the physics of our own day realises his ideal, and traces in nature a mathematical dynamism, perfectly sufficient for exact prevision and mechanical art. similarly, in saying that the essence of the soul was to think, descartes detached consciousness, or actual spirit, from the meshes of all unknown organic or invented mental mechanisms. it was an immense clarification and liberation in its proper dimension: but this pure consciousness was not a soul; it was not the animal psyche, or principle of organisation, life, and passion--a principle which, according to descartes, was material. to have called such a material principle the soul would have shocked all christian conceptions; but if descartes had abstained from giving that consecrated name to mere consciousness, he need not have been wary of making the latter intermittent and evanescent, as it naturally is. he was driven to the conclusion that the soul can never stop thinking, by the desire to placate orthodox opinion, and his own christian sentiments, at the expense of attributing to actual consciousness a substantial independence and a directive physical force which were incongruous with it: a force and independence perfectly congruous with the platonic soul, which had been a mythological being, a supernatural spirit or daemon or incubus, incarnate in the natural world, and partly dominating it. the relations of such a soul to the particular body or bodies which it might weave for itself on earth, to the actions which it performed through such bodies, and to the current of its own thoughts, then became questions for theology, or for a moralistic theory of the universe. they were questions remote from the preoccupations of the modern mind; yet it was not possible either for locke or for descartes to clear their fresh conceptions altogether from those ancient dreams. what views precisely did locke oppose to these radical tendencies of descartes? in respect to the nature of matter, i have indicated above the position of locke: pictorially he accepted an ordinary atomism; scientifically, the physics of newton. on the other two points locke's convictions were implicit rather than speculative: he resisted the cartesian theories without much developing his own, as after all was natural in a critic engaged in proving that our natural faculties were not intended for speculation. all knowledge came from experience, and no man could know the savour of a pineapple without having tasted it. yet this savour, according to locke, did not reside at first in the pineapple, to be conveyed on contact to the palate and to the mind; but it was generated in the process of gustation; or perhaps we should rather say that it was generated in the mind on occasion of that process. at least, then, in respect to secondary qualities, and to all moral values, the terms of human knowledge were not drawn from the objects encountered in the world, but from an innate sensibility proper to the human body or mind. experience--if this word meant the lifelong train of ideas which made a man's moral being--was not a source of knowledge but was knowledge (or illusion) itself, produced by organs endowed with a special native sensibility in contact with varying external stimuli. this conclusion would then not have contradicted, but exactly expressed, the doctrine of innate categories. as to the soul, which might exist without thinking, locke still called it an immaterial substance: not so immaterial, however, as not to be conveyed bodily with him in his coach from london to oxford. although, like hobbes, locke believed in the power of the english language to clarify the human intellect, he here ignored the advice of hobbes to turn that befuddling latin phrase into plain english. substance meant body: immaterial meant bodiless: therefore immaterial substance meant bodiless body. true, substance had not really meant body for aristotle or the schoolmen; but who now knew or cared what anything had meant for them? locke scornfully refused to consider what a substantial form may have signified; and in still maintaining that he had a soul, and calling it a spiritual substance, he was probably simply protesting that there was something living and watchful within his breast, the invisible moral agent in all his thoughts and actions. it was _he_ that had them and did them; and this self of his was far from being reducible to a merely logical impersonal subject, an "i think" presupposed in all thought: for what would this "i think" have become when it was not thinking? on the other hand it mattered very little what the _substance_ of a thinking being might be: god might even have endowed the body with the faculty of thinking, and of generating ideas on occasion of certain impacts. yet a man was a man for all that: and locke was satisfied that he knew, at least well enough for an honest englishman, what he was. he was what he felt himself to be: and this inner man of his was not merely the living self, throbbing now in his heart; it was all his moral past, all that he remembered to have been. if, from moment to moment, the self was a spiritual energy astir within, in retrospect the living present seemed, as it were, to extend its tentacles and to communicate its subjectivity to his whole personal past. the limits of his personality were those of his memory, and his experience included everything that his living mind could appropriate and re-live. in a word, _he was his idea of himself_: and this insight opens a new chapter not only in his philosophy but in the history of human self-estimation. mankind was henceforth invited not to think of itself as a tribe of natural beings, nor of souls, with a specific nature and fixed possibilities. each man was a romantic personage or literary character: he was simply what he was thought to be, and might become anything that he could will to become. the way was opened for napoleon on the one hand and for fichte on the other. iii page . __all_ ideas must be equally conditioned._ even the mathematical ideas which seem so exactly to describe the dynamic order of nature are not repetitions of their natural counterpart: for mathematical form in nature is a web of diffuse relations enacted; in the mind it is a thought possessed, the logical synthesis of those deployed relations. to run in a circle is one thing; to conceive a circle is another. our mind by its animal roots (which render it relevant to the realm of matter and cognitive) and by its spiritual actuality (which renders it original, synthetic, and emotional) is a language, from its beginnings; almost, we might say, a biological poetry; and the greater the intellectuality and poetic abstraction the greater the possible range. yet we must not expect this scope of speculation in us to go with adequacy or exhaustiveness: on the contrary, mathematics and religion, each in its way so sure, leave most of the truth out. iv page . _he cannot be aware of what goes on beyond him, except as it affects his own life._ even that spark of divine intelligence which comes into the animal soul, as aristotle says, from beyond the gates, comes and is called down by the exigencies of physical life. an animal endowed with locomotion cannot merely feast sensuously on things as they appear, but must react upon them at the first signal, and in so doing must virtually and in intent envisage them as they are in themselves. for it is by virtue of their real constitution and intrinsic energy that they act upon us and suffer change in turn at our hands; so that whatsoever form things may take to our senses and intellect, they take that form by exerting their material powers upon us, and intertwining them in action with our own organisms. thus the appearance of things is always, in some measure, a true index to their reality. animals are inevitably engaged in self-transcending action, and the consciousness of self-transcending action is self-transcendent knowledge. the very nature of animal life makes it possible, within animal consciousness, to discount appearance and to correct illusion--things which in a vegetative or aesthetic sensibility would not be distinguishable from pure experience itself. but when aroused to self-transcendent attention, feeling must needs rise to intelligence, so that external fact and impartial truth come within the range of consciousness, not indeed by being contained there, but by being aimed at. v page . _conscious mind was a fact on its own account._ this conscious mind was a man's moral being, and personal identity could not extend further than possible memory. this doctrine of locke's had some comic applications. the bishop of worcester was alarmed. if actions which a hardened sinner had forgotten were no longer his, a short memory would be a great blessing in the day of judgment. on the other hand, a theology more plastic than stillingfleet's would one day find in this same doctrine a new means of edification. for if i may disown all actions i have forgotten, may not things not done or witnessed by me in the body be now appropriated and incorporated in my consciousness, if only i conceive them vividly? the door is then open to all the noble ambiguities of idealism. as my consciousness expands, or thinks it expands, into dramatic sympathy with universal experience, that experience becomes my own. i may say i have been the agent in all past achievements. emerson could know that he was shakespeare and caesar and christ. futurity is mine also, in every possible direction at once; and i am one with the spirit of the universe and with god. locke reassured the bishop of worcester, and was humbly confident that divine justice would find a way of vindicating itself in spite of human wit. he might have added that if the sin of adam could not only be imputed to us juridically but could actually taint our consciousness--as it certainly does if by adam we understand our whole material heritage--so surely the sins done or the habits acquired by the body beyond the scope of consciousness may taint or clarify this consciousness now. indeed, the idea we form of ourselves and of our respective experiences is a figment of vanity, a product of dramatic imagination, without cognitive import save as a reading of the hidden forces, physical or divine, which have formed us and actually govern us. vi page . _mind and body interacted._ the self which acts in a man is itself moved by forces which have long been familiar to common sense, without being understood except dramatically. these forces are called the passions; or when the dramatic units distinguished are longish strands rather than striking episodes, they are called temperament, character, or will; or perhaps, weaving all these strands and episodes together again into one moral fabric, we call them simply human nature. but in what does this vague human nature reside, and how does it operate on the non-human world? certainly not within the conscious sphere, or in the superficial miscellany of experience. immediate experience is the intermittent chaos which human nature, in combination with external circumstances, is invoked to support and to rationalise. is human nature, then, resident in each individual soul? certainly: but the soul is merely another name for that active principle which we are looking for, to be the seat of our sensibility and the source of our actions. is this psychic power, then, resident in the body? undoubtedly; since it is hereditary and transmitted by a seed, and continually aroused and modified by material agencies. since this soul or self in the body is so obscure, the temptation is great to dramatise its energies and to describe them in myths. myth is the normal means of describing those forces of nature which we cannot measure or understand; if we could understand or measure them we should describe them prosaically and analytically, in what is called science. but nothing is less measurable, or less intelligible to us, in spite of being so near us and familiar, as the life of this carnal instrument, so soft and so violent, which breeds our sensations and precipitates our actions. we see today how the freudian psychology, just because it is not satisfied with registering the routine of consciousness but endeavours to trace its hidden mechanism and to unravel its physical causes, is driven to use the most frankly mythological language. the physiological processes concerned, though presupposed, are not on the scale of human perception and not traceable in detail; and the moral action, though familiar in snatches, has to be patched by invented episodes, and largely attributed to daemonic personages that never come on the stage. locke, in his psychology of morals, had at first followed the verbal rationalism by which people attribute motives to themselves and to one another. human actions were explained by the alleged pursuit of the greater prospective pleasure, and avoidance of the greater prospective pain. but this way of talking, though not so poetical as freud's, is no less mythical. eventual goods and evils have no present existence and no power: they cannot even be discerned prophetically, save by the vaguest fancy, entirely based on the present impulses and obsessions of the soul. no future good, no future evil avails to move us, except--as locke said after examining the facts more closely--when a _certain uneasiness_ in the soul (or in the body) causes us to turn to those untried goods and evils with a present and living interest. this actual uneasiness, with the dream pictures which it evokes, is a mere symptom of the direction in which human nature in us is already moving, or already disposed to move. without this prior physical impulse, heaven may beckon and hell may yawn without causing the least variation in conduct. as in religious conversion all is due to the call of grace, so in ordinary action all is due to the ripening of natural impulses and powers within the psyche. the _uneasiness_ observed by locke is merely the consciousness of this ripening, before the field of relevant action has been clearly discerned. when all this is considered, the ostensible interaction between mind and body puts on a new aspect. there are no _purely mental_ ideas or intentions followed by material effects: there are no material events followed by a _purely mental_ sensation or idea. mental events are always elements in total natural events containing material elements also: material elements form the organ, the stimulus, and probably also the object for those mental sensations or ideas. moreover, the physical strand alone is found to be continuous and traceable; the conscious strand, the sequence of mental events, flares up and dies down daily, if not hourly; and the medley of its immediate features--images, words, moods--juxtaposes china and peru, past and future, in the most irresponsible confusion. on the other hand, in human life it is a part of the conscious element--intentions, affections, plans, and reasonings--that _explains_ the course of action: dispersed temporally, our dominant thoughts contain the reason for our continuous behaviour, and seem to guide it. they are not so much links in a chain of minute consecutive causes--an idea or an act of will often takes time to work and works, as it were, only posthumously--as they are general overarching moral inspirations and resolves, which the machinery of our bodies executes in its own way, often rendering our thoughts more precise in the process, or totally transforming them. we do roughly what we meant to do, barring accidents. the reasons lie deep in our compound nature, being probably inarticulate; and our action in a fragmentary way betrays our moral disposition: betrays it in both senses of the word betray, now revealing it unawares, and now sadly disappointing it. i leave it for the reader's reflection to decide whether we should call such cohabitation of mind with body interaction, or not rather sympathetic concomitance, self-annotation, and a partial prophetic awakening to a life which we are leading automatically. vii page . _to the confusion of common sense._ berkeley and his followers sometimes maintain that common sense is on their side, that they have simply analysed the fact of our experience of the material world, and if there is any paradox in their idealism, it is merely verbal and disappears with familiarity. all the "reality", they say, all the force, obduracy, and fertility of nature subsist undiminished after we discover that this reality resides, and can only reside, in the fixed order of our experience. but no: analysis of immediate experience will never disclose any fixed order in it; the surface of experience, when not interpreted materialistically, is an inextricable dream. berkeley and his followers, when they look in this direction, towards nature and the rationale of experience and science, are looking away from their own system, and relying instead on the automatic propensity of human nature to routine, so that we spontaneously prepare for repeating our actions (not our experience) and even anticipate their occasions; a propensity further biased by the dominant rhythms of the psyche, so that we assume a future not so much similar to the past, as better. when developed, this propensity turns into trust in natural or divine laws; but it is contrary to common sense to expect such laws to operate apart from matter and from the material continuity of external occasions. this appears clearly in our trust in persons--a radical animal propensity--which is consonant with common sense when these persons are living bodies, but becomes superstitious, or at least highly speculative, when these persons are disembodied spirits. it is a pity that the beautiful system of berkeley should have appeared in an unspiritual age, when religion was mundane and perfunctory, and the free spirit, where it stirred, was romantic and wilful. for that system was essentially religious: it put the spirit face to face with god, everywhere, always, and in everything it turned experience into a divine language for the monition and expression of the inner man. such an instrument, in spiritual hands, might have served to dispel all natural illusions and affections, and to disinfect the spirit of worldliness and egotism. but berkeley and his followers had no such thought. all they wished was to substitute a social for a material world, precisely because a merely social world might make worldly interests loom larger and might induce mankind, against the evidence of their senses and the still small voice in their hearts, to live as if their worldly interests were absolute and must needs dominate the spirit. morally this system thus came to sanction a human servitude to material things such as ancient materialists would have scorned; and theoretically the system did not escape the dogmatic commitments of common sense against which it protested. for far from withdrawing into the depths of the private spirit, it professed to describe universal experience and the evolution of all human ideas. this notion of "experience" originally presupposed a natural agent or subject to endure that experience, and to profit by it, by learning to live in better harmony with external circumstances. each agent or subject of experience might, at other times, become an object of experience also: for they all formed part of a material world, which they might envisage in common in their perceptions. now the criticism which repudiates this common material medium, like all criticism or doubt, is secondary and partial: it continues to operate with all the assumptions of common sense, save the one which it is expressly criticising. so, in repudiating the material world, this philosophy retains the notion of various agents or subjects gathering experience; and we are not expected to doubt that there are just as many streams of experience without a world, as there were people in the world when the world existed. but the number and nature of these experiences have now become undiscoverable, the material persons having been removed who formerly were so placed as to gather easily imagined experiences, and to be able to communicate them; and the very notion of experience has been emptied of its meaning, when no external common world subsists to impose that same experience on everybody. it was not knowledge of existing experiences _in vacuo_ that led common sense to assume a material world, but knowledge of an existing material world led it to assume existing, and regularly reproducible, experiences. thus the whole social convention posited by empirical idealism is borrowed without leave, and rests on the belief in nature for which it is substituted. viii page . _the literary psychologist may come very near to the truth of experience._ experience cannot be in itself an object of science, because it is essentially invisible, immeasurable, fugitive, and private; and although it may be shared or repeated, the evidence for that repetition or that unanimity cannot be found by comparing a present experience with another experience by hypothesis absent. both the absent experience and its agreement with the present experience must be imagined freely and credited instinctively, in view of the known circumstances in which the absent experience is conceived to have occurred. the only instrument for conceiving experience at large is accordingly private imagination; and such imagination cannot be tested, although it may be guided and perhaps recast by fresh observations or reports concerning the action and language of other people. for action and language, being contagious, and being the material counterpart of experience in each of us, may voluntarily or involuntarily suggest our respective experience to one another, by causing each to re-enact more or less accurately within himself the experience of the rest. thus alien thoughts and feelings are revealed or suggested to us in common life, not without a subjective transformation increasing, so to speak, as the square of the distance: and even the record of experience in people's own words, when these are not names for recognisable external things, awakens in the reader, in another age or country, quite incommensurable ideas. yet, under favourable circumstances, such suggestion or revelation of experience, without ever becoming science, may become public unanimity in sentiment, and may produce a truthful and lively dramatic literature. all modern philosophy, in so far as it is a description of experience and not of nature, therefore seems to belong to the sphere of literature, and to be without scientific value. ii fifty years of british idealism[ ] after fifty years, an old milestone in the path of philosophy, bradley's _ethical studies_, has been set up again, as if to mark the distance which english opinion has traversed in the interval. it has passed from insular dogmatism to universal bewilderment; and a chief agent in the change has been bradley himself, with his scornful and delicate intellect, his wit, his candour, his persistence, and the baffling futility of his conclusions. in this early book we see him coming forth like a young david against every clumsy champion of utilitarianism, hedonism, positivism, or empiricism. and how smooth and polished were the little stones in his sling! how fatally they would have lodged in the forehead of that composite monster, if only it had had a forehead! some of them might even have done murderous execution in bradley's own camp: for instance, this pebble cast playfully at the metaphysical idol called "law": "it is _always_ wet on half-holidays because of the law of raininess, but _sometimes_ it is _not_ wet, because of the supplementary law of sunshine". bradley and his friends achieved a notable victory in the academic field: philosophic authority and influence passed largely into their hands in all english-speaking universities. but it was not exactly from these seats of learning that naturalism and utilitarianism needed to be dislodged; like the corresponding radicalisms of our day, these doctrines prevailed rather in certain political and intellectual circles outside, consciously revolutionary and often half-educated; and i am afraid that the braggart goliaths of today need chastening at least as much as those of fifty years ago. in a country officially christian, and especially in oxford, it is natural and fitting that academic authority should belong to orthodox tradition--theological, platonic, and aristotelian. bradley, save for a few learned quotations, strangely ignored this orthodoxy entrenched behind his back. in contrast with it he was himself a heretic, with first principles devastating every settled belief: and it was really this venerable silent partner at home that his victory superseded, at least in appearance and for a season. david did not slay goliath, but he dethroned saul. saul was indeed already under a cloud, and all in david's heart was not unkindness in that direction. bradley might almost be called an unbelieving newman; time, especially, seems to have brought his suffering and refined spirit into greater sympathy with ancient sanctities. originally, for instance, venting the hearty protestant sentiment that only the christianity of laymen is sound, he had written: "i am happy to say that 'religieux' has no english equivalent". but a later note says: "this is not true except of modern english only. and, in any case, it won't do, and was wrong and due to ignorance. however secluded the religious life, it may be practical indirectly _if_ through the unity of the spiritual body it can be taken as vicarious". the "_if_" here saves the principle that all values must be social, and that the social organism is the sole moral reality: yet how near this bubble comes to being pricked! we seem clearly to feel that the question is not whether spiritual life subserves animal society, but whether animal society ever is stirred and hallowed into spiritual life. all this, however, in that age of progress, was regarded as obsolete: there was no longer to be any spirit except the spirit of the times. true, the ritualists might be striving to revive the latent energies of religious devotion, with some dubious help from aestheticism: but against the rising tide of mechanical progress and romantic anarchy, and against the mania for rewriting history, traditional philosophy then seemed helpless and afraid to defend itself: it is only now beginning to recover its intellectual courage. for the moment, speculative radicals saw light in a different quarter. german idealism was nothing if not self-confident; it was relatively new; it was encyclopaedic in its display of knowledge, which it could manipulate dialectically with dazzling, if not stable, results; it was protestant in temper and autonomous in principle; and altogether it seemed a sovereign and providential means of suddenly turning the tables on the threatened naturalism. by developing romantic intuition from within and packing all knowledge into one picture, the universe might be shown to be, like intuition itself, thoroughly spiritual, personal, and subjective. the fundamental axiom of the new logic was that the only possible reality was consciousness. "people find", writes bradley, "a subject and an object correlated in consciousness.... to go out of that unity is for us literally to go out of our minds.... when mind is made only a part of the whole, there is a question which _must_ be answered.... if about any matter we know nothing whatsoever, can we say anything about it? can we even say that it is? and if it is not in consciousness, how can we know it?... and conversely, if we know it, it cannot be not mind." bradley challenged his contemporaries to refute this argument; and not being able to do so, many of them felt constrained to accept it, perhaps not without grave misgivings. for was it not always a rooted conviction of the british mind that knowledge brings material power, and that any figments of consciousness (in religion, for instance) not bringing material power are dangerous bewitchments, and not properly knowledge? yet it is no less characteristic of the british mind to yield occasionally, up to a certain point, to some such enthusiastic fancy, provided that its incompatibility with honest action may be denied or ignored. so in this case british idealists, in the act of defining knowledge idealistically, as the presence to consciousness of its own phenomena, never really ceased to assume transcendent knowledge of a self-existing world, social and psychological, if not material: and they continued scrupulously to readjust their ideas to those dark facts, often more faithfully than the avowed positivists or scientific psychologists. what could ethics properly be to a philosopher who on principle might not trespass beyond the limits of consciousness? only ethical sentiment. bradley was satisfied to appeal to the moral consciousness of his day, without seeking to transform it. the most intentionally eloquent passage in his book describes war-fever unifying and carrying away a whole people: that was the summit of moral consciousness and of mystic virtue. his aim, even in ethics, was avowedly to describe that which exists, to describe moral experience, without proposing a different form for it. a man must be a man of his own time, or nothing; to set up to be better than the world was the beginning of immorality; and virtue lay in accepting one's station and its duties. the moralist should fill his mind with a concrete picture of the task and standards of his age and nation, and should graft his own ideals upon that tree; this need not prevent moral consciousness from including a decided esteem for non-political excellences like health, beauty, or intelligence, which are not ordinarily called virtues by modern moralists. yet they were undeniably good; better, perhaps, than any painful and laborious dutifulness; so that the strictly moral consciousness might run over, and presently lose itself in "something higher". indeed, even health, beauty, and intelligence, which seemed at first so clearly good, might lose their sharpness on a wider view. in the panorama that would ultimately fill the mind these so-called goods and virtues could not be conceived without their complementary vices and evils. thus all moral consciousness, and even all vital preference might ultimately be superseded: they might appear to have belonged to a partial and rather low stage in the self-development of consciousness. with this dissolution of his moral judgments always in prospect, why should bradley, or any idealist, have pursued ethical studies at all? since all phases of life were equally necessary to enrich an infinite consciousness, which must know both good and evil in order to merge and to transcend them, he could hardly nurse any intense enthusiasm for a different complexion to be given to the lives of men. his moral passion--for he had it, caustic and burning clear--was purely intellectual: it was shame that in england the moral consciousness should have been expressed in systems dialectically so primitive as those of the positivists and utilitarians. he acknowledged, somewhat superciliously, that their hearts were in the right place; yet, if we are to have ethics at all, were not their thoughts in the right place also? they were concerned not with analysis of the moral consciousness but with the conduct of affairs and the reform of institutions. the spectacle of human wretchedness profoundly moved them; their minds were bent on transforming society, so that a man's station and its duties might cease to be what a decayed feudal organisation and an inhuman industrialism had made of them. they revolted against the miserable condition of the masses of mankind, and against the miserable consolations which official religion, or a philosophy like bradley's, offered them in their misery. the utilitarians were at least intent on existence and on the course of events; they wished to transform institutions to fit human nature better, and to educate human nature by those new institutions so that it might better realise its latent capacities. these are matters which a man may modify by his acts and they are therefore the proper concern of the moralist. were they much to blame if they neglected to define pleasure or happiness and used catch-words, dialectically vague, to indicate a direction of effort politically quite unmistakable? doubtless their political action, like their philosophical nomenclature, was revolutionary and relied too much on wayward feelings ignorant of their own causes. revolution, no less than tradition, is but a casual and clumsy expression of human nature in contact with circumstances; yet pain and pleasure and spontaneous hopes, however foolish, are direct expressions of that contact, and speak for the soul; whereas a man's station and its duties are purely conventional, and may altogether misrepresent his native capacities. the protest of human nature against the world and its oppressions is the strong side of every rebellion; it was the _moral_ side of utilitarianism, of the rebellion against irrational morality. unfortunately the english reformers were themselves idealists of a sort, entangled in the vehicles of perception, and talking about sensations and ideas, pleasures and pains, as if these had been the elements of human nature, or even of nature at large: and only the most meagre of verbal systems, and the most artificial, can be constructed out of such materials. moreover, they spoke much of pleasure and happiness, and hardly at all of misery and pain: whereas it would have been wiser, and truer to their real inspiration, to have laid all the emphasis on evils to be abated, leaving the good to shape itself in freedom. suffering is the instant and obvious sign of some outrage done to human nature; without this natural recoil, actual or imminent, no morality would have any sanction, and no precept could be imperative. what silliness to command me to pursue pleasure or to avoid it, if in any case everything would be well! save for some shadow of dire repentance looming in the distance, i am deeply free to walk as i will. the choice of pleasure for a principle of morals was particularly unfortunate in the british utilitarians; it lent them an air of frivolity absurdly contrary to their true character. pleasure might have been a fit enough word in the mouth of aristippus, a semi-oriental untouched by the least sense of responsibility, or even on the lips of humanists in the eighteenth century, who, however sordid their lives may sometimes have been, could still move in imagination to the music of mozart, in the landscape of watteau or of fragonard. but in the land and age of dickens the moral ideal was not so much pleasure as kindness: this tenderer word not only expresses better the motive at work, but it points to the distressing presence of misery in the world, to make natural kindness laborious and earnest, and turn it into a legislative system. bradley's hostility to pleasure was not fanatical: one's station and its duties might have their agreeable side. "it is probably good for you", he tells us, "to have, say, not less than two glasses of wine after dinner. six on ordinary occasions is perhaps too many; but as to three or four, they are neither one way nor the other." if the voluptuary was condemned, it was for the commonplace reason which a hedonist, too, might invoke, that a life of pleasure soon palls and becomes unpleasant. bradley's objection to pleasure was merely speculative: he found it too "abstract". to call a pleasure when actually felt an abstraction is an exquisite absurdity: but pleasure, in its absolute essence, is certainly simple and indefinable. if instead of enjoying it on the wing, and as an earnest of the soul's momentary harmony, we attempt to arrest and observe it, we find it strangely dumb; we are not informed by it concerning its occasion, nor carried from it by any logical implication to the natural object in which it might be found. a pure hedonist ought therefore to be rather relieved if all images lapsed from his consciousness and he could luxuriate in sheer pleasure, dark and overwhelming. true, such bliss would be rather inhuman, and of the sort which we rashly assign to the oyster: but why should a radical and intrepid philosopher be ashamed of that? the condition of bradley's absolute--feeling in which all distinctions are transcended and merged--seems to be something of that kind; but there would be a strange irony in attributing this mystical and rapturous ideal to such ponderous worthies as mill and spencer, whose minds were nothing if not anxious, perturbed, instrumental, and full of respect for variegated facts, and who were probably incapable of tasting pure pleasure at all. but if pleasure, in its pure essence, might really be the highest good for a mystic who should be lost in it, it would be no guide to a moralist wishing to control events, and to distribute particular pleasures or series of pleasures as richly as possible in the world. for this purpose he would need to understand human nature and its variable functions, in which different persons and peoples may find their sincere pleasures; and this knowledge would first lend to his general love of pleasure any point of application in the governance of life or in benevolent legislation. some concrete image of a happy human world would take the place of the futile truism that pleasure is good and pain evil. this is, of course, what utilitarian moralists meant to do, and actually did, in so far as their human sympathies extended, which was not to the highest things; but it was not what they said, and bradley had a clear advantage over them in the war of words. a pleasure is not a programme: it exists here and not there, for me and for no one else, once and never again. when past, it leaves the will as empty and as devoid of allegiance as if it had never existed; pleasure is sand, though it have the colour of gold. but this is evidently true of all existence. each living moment, each dead man, each cycle of the universe leaves nothing behind it but a void which perhaps something kindred may refill. a hegel, after identifying himself for a moment with the absolute idea, is in his existence no less subject to sleepiness, irritation, and death than if he had been modestly satisfied with the joys of an oyster. it is only their common form, or their common worship, that can give to the quick moments of life any mutual relevance or sympathy; and existence would not come at all within sight of a good, either momentary or final, if it were not inwardly directed upon realising some definite essence. for the rest this essence may be as simple as you will, if the nature directed upon it is unified and simple; and it would be mere intellectual snobbery to condemn pleasure because it has not so many subdivisions in it as an encyclopaedia of the sciences. for the moralist pleasure and pain may even be the better guides, because they express more directly and boldly the instinctive direction of animal life, and thereby mark more clearly the genuine difference between good and evil. we may well say with bradley that the good is self-realisation; but what is the self? certainly not the feeling or consciousness of the moment, nor the life of the world, nor pure spirit. the self that can systematically distinguish good from evil is an animal soul. it grows from a seed; its potentiality is definite and its fate precarious; and in man it requires society to rear it and tradition to educate it. the good is accordingly social, in so far as the soul demands society; but it is the nature of the individual that determines the kind and degree of sociability that is good for him, and draws the line between society that is a benefit and society that is a nuisance. to subordinate the soul fundamentally to society or the individual to the state is sheer barbarism: the greeks, sometimes invoked to support this form of idolatry, were never guilty of it; on the contrary, their lawgivers were always reforming and planning the state so that the soul might be perfect in it. discipline is a help to the spirit: but even social relations, when like love, friendship, or sport they are spontaneous and good in themselves, retire as far as possible from the pressure of the world, and build their paradise apart, simple, and hidden in the wilderness; while all the ultimate hopes and assurances of the spirit escape altogether into the silent society of nature, of truth, of essence, far from those fatuous worldly conventions which hardly make up for their tyranny by their instability: for the prevalent moral fashion is always growing old, and human nature is always becoming young again. world-worship is the expedient of those who, having lost the soul that is in them, look for it in things external, where there is no soul: and by a curious recoil, it is also the expedient of those who seek their lost soul in actual consciousness, where it also is not: for sensations and ideas are not the soul but only passing and partial products of its profound animal life. moral consciousness in particular would never have arisen and would be gratuitous, save for the ferocious bias of a natural living creature, defending itself against its thousand enemies. nor would knowledge in its turn be knowledge if it were merely intuition of essence, such as the sensualist, the poet, or the dialectician may rest in. if the imagery of logic or passion ever comes to convey _knowledge_, it does so by virtue of a concomitant physical adjustment to external things; for the nerve of real or transcendent knowledge is the notice which one part of the world may take of another part; and it is this momentous cognisance, no matter what intangible feelings may supply terms for its prosody, that enlarges the mind to some practical purpose and informs it about the world. consciousness then ceases to be passive sense or idle ideation and becomes belief and intelligence. then the essences which form the "content of consciousness" may be vivified and trippingly run over, like the syllables of a familiar word, in the active recognition of things and people and of all the ominous or pliable forces of nature. for essences, being eternal and non-existent in themselves, cannot come to consciousness by their own initiative, but only as occasion and the subtle movements of the soul may evoke their forms; so that the fact that they are given to consciousness has a natural status and setting in the material world, and is part of the same natural event as the movement of the soul and body which supports that consciousness. there is therefore no need of refuting idealism, which is an honest examination of conscience in a reflective mind. refutations and proofs depend on pregnant meanings assigned to terms, meanings first rendered explicit and unambiguous by those very proofs or refutations. on any different acceptation of those terms, these proofs and refutations fall to the ground; and it remains a question for good sense, not for logic at all, how far the terms in either case describe anything existent. if by "knowledge" we understand intuition of essences, idealism follows; but it follows only in respect to essences given in intuition: nothing follows concerning the seat, origin, conditions, or symptomatic value of such intuition, nor even that such intuition ever actually occurs. idealism, therefore, without being refuted, may be hemmed in and humanised by natural knowledge about it and about its place in human speculation; the most recalcitrant materialist (like myself) might see its plausibility during a somewhat adolescent phase of self-consciousness. consciousness itself he might accept and relish as the natural spiritual resonance of action and passion, recognising it in its proud isolation and specious autonomy, like the mountain republics of andorra and san marino. german idealism is a mighty pose, an attitude always possible to a self-conscious and reflective being: but it is hardly a system, since it contradicts beliefs which in action are inevitable; it may therefore be readily swallowed, but it can never be digested. neither of its two ingredients--romantic scepticism and romantic superstition--agrees particularly with the british stomach. not romantic scepticism: for in england an instinctive distrust of too much clearness and logic, a difficulty in drawing all the consequences of any principle, soon gave to this most radical of philosophies a prim and religious air: its purity was alloyed with all sorts of conventions: so much so that we find british hegelians often deeply engaged in psychology, cosmology, or religion, as if they took their idealism for a kind of physics, and wished merely to reinterpret the facts of nature in an edifying way, without uprooting them from their natural places. this has been made easier by giving idealism an objective, non-psychological turn: events, and especially feelings and ideas, will then be swallowed up in the essences which they display. thus bradley maintained that two thoughts, no matter how remote from each other in time or space, were identically the same, and not merely similar, if only they contemplated the same idea. mind itself ceased in this way to mean a series of existing feelings and was identified with intelligence; and intelligence in its turn was identified with the idea or logos which might be the ultimate theme of intelligence. there could be only one mind, so conceived, since there could be only one total system in the universe visible to omniscience. as to romantic scepticism, we may see by contrast what it would be, when left to itself, if we consider those lucid italians who have taken up their idealism late and with open eyes. in croce and gentile the transcendental attitude is kept pure: for them there is really no universe save spirit creating its experience; and if we ask whence or on what principle occasions arise for all this compulsory fiction, we are reminded that this question, with any answer which spirit might invent for it, belongs not to philosophy but to some special science like physiology, itself, of course, only a particular product of creative thought. thus the more impetuously the inquisitive squirrel would rush from his cage, the faster and faster he causes the cage to whirl about his ears. he has not the remotest chance of reaching his imaginary bait--god, nature, or truth; for to seek such things is to presuppose them, and to presuppose anything, if spirit be absolute, is to invent it. even those philosophies of history which the idealist may for some secret reason be impelled to construct would be superstitious, according to his own principles, if he took them for more than poetic fictions of the historian; so that in the study of history, as in every other study, all the diligence and sober learning which the philosopher may possess are non-philosophical, since they presuppose independent events and material documents. thus perfect idealism turns out to be pure literary sport, like lyric poetry, in which no truth is conveyed save the miscellaneous truths taken over from common sense or the special sciences; and the gay spirit, supposed to be living and shining of its own sweet will, can find nothing to live or shine upon save the common natural world. such at least would be the case if romantic superstition did not supervene, demanding that the spirit should impose some arbitrary rhythm or destiny on the world which it creates: but this side of idealism has been cultivated chiefly by the intrepid germans: some of them, like spengler and keyserling, still thrive and grow famous on it without a blush. the modest english in these matters take shelter under the wing of science speculatively extended, or traditional religion prudently rationalised: the scope of the spirit, like its psychological distribution, is conceived realistically. it might almost prove an euthanasia for british idealism to lose itself in the new metaphysics of nature which the mathematicians are evolving; and since this metaphysics, though materialistic in effect, is more subtle and abstruse than popular materialism, british idealism might perhaps be said to survive in it, having now passed victoriously into its opposite, and being merged in something higher. [ ] _ethical studies_, by f.h. bradley, o.m., ll.d. (glasgow), late fellow of merton college, oxford; second edition revised, with additional notes by the author. oxford, the clarendon press, . iii revolutions in science since the beginning of the twentieth century, science has gained notably in expertness, and lost notably in authority. we are bombarded with inventions; but if we ask the inventors what they have learned of the depths of nature, which somehow they have probed with such astonishing success, their faces remain blank. they may be chewing gum; or they may tell us that if an aeroplane could only fly fast enough, it would get home before it starts; or they may urge us to come with them into a dark room, to hold hands, and to commune with the dear departed. practically there may be no harm in such a division of labour, the inventors doing the work and the professors the talking. the experts may themselves be inexpert in verbal expression, or content with stock phrases, or profoundly sceptical, or too busy to think. nevertheless, skill and understanding are at their best when they go together and adorn the same mind. modern science until lately had realised this ideal: it was an extension of common perception and common sense. we could trust it implicitly, as we do a map or a calendar; it was not true for us merely in an argumentative or visionary sense, as are religion and philosophy. geography went hand in hand with travel, copernican astronomy with circumnavigation of the globe: and even the theory of evolution and the historical sciences in the nineteenth century were continuous with liberal reform: people saw in the past, as they then learned to conceive it, simply an extension of those transformations which they were witnessing in the present. they could think they knew the world as a man knows his native town, or the contents of his chest of drawers: nature was our home, and science was our home knowledge. for it is not intrinsic clearness or coherence that make ideas persuasive, but connection with action, or with some voluminous inner response, which is readiness to act. it is a sense of on-coming fate, a compulsion to do or to suffer, that produces the illusion of perfect knowledge. i call it illusion, although our contact with things may be real, and our sensations and thoughts may be inevitable and honest; because nevertheless it is always an illusion to suppose that our images are the intrinsic qualities of things, or reproduce them exactly. the ptolemaic system, for instance, was perfectly scientific; it was based on careful and prolonged observation and on just reasoning; but it was modelled on an image--the spherical blue dome of the heavens--proper only to an observer on the earth, and not transferable to a universe which is diffuse, centreless, fluid, and perhaps infinite. when the imagination, for any reason, comes to be peopled with images of the latter sort, the modern, and especially the latest, astronomy becomes more persuasive. for although i suspect that even einstein is an imperfect relativist, and retains euclidean space and absolute time at the bottom of his calculation, and recovers them at the end, yet the effort to express the system of nature as it would appear from _any_ station and to _any_ sensorium seems to be eminently enlightening. theory and practice in the latest science are still allied, otherwise neither of them would prosper as it does; but each has taken a leap in its own direction. the distance between them has become greater than the naked eye can measure, and each of them in itself has become unintelligible. we roll and fly at dizzy speeds, and hear at incredible distances; at the same time we imagine and calculate to incredible depths. the technique of science, like that of industry, has become a thing in itself; the one veils its object, which is nature, as the other defeats its purpose, which is happiness. science often seems to be less the study of things than the study of science. it is now more scholastic than philosophy ever was. we are invited to conceive organisms within organisms, so minute, so free, and so dynamic, that the heart of matter seems to explode into an endless discharge of fireworks, or a mathematical nightmare realised in a thousand places at once, and become the substance of the world. what is even more remarkable--for the notion of infinite organisation has been familiar to the learned at least since the time of leibniz--the theatre of science is transformed no less than the actors and the play. the upright walls of space, the steady tread of time, begin to fail us; they bend now so obligingly to our perspectives that we no longer seem to travel through them, but to carry them with us, shooting them out or weaving them about us according to some native fatality, which is left unexplained. we seem to have reverted in some sense from copernicus to ptolemy: except that the centre is now occupied, not by the solid earth, but by _any_ geometrical point chosen for the origin of calculation. time, too, is not measured by the sun or stars, but by _any_ "clock"--that is, by any recurrent rhythm taken as a standard of comparison. it would seem that the existence and energy of each chosen centre, as well as its career and encounters, hang on the collateral existence of other centres of force, among which it must wend its way: yet the only witness to their presence, and the only known property of their substance, is their "radio-activity", or the physical light which they shed. light, in its physical being, is accordingly the measure of all things in this new philosophy: and if we ask ourselves why this element should have been preferred, the answer is not far to seek. light is the only medium through which very remote or very minute particles of matter can be revealed to science. whatever the nature of things may be intrinsically, science must accordingly express the universe in terms of light. these reforms have come from within: they are triumphs of method. we make an evident advance in logic, and in that parsimony which is dear to philosophers (though not to nature), if we refuse to assign given terms and relations to any prior medium, such as absolute time or space, which cannot be given with them. observable spaces and times, like the facts observed in them, are given separately and in a desultory fashion. initially, then, there are as many spaces and times as there are observers, or rather observations; these are the specious times and spaces of dreams, of sensuous life, and of romantic biography. each is centred here and now, and stretched outwards, forward, and back, as far as imagination has the strength to project it. then, when objects and events have been posited as self-existent, and when a "clock" and a system of co-ordinates have been established for measuring them, a single mathematical space and time may be deployed about them, conceived to contain all things, and to supply them with their respective places and dates. this gives us the cosmos of classical physics. but this system involves the uncritical notion of light and matter travelling through media previously existing, and being carried down, like a boat drifting down stream, by a flowing time which has a pace of its own, and imposes it on all existence. in reality, each "clock" and each landscape is self-centred and initially absolute: its time and space are irrelevant to those of any other landscape or "clock", unless the objects or events revealed there, being posited as self-existent, actually coincide with those revealed also in another landscape, or dated by another "clock". it is only by travelling along its own path at its own rate that experience or light can ever reach a point lying on another path also, so that two observations, and two measures, may coincide at their ultimate terms, their starting-points or their ends. positions are therefore not independent of the journey which terminates in them, and thereby individuates them; and dates are not independent of the events which distinguish them. the flux of existence comes first: matter and light distend time by their pulses, they distend space by their deployments. this, if i understand it, is one half the new theory; the other half is not less acceptable. newton had described motion as a result of two principles: the first, inertia, was supposed to be inherent in bodies; the second, gravity, was incidental to their co-existence. yet inherent inertia can only be observed relatively: it makes no difference to me whether i am said to be moving at a great speed or absolutely at rest, if i am not jolted or breathless, and if my felt environment does not change. inertia, or weight, in so far as it denotes something intrinsic, seems to be but another name for substance or the principle of existence: in so far as it denotes the first law of motion, it seems to be relative to an environment. it would therefore be preferable to combine inertia and attraction in a single formula, expressing the behaviour of bodies towards one another in all their conjunctions, without introducing any inherent forces or absolute measures. this seems to have been done by einstein, or at least impressively suggested: and it has been found that the new calculations correspond to certain delicate observations more accurately than the old. this revolution in science seems, then, to be perfectly legal, and ought to be welcomed; yet only under one important moral condition, and with a paradoxical result. the moral condition is that the pride of science should turn into humility, that it should no longer imagine that it is laying bare the intrinsic nature of things. and the paradoxical result is this: that the forms of science are optional, like various languages or methods of notation. one may be more convenient or subtle than another, according to the place, senses, interests, and scope of the explorer; a reform in science may render the old theories antiquated, like the habit of wearing togas, or of going naked; but it cannot render them false, or itself true. science, when it is more than the gossip of adventure or of experiment, yields practical assurances couched in symbolic terms, but no ultimate insight: so that the intellectual vacancy of the expert, which i was deriding, is a sort of warrant of his solidity. it is rather when the expert prophesies, when he propounds a new philosophy founded on his latest experiments, that we may justly smile at his system, and wait for the next. self-knowledge--and the new science is full of self-knowledge--is a great liberator: if perhaps it imposes some retrenchment, essentially it revives courage. then at last we see what we are and what we can do. the spirit can abandon its vain commitments and false pretensions, like a young man free at last to throw off his clothes and run naked along the sands. intelligence is never gayer, never surer, than when it is strictly formal, satisfied with the evidence of its materials, as with the lights of jewels, and filled with mounting speculations, as with a sort of laughter. if all the arts aspire to the condition of music, all the sciences aspire to the condition of mathematics. their logic is their spontaneous and intelligible side: and while they differ from mathematics and from one another in being directed in the first instance upon various unintelligible existing objects, yet as they advance, they unite: because they are everywhere striving to discover in those miscellaneous objects some intelligible order and method. and as the emotion of the pure artist, whatever may be his materials, lies in finding in them some formal harmony or imposing it upon them, so the interest of the scientific mind, in so far as it is free and purely intellectual, lies in tracing their formal pattern. the mathematician can afford to leave to his clients, the engineers, or perhaps the popular philosophers, the emotion of belief: for himself he keeps the lyrical pleasure of metre and of evolving equations: and it is a pleasant surprise to him, and an added problem, if he finds that the arts can use his calculations, or that the senses can verify them; much as if a composer found that the sailors could heave better when singing his songs. yet such independence, however glorious inwardly, cannot help diminishing the prestige of the arts in the world. if science misled us before, when it was full of clearness and confidence, how shall we trust it now that it is all mystery and paradox? if classical physics needed this fundamental revision, near to experience and fruitful as it was, what revision will not romantic physics require? nor is the future alone insecure: even now the prophets hardly understand one another, or perhaps themselves; and some of them interlard their science with the most dubious metaphysics. naturally the enemies of science have not been slow to seize this opportunity: the soft-hearted, the muddle-headed, the superstitious are all raising their voices, no longer in desperate resistance to science, but hopefully, and in its name. science, they tell us, is no longer hostile to religion, or to divination of any sort. indeed, divination is a science too. physics is no longer materialistic since space is now curved, and filled with an ether through which light travels at , kilometres per second--an immaterial rate: because if anything material ventured to move at that forbidden speed, it would be so flattened that it would cease to exist. indeed, matter is now hardly needed at all; its place has been taken by radio-activity, and by electrons which dart and whirl with such miraculous swiftness, that occasionally, for no known reason, they can skip from orbit to orbit without traversing the intervening positions--an evident proof of free-will in them. or if solids should still seem to be material, there are astral bodies as well which are immaterial although physical; and as to ether and electricity, they are the very substance of spirit. all this i find announced in newspapers and even in books as the breakdown of scientific materialism: and yet, when was materialism more arrant and barbarous than in these announcements? something no doubt has broken down: but i am afraid it is rather the habit of thinking clearly and the power to discern the difference between material and spiritual things. the latest revolution in science will probably not be the last. i do not know what internal difficulties, contradictions, or ominous obscurities may exist in the new theories, or what logical seeds of change, perhaps of radical change, might be discovered there by a competent critic. i base my expectation on two circumstances somewhat more external and visible to the lay mind. one circumstance is that the new theories seem to be affected, and partly inspired, by a particular philosophy, itself utterly insecure. this philosophy regards the point of view as controlling or even creating the object seen; in other words, it identifies the object with the experience or the knowledge of it: it is essentially a subjective, psychological, protestant philosophy. the study of perspectives, which a severer critic might call illusions, is one of the most interesting and enlightening of studies, and for my own part i should be content to dwell almost exclusively in that poetic and moral atmosphere, in the realm of literature and of humanism. yet i cannot help seeing that neither in logic nor in natural genesis can perspectives be the ultimate object of science, since a plurality of points of view, somehow comparable, must be assumed in the beginning, as well as common principles of projection, and ulterior points of contact or coincidence. such assumptions, which must persist throughout, seem to presuppose an absolute system of nature behind all the relative systems of science. the other circumstance which points to further revolutions is social. the new science is unintelligible to almost all of us; it can be tested only by very delicate observations and very difficult reasoning. we accept it on the authority of a few professors who themselves have accepted it with a contagious alacrity, as if caught in a whirlwind. it has sprung up mysteriously and mightily, like mysticism in a cloister or theology in a council: a soviet of learned men has proclaimed it. moreover, it is not merely a system among systems, but a movement among movements. a system, even when it has serious rivals, may be maintained for centuries as religions are maintained, institutionally; but a movement comes to an end; it is followed presently by a period of assimilation which transforms it, or by a movement in some other direction. i ask myself accordingly whether the condition of the world in the coming years will be favourable to refined and paradoxical science. the extension of education will have enabled the uneducated to pronounce upon everything. will the patronage of capital and enterprise subsist, to encourage discovery and reward invention? will a jealous and dogmatic democracy respect the unintelligible insight of the few? will a perhaps starving democracy support materially its soviet of seers? but let us suppose that no utilitarian fanaticism supervenes, and no intellectual surfeit or discouragement. may not the very profundity of the new science and its metaphysical affinities lead it to bolder developments, inscrutable to the public and incompatible with one another, like the gnostic sects of declining antiquity? then perhaps that luminous modern thing which until recently was called science, in contrast to all personal philosophies, may cease to exist altogether, being petrified into routine in the practitioners, and fading in the professors into abstruse speculations. iv a long way round to nirvana that the end of life is death may be called a truism, since the various kinds of immortality that might perhaps supervene would none of them abolish death, but at best would weave life and death together into the texture of a more comprehensive destiny. the end of one life might be the beginning of another, if the creator had composed his great work like a dramatic poet, assigning successive lines to different characters. death would then be merely the cue at the end of each speech, summoning the next personage to break in and keep the ball rolling. or perhaps, as some suppose, all the characters are assumed in turn by a single supernatural spirit, who amid his endless improvisations is imagining himself living for the moment in this particular solar and social system. death in such a universal monologue would be but a change of scene or of metre, while in the scramble of a real comedy it would be a change of actors. in either case every voice would be silenced sooner or later, and death would end each particular life, in spite of all possible sequels. the relapse of created things into nothing is no violent fatality, but something naturally quite smooth and proper. this has been set forth recently, in a novel way, by a philosopher from whom we hardly expected such a lesson, namely professor sigmund freud. he has now broadened his conception of sexual craving or _libido_ into a general principle of attraction or concretion in matter, like the eros of the ancient poets hesiod and empedocles. the windows of that stuffy clinic have been thrown open; that smell of acrid disinfectants, those hysterical shrieks, have escaped into the cold night. the troubles of the sick soul, we are given to understand, as well as their cure, after all flow from the stars. i am glad that freud has resisted the tendency to represent this principle of love as the only principle in nature. unity somehow exercises an evil spell over metaphysicians. it is admitted that in real life it is not well for one to be alone, and i think pure unity is no less barren and graceless in metaphysics. you must have plurality to start with, or trinity, or at least duality, if you wish to get anywhere, even if you wish to get effectively into the bosom of the one, abandoning your separate existence. freud, like empedocles, has prudently introduced a prior principle for love to play with; not strife, however (which is only an incident in love), but inertia, or the tendency towards peace and death. let us suppose that matter was originally dead, and perfectly content to be so, and that it still relapses, when it can, into its old equilibrium. but the homogeneous (as spencer would say) when it is finite is unstable: and matter, presumably not being co-extensive with space, necessarily forms aggregates which have an inside and an outside. the parts of such bodies are accordingly differently exposed to external influences and differently related to one another. this inequality, even in what seems most quiescent, is big with changes, destined to produce in time a wonderful complexity. it is the source of all uneasiness, of life, and of love. "let us imagine [writes freud][ ] an undifferentiated vesicle of sensitive substance: then its surface, exposed as it is to the outer world, is by its very position differentiated, and serves as an organ for receiving stimuli.... this morsel of living substance floats about in an outer world which is charged with the most potent energies, and it would be destroyed ... if it were not furnished with protection against stimulation. [on the other hand] the sensitive cortical layer has no protective barrier against excitations emanating from within.... the most prolific sources of such excitations are the so-called instincts of the organism.... the child never gets tired of demanding the repetition of a game ... he wants always to hear the same story instead of a new one, insists inexorably on exact repetition, and corrects each deviation which the narrator lets slip by mistake.... according to this, _an instinct would be a tendency in living organic matter impelling it towards reinstatement of an earlier condition_, one which it had abandoned under the influence of external disturbing forces--a kind of organic elasticity, or, to put it another way, the manifestation of inertia in organic life. "if, then, all organic instincts are conservative, historically acquired, and directed towards regression, towards reinstatement of something earlier, we are obliged to place all the results of organic development to the credit of external, disturbing, and distracting influences. the rudimentary creature would from its very beginning not have wanted to change, would, if circumstances had remained the same, have always merely repeated the same course of existence.... it would be counter to the conservative nature of instinct if the goal of life were a state never hitherto reached. it must be rather an ancient starting point, which the living being left long ago, and to which it harks back again by all the circuitous paths of development.... _the goal of all life is death...._ "through a long period of time the living substance may have ... had death within easy reach ... until decisive external influences altered in such a way as to compel [it] to ever greater deviations from the original path of life, and to ever more complicated and circuitous routes to the attainment of the goal of death. these circuitous ways to death, faithfully retained by the conservative instincts, would be neither more nor less than the phenomena of life as we know it." freud puts forth these interesting suggestions with much modesty, admitting that they are vague and uncertain and (what it is even more important to notice) mythical in their terms; but it seems to me that, for all that, they are an admirable counterblast to prevalent follies. when we hear that there is, animating the whole universe, an _Élan vital_, or general impulse toward some unknown but single ideal, the terms used are no less uncertain, mythical, and vague, but the suggestion conveyed is false--false, i mean, to the organic source of life and aspiration, to the simple naturalness of nature: whereas the suggestion conveyed by freud's speculations is true. in what sense can myths and metaphors be true or false? in the sense that, in terms drawn from moral predicaments or from literary psychology, they may report the general movement and the pertinent issue of material facts, and may inspire us with a wise sentiment in their presence. in this sense i should say that greek mythology was true and calvinist theology was false. the chief terms employed in psycho-analysis have always been metaphorical: "unconscious wishes", "the pleasure-principle", "the oedipus complex", "narcissism", "the censor"; nevertheless, interesting and profound vistas may be opened up, in such terms, into the tangle of events in a man's life, and a fresh start may be made with fewer encumbrances and less morbid inhibition. "the shortcomings of our description", freud says, "would probably disappear if for psychological terms we could substitute physiological or chemical ones. these too only constitute a metaphorical language, but one familiar to us for a much longer time, and perhaps also simpler." all human discourse is metaphorical, in that our perceptions and thoughts are adventitious signs for their objects, as names are, and by no means copies of what is going on materially in the depths of nature; but just as the sportsman's eye, which yields but a summary graphic image, can trace the flight of a bird through the air quite well enough to shoot it and bring it down, so the myths of a wise philosopher about the origin of life or of dreams, though expressed symbolically, may reveal the pertinent movement of nature to us, and may kindle in us just sentiments and true expectations in respect to our fate--for his own soul is the bird this sportsman is shooting. now i think these new myths of freud's about life, like his old ones about dreams, are calculated to enlighten and to chasten us enormously about ourselves. the human spirit, when it awakes, finds itself in trouble; it is burdened, for no reason it can assign, with all sorts of anxieties about food, pressures, pricks, noises, and pains. it is born, as another wise myth has it, in original sin. and the passions and ambitions of life, as they come on, only complicate this burden and make it heavier, without rendering it less incessant or gratuitous. whence this fatality, and whither does it lead? it comes from heredity, and it leads to propagation. when we ask how heredity could be started or transmitted, our ignorance of nature and of past time reduces us to silence or to wild conjectures. something--let us call it matter--must always have existed, and some of its parts, under pressure of the others, must have got tied up into knots, like the mainspring of a watch, in such a violent and unhappy manner that when the pressure is relaxed they fly open as fast as they can, and unravel themselves with a vast sense of relief. hence the longing to satisfy latent passions, with the fugitive pleasure in doing so. but the external agencies that originally wound up that mainspring never cease to operate; every fresh stimulus gives it another turn, until it snaps, or grows flaccid, or is unhinged. moreover, from time to time, when circumstances change, these external agencies may encrust that primary organ with minor organs attached to it. every impression, every adventure, leaves a trace or rather a seed behind it. it produces a further complication in the structure of the body, a fresh charge, which tends to repeat the impressed motion in season and out of season. hence that perpetual docility or ductility in living substance which enables it to learn tricks, to remember facts, and (when the seeds of past experiences marry and cross in the brain) to imagine new experiences, pleasing or horrible. every act initiates a new habit and may implant a new instinct. we see people even late in life carried away by political or religious contagions or developing strange vices; there would be no peace in old age, but rather a greater and greater obsession by all sorts of cares, were it not that time, in exposing us to many adventitious influences, weakens or discharges our primitive passions; we are less greedy, less lusty, less hopeful, less generous. but these weakened primitive impulses are naturally by far the strongest and most deeply rooted in the organism: so that although an old man may be converted or may take up some hobby, there is usually something thin in his elderly zeal, compared with the heartiness of youth; nor is it edifying to see a soul in which the plainer human passions are extinct becoming a hotbed of chance delusions. in any case each fresh habit taking root in the organism forms a little mainspring or instinct of its own, like a parasite; so that an elaborate mechanism is gradually developed, where each lever and spring holds the other down, and all hold the mainspring down together, allowing it to unwind itself only very gradually, and meantime keeping the whole clock ticking and revolving, and causing the smooth outer face which it turns to the world, so clean and innocent, to mark the time of day amiably for the passer-by. but there is a terribly complicated labour going on beneath, propelled with difficulty, and balanced precariously, with much secret friction and failure. no wonder that the engine often gets visibly out of order, or stops short: the marvel is that it ever manages to go at all. nor is it satisfied with simply revolving and, when at last dismounted, starting afresh in the person of some seed it has dropped, a portion of its substance with all its concentrated instincts wound up tightly within it, and eager to repeat the ancestral experiment; all this growth is not merely material and vain. each clock in revolving strikes the hour, even the quarters, and often with lovely chimes. these chimes we call perceptions, feelings, purposes, and dreams; and it is because we are taken up entirely with this mental music, and perhaps think that it sounds of itself and needs no music-box to make it, that we find such difficulty in conceiving the nature of our own clocks and are compelled to describe them only musically, that is, in myths. but the ineptitude of our aesthetic minds to unravel the nature of mechanism does not deprive these minds of their own clearness and euphony. besides sounding their various musical notes, they have the cognitive function of indicating the hour and catching the echoes of distant events or of maturing inward dispositions. this information and emotion, added to incidental pleasures in satisfying our various passions, make up the life of an incarnate spirit. they reconcile it to the external fatality that has wound up the organism, and is breaking it down; and they rescue this organism and all its works from the indignity of being a vain complication and a waste of motion. that the end of life should be death may sound sad: yet what other end can anything have? the end of an evening party is to go to bed; but its use is to gather congenial people together, that they may pass the time pleasantly. an invitation to the dance is not rendered ironical because the dance cannot last for ever; the youngest of us and the most vigorously wound up, after a few hours, has had enough of sinuous stepping and prancing. the transitoriness of things is essential to their physical being, and not at all sad in itself; it becomes sad by virtue of a sentimental illusion, which makes us imagine that they wish to endure, and that their end is always untimely; but in a healthy nature it is not so. what is truly sad is to have some impulse frustrated in the midst of its career, and robbed of its chosen object; and what is painful is to have an organ lacerated or destroyed when it is still vigorous, and not ready for its natural sleep and dissolution. we must not confuse the itch which our unsatisfied instincts continue to cause with the pleasure of satisfying and dismissing each of them in turn. could they all be satisfied harmoniously we should be satisfied once for all and completely. then doing and dying would coincide throughout and be a perfect pleasure. this same insight is contained in another wise myth which has inspired morality and religion in india from time immemorial: i mean the doctrine of karma. we are born, it says, with a heritage, a character imposed, and a long task assigned, all due to the ignorance which in our past lives has led us into all sorts of commitments. these obligations we must pay off, relieving the pure spirit within us from its accumulated burdens, from debts and assets both equally oppressive. we cannot disentangle ourselves by mere frivolity, nor by suicide: frivolity would only involve us more deeply in the toils of fate, and suicide would but truncate our misery and leave us for ever a confessed failure. when life is understood to be a process of redemption, its various phases are taken up in turn without haste and without undue attachment; their coming and going have all the keenness of pleasure, the holiness of sacrifice, and the beauty of art. the point is to have expressed and discharged all that was latent in us; and to this perfect relief various temperaments and various traditions assign different names, calling it having one's day, or doing one's duty, or realising one's ideal, or saving one's soul. the task in any case is definite and imposed on us by nature, whether we recognise it or not; therefore we can make true moral progress or fall into real errors. wisdom and genius lie in discerning this prescribed task and in doing it readily, cleanly, and without distraction. folly on the contrary imagines that any scent is worth following, that we have an infinite nature, or no nature in particular, that life begins without obligations and can do business without capital, and that the will is vacuously free, instead of being a specific burden and a tight hereditary knot to be unravelled. some philosophers without self-knowledge think that the variations and further entanglements which the future may bring are the manifestation of spirit; but they are, as freud has indicated, imposed on living beings by external pressure, and take shape in the realm of matter. it is only after the organs of spirit are formed mechanically that spirit can exist, and can distinguish the better from the worse in the fate of those organs, and therefore in its own fate. spirit has nothing to do with infinite existence. infinite existence is something physical and ambiguous; there is no scale in it and no centre. the depths of the human heart are finite, and they are dark only to ignorance. deep and dark as a soul may be when you look down into it from outside, it is something perfectly natural; and the same understanding that can unearth our suppressed young passions, and dispel our stubborn bad habits, can show us where our true good lies. nature has marked out the path for us beforehand; there are snares in it, but also primroses, and it leads to peace. v the prestige of the infinite "the more complex the world becomes and the more it rises above the indeterminate, so much the farther removed it is from god; that is to say, so much the more impious it is." m. julien benda[ ] is not led to this startling utterance by any political or sentimental grudge. it is not the late war, nor the peace of versailles, nor the parlous state of the arts, nor the decay of morality and prosperity that disgusts him with our confused world. it is simply overmastering respect for the infinite. _la trahison des clercs_, or treason of the levites, with which he had previously upbraided the intellectuals of his time, now appears to consist precisely in coveting a part in this world's inheritance, and forgetting that the inheritance of the levites is the lord: which, being interpreted philosophically, means that a philosopher is bound to measure all things by the infinite. this infinite is not rhetorical, as if we spoke of infinite thought or infinite love: it is physico-mathematical. nothing but number, m. benda tells us, seems to him intelligible. time, space, volume, and complexity (which appears to the senses as quality) stretch in a series of units, positions, or degrees, to infinity, as number does: and in such homogeneous series, infinite in both directions, there will be no fixed point of origin for counting or surveying the whole and no particular predominant scale. every position will be essentially identical with every other; every suggested structure will be collapsible and reversible; and the position and relations of every unit will be indistinguishable from those of every other. in the infinite, m. benda says, the parts have no identity: each number in the scale, as we begin counting from different points of origin, bears also every other number. this is no mere mathematical puzzle; the thought has a strange moral eloquence. seen in their infinite setting, which we may presume to be their ultimate environment, all things lose their central position and their dominant emphasis. the contrary of what we first think of them or of ourselves--for instance that we are alive, while they are dead or unborn--is also true. egotism becomes absurd; pride and shame become the vainest of illusions. if then it be repugnant to reason that the series of numbers, moments, positions, and volumes should be limited--and the human spirit has a great affinity to the infinite--all specific quality and variety in things must be superficial and deeply unreal. they are masks in the carnival of phenomena, to be observed without conviction, and secretly dismissed as ironical by those who have laid up their treasure in the infinite. this mathematical dissolution of particulars is reinforced by moral considerations which are more familiar. existence--any specific fact asserting itself in any particular place or moment--is inevitably contingent, arbitrary, gratuitous, and insecure. a sense of insecurity is likely to be the first wedge by which repentance penetrates into the animal heart. if a man did not foresee death and fear it, he might never come at all to the unnatural thought of renouncing life. in fact, he does not often remember death: yet his whole gay world is secretly afraid of being found out, of being foiled in the systematic bluff by which it lives as if its life were immortal; and far more than the brave young man fears death in his own person, the whole life of the world fears to be exorcised by self-knowledge, and lost in air. and with good reason: because, whether we stop to notice this circumstance or not, every fact, every laborious beloved achievement of man or of nature, has come to exist against infinite odds. in the dark grab-bag of being, this chosen fact was surrounded by innumerable possible variations or contradictions of it; and each of those possibilities, happening not to be realised here and now, yet possesses intrinsically exactly the same aptitude or claim to existence. nor are these claims and aptitudes merely imaginary and practically contemptible. the flux of existence is continually repenting of its choices, and giving everything actual the lie, by continually substituting something else, no less specific and no less nugatory. _this_ world, _any_ world, exists only by an unmerited privilege. its glory is offensive to the spirit, like the self-sufficiency of some obstreperous nobody, who happens to have drawn the big prize in a lottery. "the world", m. benda writes, "inspires me with a double sentiment. i feel it to be full of grandeur, because it has succeeded in asserting itself and coming to exist; and i feel it to be pitiful, when i consider how it hung on a mere nothing that this particular world should never have existed." and though this so accidental world, by its manifold beauties and excitements, may arouse our romantic enthusiasm, it is fundamentally an _unholy_ world. its creation, he adds in italics, "_is something which reason would wish had never taken place_". for we must not suppose that god, when god is defined as infinite being, can be the creator of the world. such a notion would hopelessly destroy that coherence in thought to which m. benda aspires. the infinite cannot be selective; it cannot possess a particular structure (such, for instance, as the trinity) nor a particular quality (such as goodness). it cannot exert power or give direction. nothing can be responsible for the world except the world itself. it has created, or is creating, itself perpetually by its own arbitrary act, by a groundless self-assertion which may be called (somewhat metaphorically) will, or even original sin: the original sin of existence, particularity, selfishness, or separation from god. existence, being absolutely contingent and ungrounded, is perfectly free: and if it ties itself up in its own habits or laws, and becomes a terrible nightmare to itself by its automatic monotony, that still is only its own work and, figuratively speaking, its own fault. nothing save its own arbitrary and needless pressure keeps it going in that round. this fatality is impressive, and popular religion has symbolised it in the person of a deity far more often recognised and worshipped than infinite being. this popular deity, a symbol for the forces of nature and history, the patron of human welfare and morality, m. benda calls the imperial god. "it is clear that these two gods ... have nothing to do with one another. the god whom marshal de villars, rising in his stirrups and pointing his drawn sword heavenwards, thanks on the evening of denain, is one god: quite another is the god within whose bosom the author of the _imitation_, in a corner of his cell, feels the nothingness of all human victories." it follows from this, if we are coherent, that any "return to god" which ascetic philosophy may bring about cannot be a social reform, a transition to some better form of natural existence in a promised land, a renovated earth, or a material or temporal heaven. nor can the error of creation be corrected violently by a second arbitrary act, such as suicide, or the annihilation of the universe by some ultimate general collapse. if such events happen, they still leave the door open to new creations and fresh errors. but the marvel is (i will return to this point presently) that the world, in the person of a human individual endowed with reason, may perceive the error of its ways and correct it ideally, in the sphere of estimation and worship. such is the only possible salvation. reason, in order to save us, and we, in order to be saved, must both subsist: we must both be incidents in the existing world. we may then, by the operation of reason in us, recover our allegiance to the infinite, for we are bone of its bone and flesh of its flesh: and by our secret sympathy with it we may rescind every particular claim and dismiss silently every particular form of being, as something unreal and unholy. an even more cogent reason why m. benda's god cannot have been the creator of the world is that avowedly this god has never existed. we are expressly warned that "if god is infinite being he excludes existence, in so far as to exist means to be distinct. in the sense which everybody attaches to the word existence, god, as i conceive him, _does not exist_". of course, in the mind of a lover of the infinite, this fact is not derogatory to god, but derogatory to existence. the infinite remains the first and the ultimate term in thought, the fundamental dimension common to all things, however otherwise they may be qualified; it remains the eternal background against which they all are defined and into which they soon disappear. evidently, in this divine--because indestructible and necessary--dimension, being is incapable of making choices, adopting paths of evolution, or exercising power; it knows nothing of phenomena; it is not their cause nor their sanction. it is incapable of love, wrath, or any other passion. "i will add", writes m. benda, "something else which theories of an impersonal deity have less often pointed out. since infinity is incompatible with personal being, god is incapable of morality." thus mere intuition and analysis of the infinite, since this infinite is itself passive and indifferent, may prove a subtle antidote to passion, to folly, and even to life. i think m. benda succeeds admirably in the purpose announced in his title of rendering his discourse coherent. if once we accept his definitions, his corollaries follow. clearly and bravely he disengages his idea of infinity from other properties usually assigned to the deity, such as power, omniscience, goodness, and tutelary functions in respect to life, or to some special human society. but coherence is not completeness, nor even a reasonable measure of descriptive truth; and certain considerations are omitted from m. benda's view which are of such moment that, if they were included, they might transform the whole issue. perhaps the chief of these omissions is that of an organ for thought. m. benda throughout is engaged simply in clarifying his own ideas, and repeatedly disclaims any ulterior pretensions. he finds in the panorama of his thoughts an idea of infinite being, or god, and proceeds to study the relation of that conception to all others. it is a task of critical analysis and religious confession: and nothing could be more legitimate and, to some of us, more interesting. but whence these various ideas, and whence the spell which the idea of infinite being in particular casts over the meditative mind? unless we can view these movements of thought in their natural setting and order of genesis, we shall be in danger of turning autobiography into cosmology and inwardness into folly. one of the most notable points in m. benda's analysis is his insistence on the leap involved in passing from infinite being to any particular fact or system of facts; and again the leap involved in passing, when the converted spirit "returns to god", from specific animal interests--no matter how generous, social, or altruistic these interests may be--to absolute renunciation and sympathy with the absolute. "that a will to return to god should arise in the phenomenal world seems to be a miracle no less wonderful (though it be less wondered at) than that the world should arise in the bosom of god." "love of man, charity, humanitarianism are nothing but the selfishness of the race, by which each animal species assures its specific existence." "to surrender one's individuality for the benefit of a larger self is something quite different from disinterestedness; it is the exact opposite." and certainly, if we regarded infinite being as a cosmological medium--say, empty space and time--there would be a miraculous break, an unaccountable new beginning, if that glassy expanse was suddenly wrinkled by something called energy. but in fact there need never have been such a leap, or such a miracle, because there could never have been such a transition. infinite being is not a material vacuum "in the bosom" of which a world might arise. it is a platonic idea--though plato never entertained it--an essence, non-existent and immutable, not in the same field of reality at all as a world of moving and colliding things. such an essence is not conceivably the seat of the variations that enliven the world. it is only in thought that we may pass from infinite being to an existing universe; and when we turn from one to the other, and say that now energy has emerged from the bosom of god, we are turning over a new leaf, or rather picking up an entirely different volume. the natural world is composed of objects and events which theory may regard as transformations of a hypothetical energy; an energy which m. benda--who when he comes down to the physical world is a good materialist--conceives to have condensed and distributed itself into matter, which in turn composed organisms and ultimately generated consciousness and reason. but in whatever manner the natural world may have evolved, it is found and posited by us in perception and action, not, like infinite being, defined in thought. this contrast is ontological, and excludes any derivation of the one object from the other. m. benda himself tells us so; and we may wonder why he introduced infinite being at all into his description of the world. the reason doubtless is that he was not engaged in describing the world, except by the way, but rather in classifying and clarifying his ideas in view of determining his moral allegiance. and he arranged his terms, whether ideal or materials, in a single series, because they were alike present to his intuition, and he was concerned to arrange them in a hierarchy, according to their moral dignity. not only is infinite being an incongruous and obstructive term to describe the substance of the world (which, if it subtends the changes in the world and causes them, must evidently change with them), but even mathematical space and time, in their ideal infinity, may be very far from describing truly the medium and groundwork of the universe. that is a question for investigation and hypothesis, not for intuition. but in the life of intuition, when that life takes a mathematical turn, empty space and time and their definable structure may be important themes; while, when the same life becomes a discipline of the affections, we see by this latest example, as well as by many a renowned predecessor of m. benda, that infinite being may dominate the scene. nor is this eventual dominance so foreign to the natural mind, or such a miraculous conversion, as it might seem. here, too, there is no derivation of object from object, but an alternative for the mind. as m. benda points out, natural interests and sympathies may expand indefinitely, so as to embrace a family, a nation, or the whole animate universe; we might even be chiefly occupied with liberal pursuits, such as science or music; the more we laboured at these things and delighted in them, the less ready should we be for renunciation and detachment. must conversion then descend upon us from heaven like a thunderbolt? far from it. we need not look for the principle of spiritual life in the distance: we have it at home from the beginning. even the idea of infinite being, though unnamed, is probably familiar. perhaps in the biography of the human race, or of each budding mind, the infinite or indeterminate may have been the primary datum. on that homogeneous sensuous background, blank at first but secretly plastic, a spot here and a movement there may gradually have become discernible, until the whole picture of nature and history had shaped itself as we see it. a certain sense of that primitive datum, the infinite or indeterminate, may always remain as it were the outstretched canvas on which every picture is painted. and when the pictures vanish, as in deep sleep, the ancient simplicity and quietness may be actually recovered, in a conscious union with brahma. so sensuous, so intimate, so unsophisticated the "return to god" may be for the spirit, without excluding the other avenues, intellectual and ascetic, by which this return may be effected in waking life, though then not so much in act as in intent only and allegiance. i confess that formerly i had some difficulty in sharing the supreme respect for infinite being which animates so many saints: it seemed to me the dazed, the empty, the deluded side of spirituality. why rest in an object which can be redeemed from blank negation only by a blank intensity? but time has taught me not to despise any form of vital imagination, any discipline which may achieve perfection after any kind. intuition is a broadly based activity; it engages elaborate organs and sums up and synthesises accumulated impressions. it may therefore easily pour the riches of its ancestry into the image or the sentiment which it evokes, poor as this sentiment or image might seem if expressed in words. in rapt or ecstatic moments, the vital momentum, often the moral escape, is everything, and the achievement, apart from that blessed relief, little or nothing. infinite being may profit in this way by offering a contrast to infinite annoyance. moreover, in my own way, i have discerned in pure being the involution of all forms. as felt, pure being may be indeterminate, but as conceived reflectively it includes all determinations: so that when deployed into the realm of essence, infinite or indeterminate being truly contains entertainment for all eternity. m. benda feels this pregnancy of the infinite on the mathematical side; but he hardly notices the fact, proclaimed so gloriously by spinoza, that the infinity of extension is only one of an infinity of infinites. there is an aesthetic infinite, or many aesthetic infinites, composed of all the forms which nature or imagination might exhibit; and where imagination fails, there are infinite remainders of the unimagined. the version which m. benda gives us of infinite being, limited to the mathematical dimension, is therefore unnecessarily cold and stark. his one infinity is monochrome, whereas the total infinity of essence, in which an infinity of outlines is only one item, is infinitely many-coloured. phenomena therefore fall, in their essential variety, within and not without infinite being: so that in "returning to god" we might take the whole world with us, not indeed in its blind movement and piecemeal illumination, as events occur, but in an after-image and panoramic portrait, as events are gathered together in the realm of truth. on the whole i think m. benda's two gods are less unfriendly to one another than his aggrieved tone might suggest. this pregnant little book ends on a tragic note. "hitherto human self-assertion in the state or the family, while serving the imperial god, has paid some grudging honours, at least verbally, to the infinite god as well, under the guise of liberalism, love of mankind, or the negation of classes. but today this imperfect homage is retracted, and nothing is reverenced except that which gives strength. if anyone preaches human kindness, it is in order to establish a "strong" community martially trained, like a super-state, to oppose everything not included within it, and to become omnipotent in the art of utilising the non-human forces of nature.... the will to return to god may prove to have been, in the history of the phenomenal world, a sublime accident." certainly the will to "return to god", if not an accident, is an incident in the life of the world; and the whole world itself is a sublime accident, in the sense that its existence is contingent, groundless, and precarious. yet so long as the imperial god continues successfully to keep our world going, it will be no accident, but a natural necessity, that many a mind should turn to the thought of the infinite with awe, with a sense of liberation, and even with joy. the infinite god owes all his worshippers, little as he may care for them, to the success of the imperial god in creating reflective and speculative minds. or (to drop these mythological expressions which may become tiresome) philosophers owe to nature and to the discipline of moral life their capacity to look beyond nature and beyond morality. and while they may _look_ beyond, and take comfort in the vision, they cannot _pass_ beyond. as m. benda says, the most faithful levite can return to the infinite only in his thought; in his life he must remain a lay creature. yet nature, in forming the human soul, unintentionally unlocked for the mind the doors to truth and to essence, partly by obliging the soul to attend to things which are outside, and partly by endowing the soul with far greater potentialities of sensation and invention than daily life is likely to call forth. our minds are therefore naturally dissatisfied with their lot and speculatively directed upon an outspread universe in which our persons count for almost nothing. these insights are calculated to give our brutal wills some pause. intuition of the infinite and recourse to the infinite for religious inspiration follow of themselves, and can never be suppressed altogether, so long as life is conscious and experience provokes reflection. spirit is certainly not one of the forces producing spirit, but neither is it a contrary force. it is the actuality of feeling, of observation, of meaning. spirit has no unmannerly quarrel with its parents, its hosts, or even its gaolers: they know not what they do. yet spirit belongs intrinsically to another sphere, and cannot help wondering at the world, and suffering in it. the man in whom spirit is awake will continue to live and act, but with a difference. in so far as he has become pure spirit he will have transcended the fear of death or defeat; for now his instinctive fear, which will subsist, will be neutralised by an equally sincere consent to die and to fail. he will live henceforth in a truer and more serene sympathy with nature than is possible to rival natural beings. natural beings are perpetually struggling to live only, and not to die; so that their will is in hopeless rebellion against the divine decrees which they must obey notwithstanding. the spiritual man, on the contrary, in so far as he has already passed intellectually into the eternal world, no longer endures unwillingly the continual death involved in living, or the final death involved in having been born. he renounces everything religiously in the very act of attaining it, resigning existence itself as gladly as he accepts it, or even more gladly; because the emphasis which action and passion lend to the passing moment seems to him arbitrary and violent; and as each task or experience is dismissed in turn, he accounts the end of it more blessed than the beginning. [ ] the following quotations are drawn from _beyond the pleasure principle_, by sigmund freud; authorised translation by c.j.m. hubback. the international psycho-analytic press, , pp. - . the italics are in the original. [ ] _essai d'un discours cohérent sur les rapports de dieu et du monde._ par julien benda. librairie gallimard, paris, . transcribed from the cassell & co. edition by david price, email ccx @coventry.ac.uk letters on england by voltaire introduction francois marie arouet, who called himself voltaire, was the son of francois arouet of poitou, who lived in paris, had given up his office of notary two years before the birth of this his third son, and obtained some years afterwards a treasurer's office in the chambre des comptes. voltaire was born in the year . he lived until within ten or eleven years of the outbreak of the great french revolution, and was a chief leader in the movement of thought that preceded the revolution. though he lived to his eighty-fourth year, voltaire was born with a weak body. his brother armand, eight years his senior, became a jansenist. voltaire when ten years old was placed with the jesuits in the college louis-le- grand. there he was taught during seven years, and his genius was encouraged in its bent for literature; skill in speaking and in writing being especially fostered in the system of education which the jesuits had planned to produce capable men who by voice and pen could give a reason for the faith they held. verses written for an invalid soldier at the age of eleven won for young voltaire the friendship of ninon l'enclos, who encouraged him to go on writing verses. she died soon afterwards, and remembered him with a legacy of two thousand livres for purchase of books. he wrote in his lively school-days a tragedy that afterwards he burnt. at the age of seventeen he left the college louis- le-grand, where he said afterwards that he had been taught nothing but latin and the stupidities. he was then sent to the law schools, and saw life in paris as a gay young poet who, with all his brilliant liveliness, had an aptitude for looking on the tragic side of things, and one of whose first poems was an "ode on the misfortunes of life." his mother died when he was twenty. voltaire's father thought him a fool for his versifying, and attached him as secretary to the marquis of chateauneuf; when he went as ambassador to the hague. in december, , he was dismissed for his irregularities. in paris his unsteadiness and his addiction to literature caused his father to rejoice in getting him housed in a country chateau with m. de caumartin. m. de caumartin's father talked with such enthusiasm of henri iv. and sully that voltaire planned the writing of what became his _henriade_, and his "history of the age of louis xiv.," who died on the st of september, . under the regency that followed, voltaire got into trouble again and again through the sharpness of his pen, and at last, accused of verse that satirised the regent, he was locked up--on the th of may, --in the bastille. there he wrote the first two books of his _henriade_, and finished a play on oedipus, which he had begun at the age of eighteen. he did not obtain full liberty until the th of april, , and it was at this time--with a clearly formed design to associate the name he took with work of high attempt in literature--that francois marie arouet, aged twenty-four, first called himself voltaire. voltaire's _oedipe_ was played with success in november, . a few months later he was again banished from paris, and finished the _henriade_ in his retirement, as well as another play, _artemise_, that was acted in february, . other plays followed. in december, , voltaire visited lord bolingbroke, who was then an exile from england, at the chateau of la source. there was now constant literary activity. from july to october, , voltaire visited holland with madame de rupelmonde. after a serious attack of small-pox in november, , voltaire was active as a poet about the court. he was then in receipt of a pension of two thousand livres from the king, and had inherited more than twice as much by the death of his father in january, . but in december, , a quarrel, fastened upon him by the chevalier de rohan, who had him waylaid and beaten, caused him to send a challenge. for this he was arrested and lodged once more, in april, , in the bastille. there he was detained a month; and his first act when he was released was to ask for a passport to england. voltaire left france, reached london in august, , went as guest to the house of a rich merchant at wandsworth, and remained three years in this country, from the age of thirty-two to the age of thirty-five. he was here when george i. died, and george ii. became king. he published here his _henriade_. he wrote here his "history of charles xii." he read "gulliver's travels" as a new book, and might have been present at the first night of _the beggar's opera_. he was here whet sir isaac newton died. in he published at rouen the _lettres sur les anglais_, which appeared in england in in the volume from which they are here reprinted. h.m. letters on england letter i.--on the quakers i was of opinion that the doctrine and history of so extraordinary a people were worthy the attention of the curious. to acquaint myself with them i made a visit to one of the most eminent quakers in england, who, after having traded thirty years, had the wisdom to prescribe limits to his fortune and to his desires, and was settled in a little solitude not far from london. being come into it, i perceived a small but regularly built house, vastly neat, but without the least pomp of furniture. the quaker who owned it was a hale, ruddy-complexioned old man, who had never been afflicted with sickness because he had always been insensible to passions, and a perfect stranger to intemperance. i never in my life saw a more noble or a more engaging aspect than his. he was dressed like those of his persuasion, in a plain coat without pleats in the sides, or buttons on the pockets and sleeves; and had on a beaver, the brims of which were horizontal like those of our clergy. he did not uncover himself when i appeared, and advanced towards me without once stooping his body; but there appeared more politeness in the open, humane air of his countenance, than in the custom of drawing one leg behind the other, and taking that from the head which is made to cover it. "friend," says he to me, "i perceive thou art a stranger, but if i can do anything for thee, only tell me." "sir," said i to him, bending forwards and advancing, as is usual with us, one leg towards him, "i flatter myself that my just curiosity will not give you the least offence, and that you'll do me the honour to inform me of the particulars of your religion." "the people of thy country," replied the quaker, "are too full of their bows and compliments, but i never yet met with one of them who had so much curiosity as thyself. come in, and let us first dine together." i still continued to make some very unseasonable ceremonies, it not being easy to disengage one's self at once from habits we have been long used to; and after taking part in a frugal meal, which began and ended with a prayer to god, i began to question my courteous host. i opened with that which good catholics have more than once made to huguenots. "my dear sir," said i, "were you ever baptised?" "i never was," replied the quaker, "nor any of my brethren." "zounds!" say i to him, "you are not christians, then." "friend," replies the old man in a soft tone of voice, "swear not; we are christians, and endeavour to be good christians, but we are not of opinion that the sprinkling water on a child's head makes him a christian." "heavens!" say i, shocked at his impiety, "you have then forgot that christ was baptised by st. john." "friend," replies the mild quaker once again, "swear not; christ indeed was baptised by john, but he himself never baptised anyone. we are the disciples of christ, not of john." i pitied very much the sincerity of my worthy quaker, and was absolutely for forcing him to get himself christened. "were that all," replied he very gravely, "we would submit cheerfully to baptism, purely in compliance with thy weakness, for we don't condemn any person who uses it; but then we think that those who profess a religion of so holy, so spiritual a nature as that of christ, ought to abstain to the utmost of their power from the jewish ceremonies." "o unaccountable!" say i: "what! baptism a jewish ceremony?" "yes, my friend," says he, "so truly jewish, that a great many jews use the baptism of john to this day. look into ancient authors, and thou wilt find that john only revived this practice; and that it had been used by the hebrews, long before his time, in like manner as the mahometans imitated the ishmaelites in their pilgrimages to mecca. jesus indeed submitted to the baptism of john, as he had suffered himself to be circumcised; but circumcision and the washing with water ought to be abolished by the baptism of christ, that baptism of the spirit, that ablution of the soul, which is the salvation of mankind. thus the forerunner said, 'i indeed baptise you with water unto repentance; but he that cometh after me is mightier than i, whose shoes i am not worthy to bear: he shall baptise you with the holy ghost and with fire.' likewise paul, the great apostle of the gentiles, writes as follows to the corinthians, 'christ sent me not to baptise, but to preach the gospel;' and indeed paul never baptised but two persons with water, and that very much against his inclinations. he circumcised his disciple timothy, and the other disciples likewise circumcised all who were willing to submit to that carnal ordinance. but art thou circumcised?" added he. "i have not the honour to be so," say i. "well, friend," continues the quaker, "thou art a christian without being circumcised, and i am one without being baptised." thus did this pious man make a wrong but very specious application of four or five texts of scripture which seemed to favour the tenets of his sect; but at the same time forgot very sincerely an hundred texts which made directly against them. i had more sense than to contest with him, since there is no possibility of convincing an enthusiast. a man should never pretend to inform a lover of his mistress's faults, no more than one who is at law, of the badness of his cause; nor attempt to win over a fanatic by strength of reasoning. accordingly i waived the subject. "well," said i to him, "what sort of a communion have you?" "we have none like that thou hintest at among us," replied he. "how! no communion?" said i. "only that spiritual one," replied he, "of hearts." he then began again to throw out his texts of scripture; and preached a most eloquent sermon against that ordinance. he harangued in a tone as though he had been inspired, to prove that the sacraments were merely of human invention, and that the word "sacrament" was not once mentioned in the gospel. "excuse," said he, "my ignorance, for i have not employed a hundredth part of the arguments which might be brought to prove the truth of our religion, but these thou thyself mayest peruse in the exposition of our faith written by robert barclay. it is one of the best pieces that ever was penned by man; and as our adversaries confess it to be of dangerous tendency, the arguments in it must necessarily be very convincing." i promised to peruse this piece, and my quaker imagined he had already made a convert of me. he afterwards gave me an account in few words of some singularities which make this sect the contempt of others. "confess," said he, "that it was very difficult for thee to refrain from laughter, when i answered all thy civilities without uncovering my head, and at the same time said 'thee' and 'thou' to thee. however, thou appearest to me too well read not to know that in christ's time no nation was so ridiculous as to put the plural number for the singular. augustus caesar himself was spoken to in such phrases as these: 'i love thee,' 'i beseech thee,' 'i thank thee;' but he did not allow any person to call him 'domine,' sir. it was not till many ages after that men would have the word 'you,' as though they were double, instead of 'thou' employed in speaking to them; and usurped the flattering titles of lordship, of eminence, and of holiness, which mere worms bestow on other worms by assuring them that they are with a most profound respect, and an infamous falsehood, their most obedient humble servants. it is to secure ourselves more strongly from such a shameless traffic of lies and flattery, that we 'thee' and 'thou' a king with the same freedom as we do a beggar, and salute no person; we owing nothing to mankind but charity, and to the laws respect and obedience. "our apparel is also somewhat different from that of others, and this purely, that it may be a perpetual warning to us not to imitate them. others wear the badges and marks of their several dignities, and we those of christian humility. we fly from all assemblies of pleasure, from diversions of every kind, and from places where gaming is practised; and indeed our case would be very deplorable, should we fill with such levities as those i have mentioned the heart which ought to be the habitation of god. we never swear, not even in a court of justice, being of opinion that the most holy name of god ought not to be prostituted in the miserable contests betwixt man and man. when we are obliged to appear before a magistrate upon other people's account (for law-suits are unknown among the friends), we give evidence to the truth by sealing it with our yea or nay; and the judges believe us on our bare affirmation, whilst so many other christians forswear themselves on the holy gospels. we never war or fight in any case; but it is not that we are afraid, for so far from shuddering at the thoughts of death, we on the contrary bless the moment which unites us with the being of beings; but the reason of our not using the outward sword is, that we are neither wolves, tigers, nor mastiffs, but men and christians. our god, who has commanded us to love our enemies, and to suffer without repining, would certainly not permit us to cross the seas, merely because murderers clothed in scarlet, and wearing caps two foot high, enlist citizens by a noise made with two little sticks on an ass's skin extended. and when, after a victory is gained, the whole city of london is illuminated; when the sky is in a blaze with fireworks, and a noise is heard in the air, of thanksgivings, of bells, of organs, and of the cannon, we groan in silence, and are deeply affected with sadness of spirit and brokenness of heart, for the sad havoc which is the occasion of those public rejoicings." letter ii.--on the quakers such was the substance of the conversation i had with this very singular person; but i was greatly surprised to see him come the sunday following and take me with him to the quakers' meeting. there are several of these in london, but that which he carried me to stands near the famous pillar called the monument. the brethren were already assembled at my entering it with my guide. there might be about four hundred men and three hundred women in the meeting. the women hid their faces behind their fans, and the men were covered with their broad-brimmed hats. all were seated, and the silence was universal. i passed through them, but did not perceive so much as one lift up his eyes to look at me. this silence lasted a quarter of an hour, when at last one of them rose up, took off his hat, and, after making a variety of wry faces and groaning in a most lamentable manner, he, partly from his nose and partly from his mouth, threw out a strange, confused jumble of words (borrowed, as he imagined, from the gospel) which neither himself nor any of his hearers understood. when this distorter had ended his beautiful soliloquy, and that the stupid, but greatly edified, congregation were separated, i asked my friend how it was possible for the judicious part of their assembly to suffer such a babbling? "we are obliged," says he, "to suffer it, because no one knows when a man rises up to hold forth whether he will be moved by the spirit or by folly. in this doubt and uncertainty we listen patiently to everyone; we even allow our women to hold forth. two or three of these are often inspired at one and the same time, and it is then that a most charming noise is heard in the lord's house." "you have, then, no priests?" say i to him. "no, no, friend," replies the quaker, "to our great happiness." then opening one of the friends' books, as he called it, he read the following words in an emphatic tone:--"'god forbid we should presume to ordain anyone to receive the holy spirit on the lord's day to the prejudice of the rest of the brethren.' thanks to the almighty, we are the only people upon earth that have no priests. wouldst thou deprive us of so happy a distinction? why should we abandon our babe to mercenary nurses, when we ourselves have milk enough for it? these mercenary creatures would soon domineer in our houses and destroy both the mother and the babe. god has said, 'freely you have received, freely give.' shall we, after these words, cheapen, as it were, the gospel, sell the holy ghost, and make of an assembly of christians a mere shop of traders? we don't pay a set of men clothed in black to assist our poor, to bury our dead, or to preach to the brethren. these offices are all of too tender a nature for us ever to entrust them to others." "but how is it possible for you," said i, with some warmth, "to know whether your discourse is really inspired by the almighty?" "whosoever," says he, "shall implore christ to enlighten him, and shall publish the gospel truths he may feel inwardly, such an one may be assured that he is inspired by the lord." he then poured forth a numberless multitude of scripture texts which proved, as he imagined, that there is no such thing as christianity without an immediate revelation, and added these remarkable words: "when thou movest one of thy limbs, is it moved by thy own power? certainly not; for this limb is often sensible to involuntary motions. consequently he who created thy body gives motion to this earthly tabernacle. and are the several ideas of which thy soul receives the impression formed by thyself? much less are they, since these pour in upon thy mind whether thou wilt or no; consequently thou receivest thy ideas from him who created thy soul. but as he leaves thy affections at full liberty, he gives thy mind such ideas as thy affections may deserve; if thou livest in god, thou actest, thou thinkest in god. after this thou needest only but open thine eyes to that light which enlightens all mankind, and it is then thou wilt perceive the truth, and make others perceive it." "why, this," said i, "is malebranche's doctrine to a tittle." "i am acquainted with thy malebranche," said he; "he had something of the friend in him, but was not enough so." these are the most considerable particulars i learnt concerning the doctrine of the quakers. in my next letter i shall acquaint you with their history, which you will find more singular than their opinions. letter iii.--on the quakers you have already heard that the quakers date from christ, who, according to them, was the first quaker. religion, say these, was corrupted a little after his death, and remained in that state of corruption about sixteen hundred years. but there were always a few quakers concealed in the world, who carefully preserved the sacred fire, which was extinguished in all but themselves, until at last this light spread itself in england in . it was at the time when great britain was torn to pieces by the intestine wars which three or four sects had raised in the name of god, that one george fox, born in leicestershire, and son to a silk-weaver, took it into his head to preach, and, as he pretended, with all the requisites of a true apostle--that is, without being able either to read or write. he was about twenty-five years of age, irreproachable in his life and conduct, and a holy madman. he was equipped in leather from head to foot, and travelled from one village to another, exclaiming against war and the clergy. had his invectives been levelled against the soldiery only he would have been safe enough, but he inveighed against ecclesiastics. fox was seized at derby, and being carried before a justice of peace, he did not once offer to pull off his leathern hat, upon which an officer gave him a great box of the ear, and cried to him, "don't you know you are to appear uncovered before his worship?" fox presented his other cheek to the officer, and begged him to give him another box for god's sake. the justice would have had him sworn before he asked him any questions. "know, friend," says fox to him, "that i never swear." the justice, observing he "thee'd" and "thou'd" him, sent him to the house of correction, in derby, with orders that he should be whipped there. fox praised the lord all the way he went to the house of correction, where the justice's order was executed with the utmost severity. the men who whipped this enthusiast were greatly surprised to hear him beseech them to give him a few more lashes for the good of his soul. there was no need of entreating these people; the lashes were repeated, for which fox thanked them very cordially, and began to preach. at first the spectators fell a-laughing, but they afterwards listened to him; and as enthusiasm is an epidemical distemper, many were persuaded, and those who scourged him became his first disciples. being set at liberty, he ran up and down the country with a dozen proselytes at his heels, still declaiming against the clergy, and was whipped from time to time. being one day set in the pillory, he harangued the crowd in so strong and moving a manner, that fifty of the auditors became his converts, and he won the rest so much in his favour that, his head being freed tumultuously from the hole where it was fastened, the populace went and searched for the church of england clergyman who had been chiefly instrumental in bringing him to this punishment, and set him on the same pillory where fox had stood. fox was bold enough to convert some of oliver cromwell's soldiers, who thereupon quitted the service and refused to take the oaths. oliver, having as great a contempt for a sect which would not allow its members to fight, as sixtus quintus had for another sect, _dove non si chiamava_, began to persecute these new converts. the prisons were crowded with them, but persecution seldom has any other effect than to increase the number of proselytes. these came, therefore, from their confinement more strongly confirmed in the principles they had imbibed, and followed by their gaolers, whom they had brought over to their belief. but the circumstances which contributed chiefly to the spreading of this sect were as follows:--fox thought himself inspired, and consequently was of opinion that he must speak in a manner different from the rest of mankind. he thereupon began to writhe his body, to screw up his face, to hold in his breath, and to exhale it in a forcible manner, insomuch that the priestess of the pythian god at delphos could not have acted her part to better advantage. inspiration soon became so habitual to him that he could scarce deliver himself in any other manner. this was the first gift he communicated to his disciples. these aped very sincerely their master's several grimaces, and shook in every limb the instant the fit of inspiration came upon them, whence they were called quakers. the vulgar attempted to mimic them; they trembled, they spake through the nose, they quaked and fancied themselves inspired by the holy ghost. the only thing now wanting was a few miracles, and accordingly they wrought some. fox, this modern patriarch, spoke thus to a justice of peace before a large assembly of people: "friend, take care what thou dost; god will soon punish thee for persecuting his saints." this magistrate, being one who besotted himself every day with bad beer and brandy, died of an apoplexy two days after, the moment he had signed a _mittimus_ for imprisoning some quakers. the sudden death with which this justice was seized was not ascribed to his intemperance, but was universally looked upon as the effect of the holy man's predictions; so that this accident made more converts to quakerism than a thousand sermons and as many shaking fits could have done. oliver, finding them increase daily, was desirous of bringing them over to his party, and for that purpose attempted to bribe them by money. however, they were incorruptible, which made him one day declare that this religion was the only one he had ever met with that had resisted the charms of gold. the quakers were several times persecuted under charles ii.; not upon a religious account, but for refusing to pay the tithes, for "theeing" and "thouing" the magistrates, and for refusing to take the oaths enacted by the laws. at last robert barclay, a native of scotland, presented to the king, in , his "apology for the quakers," a work as well drawn up as the subject could possibly admit. the dedication to charles ii. is not filled with mean, flattering encomiums, but abounds with bold touches in favour of truth and with the wisest counsels. "thou hast tasted," says he to the king at the close of his epistle dedicatory, "of prosperity and adversity; thou knowest what it is to be banished thy native country; to be overruled as well as to rule and sit upon the throne; and, being oppressed, thou hast reason to know how hateful the oppressor is both to god and man. if, after all these warnings and advertisements, thou dost not turn unto the lord with all thy heart, but forget him who remembered thee in thy distress, and give up thyself to follow lust and vanity, surely great will be thy condemnation. "against which snare, as well as the temptation of those that may or do feed thee and prompt thee to evil, the most excellent and prevalent remedy will be, to apply thyself to that light of christ which shineth in thy conscience, which neither can nor will flatter thee nor suffer thee to be at ease in thy sins, but doth and will deal plainly and faithfully with thee, as those that are followers thereof have plainly done.--thy faithful friend and subject, robert barclay." a more surprising circumstance is, that this epistle, written by a private man of no figure, was so happy in its effects, as to put a stop to the persecution. letter iv.--on the quakers about this time arose the illustrious william penn, who established the power of the quakers in america, and would have made them appear venerable in the eyes of the europeans, were it possible for mankind to respect virtue when revealed in a ridiculous light. he was the only son of vice-admiral penn, favourite of the duke of york, afterwards king james ii. william penn, at twenty years of age, happening to meet with a quaker in cork, whom he had known at oxford, this man made a proselyte of him; and william being a sprightly youth, and naturally eloquent, having a winning aspect, and a very engaging carriage, he soon gained over some of his intimates. he carried matters so far, that he formed by insensible degrees a society of young quakers, who met at his house; so that he was at the head of a sect when a little above twenty. being returned, after his leaving cork, to the vice-admiral his father, instead of falling upon his knees to ask his blessing, he went up to him with his hat on, and said, "friend, i am very glad to see thee in good health." the vice-admiral imagined his son to be crazy, but soon finding he was turned quaker, he employed all the methods that prudence could suggest to engage him to behave and act like other people. the youth made no other answer to his father, than by exhorting him to turn quaker also. at last his father confined himself to this single request, viz., "that he should wait upon the king and the duke of york with his hat under his arm, and should not 'thee' and 'thou' them." william answered, "that he could not do these things, for conscience' sake," which exasperated his father to such a degree, that he turned him out of doors. young pen gave god thanks for permitting him to suffer so early in his cause, after which he went into the city, where he held forth, and made a great number of converts. the church of england clergy found their congregations dwindle away daily; and penn being young, handsome, and of a graceful stature, the court as well as the city ladies flocked very devoutly to his meeting. the patriarch, george fox, hearing of his great reputation, came to london (though the journey was very long) purely to see and converse with him. both resolved to go upon missions into foreign countries, and accordingly they embarked for holland, after having left labourers sufficient to take care of the london vineyard. their labours were crowned with success in amsterdam, but a circumstance which reflected the greatest honour on them, and at the same time put their humility to the greatest trial, was the reception they met with from elizabeth, the princess palatine, aunt to george i. of great britain, a lady conspicuous for her genius and knowledge, and to whom descartes had dedicated his philosophical romance. she was then retired to the hague, where she received these friends, for so the quakers were at that time called in holland. this princess had several conferences with them in her palace, and she at last entertained so favourable an opinion of quakerism, that they confessed she was not far from the kingdom of heaven. the friends sowed likewise the good seed in germany, but reaped very little fruit; for the mode of "theeing" and "thouing" was not approved of in a country where a man is perpetually obliged to employ the titles of "highness" and "excellency." william penn returned soon to england upon hearing of his father's sickness, in order to see him before he died. the vice-admiral was reconciled to his son, and though of a different persuasion, embraced him tenderly. william made a fruitless exhortation to his father not to receive the sacrament, but to die a quaker, and the good old man entreated his son william to wear buttons on his sleeves, and a crape hatband in his beaver, but all to no purpose. william penn inherited very large possessions, part of which consisted in crown debts due to the vice-admiral for sums he had advanced for the sea service. no moneys were at that time more insecure than those owing from the king. penn was obliged to go more than once, and "thee" and "thou" king charles and his ministers, in order to recover the debt; and at last, instead of specie, the government invested him with the right and sovereignty of a province of america, to the south of maryland. thus was a quaker raised to sovereign power. penn set sail for his new dominions with two ships freighted with quakers, who followed his fortune. the country was then called pennsylvania from william penn, who there founded philadelphia, now the most flourishing city in that country. the first step he took was to enter into an alliance with his american neighbours, and this is the only treaty between those people and the christians that was not ratified by an oath, and was never infringed. the new sovereign was at the same time the legislator of pennsylvania, and enacted very wise and prudent laws, none of which have ever been changed since his time. the first is, to injure no person upon a religious account, and to consider as brethren all those who believe in one god. he had no sooner settled his government, but several american merchants came and peopled this colony. the natives of the country, instead of flying into the woods, cultivated by insensible degrees a friendship with the peaceable quakers. they loved these foreigners as much as they detested the other christians who had conquered and laid waste america. in a little time a great number of these savages (falsely so called), charmed with the mild and gentle disposition of their neighbours, came in crowds to william penn, and besought him to admit them into the number of his vassals. it was very rare and uncommon for a sovereign to be "thee'd" and "thou'd" by the meanest of his subjects, who never took their hats off when they came into his presence; and as singular for a government to be without one priest in it, and for a people to be without arms, either offensive or defensive; for a body of citizens to be absolutely undistinguished but by the public employments, and for neighbours not to entertain the least jealousy one against the other. william penn might glory in having brought down upon earth the so much boasted golden age, which in all probability never existed but in pennsylvania. he returned to england to settle some affairs relating to his new dominions. after the death of king charles ii., king james, who had loved the father, indulged the same affection to the son, and no longer considered him as an obscure sectary, but as a very great man. the king's politics on this occasion agreed with his inclinations. he was desirous of pleasing the quakers by annulling the laws made against nonconformists, in order to have an opportunity, by this universal toleration, of establishing the romish religion. all the sectarists in england saw the snare that was laid for them, but did not give into it; they never failing to unite when the romish religion, their common enemy, is to be opposed. but penn did not think himself bound in any manner to renounce his principles, merely to favour protestants to whom he was odious, in opposition to a king who loved him. he had established a universal toleration with regard to conscience in america, and would not have it thought that he intended to destroy it in europe, for which reason he adhered so inviolably to king james, that a report prevailed universally of his being a jesuit. this calumny affected him very strongly, and he was obliged to justify himself in print. however, the unfortunate king james ii., in whom, as in most princes of the stuart family, grandeur and weakness were equally blended, and who, like them, as much overdid some things as he was short in others, lost his kingdom in a manner that is hardly to be accounted for. all the english sectarists accepted from william iii, and his parliament the toleration and indulgence which they had refused when offered by king james. it was then the quakers began to enjoy, by virtue of the laws, the several privileges they possess at this time. penn having at last seen quakerism firmly established in his native country, went back to pennsylvania. his own people and the americans received him with tears of joy, as though he had been a father who was returned to visit his children. all the laws had been religiously observed in his absence, a circumstance in which no legislator had ever been happy but himself. after having resided some years in pennsylvania he left it, but with great reluctance, in order to return to england, there to solicit some matters in favour of the commerce of pennsylvania. but he never saw it again, he dying in ruscombe, in berkshire, in . i am not able to guess what fate quakerism may have in america, but i perceive it dwindles away daily in england. in all countries where liberty of conscience is allowed, the established religion will at last swallow up all the rest. quakers are disqualified from being members of parliament; nor can they enjoy any post or preferment, because an oath must always be taken on these occasions, and they never swear. they are therefore reduced to the necessity of subsisting upon traffic. their children, whom the industry of their parents has enriched, are desirous of enjoying honours, of wearing buttons and ruffles; and quite ashamed of being called quakers they become converts to the church of england, merely to be in the fashion. letter v.--on the church of england england is properly the country of sectarists. _multae sunt mansiones in domo patris mei_ (in my father's house are many mansions). an englishman, as one to whom liberty is natural, may go to heaven his own way. nevertheless, though every one is permitted to serve god in whatever mode or fashion he thinks proper, yet their true religion, that in which a man makes his fortune, is the sect of episcopalians or churchmen, called the church of england, or simply the church, by way of eminence. no person can possess an employment either in england or ireland unless he be ranked among the faithful, that is, professes himself a member of the church of england. this reason (which carries mathematical evidence with it) has converted such numbers of dissenters of all persuasions, that not a twentieth part of the nation is out of the pale of the established church. the english clergy have retained a great number of the romish ceremonies, and especially that of receiving, with a most scrupulous attention, their tithes. they also have the pious ambition to aim at superiority. moreover, they inspire very religiously their flock with a holy zeal against dissenters of all denominations. this zeal was pretty violent under the tories in the four last years of queen anne; but was productive of no greater mischief than the breaking the windows of some meeting-houses and the demolishing of a few of them. for religious rage ceased in england with the civil wars, and was no more under queen anne than the hollow noise of a sea whose billows still heaved, though so long after the storm when the whigs and tories laid waste their native country, in the same manner as the guelphs and ghibelins formerly did theirs. it was absolutely necessary for both parties to call in religion on this occasion; the tories declared for episcopacy, and the whigs, as some imagined, were for abolishing it; however, after these had got the upper hand, they contented themselves with only abridging it. at the time when the earl of oxford and the lord bolingbroke used to drink healths to the tories, the church of england considered those noblemen as the defenders of its holy privileges. the lower house of convocation (a kind of house of commons) composed wholly of the clergy, was in some credit at that time; at least the members of it had the liberty to meet, to dispute on ecclesiastical matters, to sentence impious books from time to time to the flames, that is, books written against themselves. the ministry which is now composed of whigs does not so much as allow those gentlemen to assemble, so that they are at this time reduced (in the obscurity of their respective parishes) to the melancholy occupation of praying for the prosperity of the government whose tranquillity they would willingly disturb. with regard to the bishops, who are twenty-six in all, they still have seats in the house of lords in spite of the whigs, because the ancient abuse of considering them as barons subsists to this day. there is a clause, however, in the oath which the government requires from these gentlemen, that puts their christian patience to a very great trial, viz., that they shall be of the church of england as by law established. there are few bishops, deans, or other dignitaries, but imagine they are so _jure divino_; it is consequently a great mortification to them to be obliged to confess that they owe their dignity to a pitiful law enacted by a set of profane laymen. a learned monk (father courayer) wrote a book lately to prove the validity and succession of english ordinations. this book was forbid in france, but do you believe that the english ministry were pleased with it? far from it. those wicked whigs don't care a straw whether the episcopal succession among them hath been interrupted or not, or whether bishop parker was consecrated (as it is pretended) in a tavern or a church; for these whigs are much better pleased that the bishops should derive their authority from the parliament than from the apostles. the lord bolingbroke observed that this notion of divine right would only make so many tyrants in lawn sleeves, but that the laws made so many citizens. with regard to the morals of the english clergy, they are more regular than those of france, and for this reason. all the clergy (a very few excepted) are educated in the universities of oxford or cambridge, far from the depravity and corruption which reign in the capital. they are not called to dignities till very late, at a time of life when men are sensible of no other passion but avarice, that is, when their ambition craves a supply. employments are here bestowed both in the church and the army, as a reward for long services; and we never see youngsters made bishops or colonels immediately upon their laying aside the academical gown; and besides most of the clergy are married. the stiff and awkward air contracted by them at the university, and the little familiarity the men of this country have with the ladies, commonly oblige a bishop to confine himself to, and rest contented with, his own. clergymen sometimes take a glass at the tavern, custom giving them a sanction on this occasion; and if they fuddle themselves it is in a very serious manner, and without giving the least scandal. that fable-mixed kind of mortal (not to be defined), who is neither of the clergy nor of the laity; in a word, the thing called _abbe_ in france; is a species quite unknown in england. all the clergy here are very much upon the reserve, and most of them pedants. when these are told that in france young fellows famous for their dissoluteness, and raised to the highest dignities of the church by female intrigues, address the fair publicly in an amorous way, amuse themselves in writing tender love songs, entertain their friends very splendidly every night at their own houses, and after the banquet is ended withdraw to invoke the assistance of the holy ghost, and call themselves boldly the successors of the apostles, they bless god for their being protestants. but these are shameless heretics, who deserve to be blown hence through the flames to old nick, as rabelais says, and for this reason i do not trouble myself about them. letter vi.--on the presbyterians the church of england is confined almost to the kingdom whence it received its name, and to ireland, for presbyterianism is the established religion in scotland. this presbyterianism is directly the same with calvinism, as it was established in france, and is now professed at geneva. as the priests of this sect receive but very inconsiderable stipends from their churches, and consequently cannot emulate the splendid luxury of bishops, they exclaim very naturally against honours which they can never attain to. figure to yourself the haughty diogenes trampling under foot the pride of plato. the scotch presbyterians are not very unlike that proud though tattered reasoner. diogenes did not use alexander half so impertinently as these treated king charles ii.; for when they took up arms in his cause in opposition to oliver, who had deceived them, they forced that poor monarch to undergo the hearing of three or four sermons every day, would not suffer him to play, reduced him to a state of penitence and mortification, so that charles soon grew sick of these pedants, and accordingly eloped from them with as much joy as a youth does from school. a church of england minister appears as another cato in presence of a juvenile, sprightly french graduate, who bawls for a whole morning together in the divinity schools, and hums a song in chorus with ladies in the evening; but this cato is a very spark when before a scotch presbyterian. the latter affects a serious gait, puts on a sour look, wears a vastly broad-brimmed hat and a long cloak over a very short coat, preaches through the nose, and gives the name of the whore of babylon to all churches where the ministers are so fortunate as to enjoy an annual revenue of five or six thousand pounds, and where the people are weak enough to suffer this, and to give them the titles of my lord, your lordship, or your eminence. these gentlemen, who have also some churches in england, introduced there the mode of grave and severe exhortations. to them is owing the sanctification of sunday in the three kingdoms. people are there forbidden to work or take any recreation on that day, in which the severity is twice as great as that of the romish church. no operas, plays, or concerts are allowed in london on sundays, and even cards are so expressly forbidden that none but persons of quality, and those we call the genteel, play on that day; the rest of the nation go either to church, to the tavern, or to see their mistresses. though the episcopal and presbyterian sects are the two prevailing ones in great britain, yet all others are very welcome to come and settle in it, and live very sociably together, though most of their preachers hate one another almost as cordially as a jansenist damns a jesuit. take a view of the royal exchange in london, a place more venerable than many courts of justice, where the representatives of all nations meet for the benefit of mankind. there the jew, the mahometan, and the christian transact together, as though they all professed the same religion, and give the name of infidel to none but bankrupts. there the presbyterian confides in the anabaptist, and the churchman depends on the quaker's word. if one religion only were allowed in england, the government would very possibly become arbitrary; if there were but two, the people would cut one another's throats; but as there are such a multitude, they all live happy and in peace. letter vii.--on the socinians, or arians, or antitrinitarians there is a little sect here composed of clergymen, and of a few very learned persons among the laity, who, though they do not call themselves arians or socinians, do yet dissent entirely from st. athanasius with regard to their notions of the trinity, and declare very frankly that the father is greater than the son. do you remember what is related of a certain orthodox bishop, who, in order to convince an emperor of the reality of consubstantiation, put his hand under the chin of the monarch's son, and took him by the nose in presence of his sacred majesty? the emperor was going to order his attendants to throw the bishop out of the window, when the good old man gave him this handsome and convincing reason: "since your majesty," says he, "is angry when your son has not due respect shown him, what punishment do you think will god the father inflict on those who refuse his son jesus the titles due to him?" the persons i just now mentioned declare that the holy bishop took a very wrong step, that his argument was inconclusive, and that the emperor should have answered him thus: "know that there are two ways by which men may be wanting in respect to me--first, in not doing honour sufficient to my son; and, secondly, in paying him the same honour as to me." be this as it will, the principles of arius begin to revive, not only in england, but in holland and poland. the celebrated sir isaac newton honoured this opinion so far as to countenance it. this philosopher thought that the unitarians argued more mathematically than we do. but the most sanguine stickler for arianism is the illustrious dr. clark. this man is rigidly virtuous, and of a mild disposition, is more fond of his tenets than desirous of propagating them, and absorbed so entirely in problems and calculations that he is a mere reasoning machine. it is he who wrote a book which is much esteemed and little understood, on the existence of god, and another, more intelligible, but pretty much contemned, on the truth of the christian religion. he never engaged in scholastic disputes, which our friend calls venerable trifles. he only published a work containing all the testimonies of the primitive ages for and against the unitarians, and leaves to the reader the counting of the voices and the liberty of forming a judgment. this book won the doctor a great number of partisans, and lost him the see of canterbury; but, in my humble opinion, he was out in his calculation, and had better have been primate of all england than merely an arian parson. you see that opinions are subject to revolutions as well as empires. arianism, after having triumphed during three centuries, and been forgot twelve, rises at last out of its own ashes; but it has chosen a very improper season to make its appearance in, the present age being quite cloyed with disputes and sects. the members of this sect are, besides, too few to be indulged the liberty of holding public assemblies, which, however, they will, doubtless, be permitted to do in case they spread considerably. but people are now so very cold with respect to all things of this kind, that there is little probability any new religion, or old one, that may be revived, will meet with favour. is it not whimsical enough that luther, calvin, and zuinglius, all of them wretched authors, should have founded sects which are now spread over a great part of europe, that mahomet, though so ignorant, should have given a religion to asia and africa, and that sir isaac newton, dr. clark, mr. locke, mr. le clerc, etc., the greatest philosophers, as well as the ablest writers of their ages, should scarcely have been able to raise a little flock, which even decreases daily. this it is to be born at a proper period of time. were cardinal de retz to return again into the world, neither his eloquence nor his intrigues would draw together ten women in paris. were oliver cromwell, he who beheaded his sovereign, and seized upon the kingly dignity, to rise from the dead, he would be a wealthy city trader, and no more. letter viii.--on the parliament the members of the english parliament are fond of comparing themselves to the old romans. not long since mr. shippen opened a speech in the house of commons with these words, "the majesty of the people of england would be wounded." the singularity of the expression occasioned a loud laugh; but this gentleman, so far from being disconcerted, repeated the same words with a resolute tone of voice, and the laugh ceased. in my opinion, the majesty of the people of england has nothing in common with that of the people of rome, much less is there any affinity between their governments. there is in london a senate, some of the members whereof are accused (doubtless very unjustly) of selling their voices on certain occasions, as was done in rome; this is the only resemblance. besides, the two nations appear to me quite opposite in character, with regard both to good and evil. the romans never knew the dreadful folly of religious wars, an abomination reserved for devout preachers of patience and humility. marius and sylla, caesar and pompey, anthony and augustus, did not draw their swords and set the world in a blaze merely to determine whether the flamen should wear his shirt over his robe, or his robe over his shirt, or whether the sacred chickens should eat and drink, or eat only, in order to take the augury. the english have hanged one another by law, and cut one another to pieces in pitched battles, for quarrels of as trifling a nature. the sects of the episcopalians and presbyterians quite distracted these very serious heads for a time. but i fancy they will hardly ever be so silly again, they seeming to be grown wiser at their own expense; and i do not perceive the least inclination in them to murder one another merely about syllogisms, as some zealots among them once did. but here follows a more essential difference between rome and england, which gives the advantage entirely to the latter--viz., that the civil wars of rome ended in slavery, and those of the english in liberty. the english are the only people upon earth who have been able to prescribe limits to the power of kings by resisting them; and who, by a series of struggles, have at last established that wise government where the prince is all-powerful to do good, and, at the same time, is restrained from committing evil; where the nobles are great without insolence, though there are no vassals; and where the people share in the government without confusion. the house of lords and that of the commons divide the legislative power under the king, but the romans had no such balance. the patricians and plebeians in rome were perpetually at variance, and there was no intermediate power to reconcile them. the roman senate, who were so unjustly, so criminally proud as not to suffer the plebeians to share with them in anything, could find no other artifice to keep the latter out of the administration than by employing them in foreign wars. they considered the plebeians as a wild beast, whom it behoved them to let loose upon their neighbours, for fear they should devour their masters. thus the greatest defect in the government of the romans raised them to be conquerors. by being unhappy at home, they triumphed over and possessed themselves of the world, till at last their divisions sunk them to slavery. the government of england will never rise to so exalted a pitch of glory, nor will its end be so fatal. the english are not fired with the splendid folly of making conquests, but would only prevent their neighbours from conquering. they are not only jealous of their own liberty, but even of that of other nations. the english were exasperated against louis xiv. for no other reason but because he was ambitious, and declared war against him merely out of levity, not from any interested motives. the english have doubtless purchased their liberties at a very high price, and waded through seas of blood to drown the idol of arbitrary power. other nations have been involved in as great calamities, and have shed as much blood; but then the blood they spilt in defence of their liberties only enslaved them the more. that which rises to a revolution in england is no more than a sedition in other countries. a city in spain, in barbary, or in turkey, takes up arms in defence of its privileges, when immediately it is stormed by mercenary troops, it is punished by executioners, and the rest of the nation kiss the chains they are loaded with. the french are of opinion that the government of this island is more tempestuous than the sea which surrounds it, which indeed is true; but then it is never so but when the king raises the storm--when he attempts to seize the ship of which he is only the chief pilot. the civil wars of france lasted longer, were more cruel, and productive of greater evils than those of england; but none of these civil wars had a wise and prudent liberty for their object. in the detestable reigns of charles ix. and henry iii. the whole affair was only whether the people should be slaves to the guises. with regard to the last war of paris, it deserves only to be hooted at. methinks i see a crowd of schoolboys rising up in arms against their master, and afterwards whipped for it. cardinal de retz, who was witty and brave (but to no purpose), rebellious without a cause, factious without design, and head of a defenceless party, caballed for caballing sake, and seemed to foment the civil war merely out of diversion. the parliament did not know what he intended, nor what he did not intend. he levied troops by act of parliament, and the next moment cashiered them. he threatened, he begged pardon; he set a price upon cardinal mazarin's head, and afterwards congratulated him in a public manner. our civil wars under charles vi. were bloody and cruel, those of the league execrable, and that of the frondeurs ridiculous. that for which the french chiefly reproach the english nation is the murder of king charles i., whom his subjects treated exactly as he would have treated them had his reign been prosperous. after all, consider on one side charles i., defeated in a pitched battle, imprisoned, tried, sentenced to die in westminster hall, and then beheaded. and on the other, the emperor henry vii., poisoned by his chaplain at his receiving the sacrament; henry iii. stabbed by a monk; thirty assassinations projected against henry iv., several of them put in execution, and the last bereaving that great monarch of his life. weigh, i say, all these wicked attempts, and then judge. letter ix.--on the government that mixture in the english government, that harmony between king, lords, and commons, did not always subsist. england was enslaved for a long series of years by the romans, the saxons, the danes, and the french successively. william the conqueror particularly, ruled them with a rod of iron. he disposed as absolutely of the lives and fortunes of his conquered subjects as an eastern monarch; and forbade, upon pain of death, the english either fire or candle in their houses after eight o'clock; whether was this to prevent their nocturnal meetings, or only to try, by an odd and whimsical prohibition, how far it was possible for one man to extend his power over his fellow-creatures. it is true, indeed, that the english had parliaments before and after william the conqueror, and they boast of them, as though these assemblies then called parliaments, composed of ecclesiastical tyrants and of plunderers entitled barons, had been the guardians of the public liberty and happiness. the barbarians who came from the shores of the baltic, and settled in the rest of europe, brought with them the form of government called states or parliaments, about which so much noise is made, and which are so little understood. kings, indeed, were not absolute in those days; but then the people were more wretched upon that very account, and more completely enslaved. the chiefs of these savages, who had laid waste france, italy, spain, and england, made themselves monarchs. their generals divided among themselves the several countries they had conquered, whence sprung those margraves, those peers, those barons, those petty tyrants, who often contested with their sovereigns for the spoils of whole nations. these were birds of prey fighting with an eagle for doves whose blood the victorious was to suck. every nation, instead of being governed by one master, was trampled upon by a hundred tyrants. the priests soon played a part among them. before this it had been the fate of the gauls, the germans, and the britons, to be always governed by their druids and the chiefs of their villages, an ancient kind of barons, not so tyrannical as their successors. these druids pretended to be mediators between god and man. they enacted laws, they fulminated their excommunications, and sentenced to death. the bishops succeeded, by insensible degrees, to their temporal authority in the goth and vandal government. the popes set themselves at their head, and armed with their briefs, their bulls, and reinforced by monks, they made even kings tremble, deposed and assassinated them at pleasure, and employed every artifice to draw into their own purses moneys from all parts of europe. the weak ina, one of the tyrants of the saxon heptarchy in england, was the first monarch who submitted, in his pilgrimage to rome, to pay st. peter's penny (equivalent very near to a french crown) for every house in his dominions. the whole island soon followed his example; england became insensibly one of the pope's provinces, and the holy father used to send from time to time his legates thither to levy exorbitant taxes. at last king john delivered up by a public instrument the kingdom of england to the pope, who had excommunicated him; but the barons, not finding their account in this resignation, dethroned the wretched king john and seated louis, father to st. louis, king of france, in his place. however, they were soon weary of their new monarch, and accordingly obliged him to return to france. whilst that the barons, the bishops, and the popes, all laid waste england, where all were for ruling the most numerous, the most useful, even the most virtuous, and consequently the most venerable part of mankind, consisting of those who study the laws and the sciences, of traders, of artificers, in a word, of all who were not tyrants--that is, those who are called the people: these, i say, were by them looked upon as so many animals beneath the dignity of the human species. the commons in those ages were far from sharing in the government, they being villains or peasants, whose labour, whose blood, were the property of their masters who entitled themselves the nobility. the major part of men in europe were at that time what they are to this day in several parts of the world--they were villains or bondsmen of lords--that is, a kind of cattle bought and sold with the land. many ages passed away before justice could be done to human nature--before mankind were conscious that it was abominable for many to sow, and but few reap. and was not france very happy, when the power and authority of those petty robbers was abolished by the lawful authority of kings and of the people? happily, in the violent shocks which the divisions between kings and the nobles gave to empires, the chains of nations were more or less heavy. liberty in england sprang from the quarrels of tyrants. the barons forced king john and king henry iii. to grant the famous magna charta, the chief design of which was indeed to make kings dependent on the lords; but then the rest of the nation were a little favoured in it, in order that they might join on proper occasions with their pretended masters. this great charter, which is considered as the sacred origin of the english liberties, shows in itself how little liberty was known. the title alone proves that the king thought he had a just right to be absolute; and that the barons, and even the clergy, forced him to give up the pretended right, for no other reason but because they were the most powerful. magna charta begins in this style: "we grant, of our own free will, the following privileges to the archbishops, bishops, priors, and barons of our kingdom," etc. the house of commons is not once mentioned in the articles of this charter--a proof that it did not yet exist, or that it existed without power. mention is therein made, by name, of the freemen of england--a melancholy proof that some were not so. it appears, by article xxxii., that these pretended freemen owed service to their lords. such a liberty as this was not many removes from slavery. by article xxi., the king ordains that his officers shall not henceforward seize upon, unless they pay for them, the horses and carts of freemen. the people considered this ordinance as a real liberty, though it was a greater tyranny. henry vii., that happy usurper and great politician, who pretended to love the barons, though he in reality hated and feared them, got their lands alienated. by this means the villains, afterwards acquiring riches by their industry, purchased the estates and country seats of the illustrious peers who had ruined themselves by their folly and extravagance, and all the lands got by insensible degrees into other hands. the power of the house of commons increased every day. the families of the ancient peers were at last extinct; and as peers only are properly noble in england, there would be no such thing in strictness of law as nobility in that island, had not the kings created new barons from time to time, and preserved the body of peers, once a terror to them, to oppose them to the commons, since become so formidable. all these new peers who compose the higher house receive nothing but their titles from the king, and very few of them have estates in those places whence they take their titles. one shall be duke of d-, though he has not a foot of land in dorsetshire; and another is earl of a village, though he scarce knows where it is situated. the peers have power, but it is only in the parliament house. there is no such thing here as _haute_, _moyenne_, and _basse justice_--that is, a power to judge in all matters civil and criminal; nor a right or privilege of hunting in the grounds of a citizen, who at the same time is not permitted to fire a gun in his own field. no one is exempted in this country from paying certain taxes because he is a nobleman or a priest. all duties and taxes are settled by the house of commons, whose power is greater than that of the peers, though inferior to it in dignity. the spiritual as well as temporal lords have the liberty to reject a money bill brought in by the commons; but they are not allowed to alter anything in it, and must either pass or throw it out without restriction. when the bill has passed the lords and is signed by the king, then the whole nation pays, every man in proportion to his revenue or estate, not according to his title, which would be absurd. there is no such thing as an arbitrary subsidy or poll-tax, but a real tax on the lands, of all which an estimate was made in the reign of the famous king william iii. the land-tax continues still upon the same foot, though the revenue of the lands is increased. thus no one is tyrannised over, and every one is easy. the feet of the peasants are not bruised by wooden shoes; they eat white bread, are well clothed, and are not afraid of increasing their stock of cattle, nor of tiling their houses, from any apprehension that their taxes will be raised the year following. the annual income of the estates of a great many commoners in england amounts to two hundred thousand livres, and yet these do not think it beneath them to plough the lands which enrich them, and on which they enjoy their liberty. letter x.--on trade as trade enriched the citizens in england, so it contributed to their freedom, and this freedom on the other side extended their commerce, whence arose the grandeur of the state. trade raised by insensible degrees the naval power, which gives the english a superiority over the seas, and they now are masters of very near two hundred ships of war. posterity will very probably be surprised to hear that an island whose only produce is a little lead, tin, fuller's-earth, and coarse wool, should become so powerful by its commerce, as to be able to send, in , three fleets at the same time to three different and far distanced parts of the globe. one before gibraltar, conquered and still possessed by the english; a second to portobello, to dispossess the king of spain of the treasures of the west indies; and a third into the baltic, to prevent the northern powers from coming to an engagement. at the time when louis xiv. made all italy tremble, and that his armies, which had already possessed themselves of savoy and piedmont, were upon the point of taking turin; prince eugene was obliged to march from the middle of germany in order to succour savoy. having no money, without which cities cannot be either taken or defended, he addressed himself to some english merchants. these, at an hour and half's warning, lent him five millions, whereby he was enabled to deliver turin, and to beat the french; after which he wrote the following short letter to the persons who had disbursed him the above-mentioned sums: "gentlemen, i have received your money, and flatter myself that i have laid it out to your satisfaction." such a circumstance as this raises a just pride in an english merchant, and makes him presume (not without some reason) to compare himself to a roman citizen; and, indeed, a peer's brother does not think traffic beneath him. when the lord townshend was minister of state, a brother of his was content to be a city merchant; and at the time that the earl of oxford governed great britain, a younger brother was no more than a factor in aleppo, where he chose to live, and where he died. this custom, which begins, however, to be laid aside, appears monstrous to germans, vainly puffed up with their extraction. these think it morally impossible that the son of an english peer should be no more than a rich and powerful citizen, for all are princes in germany. there have been thirty highnesses of the same name, all whose patrimony consisted only in their escutcheons and their pride. in france the title of marquis is given gratis to any one who will accept of it; and whosoever arrives at paris from the midst of the most remote provinces with money in his purse, and a name terminating in _ac_ or _ille_, may strut about, and cry, "such a man as i! a man of my rank and figure!" and may look down upon a trader with sovereign contempt; whilst the trader on the other side, by thus often hearing his profession treated so disdainfully, is fool enough to blush at it. however, i need not say which is most useful to a nation; a lord, powdered in the tip of the mode, who knows exactly at what o'clock the king rises and goes to bed, and who gives himself airs of grandeur and state, at the same time that he is acting the slave in the ante-chamber of a prime minister; or a merchant, who enriches his country, despatches orders from his counting- house to surat and grand cairo, and contributes to the well-being of the world. letter xi.--on inoculation it is inadvertently affirmed in the christian countries of europe that the english are fools and madmen. fools, because they give their children the small-pox to prevent their catching it; and madmen, because they wantonly communicate a certain and dreadful distemper to their children, merely to prevent an uncertain evil. the english, on the other side, call the rest of the europeans cowardly and unnatural. cowardly, because they are afraid of putting their children to a little pain; unnatural, because they expose them to die one time or other of the small- pox. but that the reader may be able to judge whether the english or those who differ from them in opinion are in the right, here follows the history of the famed inoculation, which is mentioned with so much dread in france. the circassian women have, from time immemorial, communicated the small- pox to their children when not above six months old by making an incision in the arm, and by putting into this incision a pustule, taken carefully from the body of another child. this pustule produces the same effect in the arm it is laid in as yeast in a piece of dough; it ferments, and diffuses through the whole mass of blood the qualities with which it is impregnated. the pustules of the child in whom the artificial small-pox has been thus inoculated are employed to communicate the same distemper to others. there is an almost perpetual circulation of it in circassia; and when unhappily the small-pox has quite left the country, the inhabitants of it are in as great trouble and perplexity as other nations when their harvest has fallen short. the circumstance that introduced a custom in circassia, which appears so singular to others, is nevertheless a cause common to all nations, i mean maternal tenderness and interest. the circassians are poor, and their daughters are beautiful, and indeed, it is in them they chiefly trade. they furnish with beauties the seraglios of the turkish sultan, of the persian sophy, and of all those who are wealthy enough to purchase and maintain such precious merchandise. these maidens are very honourably and virtuously instructed to fondle and caress men; are taught dances of a very polite and effeminate kind; and how to heighten by the most voluptuous artifices the pleasures of their disdainful masters for whom they are designed. these unhappy creatures repeat their lesson to their mothers, in the same manner as little girls among us repeat their catechism without understanding one word they say. now it often happened that, after a father and mother had taken the utmost care of the education of their children, they were frustrated of all their hopes in an instant. the small-pox getting into the family, one daughter died of it, another lost an eye, a third had a great nose at her recovery, and the unhappy parents were completely ruined. even, frequently, when the small-pox became epidemical, trade was suspended for several years, which thinned very considerably the seraglios of persia and turkey. a trading nation is always watchful over its own interests, and grasps at every discovery that may be of advantage to its commerce. the circassians observed that scarce one person in a thousand was ever attacked by a small-pox of a violent kind. that some, indeed, had this distemper very favourably three or four times, but never twice so as to prove fatal; in a word, that no one ever had it in a violent degree twice in his life. they observed farther, that when the small-pox is of the milder sort, and the pustules have only a tender, delicate skin to break through, they never leave the least scar in the face. from these natural observations they concluded, that in case an infant of six months or a year old should have a milder sort of small-pox, he would not die of it, would not be marked, nor be ever afflicted with it again. in order, therefore, to preserve the life and beauty of their children, the only thing remaining was to give them the small-pox in their infant years. this they did by inoculating in the body of a child a pustule taken from the most regular and at the same time the most favourable sort of small-pox that could be procured. the experiment could not possibly fail. the turks, who are people of good sense, soon adopted this custom, insomuch that at this time there is not a bassa in constantinople but communicates the small-pox to his children of both sexes immediately upon their being weaned. some pretend that the circassians borrowed this custom anciently from the arabians; but we shall leave the clearing up of this point of history to some learned benedictine, who will not fail to compile a great many folios on this subject, with the several proofs or authorities. all i have to say upon it is that, in the beginning of the reign of king george i., the lady wortley montague, a woman of as fine a genius, and endued with as great a strength of mind, as any of her sex in the british kingdoms, being with her husband, who was ambassador at the porte, made no scruple to communicate the small-pox to an infant of which she was delivered in constantinople. the chaplain represented to his lady, but to no purpose, that this was an unchristian operation, and therefore that it could succeed with none but infidels. however, it had the most happy effect upon the son of the lady wortley montague, who, at her return to england, communicated the experiment to the princess of wales, now queen of england. it must be confessed that this princess, abstracted from her crown and titles, was born to encourage the whole circle of arts, and to do good to mankind. she appears as an amiable philosopher on the throne, having never let slip one opportunity of improving the great talents she received from nature, nor of exerting her beneficence. it is she who, being informed that a daughter of milton was living, but in miserable circumstances, immediately sent her a considerable present. it is she who protects the learned father courayer. it is she who condescended to attempt a reconciliation between dr. clark and mr. leibnitz. the moment this princess heard of inoculation, she caused an experiment of it to be made on four criminals sentenced to die, and by that means preserved their lives doubly; for she not only saved them from the gallows, but by means of this artificial small-pox prevented their ever having that distemper in a natural way, with which they would very probably have been attacked one time or other, and might have died of in a more advanced age. the princess being assured of the usefulness of this operation, caused her own children to be inoculated. a great part of the kingdom followed her example, and since that time ten thousand children, at least, of persons of condition owe in this manner their lives to her majesty and to the lady wortley montague; and as many of the fair sex are obliged to them for their beauty. upon a general calculation, threescore persons in every hundred have the small-pox. of these threescore, twenty die of it in the most favourable season of life, and as many more wear the disagreeable remains of it in their faces so long as they live. thus, a fifth part of mankind either die or are disfigured by this distemper. but it does not prove fatal to so much as one among those who are inoculated in turkey or in england, unless the patient be infirm, or would have died had not the experiment been made upon him. besides, no one is disfigured, no one has the small- pox a second time, if the inoculation was perfect. it is therefore certain, that had the lady of some french ambassador brought this secret from constantinople to paris, the nation would have been for ever obliged to her. then the duke de villequier, father to the duke d'aumont, who enjoys the most vigorous constitution, and is the healthiest man in france, would not have been cut off in the flower of his age. the prince of soubise, happy in the finest flush of health, would not have been snatched away at five-and-twenty, nor the dauphin, grandfather to louis xv., have been laid in his grave in his fiftieth year. twenty thousand persons whom the small-pox swept away at paris in would have been alive at this time. but are not the french fond of life, and is beauty so inconsiderable an advantage as to be disregarded by the ladies? it must be confessed that we are an odd kind of people. perhaps our nation will imitate ten years hence this practice of the english, if the clergy and the physicians will but give them leave to do it; or possibly our countrymen may introduce inoculation three months hence in france out of mere whim, in case the english should discontinue it through fickleness. i am informed that the chinese have practised inoculation these hundred years, a circumstance that argues very much in its favour, since they are thought to be the wisest and best governed people in the world. the chinese, indeed, do not communicate this distemper by inoculation, but at the nose, in the same manner as we take snuff. this is a more agreeable way, but then it produces the like effects; and proves at the same time that had inoculation been practised in france it would have saved the lives of thousands. letter xii.--on the lord bacon not long since the trite and frivolous question following was debated in a very polite and learned company, viz., who was the greatest man, caesar, alexander, tamerlane, cromwell, &c.? somebody answered that sir isaac newton excelled them all. the gentleman's assertion was very just; for if true greatness consists in having received from heaven a mighty genius, and in having employed it to enlighten our own mind and that of others, a man like sir isaac newton, whose equal is hardly found in a thousand years, is the truly great man. and those politicians and conquerors (and all ages produce some) were generally so many illustrious wicked men. that man claims our respect who commands over the minds of the rest of the world by the force of truth, not those who enslave their fellow-creatures: he who is acquainted with the universe, not they who deface it. since, therefore, you desire me to give you an account of the famous personages whom england has given birth to, i shall begin with lord bacon, mr. locke, sir isaac newton, &c. afterwards the warriors and ministers of state shall come in their order. i must begin with the celebrated viscount verulam, known in europe by the name of bacon, which was that of his family. his father had been lord keeper, and himself was a great many years lord chancellor under king james i. nevertheless, amidst the intrigues of a court, and the affairs of his exalted employment, which alone were enough to engross his whole time, he yet found so much leisure for study as to make himself a great philosopher, a good historian, and an elegant writer; and a still more surprising circumstance is that he lived in an age in which the art of writing justly and elegantly was little known, much less true philosophy. lord bacon, as is the fate of man, was more esteemed after his death than in his lifetime. his enemies were in the british court, and his admirers were foreigners. when the marquis d'effiat attended in england upon the princess henrietta maria, daughter to henry iv., whom king charles i. had married, that minister went and visited the lord bacon, who, being at that time sick in his bed, received him with the curtains shut close. "you resemble the angels," says the marquis to him; "we hear those beings spoken of perpetually, and we believe them superior to men, but are never allowed the consolation to see them." you know that this great man was accused of a crime very unbecoming a philosopher: i mean bribery and extortion. you know that he was sentenced by the house of lords to pay a fine of about four hundred thousand french livres, to lose his peerage and his dignity of chancellor; but in the present age the english revere his memory to such a degree, that they will scarce allow him to have been guilty. in case you should ask what are my thoughts on this head, i shall answer you in the words which i heard the lord bolingbroke use on another occasion. several gentlemen were speaking, in his company, of the avarice with which the late duke of marlborough had been charged, some examples whereof being given, the lord bolingbroke was appealed to (who, having been in the opposite party, might perhaps, without the imputation of indecency, have been allowed to clear up that matter): "he was so great a man," replied his lordship, "that i have forgot his vices." i shall therefore confine myself to those things which so justly gained lord bacon the esteem of all europe. the most singular and the best of all his pieces is that which, at this time, is the most useless and the least read, i mean his _novum scientiarum organum_. this is the scaffold with which the new philosophy was raised; and when the edifice was built, part of it at least, the scaffold was no longer of service. the lord bacon was not yet acquainted with nature, but then he knew, and pointed out, the several paths that lead to it. he had despised in his younger years the thing called philosophy in the universities, and did all that lay in his power to prevent those societies of men instituted to improve human reason from depraving it by their quiddities, their horrors of the vacuum, their substantial forms, and all those impertinent terms which not only ignorance had rendered venerable, but which had been made sacred by their being ridiculously blended with religion. he is the father of experimental philosophy. it must, indeed, be confessed that very surprising secrets had been found out before his time--the sea-compass, printing, engraving on copper plates, oil-painting, looking-glasses; the art of restoring, in some measure, old men to their sight by spectacles; gunpowder, &c., had been discovered. a new world had been fought for, found, and conquered. would not one suppose that these sublime discoveries had been made by the greatest philosophers, and in ages much more enlightened than the present? but it was far otherwise; all these great changes happened in the most stupid and barbarous times. chance only gave birth to most of those inventions; and it is very probable that what is called chance contributed very much to the discovery of america; at least, it has been always thought that christopher columbus undertook his voyage merely on the relation of a captain of a ship which a storm had driven as far westward as the caribbean islands. be this as it will, men had sailed round the world, and could destroy cities by an artificial thunder more dreadful than the real one; but, then, they were not acquainted with the circulation of the blood, the weight of the air, the laws of motion, light, the number of our planets, &c. and a man who maintained a thesis on aristotle's "categories," on the universals _a parte rei_, or such-like nonsense, was looked upon as a prodigy. the most astonishing, the most useful inventions, are not those which reflect the greatest honour on the human mind. it is to a mechanical instinct, which is found in many men, and not to true philosophy, that most arts owe their origin. the discovery of fire, the art of making bread, of melting and preparing metals, of building houses, and the invention of the shuttle, are infinitely more beneficial to mankind than printing or the sea-compass: and yet these arts were invented by uncultivated, savage men. what a prodigious use the greeks and romans made afterwards of mechanics! nevertheless, they believed that there were crystal heavens, that the stars were small lamps which sometimes fell into the sea, and one of their greatest philosophers, after long researches, found that the stars were so many flints which had been detached from the earth. in a word, no one before the lord bacon was acquainted with experimental philosophy, nor with the several physical experiments which have been made since his time. scarce one of them but is hinted at in his work, and he himself had made several. he made a kind of pneumatic engine, by which he guessed the elasticity of the air. he approached, on all sides as it were, to the discovery of its weight, and had very near attained it, but some time after torricelli seized upon this truth. in a little time experimental philosophy began to be cultivated on a sudden in most parts of europe. it was a hidden treasure which the lord bacon had some notion of, and which all the philosophers, encouraged by his promises, endeavoured to dig up. but that which surprised me most was to read in his work, in express terms, the new attraction, the invention of which is ascribed to sir isaac newton. we must search, says lord bacon, whether there may not be a kind of magnetic power which operates between the earth and heavy bodies, between the moon and the ocean, between the planets, &c. in another place he says either heavy bodies must be carried towards the centre of the earth, or must be reciprocally attracted by it; and in the latter case it is evident that the nearer bodies, in their falling, draw towards the earth, the stronger they will attract one another. we must, says he, make an experiment to see whether the same clock will go faster on the top of a mountain or at the bottom of a mine; whether the strength of the weights decreases on the mountain and increases in the mine. it is probable that the earth has a true attractive power. this forerunner in philosophy was also an elegant writer, an historian, and a wit. his moral essays are greatly esteemed, but they were drawn up in the view of instructing rather than of pleasing; and, as they are not a satire upon mankind, like rochefoucauld's "maxims," nor written upon a sceptical plan, like montaigne's "essays," they are not so much read as those two ingenious authors. his history of henry vii. was looked upon as a masterpiece, but how is it possible that some persons can presume to compare so little a work with the history of our illustrious thuanus? speaking about the famous impostor perkin, son to a converted jew, who assumed boldly the name and title of richard iv., king of england, at the instigation of the duchess of burgundy, and who disputed the crown with henry vii., the lord bacon writes as follows:-- "at this time the king began again to be haunted with sprites, by the magic and curious arts of the lady margaret, who raised up the ghost of richard, duke of york, second son to king edward iv., to walk and vex the king. "after such time as she (margaret of burgundy) thought he (perkin warbeck) was perfect in his lesson, she began to cast with herself from what coast this blazing star should first appear, and at what time it must be upon the horizon of ireland; for there had the like meteor strong influence before." methinks our sagacious thuanus does not give in to such fustian, which formerly was looked upon as sublime, but in this age is justly called nonsense. letter xiii.--on mr. locke perhaps no man ever had a more judicious or more methodical genius, or was a more acute logician than mr. locke, and yet he was not deeply skilled in the mathematics. this great man could never subject himself to the tedious fatigue of calculations, nor to the dry pursuit of mathematical truths, which do not at first present any sensible objects to the mind; and no one has given better proofs than he, that it is possible for a man to have a geometrical head without the assistance of geometry. before his time, several great philosophers had declared, in the most positive terms, what the soul of man is; but as these absolutely knew nothing about it, they might very well be allowed to differ entirely in opinion from one another. in greece, the infant seat of arts and of errors, and where the grandeur as well as folly of the human mind went such prodigious lengths, the people used to reason about the soul in the very same manner as we do. the divine anaxagoras, in whose honour an altar was erected for his having taught mankind that the sun was greater than peloponnesus, that snow was black, and that the heavens were of stone, affirmed that the soul was an aerial spirit, but at the same time immortal. diogenes (not he who was a cynical philosopher after having coined base money) declared that the soul was a portion of the substance of god: an idea which we must confess was very sublime. epicurus maintained that it was composed of parts in the same manner as the body. aristotle, who has been explained a thousand ways, because he is unintelligible, was of opinion, according to some of his disciples, that the understanding in all men is one and the same substance. the divine plato, master of the divine aristotle,--and the divine socrates, master of the divine plato--used to say that the soul was corporeal and eternal. no doubt but the demon of socrates had instructed him in the nature of it. some people, indeed, pretend that a man who boasted his being attended by a familiar genius must infallibly be either a knave or a madman, but this kind of people are seldom satisfied with anything but reason. with regard to the fathers of the church, several in the primitive ages believed that the soul was human, and the angels and god corporeal. men naturally improve upon every system. st. bernard, as father mabillon confesses, taught that the soul after death does not see god in the celestial regions, but converses with christ's human nature only. however, he was not believed this time on his bare word; the adventure of the crusade having a little sunk the credit of his oracles. afterwards a thousand schoolmen arose, such as the irrefragable doctor, the subtile doctor, the angelic doctor, the seraphic doctor, and the cherubic doctor, who were all sure that they had a very clear and distinct idea of the soul, and yet wrote in such a manner, that one would conclude they were resolved no one should understand a word in their writings. our descartes, born to discover the errors of antiquity, and at the same time to substitute his own, and hurried away by that systematic spirit which throws a cloud over the minds of the greatest men, thought he had demonstrated that the soul is the same thing as thought, in the same manner as matter, in his opinion, is the same as extension. he asserted, that man thinks eternally, and that the soul, at its coming into the body, is informed with the whole series of metaphysical notions: knowing god, infinite space, possessing all abstract ideas--in a word, completely endued with the most sublime lights, which it unhappily forgets at its issuing from the womb. father malebranche, in his sublime illusions, not only admitted innate ideas, but did not doubt of our living wholly in god, and that god is, as it were, our soul. such a multitude of reasoners having written the romance of the soul, a sage at last arose, who gave, with an air of the greatest modesty, the history of it. mr. locke has displayed the human soul in the same manner as an excellent anatomist explains the springs of the human body. he everywhere takes the light of physics for his guide. he sometimes presumes to speak affirmatively, but then he presumes also to doubt. instead of concluding at once what we know not, he examines gradually what we would know. he takes an infant at the instant of his birth; he traces, step by step, the progress of his understanding; examines what things he has in common with beasts, and what he possesses above them. above all, he consults himself: the being conscious that he himself thinks. "i shall leave," says he, "to those who know more of this matter than myself, the examining whether the soul exists before or after the organisation of our bodies. but i confess that it is my lot to be animated with one of those heavy souls which do not think always; and i am even so unhappy as not to conceive that it is more necessary the soul should think perpetually than that bodies should be for ever in motion." with regard to myself, i shall boast that i have the honour to be as stupid in this particular as mr. locke. no one shall ever make me believe that i think always: and i am as little inclined as he could be to fancy that some weeks after i was conceived i was a very learned soul; knowing at that time a thousand things which i forgot at my birth; and possessing when in the womb (though to no manner of purpose) knowledge which i lost the instant i had occasion for it; and which i have never since been able to recover perfectly. mr. locke, after having destroyed innate ideas; after having fully renounced the vanity of believing that we think always; after having laid down, from the most solid principles, that ideas enter the mind through the senses; having examined our simple and complex ideas; having traced the human mind through its several operations; having shown that all the languages in the world are imperfect, and the great abuse that is made of words every moment, he at last comes to consider the extent or rather the narrow limits of human knowledge. it was in this chapter he presumed to advance, but very modestly, the following words: "we shall, perhaps, never be capable of knowing whether a being, purely material, thinks or not." this sage assertion was, by more divines than one, looked upon as a scandalous declaration that the soul is material and mortal. some englishmen, devout after their way, sounded an alarm. the superstitious are the same in society as cowards in an army; they themselves are seized with a panic fear, and communicate it to others. it was loudly exclaimed that mr. locke intended to destroy religion; nevertheless, religion had nothing to do in the affair, it being a question purely philosophical, altogether independent of faith and revelation. mr. locke's opponents needed but to examine, calmly and impartially, whether the declaring that matter can think, implies a contradiction; and whether god is able to communicate thought to matter. but divines are too apt to begin their declarations with saying that god is offended when people differ from them in opinion; in which they too much resemble the bad poets, who used to declare publicly that boileau spake irreverently of louis xiv., because he ridiculed their stupid productions. bishop stillingfleet got the reputation of a calm and unprejudiced divine because he did not expressly make use of injurious terms in his dispute with mr. locke. that divine entered the lists against him, but was defeated; for he argued as a schoolman, and locke as a philosopher, who was perfectly acquainted with the strong as well as the weak side of the human mind, and who fought with weapons whose temper he knew. if i might presume to give my opinion on so delicate a subject after mr. locke, i would say, that men have long disputed on the nature and the immortality of the soul. with regard to its immortality, it is impossible to give a demonstration of it, since its nature is still the subject of controversy; which, however, must be thoroughly understood before a person can be able to determine whether it be immortal or not. human reason is so little able, merely by its own strength, to demonstrate the immortality of the soul, that it was absolutely necessary religion should reveal it to us. it is of advantage to society in general, that mankind should believe the soul to be immortal; faith commands us to do this; nothing more is required, and the matter is cleared up at once. but it is otherwise with respect to its nature; it is of little importance to religion, which only requires the soul to be virtuous, whatever substance it may be made of. it is a clock which is given us to regulate, but the artist has not told us of what materials the spring of this chock is composed. i am a body, and, i think, that's all i know of the matter. shall i ascribe to an unknown cause, what i can so easily impute to the only second cause i am acquainted with? here all the school philosophers interrupt me with their arguments, and declare that there is only extension and solidity in bodies, and that there they can have nothing but motion and figure. now motion, figure, extension and solidity cannot form a thought, and consequently the soul cannot be matter. all this so often repeated mighty series of reasoning, amounts to no more than this: i am absolutely ignorant what matter is; i guess, but imperfectly, some properties of it; now i absolutely cannot tell whether these properties may be joined to thought. as i therefore know nothing, i maintain positively that matter cannot think. in this manner do the schools reason. mr. locke addressed these gentlemen in the candid, sincere manner following: at least confess yourselves to be as ignorant as i. neither your imaginations nor mine are able to comprehend in what manner a body is susceptible of ideas; and do you conceive better in what manner a substance, of what kind soever, is susceptible of them? as you cannot comprehend either matter or spirit, why will you presume to assert anything? the superstitious man comes afterwards and declares, that all those must be burnt for the good of their souls, who so much as suspect that it is possible for the body to think without any foreign assistance. but what would these people say should they themselves be proved irreligious? and indeed, what man can presume to assert, without being guilty at the same time of the greatest impiety, that it is impossible for the creator to form matter with thought and sensation? consider only, i beg you, what a dilemma you bring yourselves into, you who confine in this manner the power of the creator. beasts have the same organs, the same sensations, the same perceptions as we; they have memory, and combine certain ideas. in case it was not in the power of god to animate matter, and inform it with sensation, the consequence would be, either that beasts are mere machines, or that they have a spiritual soul. methinks it is clearly evident that beasts cannot be mere machines, which i prove thus. god has given to them the very same organs of sensation as to us: if therefore they have no sensation, god has created a useless thing; now according to your own confession god does nothing in vain; he therefore did not create so many organs of sensation, merely for them to be uninformed with this faculty; consequently beasts are not mere machines. beasts, according to your assertion, cannot be animated with a spiritual soul; you will, therefore, in spite of yourself, be reduced to this only assertion, viz., that god has endued the organs of beasts, who are mere matter, with the faculties of sensation and perception, which you call instinct in them. but why may not god, if he pleases, communicate to our more delicate organs, that faculty of feeling, perceiving, and thinking, which we call human reason? to whatever side you turn, you are forced to acknowledge your own ignorance, and the boundless power of the creator. exclaim therefore no more against the sage, the modest philosophy of mr. locke, which so far from interfering with religion, would be of use to demonstrate the truth of it, in case religion wanted any such support. for what philosophy can be of a more religious nature than that, which affirming nothing but what it conceives clearly, and conscious of its own weakness, declares that we must always have recourse to god in our examining of the first principles? besides, we must not be apprehensive that any philosophical opinion will ever prejudice the religion of a country. though our demonstrations clash directly with our mysteries, that is nothing to the purpose, for the latter are not less revered upon that account by our christian philosophers, who know very well that the objects of reason and those of faith are of a very different nature. philosophers will never form a religious sect, the reason of which is, their writings are not calculated for the vulgar, and they themselves are free from enthusiasm. if we divide mankind into twenty parts, it will be found that nineteen of these consist of persons employed in manual labour, who will never know that such a man as mr. locke existed. in the remaining twentieth part how few are readers? and among such as are so, twenty amuse themselves with romances to one who studies philosophy. the thinking part of mankind is confined to a very small number, and these will never disturb the peace and tranquillity of the world. neither montaigne, locke, bayle, spinoza, hobbes, the lord shaftesbury, collins, nor toland lighted up the firebrand of discord in their countries; this has generally been the work of divines, who being at first puffed up with the ambition of becoming chiefs of a sect, soon grew very desirous of being at the head of a party. but what do i say? all the works of the modern philosophers put together will never make so much noise as even the dispute which arose among the franciscans, merely about the fashion of their sleeves and of their cowls. letter xiv.--on descartes and sir isaac newton a frenchman who arrives in london, will find philosophy, like everything else, very much changed there. he had left the world a plenum, and he now finds it a vacuum. at paris the universe is seen composed of vortices of subtile matter; but nothing like it is seen in london. in france, it is the pressure of the moon that causes the tides; but in england it is the sea that gravitates towards the moon; so that when you think that the moon should make it flood with us, those gentlemen fancy it should be ebb, which very unluckily cannot be proved. for to be able to do this, it is necessary the moon and the tides should have been inquired into at the very instant of the creation. you will observe farther, that the sun, which in france is said to have nothing to do in the affair, comes in here for very near a quarter of its assistance. according to your cartesians, everything is performed by an impulsion, of which we have very little notion; and according to sir isaac newton, it is by an attraction, the cause of which is as much unknown to us. at paris you imagine that the earth is shaped like a melon, or of an oblique figure; at london it has an oblate one. a cartesian declares that light exists in the air; but a newtonian asserts that it comes from the sun in six minutes and a half. the several operations of your chemistry are performed by acids, alkalies and subtile matter; but attraction prevails even in chemistry among the english. the very essence of things is totally changed. you neither are agreed upon the definition of the soul, nor on that of matter. descartes, as i observed in my last, maintains that the soul is the same thing with thought, and mr. locke has given a pretty good proof of the contrary. descartes asserts farther, that extension alone constitutes matter, but sir isaac adds solidity to it. how furiously contradictory are these opinions! "non nostrum inter vos tantas componere lites." virgil, eclog. iii. "'tis not for us to end such great disputes." this famous newton, this destroyer of the cartesian system, died in march, anno . his countrymen honoured him in his lifetime, and interred him as though he had been a king who had made his people happy. the english read with the highest satisfaction, and translated into their tongue, the elogium of sir isaac newton, which m. de fontenelle spoke in the academy of sciences. m. de fontenelle presides as judge over philosophers; and the english expected his decision, as a solemn declaration of the superiority of the english philosophy over that of the french. but when it was found that this gentleman had compared descartes to sir isaac, the whole royal society in london rose up in arms. so far from acquiescing with m. fontenelle's judgment, they criticised his discourse. and even several (who, however, were not the ablest philosophers in that body) were offended at the comparison; and for no other reason but because descartes was a frenchman. it must be confessed that these two great men differed very much in conduct, in fortune, and in philosophy. nature had indulged descartes with a shining and strong imagination, whence he became a very singular person both in private life and in his manner of reasoning. this imagination could not conceal itself even in his philosophical works, which are everywhere adorned with very shining, ingenious metaphors and figures. nature had almost made him a poet; and indeed he wrote a piece of poetry for the entertainment of christina, queen of sweden, which however was suppressed in honour to his memory. he embraced a military life for some time, and afterwards becoming a complete philosopher, he did not think the passion of love derogatory to his character. he had by his mistress a daughter called froncine, who died young, and was very much regretted by him. thus he experienced every passion incident to mankind. he was a long time of opinion that it would be necessary for him to fly from the society of his fellow creatures, and especially from his native country, in order to enjoy the happiness of cultivating his philosophical studies in full liberty. descartes was very right, for his contemporaries were not knowing enough to improve and enlighten his understanding, and were capable of little else than of giving him uneasiness. he left france purely to go in search of truth, which was then persecuted by the wretched philosophy of the schools. however, he found that reason was as much disguised and depraved in the universities of holland, into which he withdrew, as in his own country. for at the time that the french condemned the only propositions of his philosophy which were true, he was persecuted by the pretended philosophers of holland, who understood him no better; and who, having a nearer view of his glory, hated his person the more, so that he was obliged to leave utrecht. descartes was injuriously accused of being an atheist, the last refuge of religious scandal: and he who had employed all the sagacity and penetration of his genius, in searching for new proofs of the existence of a god, was suspected to believe there was no such being. such a persecution from all sides, must necessarily suppose a most exalted merit as well as a very distinguished reputation, and indeed he possessed both. reason at that time darted a ray upon the world through the gloom of the schools, and the prejudices of popular superstition. at last his name spread so universally, that the french were desirous of bringing him back into his native country by rewards, and accordingly offered him an annual pension of a thousand crowns. upon these hopes descartes returned to france; paid the fees of his patent, which was sold at that time, but no pension was settled upon him. thus disappointed, he returned to his solitude in north holland, where he again pursued the study of philosophy, whilst the great galileo, at fourscore years of age, was groaning in the prisons of the inquisition, only for having demonstrated the earth's motion. at last descartes was snatched from the world in the flower of his age at stockholm. his death was owing to a bad regimen, and he expired in the midst of some literati who were his enemies, and under the hands of a physician to whom he was odious. the progress of sir isaac newton's life was quite different. he lived happy, and very much honoured in his native country, to the age of fourscore and five years. it was his peculiar felicity, not only to be born in a country of liberty, but in an age when all scholastic impertinences were banished from the world. reason alone was cultivated, and mankind could only be his pupil, not his enemy. one very singular difference in the lives of these two great men is, that sir isaac, during the long course of years he enjoyed, was never sensible to any passion, was not subject to the common frailties of mankind, nor ever had any commerce with women--a circumstance which was assured me by the physician and surgeon who attended him in his last moments. we may admire sir isaac newton on this occasion, but then we must not censure descartes. the opinion that generally prevails in england with regard to these new philosophers is, that the latter was a dreamer, and the former a sage. very few people in england read descartes, whose works indeed are now useless. on the other side, but a small number peruse those of sir isaac, because to do this the student must be deeply skilled in the mathematics, otherwise those works will be unintelligible to him. but notwithstanding this, these great men are the subject of everyone's discourse. sir isaac newton is allowed every advantage, whilst descartes is not indulged a single one. according to some, it is to the former that we owe the discovery of a vacuum, that the air is a heavy body, and the invention of telescopes. in a word, sir isaac newton is here as the hercules of fabulous story, to whom the ignorant ascribed all the feats of ancient heroes. in a critique that was made in london on mr. de fontenelle's discourse, the writer presumed to assert that descartes was not a great geometrician. those who make such a declaration may justly be reproached with flying in their master's face. descartes extended the limits of geometry as far beyond the place where he found them, as sir isaac did after him. the former first taught the method of expressing curves by equations. this geometry which, thanks to him for it, is now grown common, was so abstruse in his time, that not so much as one professor would undertake to explain it; and schotten in holland, and format in france, were the only men who understood it. he applied this geometrical and inventive genius to dioptrics, which, when treated of by him, became a new art. and if he was mistaken in some things, the reason of that is, a man who discovers a new tract of land cannot at once know all the properties of the soil. those who come after him, and make these lands fruitful, are at least obliged to him for the discovery. i will not deny but that there are innumerable errors in the rest of descartes' works. geometry was a guide he himself had in some measure fashioned, which would have conducted him safely through the several paths of natural philosophy. nevertheless, he at last abandoned this guide, and gave entirely into the humour of forming hypotheses; and then philosophy was no more than an ingenious romance, fit only to amuse the ignorant. he was mistaken in the nature of the soul, in the proofs of the existence of a god, in matter, in the laws of motion, and in the nature of light. he admitted innate ideas, he invented new elements, he created a world; he made man according to his own fancy; and it is justly said, that the man of descartes is, in fact, that of descartes only, very different from the real one. he pushed his metaphysical errors so far, as to declare that two and two make four for no other reason but because god would have it so. however, it will not be making him too great a compliment if we affirm that he was valuable even in his mistakes. he deceived himself; but then it was at least in a methodical way. he destroyed all the absurd chimeras with which youth had been infatuated for two thousand years. he taught his contemporaries how to reason, and enabled them to employ his own weapons against himself. if descartes did not pay in good money, he however did great service in crying down that of a base alloy. i indeed believe that very few will presume to compare his philosophy in any respect with that of sir isaac newton. the former is an essay, the latter a masterpiece. but then the man who first brought us to the path of truth, was perhaps as great a genius as he who afterwards conducted us through it. descartes gave sight to the blind. these saw the errors of antiquity and of the sciences. the path he struck out is since become boundless. rohault's little work was, during some years, a complete system of physics; but now all the transactions of the several academies in europe put together do not form so much as the beginning of a system. in fathoming this abyss no bottom has been found. we are now to examine what discoveries sir isaac newton has made in it. letter xv.--on attraction the discoveries which gained sir isaac newton so universal a reputation, relate to the system of the world, to light, to geometrical infinities; and, lastly, to chronology, with which he used to amuse himself after the fatigue of his severer studies. i will now acquaint you (without prolixity if possible) with the few things i have been able to comprehend of all these sublime ideas. with regard to the system of our world, disputes were a long time maintained, on the cause that turns the planets, and keeps them in their orbits: and on those causes which make all bodies here below descend towards the surface of the earth. the system of descartes, explained and improved since his time, seemed to give a plausible reason for all those phenomena; and this reason seemed more just, as it is simple and intelligible to all capacities. but in philosophy, a student ought to doubt of the things he fancies he understands too easily, as much as of those he does not understand. gravity, the falling of accelerated bodies on the earth, the revolution of the planets in their orbits, their rotations round their axis, all this is mere motion. now motion cannot perhaps be conceived any otherwise than by impulsion; therefore all those bodies must be impelled. but by what are they impelled? all space is full, it therefore is filled with a very subtile matter, since this is imperceptible to us; this matter goes from west to east, since all the planets are carried from west to east. thus from hypothesis to hypothesis, from one appearance to another, philosophers have imagined a vast whirlpool of subtile matter, in which the planets are carried round the sun: they also have created another particular vortex which floats in the great one, and which turns daily round the planets. when all this is done, it is pretended that gravity depends on this diurnal motion; for, say these, the velocity of the subtile matter that turns round our little vortex, must be seventeen times more rapid than that of the earth; or, in case its velocity is seventeen times greater than that of the earth, its centrifugal force must be vastly greater, and consequently impel all bodies towards the earth. this is the cause of gravity, according to the cartesian system. but the theorist, before he calculated the centrifugal force and velocity of the subtile matter, should first have been certain that it existed. sir isaac newton, seems to have destroyed all these great and little vortices, both that which carries the planets round the sun, as well as the other which supposes every planet to turn on its own axis. first, with regard to the pretended little vortex of the earth, it is demonstrated that it must lose its motion by insensible degrees; it is demonstrated, that if the earth swims in a fluid, its density must be equal to that of the earth; and in case its density be the same, all the bodies we endeavour to move must meet with an insuperable resistance. with regard to the great vortices, they are still more chimerical, and it is impossible to make them agree with kepler's law, the truth of which has been demonstrated. sir isaac shows, that the revolution of the fluid in which jupiter is supposed to be carried, is not the same with regard to the revolution of the fluid of the earth, as the revolution of jupiter with respect to that of the earth. he proves, that as the planets make their revolutions in ellipses, and consequently being at a much greater distance one from the other in their aphelia, and a little nearer in their perihelia; the earth's velocity, for instance, ought to be greater when it is nearer venus and mars, because the fluid that carries it along, being then more pressed, ought to have a greater motion; and yet it is even then that the earth's motion is slower. he proves that there is no such thing as a celestial matter which goes from west to east since the comets traverse those spaces, sometimes from east to west, and at other times from north to south. in fine, the better to resolve, if possible, every difficulty, he proves, and even by experiments, that it is impossible there should be a plenum; and brings back the vacuum, which aristotle and descartes had banished from the world. having by these and several other arguments destroyed the cartesian vortices, he despaired of ever being able to discover whether there is a secret principle in nature which, at the same time, is the cause of the motion of all celestial bodies, and that of gravity on the earth. but being retired in , upon account of the plague, to a solitude near cambridge; as he was walking one day in his garden, and saw some fruits fall from a tree, he fell into a profound meditation on that gravity, the cause of which had so long been sought, but in vain, by all the philosophers, whilst the vulgar think there is nothing mysterious in it. he said to himself; that from what height soever in our hemisphere, those bodies might descend, their fall would certainly be in the progression discovered by galileo; and the spaces they run through would be as the square of the times. why may not this power which causes heavy bodies to descend, and is the same without any sensible diminution at the remotest distance from the centre of the earth, or on the summits of the highest mountains, why, said sir isaac, may not this power extend as high as the moon? and in case its influence reaches so far, is it not very probable that this power retains it in its orbit, and determines its motion? but in case the moon obeys this principle (whatever it be) may we not conclude very naturally that the rest of the planets are equally subject to it? in case this power exists (which besides is proved) it must increase in an inverse ratio of the squares of the distances. all, therefore, that remains is, to examine how far a heavy body, which should fall upon the earth from a moderate height, would go; and how far in the same time, a body which should fall from the orbit of the moon, would descend. to find this, nothing is wanted but the measure of the earth, and the distance of the moon from it. thus sir isaac newton reasoned. but at that time the english had but a very imperfect measure of our globe, and depended on the uncertain supposition of mariners, who computed a degree to contain but sixty english miles, whereas it consists in reality of near seventy. as this false computation did not agree with the conclusions which sir isaac intended to draw from them, he laid aside this pursuit. a half-learned philosopher, remarkable only for his vanity, would have made the measure of the earth agree, anyhow, with his system. sir isaac, however, chose rather to quit the researches he was then engaged in. but after mr. picard had measured the earth exactly, by tracing that meridian which redounds so much to the honour of the french, sir isaac newton resumed his former reflections, and found his account in mr. picard's calculation. a circumstance which has always appeared wonderful to me, is that such sublime discoveries should have been made by the sole assistance of a quadrant and a little arithmetic. the circumference of the earth is , , feet. this, among other things, is necessary to prove the system of attraction. the instant we know the earth's circumference, and the distance of the moon, we know that of the moon's orbit, and the diameter of this orbit. the moon performs its revolution in that orbit in twenty-seven days, seven hours, forty-three minutes. it is demonstrated, that the moon in its mean motion makes an hundred and fourscore and seven thousand nine hundred and sixty feet (of paris) in a minute. it is likewise demonstrated, by a known theorem, that the central force which should make a body fall from the height of the moon, would make its velocity no more than fifteen paris feet in a minute of time. now, if the law by which bodies gravitate and attract one another in an inverse ratio to the squares of the distances be true, if the same power acts according to that law throughout all nature, it is evident that as the earth is sixty semi-diameters distant from the moon, a heavy body must necessarily fall (on the earth) fifteen feet in the first second, and fifty-four thousand feet in the first minute. now a heavy body falls, in reality, fifteen feet in the first second, and goes in the first minute fifty-four thousand feet, which number is the square of sixty multiplied by fifteen. bodies, therefore, gravitate in an inverse ratio of the squares of the distances; consequently, what causes gravity on earth, and keeps the moon in its orbit, is one and the same power; it being demonstrated that the moon gravitates on the earth, which is the centre of its particular motion, it is demonstrated that the earth and the moon gravitate on the sun which is the centre of their annual motion. the rest of the planets must be subject to this general law; and if this law exists, these planets must follow the laws which kepler discovered. all these laws, all these relations are indeed observed by the planets with the utmost exactness; therefore, the power of attraction causes all the planets to gravitate towards the sun, in like manner as the moon gravitates towards our globe. finally, as in all bodies re-action is equal to action, it is certain that the earth gravitates also towards the moon; and that the sun gravitates towards both. that every one of the satellites of saturn gravitates towards the other four, and the other four towards it; all five towards saturn, and saturn towards all. that it is the same with regard to jupiter; and that all these globes are attracted by the sun, which is reciprocally attracted by them. this power of gravitation acts proportionably to the quantity of matter in bodies, a truth which sir isaac has demonstrated by experiments. this new discovery has been of use to show that the sun (the centre of the planetary system) attracts them all in a direct ratio of their quantity of matter combined with their nearness. from hence sir isaac, rising by degrees to discoveries which seemed not to be formed for the human mind, is bold enough to compute the quantity of matter contained in the sun and in every planet; and in this manner shows, from the simple laws of mechanics, that every celestial globe ought necessarily to be where it is placed. his bare principle of the laws of gravitation accounts for all the apparent inequalities in the course of the celestial globes. the variations of the moon are a necessary consequence of those laws. moreover, the reason is evidently seen why the nodes of the moon perform their revolutions in nineteen years, and those of the earth in about twenty-six thousand. the several appearances observed in the tides are also a very simple effect of this attraction. the proximity of the moon, when at the full, and when it is new, and its distance in the quadratures or quarters, combined with the action of the sun, exhibit a sensible reason why the ocean swells and sinks. after having shown by his sublime theory the course and inequalities of the planets, he subjects comets to the same law. the orbit of these fires (unknown for so great a series of years), which was the terror of mankind and the rock against which philosophy split, placed by aristotle below the moon, and sent back by descartes above the sphere of saturn, is at last placed in its proper seat by sir isaac newton. he proves that comets are solid bodies which move in the sphere of the sun's activity, and that they describe an ellipsis so very eccentric, and so near to parabolas, that certain comets must take up above five hundred years in their revolution. the learned dr. halley is of opinion that the comet seen in is the same which appeared in julius caesar's time. this shows more than any other that comets are hard, opaque bodies; for it descended so near to the sun, as to come within a sixth part of the diameter of this planet from it, and consequently might have contracted a degree of heat two thousand times stronger than that of red-hot iron; and would have been soon dispersed in vapour, had it not been a firm, dense body. the guessing the course of comets began then to be very much in vogue. the celebrated bernoulli concluded by his system that the famous comet of would appear again the th of may, . not a single astronomer in europe went to bed that night. however, they needed not to have broke their rest, for the famous comet never appeared. there is at least more cunning, if not more certainty, in fixing its return to so remote a distance as five hundred and seventy-five years. as to mr. whiston, he affirmed very seriously that in the time of the deluge a comet overflowed the terrestrial globe. and he was so unreasonable as to wonder that people laughed at him for making such an assertion. the ancients were almost in the same way of thinking with mr. whiston, and fancied that comets were always the forerunners of some great calamity which was to befall mankind. sir isaac newton, on the contrary, suspected that they are very beneficent, and that vapours exhale from them merely to nourish and vivify the planets, which imbibe in their course the several particles the sun has detached from the comets, an opinion which, at least, is more probable than the former. but this is not all. if this power of gravitation or attraction acts on all the celestial globes, it acts undoubtedly on the several parts of these globes. for in case bodies attract one another in proportion to the quantity of matter contained in them, it can only be in proportion to the quantity of their parts; and if this power is found in the whole, it is undoubtedly in the half; in the quarters in the eighth part, and so on in _infinitum_. this is attraction, the great spring by which all nature is moved. sir isaac newton, after having demonstrated the existence of this principle, plainly foresaw that its very name would offend; and, therefore, this philosopher, in more places than one of his books, gives the reader some caution about it. he bids him beware of confounding this name with what the ancients called occult qualities, but to be satisfied with knowing that there is in all bodies a central force, which acts to the utmost limits of the universe, according to the invariable laws of mechanics. it is surprising, after the solemn protestations sir isaac made, that such eminent men as mr. sorin and mr. de fontenelle should have imputed to this great philosopher the verbal and chimerical way of reasoning of the aristotelians; mr. sorin in the memoirs of the academy of , and mr. de fontenelle in the very eulogium of sir isaac newton. most of the french (the learned and others) have repeated this reproach. these are for ever crying out, "why did he not employ the word _impulsion_, which is so well understood, rather than that of _attraction_, which is unintelligible?" sir isaac might have answered these critics thus:--"first, you have as imperfect an idea of the word impulsion as of that of attraction; and in case you cannot conceive how one body tends towards the centre of another body, neither can you conceive by what power one body can impel another. "secondly, i could not admit of impulsion; for to do this i must have known that a celestial matter was the agent. but so far from knowing that there is any such matter, i have proved it to be merely imaginary. "thirdly, i use the word attraction for no other reason but to express an effect which i discovered in nature--a certain and indisputable effect of an unknown principle--a quality inherent in matter, the cause of which persons of greater abilities than i can pretend to may, if they can, find out." "what have you, then, taught us?" will these people say further; "and to what purpose are so many calculations to tell us what you yourself do not comprehend?" "i have taught you," may sir isaac rejoin, "that all bodies gravitate towards one another in proportion to their quantity of matter; that these central forces alone keep the planets and comets in their orbits, and cause them to move in the proportion before set down. i demonstrate to you that it is impossible there should be any other cause which keeps the planets in their orbits than that general phenomenon of gravity. for heavy bodies fall on the earth according to the proportion demonstrated of central forces; and the planets finishing their course according to these same proportions, in case there were another power that acted upon all those bodies, it would either increase their velocity or change their direction. now, not one of those bodies ever has a single degree of motion or velocity, or has any direction but what is demonstrated to be the effect of the central forces. consequently it is impossible there should be any other principle." give me leave once more to introduce sir isaac speaking. shall he not be allowed to say? "my case and that of the ancients is very different. these saw, for instance, water ascend in pumps, and said, 'the water rises because it abhors a vacuum.' but with regard to myself; i am in the case of a man who should have first observed that water ascends in pumps, but should leave others to explain the cause of this effect. the anatomist, who first declared that the motion of the arm is owing to the contraction of the muscles, taught mankind an indisputable truth. but are they less obliged to him because he did not know the reason why the muscles contract? the cause of the elasticity of the air is unknown, but he who first discovered this spring performed a very signal service to natural philosophy. the spring that i discovered was more hidden and more universal, and for that very reason mankind ought to thank me the more. i have discovered a new property of matter--one of the secrets of the creator--and have calculated and discovered the effects of it. after this, shall people quarrel with me about the name i give it?" vortices may be called an occult quality, because their existence was never proved. attraction, on the contrary, is a real thing, because its effects are demonstrated, and the proportions of it are calculated. the cause of this cause is among the _arcana_ of the almighty. "precedes huc, et non amplius." (thus far shalt thou go, and no farther.) letter xvi.--on sir isaac newton's optics the philosophers of the last age found out a new universe; and a circumstance which made its discovery more difficult was that no one had so much as suspected its existence. the most sage and judicious were of opinion that it was a frantic rashness to dare so much as to imagine that it was possible to guess the laws by which the celestial bodies move and the manner how light acts. galileo, by his astronomical discoveries, kepler, by his calculation, descartes (at least, in his dioptrics), and sir isaac newton, in all his works, severally saw the mechanism of the springs of the world. the geometricians have subjected infinity to the laws of calculation. the circulation of the blood in animals, and of the sap in vegetables, have changed the face of nature with regard to us. a new kind of existence has been given to bodies in the air-pump. by the assistance of telescopes bodies have been brought nearer to one another. finally, the several discoveries which sir isaac newton has made on light are equal to the boldest things which the curiosity of man could expect after so many philosophical novelties. till antonio de dominis the rainbow was considered as an inexplicable miracle. this philosopher guessed that it was a necessary effect of the sun and rain. descartes gained immortal fame by his mathematical explication of this so natural a phenomenon. he calculated the reflections and refractions of light in drops of rain. and his sagacity on this occasion was at that time looked upon as next to divine. but what would he have said had it been proved to him that he was mistaken in the nature of light; that he had not the least reason to maintain that it is a globular body? that it is false to assert that this matter, spreading itself through the whole, waits only to be projected forward by the sun, in order to be put in action, in like manner as a long staff acts at one end when pushed forward by the other. that light is certainly darted by the sun; in fine, that light is transmitted from the sun to the earth in about seven minutes, though a cannonball, which were not to lose any of its velocity, could not go that distance in less than twenty-five years. how great would have been his astonishment had he been told that light does not reflect directly by impinging against the solid parts of bodies, that bodies are not transparent when they have large pores, and that a man should arise who would demonstrate all these paradoxes, and anatomise a single ray of light with more dexterity than the ablest artist dissects a human body. this man is come. sir isaac newton has demonstrated to the eye, by the bare assistance of the prism, that light is a composition of coloured rays, which, being united, form white colour. a single ray is by him divided into seven, which all fall upon a piece of linen, or a sheet of white paper, in their order, one above the other, and at unequal distances. the first is red, the second orange, the third yellow, the fourth green, the fifth blue, the sixth indigo, the seventh a violet-purple. each of these rays, transmitted afterwards by a hundred other prisms, will never change the colour it bears; in like manner, as gold, when completely purged from its dross, will never change afterwards in the crucible. as a superabundant proof that each of these elementary rays has inherently in itself that which forms its colour to the eye, take a small piece of yellow wood, for instance, and set it in the ray of a red colour; this wood will instantly be tinged red. but set it in the ray of a green colour, it assumes a green colour, and so of all the rest. from what cause, therefore, do colours arise in nature? it is nothing but the disposition of bodies to reflect the rays of a certain order and to absorb all the rest. what, then, is this secret disposition? sir isaac newton demonstrates that it is nothing more than the density of the small constituent particles of which a body is composed. and how is this reflection performed? it was supposed to arise from the rebounding of the rays, in the same manner as a ball on the surface of a solid body. but this is a mistake, for sir isaac taught the astonished philosophers that bodies are opaque for no other reason but because their pores are large, that light reflects on our eyes from the very bosom of those pores, that the smaller the pores of a body are the more such a body is transparent. thus paper, which reflects the light when dry, transmits it when oiled, because the oil, by filling its pores, makes them much smaller. it is there that examining the vast porosity of bodies, every particle having its pores, and every particle of those particles having its own, he shows we are not certain that there is a cubic inch of solid matter in the universe, so far are we from conceiving what matter is. having thus divided, as it were, light into its elements, and carried the sagacity of his discoveries so far as to prove the method of distinguishing compound colours from such as are primitive, he shows that these elementary rays, separated by the prism, are ranged in their order for no other reason but because they are refracted in that very order; and it is this property (unknown till he discovered it) of breaking or splitting in this proportion; it is this unequal refraction of rays, this power of refracting the red less than the orange colour, &c., which he calls the different refrangibility. the most reflexible rays are the most refrangible, and from hence he evinces that the same power is the cause both of the reflection and refraction of light. but all these wonders are merely but the opening of his discoveries. he found out the secret to see the vibrations or fits of light which come and go incessantly, and which either transmit light or reflect it, according to the density of the parts they meet with. he has presumed to calculate the density of the particles of air necessary between two glasses, the one flat, the other convex on one side, set one upon the other, in order to operate such a transmission or reflection, or to form such and such a colour. from all these combinations he discovers the proportion in which light acts on bodies and bodies act on light. he saw light so perfectly, that he has determined to what degree of perfection the art of increasing it, and of assisting our eyes by telescopes, can be carried. descartes, from a noble confidence that was very excusable, considering how strongly he was fired at the first discoveries he made in an art which he almost first found out; descartes, i say, hoped to discover in the stars, by the assistance of telescopes, objects as small as those we discern upon the earth. but sir isaac has shown that dioptric telescopes cannot be brought to a greater perfection, because of that refraction, and of that very refrangibility, which at the same time that they bring objects nearer to us, scatter too much the elementary rays. he has calculated in these glasses the proportion of the scattering of the red and of the blue rays; and proceeding so far as to demonstrate things which were not supposed even to exist, he examines the inequalities which arise from the shape or figure of the glass, and that which arises from the refrangibility. he finds that the object glass of the telescope being convex on one side and flat on the other, in case the flat side be turned towards the object, the error which arises from the construction and position of the glass is above five thousand times less than the error which arises from the refrangibility; and, therefore, that the shape or figure of the glasses is not the cause why telescopes cannot be carried to a greater perfection, but arises wholly from the nature of light. for this reason he invented a telescope, which discovers objects by reflection, and not by refraction. telescopes of this new kind are very hard to make, and their use is not easy; but, according to the english, a reflective telescope of but five feet has the same effect as another of a hundred feet in length. letter xvii.--on infinites in geometry, and sir isaac newton's chronology the labyrinth and abyss of infinity is also a new course sir isaac newton has gone through, and we are obliged to him for the clue, by whose assistance we are enabled to trace its various windings. descartes got the start of him also in this astonishing invention. he advanced with mighty steps in his geometry, and was arrived at the very borders of infinity, but went no farther. dr. wallis, about the middle of the last century, was the first who reduced a fraction by a perpetual division to an infinite series. the lord brouncker employed this series to square the hyperbola. mercator published a demonstration of this quadrature; much about which time sir isaac newton, being then twenty-three years of age, had invented a general method, to perform on all geometrical curves what had just before been tried on the hyperbola. it is to this method of subjecting everywhere infinity to algebraical calculations, that the name is given of differential calculations or of fluxions and integral calculation. it is the art of numbering and measuring exactly a thing whose existence cannot be conceived. and, indeed, would you not imagine that a man laughed at you who should declare that there are lines infinitely great which form an angle infinitely little? that a right line, which is a right line so long as it is finite, by changing infinitely little its direction, becomes an infinite curve; and that a curve may become infinitely less than another curve? that there are infinite squares, infinite cubes, and infinites of infinites, all greater than one another, and the last but one of which is nothing in comparison of the last? all these things, which at first appear to be the utmost excess of frenzy, are in reality an effort of the subtlety and extent of the human mind, and the art of finding truths which till then had been unknown. this so bold edifice is even founded on simple ideas. the business is to measure the diagonal of a square, to give the area of a curve, to find the square root of a number, which has none in common arithmetic. after all, the imagination ought not to be startled any more at so many orders of infinites than at the so well-known proposition, viz., that curve lines may always be made to pass between a circle and a tangent; or at that other, namely, that matter is divisible in _infinitum_. these two truths have been demonstrated many years, and are no less incomprehensible than the things we have been speaking of. for many years the invention of this famous calculation was denied to sir isaac newton. in germany mr. leibnitz was considered as the inventor of the differences or moments, called fluxions, and mr. bernouilli claimed the integral calculus. however, sir isaac is now thought to have first made the discovery, and the other two have the glory of having once made the world doubt whether it was to be ascribed to him or them. thus some contested with dr. harvey the invention of the circulation of the blood, as others disputed with mr. perrault that of the circulation of the sap. hartsocher and leuwenhoek disputed with each other the honour of having first seen the _vermiculi_ of which mankind are formed. this hartsocher also contested with huygens the invention of a new method of calculating the distance of a fixed star. it is not yet known to what philosopher we owe the invention of the cycloid. be this as it will, it is by the help of this geometry of infinites that sir isaac newton attained to the most sublime discoveries. i am now to speak of another work, which, though more adapted to the capacity of the human mind, does nevertheless display some marks of that creative genius with which sir isaac newton was informed in all his researches. the work i mean is a chronology of a new kind, for what province soever he undertook he was sure to change the ideas and opinions received by the rest of men. accustomed to unravel and disentangle chaos, he was resolved to convey at least some light into that of the fables of antiquity which are blended and confounded with history, and fix an uncertain chronology. it is true that there is no family, city, or nation, but endeavours to remove its original as far backward as possible. besides, the first historians were the most negligent in setting down the eras: books were infinitely less common than they are at this time, and, consequently, authors being not so obnoxious to censure, they therefore imposed upon the world with greater impunity; and, as it is evident that these have related a great number of fictitious particulars, it is probable enough that they also gave us several false eras. it appeared in general to sir isaac that the world was five hundred years younger than chronologers declare it to be. he grounds his opinion on the ordinary course of nature, and on the observations which astronomers have made. by the course of nature we here understand the time that every generation of men lives upon the earth. the egyptians first employed this vague and uncertain method of calculating when they began to write the beginning of their history. these computed three hundred and forty-one generations from menes to sethon; and, having no fixed era, they supposed three generations to consist of a hundred years. in this manner they computed eleven thousand three hundred and forty years from menes's reign to that of sethon. the greeks before they counted by olympiads followed the method of the egyptians, and even gave a little more extent to generations, making each to consist of forty years. now, here, both the egyptians and the greeks made an erroneous computation. it is true, indeed, that, according to the usual course of nature, three generations last about a hundred and twenty years; but three reigns are far from taking up so many. it is very evident that mankind in general live longer than kings are found to reign, so that an author who should write a history in which there were no dates fixed, and should know that nine kings had reigned over a nation; such an historian would commit a great error should he allow three hundred years to these nine monarchs. every generation takes about thirty-six years; every reign is, one with the other, about twenty. thirty kings of england have swayed the sceptre from william the conqueror to george i., the years of whose reigns added together amount to six hundred and forty-eight years; which, being divided equally among the thirty kings, give to every one a reign of twenty-one years and a half very near. sixty-three kings of france have sat upon the throne; these have, one with another, reigned about twenty years each. this is the usual course of nature. the ancients, therefore, were mistaken when they supposed the durations in general of reigns to equal that of generations. they, therefore, allowed too great a number of years, and consequently some years must be subtracted from their computation. astronomical observations seem to have lent a still greater assistance to our philosopher. he appears to us stronger when he fights upon his own ground. you know that the earth, besides its annual motion which carries it round the sun from west to east in the space of a year, has also a singular revolution which was quite unknown till within these late years. its poles have a very slow retrograde motion from east to west, whence it happens that their position every day does not correspond exactly with the same point of the heavens. this difference, which is so insensible in a year, becomes pretty considerable in time; and in threescore and twelve years the difference is found to be of one degree, that is to say, the three hundred and sixtieth part of the circumference of the whole heaven. thus after seventy-two years the colure of the vernal equinox which passed through a fixed star, corresponds with another fixed star. hence it is that the sun, instead of being in that part of the heavens in which the ram was situated in the time of hipparchus, is found to correspond with that part of the heavens in which the bull was situated; and the twins are placed where the bull then stood. all the signs have changed their situation, and yet we still retain the same manner of speaking as the ancients did. in this age we say that the sun is in the ram in the spring, from the same principle of condescension that we say that the sun turns round. hipparchus was the first among the greeks who observed some change in the constellations with regard to the equinoxes, or rather who learnt it from the egyptians. philosophers ascribed this motion to the stars; for in those ages people were far from imagining such a revolution in the earth, which was supposed to be immovable in every respect. they therefore created a heaven in which they fixed the several stars, and gave this heaven a particular motion by which it was carried towards the east, whilst that all the stars seemed to perform their diurnal revolution from east to west. to this error they added a second of much greater consequence, by imagining that the pretended heaven of the fixed stars advanced one degree eastward every hundred years. in this manner they were no less mistaken in their astronomical calculation than in their system of natural philosophy. as for instance, an astronomer in that age would have said that the vernal equinox was in the time of such and such an observation, in such a sign, and in such a star. it has advanced two degrees of each since the time that observation was made to the present. now two degrees are equivalent to two hundred years; consequently the astronomer who made that observation lived just so many years before me. it is certain that an astronomer who had argued in this manner would have mistook just fifty-four years; hence it is that the ancients, who were doubly deceived, made their great year of the world, that is, the revolution of the whole heavens, to consist of thirty-six thousand years. but the moderns are sensible that this imaginary revolution of the heaven of the stars is nothing else than the revolution of the poles of the earth, which is performed in twenty-five thousand nine hundred years. it may be proper to observe transiently in this place, that sir isaac, by determining the figure of the earth, has very happily explained the cause of this revolution. all this being laid down, the only thing remaining to settle chronology is to see through what star the colure of the equinoxes passes, and where it intersects at this time the ecliptic in the spring; and to discover whether some ancient writer does not tell us in what point the ecliptic was intersected in his time, by the same colure of the equinoxes. clemens alexandrinus informs us, that chiron, who went with the argonauts, observed the constellations at the time of that famous expedition, and fixed the vernal equinox to the middle of the ram; the autumnal equinox to the middle of libra; our summer solstice to the middle of cancer, and our winter solstice to the middle of capricorn. a long time after the expedition of the argonauts, and a year before the peloponnesian war, methon observed that the point of the summer solstice passed through the eighth degree of cancer. now every sign of the zodiac contains thirty degrees. in chiron's time, the solstice was arrived at the middle of the sign, that is to say to the fifteenth degree. a year before the peloponnesian war it was at the eighth, and therefore it had retarded seven degrees. a degree is equivalent to seventy-two years; consequently, from the beginning of the peloponnesian war to the expedition of the argonauts, there is no more than an interval of seven times seventy-two years, which make five hundred and four years, and not seven hundred years as the greeks computed. thus in comparing the position of the heavens at this time with their position in that age, we find that the expedition of the argonauts ought to be placed about nine hundred years before christ, and not about fourteen hundred; and consequently that the world is not so old by five hundred years as it was generally supposed to be. by this calculation all the eras are drawn nearer, and the several events are found to have happened later than is computed. i do not know whether this ingenious system will be favourably received; and whether these notions will prevail so far with the learned, as to prompt them to reform the chronology of the world. perhaps these gentlemen would think it too great a condescension to allow one and the same man the glory of having improved natural philosophy, geometry, and history. this would be a kind of universal monarchy, with which the principle of self-love that is in man will scarce suffer him to indulge his fellow-creature; and, indeed, at the same time that some very great philosophers attacked sir isaac newton's attractive principle, others fell upon his chronological system. time that should discover to which of these the victory is due, may perhaps only leave the dispute still more undetermined. letter xviii.--on tragedy the english as well as the spaniards were possessed of theatres at a time when the french had no more than moving, itinerant stages. shakspeare, who was considered as the corneille of the first-mentioned nation, was pretty nearly contemporary with lopez de vega, and he created, as it were, the english theatre. shakspeare boasted a strong fruitful genius. he was natural and sublime, but had not so much as a single spark of good taste, or knew one rule of the drama. i will now hazard a random, but, at the same time, true reflection, which is, that the great merit of this dramatic poet has been the ruin of the english stage. there are such beautiful, such noble, such dreadful scenes in this writer's monstrous farces, to which the name of tragedy is given, that they have always been exhibited with great success. time, which alone gives reputation to writers, at last makes their very faults venerable. most of the whimsical gigantic images of this poet, have, through length of time (it being a hundred and fifty years since they were first drawn) acquired a right of passing for sublime. most of the modern dramatic writers have copied him; but the touches and descriptions which are applauded in shakspeare, are hissed at in these writers; and you will easily believe that the veneration in which this author is held, increases in proportion to the contempt which is shown to the moderns. dramatic writers don't consider that they should not imitate him; and the ill-success of shakspeare's imitators produces no other effect, than to make him be considered as inimitable. you remember that in the tragedy of _othello, moor of venice_, a most tender piece, a man strangles his wife on the stage, and that the poor woman, whilst she is strangling, cries aloud that she dies very unjustly. you know that in _hamlet, prince of denmark_, two grave-diggers make a grave, and are all the time drinking, singing ballads, and making humorous reflections (natural indeed enough to persons of their profession) on the several skulls they throw up with their spades; but a circumstance which will surprise you is, that this ridiculous incident has been imitated. in the reign of king charles ii., which was that of politeness, and the golden age of the liberal arts; otway, in his _venice preserved_, introduces antonio the senator, and naki, his courtesan, in the midst of the horrors of the marquis of bedemar's conspiracy. antonio, the superannuated senator plays, in his mistress's presence, all the apish tricks of a lewd, impotent debauchee, who is quite frantic and out of his senses. he mimics a bull and a dog, and bites his mistress's legs, who kicks and whips him. however, the players have struck these buffooneries (which indeed were calculated merely for the dregs of the people) out of otway's tragedy; but they have still left in shakspeare's _julius caesar_ the jokes of the roman shoemakers and cobblers, who are introduced in the same scene with brutus and cassius. you will undoubtedly complain, that those who have hitherto discoursed with you on the english stage, and especially on the celebrated shakspeare, have taken notice only of his errors; and that no one has translated any of those strong, those forcible passages which atone for all his faults. but to this i will answer, that nothing is easier than to exhibit in prose all the silly impertinences which a poet may have thrown out; but that it is a very difficult task to translate his fine verses. all your junior academical sophs, who set up for censors of the eminent writers, compile whole volumes; but methinks two pages which display some of the beauties of great geniuses, are of infinitely more value than all the idle rhapsodies of those commentators; and i will join in opinion with all persons of good taste in declaring, that greater advantage may be reaped from a dozen verses of homer of virgil, than from all the critiques put together which have been made on those two great poets. i have ventured to translate some passages of the most celebrated english poets, and shall now give you one from shakspeare. pardon the blemishes of the translation for the sake of the original; and remember always that when you see a version, you see merely a faint print of a beautiful picture. i have made choice of part of the celebrated soliloquy in _hamlet_, which you may remember is as follows:-- "to be, or not to be? that is the question! whether 't is nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to take arms against a sea of troubles, and by opposing, end them? to die! to sleep! no more! and by a sleep to say we end the heart-ache, and the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to! 'tis a consummation devoutly to be wished. to die! to sleep! to sleep; perchance to dream! o, there's the rub; for in that sleep of death, what dreams may come when we have shuffled off this mortal coil, must give us pause. there's the respect that makes calamity of so long life: for who would bear the whips and scorns of time, the oppressor's wrong, the poor man's contumely, the pangs of despised love, the law's delay, the insolence of office, and the spurns that patient merit of the unworthy takes, when he himself might his quietus make with a bare bodkin. who would fardels bear to groan and sweat under a weary life, but that the dread of something after death, the undiscovered country, from whose bourn no traveller returns, puzzles the will, and makes us rather bear those ills we have, than fly to others that we know not of? thus conscience does make cowards of us all; and thus the native hue of resolution is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought: and enterprises of great weight and moment with this regard their currents turn awry, and lose the name of action--" my version of it runs thus:-- "demeure, il faut choisir et passer a l'instant de la vie, a la mort, ou de l'etre au neant. dieux cruels, s'il en est, eclairez mon courage. faut-il vieillir courbe sous la main qui m'outrage, supporter, ou finir mon malheur et mon sort? qui suis je? qui m'arrete! et qu'est-ce que la mort? c'est la fin de nos maux, c'est mon unique asile apres de longs transports, c'est un sommeil tranquile. on s'endort, et tout meurt, mais un affreux reveil doit succeder peut etre aux douceurs du sommeil! on nous menace, on dit que cette courte vie, de tourmens eternels est aussi-tot suivie. o mort! moment fatal! affreuse eternite! tout coeur a ton seul nom se glace epouvante. eh! qui pourroit sans toi supporter cette vie, de nos pretres menteurs benir l'hypocrisie: d'une indigne maitresse encenser les erreurs, ramper sous un ministre, adorer ses hauteurs; et montrer les langueurs de son ame abattue, a des amis ingrats qui detournent la vue? la mort seroit trop douce en ces extremitez, mais le scrupule parle, et nous crie, arretez; il defend a nos mains cet heureux homicide et d'un heros guerrier, fait un chretien timide," &c. do not imagine that i have translated shakspeare in a servile manner. woe to the writer who gives a literal version; who by rendering every word of his original, by that very means enervates the sense, and extinguishes all the fire of it. it is on such an occasion one may justly affirm, that the letter kills, but the spirit quickens. here follows another passage copied from a celebrated tragic writer among the english. it is dryden, a poet in the reign of charles ii.--a writer whose genius was too exuberant, and not accompanied with judgment enough. had he written only a tenth part of the works he left behind him, his character would have been conspicuous in every part; but his great fault is his having endeavoured to be universal. the passage in question is as follows:-- "when i consider life, 't is all a cheat, yet fooled by hope, men favour the deceit; trust on and think, to-morrow will repay; to-morrow's falser than the former day; lies more; and whilst it says we shall be blest with some new joy, cuts off what we possessed; strange cozenage! none would live past years again, yet all hope pleasure in what yet remain, and from the dregs of life think to receive what the first sprightly running could not give. i'm tired with waiting for this chymic gold, which fools us young, and beggars us when old." i shall now give you my translation:-- "de desseins en regrets et d'erreurs en desirs les mortals insenses promenent leur folie. dans des malheurs presents, dans l'espoir des plaisirs nous ne vivons jamais, nous attendons la vie. demain, demain, dit-on, va combler tous nos voeux. demain vient, et nous laisse encore plus malheureux. quelle est l'erreur, helas! du soin qui nous devore, nul de nous ne voudroit recommencer son cours. de nos premiers momens nous maudissons l'aurore, et de la nuit qui vient nous attendons encore, ce qu'ont en vain promis les plus beaux de nos jours," &c. it is in these detached passages that the english have hitherto excelled. their dramatic pieces, most of which are barbarous and without decorum, order, or verisimilitude, dart such resplendent flashes through this gleam, as amaze and astonish. the style is too much inflated, too unnatural, too closely copied from the hebrew writers, who abound so much with the asiatic fustian. but then it must be also confessed that the stilts of the figurative style, on which the english tongue is lifted up, raises the genius at the same time very far aloft, though with an irregular pace. the first english writer who composed a regular tragedy, and infused a spirit of elegance through every part of it, was the illustrious mr. addison. his "cato" is a masterpiece, both with regard to the diction and to the beauty and harmony of the numbers. the character of cato is, in my opinion, vastly superior to that of cornelia in the "pompey" of corneille, for cato is great without anything like fustian, and cornelia, who besides is not a necessary character, tends sometimes to bombast. mr. addison's cato appears to me the greatest character that was ever brought upon any stage, but then the rest of them do not correspond to the dignity of it, and this dramatic piece, so excellently well writ, is disfigured by a dull love plot, which spreads a certain languor over the whole, that quite murders it. the custom of introducing love at random and at any rate in the drama passed from paris to london about , with our ribbons and our perruques. the ladies who adorn the theatrical circle there, in like manner as in this city, will suffer love only to be the theme of every conversation. the judicious mr. addison had the effeminate complaisance to soften the severity of his dramatic character, so as to adapt it to the manners of the age, and, from an endeavour to please, quite ruined a masterpiece in its kind. since his time the drama is become more regular, the audience more difficult to be pleased, and writers more correct and less bold. i have seen some new pieces that were written with great regularity, but which, at the same time, were very flat and insipid. one would think that the english had been hitherto formed to produce irregular beauties only. the shining monsters of shakspeare give infinite more delight than the judicious images of the moderns. hitherto the poetical genius of the english resembles a tufted tree planted by the hand of nature, that throws out a thousand branches at random, and spreads unequally, but with great vigour. it dies if you attempt to force its nature, and to lop and dress it in the same manner as the trees of the garden of marli. letter xix.--on comedy i am surprised that the judicious and ingenious mr. de muralt, who has published some letters on the english and french nations, should have confined himself; in treating of comedy, merely to censure shadwell the comic writer. this author was had in pretty great contempt in mr. de muralt's time, and was not the poet of the polite part of the nation. his dramatic pieces, which pleased some time in acting, were despised by all persons of taste, and might be compared to many plays which i have seen in france, that drew crowds to the playhouse, at the same time that they were intolerable to read; and of which it might be said, that the whole city of paris exploded them, and yet all flocked to see them represented on the stage. methinks mr. de muralt should have mentioned an excellent comic writer (living when he was in england), i mean mr. wycherley, who was a long time known publicly to be happy in the good graces of the most celebrated mistress of king charles ii. this gentleman, who passed his life among persons of the highest distinction, was perfectly well acquainted with their lives and their follies, and painted them with the strongest pencil, and in the truest colours. he has drawn a misanthrope or man-hater, in imitation of that of moliere. all wycherley's strokes are stronger and bolder than those of our misanthrope, but then they are less delicate, and the rules of decorum are not so well observed in this play. the english writer has corrected the only defect that is in moliere's comedy, the thinness of the plot, which also is so disposed that the characters in it do not enough raise our concern. the english comedy affects us, and the contrivance of the plot is very ingenious, but at the same time it is too bold for the french manners. the fable is this:--a captain of a man-of-war, who is very brave, open-hearted, and inflamed with a spirit of contempt for all mankind, has a prudent, sincere friend, whom he yet is suspicious of; and a mistress that loves him with the utmost excess of passion. the captain so far from returning her love, will not even condescend to look upon her, but confides entirely in a false friend, who is the most worthless wretch living. at the same time he has given his heart to a creature, who is the greatest coquette and the most perfidious of her sex, and he is so credulous as to be confident she is a penelope, and his false friend a cato. he embarks on board his ship in order to go and fight the dutch, having left all his money, his jewels, and everything he had in the world to this virtuous creature, whom at the same time he recommends to the care of his supposed faithful friend. nevertheless the real man of honour, whom he suspects so unaccountably, goes on board the ship with him, and the mistress, on whom he would not bestow so much as one glance, disguises herself in the habit of a page, and is with him the whole voyage, without his once knowing that she is of a sex different from that she attempts to pass for, which, by the way, is not over natural. the captain having blown up his own ship in an engagement, returns to england abandoned and undone, accompanied by his page and his friend, without knowing the friendship of the one or the tender passion of the other. immediately he goes to the jewel among women, who he expected had preserved her fidelity to him and the treasure he had left in her hands. he meets with her indeed, but married to the honest knave in whom he had reposed so much confidence, and finds she had acted as treacherously with regard to the casket he had entrusted her with. the captain can scarce think it possible that a woman of virtue and honour can act so vile a part; but to convince him still more of the reality of it, this very worthy lady falls in love with the little page, and will force him to her embraces. but as it is requisite justice should be done, and that in a dramatic piece virtue ought to be rewarded and vice punished, it is at last found that the captain takes his page's place, and lies with his faithless mistress, cuckolds his treacherous friend, thrusts his sword through his body, recovers his casket, and marries his page. you will observe that this play is also larded with a petulant, litigious old woman (a relation of the captain), who is the most comical character that was ever brought upon the stage. wycherley has also copied from moliere another play, of as singular and bold a cast, which is a kind of _ecole des femmes_, or, _school for married women_. the principal character in this comedy is one homer, a sly fortune hunter, and the terror of all the city husbands. this fellow, in order to play a surer game, causes a report to be spread, that in his last illness, the surgeons had found it necessary to have him made a eunuch. upon his appearing in this noble character, all the husbands in town flock to him with their wives, and now poor homer is only puzzled about his choice. however, he gives the preference particularly to a little female peasant, a very harmless, innocent creature, who enjoys a fine flush of health, and cuckolds her husband with a simplicity that has infinitely more merit than the witty malice of the most experienced ladies. this play cannot indeed be called the school of good morals, but it is certainly the school of wit and true humour. sir john vanbrugh has written several comedies, which are more humorous than those of mr. wycherley, but not so ingenious. sir john was a man of pleasure, and likewise a poet and an architect. the general opinion is, that he is as sprightly in his writings as he is heavy in his buildings. it is he who raised the famous castle of blenheim, a ponderous and lasting monument of our unfortunate battle of hochstet. were the apartments but as spacious as the walls are thick, this castle would be commodious enough. some wag, in an epitaph he made on sir john vanbrugh, has these lines:-- "earth lie light on him, for he laid many a heavy load on thee." sir john having taken a tour into france before the glorious war that broke out in , was thrown into the bastille, and detained there for some time, without being ever able to discover the motive which had prompted our ministry to indulge him with this mark of their distinction. he wrote a comedy during his confinement; and a circumstance which appears to me very extraordinary is, that we don't meet with so much as a single satirical stroke against the country in which he had been so injuriously treated. the late mr. congreve raised the glory of comedy to a greater height than any english writer before or since his time. he wrote only a few plays, but they are all excellent in their kind. the laws of the drama are strictly observed in them; they abound with characters all which are shadowed with the utmost delicacy, and we don't meet with so much as one low or coarse jest. the language is everywhere that of men of honour, but their actions are those of knaves--a proof that he was perfectly well acquainted with human nature, and frequented what we call polite company. he was infirm and come to the verge of life when i knew him. mr. congreve had one defect, which was his entertaining too mean an idea of his first profession (that of a writer), though it was to this he owed his fame and fortune. he spoke of his works as of trifles that were beneath him; and hinted to me, in our first conversation, that i should visit him upon no other footing than that of a gentleman who led a life of plainness and simplicity. i answered, that had he been so unfortunate as to be a mere gentleman, i should never have come to see him; and i was very much disgusted at so unseasonable a piece of vanity. mr. congreve's comedies are the most witty and regular, those of sir john vanbrugh most gay and humorous, and those of mr. wycherley have the greatest force and spirit. it may be proper to observe that these fine geniuses never spoke disadvantageously of moliere; and that none but the contemptible writers among the english have endeavoured to lessen the character of that great comic poet. such italian musicians as despise lully are themselves persons of no character or ability; but a buononcini esteems that great artist, and does justice to his merit. the english have some other good comic writers living, such as sir richard steele and mr. cibber, who is an excellent player, and also poet laureate--a title which, how ridiculous soever it may be thought, is yet worth a thousand crowns a year (besides some considerable privileges) to the person who enjoys it. our illustrious corneille had not so much. to conclude. don't desire me to descend to particulars with regard to these english comedies, which i am so fond of applauding; nor to give you a single smart saying or humorous stroke from wycherley or congreve. we don't laugh in rending a translation. if you have a mind to understand the english comedy, the only way to do this will be for you to go to england, to spend three years in london, to make yourself master of the english tongue, and to frequent the playhouse every night. i receive but little pleasure from the perusal of aristophanes and plautus, and for this reason, because i am neither a greek nor a roman. the delicacy of the humour, the allusion, the _a propos_--all these are lost to a foreigner. but it is different with respect to tragedy, this treating only of exalted passions and heroical follies, which the antiquated errors of fable or history have made sacred. oedipus, electra, and such-like characters, may with as much propriety be treated of by the spaniards, the english, or us, as by the greeks. but true comedy is the speaking picture of the follies and ridiculous foibles of a nation; so that he only is able to judge of the painting who is perfectly acquainted with the people it represents. letter xx.--on such of the nobility as cultivate the belles lettres there once was a time in france when the polite arts were cultivated by persons of the highest rank in the state. the courtiers particularly were conversant in them, although indolence, a taste for trifles, and a passion for intrigue, were the divinities of the country. the court methinks at this time seems to have given into a taste quite opposite to that of polite literature, but perhaps the mode of thinking may be revived in a little time. the french are of so flexible a disposition, may be moulded into such a variety of shapes, that the monarch needs but command and he is immediately obeyed. the english generally think, and learning is had in greater honour among them than in our country--an advantage that results naturally from the form of their government. there are about eight hundred persons in england who have a right to speak in public, and to support the interest of the kingdom; and near five or six thousand may in their turns aspire to the same honour. the whole nation set themselves up as judges over these, and every man has the liberty of publishing his thoughts with regard to public affairs, which shows that all the people in general are indispensably obliged to cultivate their understandings. in england the governments of greece and rome are the subject of every conversation, so that every man is under a necessity of perusing such authors as treat of them, how disagreeable soever it may be to him; and this study leads naturally to that of polite literature. mankind in general speak well in their respective professions. what is the reason why our magistrates, our lawyers, our physicians, and a great number of the clergy, are abler scholars, have a finer taste, and more wit, than persons of all other professions? the reason is, because their condition of life requires a cultivated and enlightened mind, in the same manner as a merchant is obliged to be acquainted with his traffic. not long since an english nobleman, who was very young, came to see me at paris on his return from italy. he had written a poetical description of that country, which, for delicacy and politeness, may vie with anything we meet with in the earl of rochester, or in our chaulieu, our sarrasin, or chapelle. the translation i have given of it is so inexpressive of the strength and delicate humour of the original, that i am obliged seriously to ask pardon of the author and of all who understand english. however, as this is the only method i have to make his lordship's verses known, i shall here present you with them in our tongue:-- "qu'ay je donc vu dans l'italie? orgueil, astuce, et pauvrete, grands complimens, peu de bonte et beaucoup de ceremonie. "l'extravagante comedie que souvent l'inquisition vent qu'on nomme religion mais qu'ici nous nommons folie. "la nature en vain bienfaisante vent enricher ses lieux charmans, des pretres la main desolante etouffe ses plus beaux presens. "les monsignors, soy disant grands, seuls dans leurs palais magnifiques y sont d'illustres faineants, sans argent, et sans domestiques. "pour les petits, sans liberte, martyrs du joug qui les domine, ils ont fait voeu de pauvrete, priant dieu par oisivete et toujours jeunant par famine. "ces beaux lieux du pape benis semblent habitez par les diables; et les habitans miserables sont damnes dans le paradis." letter xxi.--on the earl of rochester and mr. waller the earl of rochester's name is universally known. mr. de st. evremont has made very frequent mention of him, but then he has represented this famous nobleman in no other light than as the man of pleasure, as one who was the idol of the fair; but, with regard to myself, i would willingly describe in him the man of genius, the great poet. among other pieces which display the shining imagination, his lordship only could boast he wrote some satires on the same subjects as those our celebrated boileau made choice of. i do not know any better method of improving the taste than to compare the productions of such great geniuses as have exercised their talent on the same subject. boileau declaims as follows against human reason in his "satire on man:" "cependant a le voir plein de vapeurs legeres, soi-meme se bercer de ses propres chimeres, lui seul de la nature est la baze et l'appui, et le dixieme ciel ne tourne que pour lui. de tous les animaux il est ici le maitre; qui pourroit le nier, poursuis tu? moi peut-etre. ce maitre pretendu qui leur donne des loix, ce roi des animaux, combien a-t'il de rois?" "yet, pleased with idle whimsies of his brain, and puffed with pride, this haughty thing would fain be think himself the only stay and prop that holds the mighty frame of nature up. the skies and stars his properties must seem, * * * of all the creatures he's the lord, he cries. * * * and who is there, say you, that dares deny so owned a truth? that may be, sir, do i. * * * this boasted monarch of the world who awes the creatures here, and with his nod gives laws this self-named king, who thus pretends to be the lord of all, how many lords has he?" oldham, _a little altered_. the lord rochester expresses himself, in his "satire against man," in pretty near the following manner. but i must first desire you always to remember that the versions i give you from the english poets are written with freedom and latitude, and that the restraint of our versification, and the delicacies of the french tongue, will not allow a translator to convey into it the licentious impetuosity and fire of the english numbers:-- "cet esprit que je hais, cet esprit plein d'erreur, ce n'est pas ma raison, c'est la tienne, docteur. c'est la raison frivole, inquiete, orgueilleuse des sages animaux, rivale dedaigneuse, qui croit entr'eux et l'ange, occuper le milieu, et pense etre ici bas l'image de son dieu. vil atome imparfait, qui croit, doute, dispute rampe, s'eleve, tombe, et nie encore sa chute, qui nous dit je suis libre, en nous montrant ses fers, et dont l'oeil trouble et faux, croit percer l'univers. allez, reverends fous, bienheureux fanatiques, compilez bien l'amas de vos riens scholastiques, peres de visions, et d'enigmes sacres, auteurs du labirinthe, ou vous vous egarez. allez obscurement eclaircir vos misteres, et courez dans l'ecole adorer vos chimeres. il est d'autres erreurs, il est de ces devots condamne par eux memes a l'ennui du repos. ce mystique encloitre, fier de son indolence tranquille, au sein de dieu. que peut il faire? il pense. non, tu ne penses point, miserable, tu dors: inutile a la terre, et mis au rang des morts. ton esprit enerve croupit dans la molesse. reveille toi, sois homme, et sors de ton ivresse. l'homme est ne pour agir, et tu pretens penser?" &c. the original runs thus:-- "hold mighty man, i cry all this we know, and 'tis this very reason i despise, this supernatural gift that makes a mite think he's the image of the infinite; comparing his short life, void of all rest, to the eternal and the ever blest. this busy, puzzling stirrer up of doubt, that frames deep mysteries, then finds them out, filling, with frantic crowds of thinking fools, those reverend bedlams, colleges, and schools; borne on whose wings each heavy sot can pierce the limits of the boundless universe. so charming ointments make an old witch fly, and bear a crippled carcase through the sky. 'tis this exalted power, whose business lies in nonsense and impossibilities. this made a whimsical philosopher before the spacious world his tub prefer; and we have modern cloistered coxcombs, who retire to think, 'cause they have naught to do. but thoughts are given for action's government, where action ceases, thought's impertinent." whether these ideas are true or false, it is certain they are expressed with an energy and fire which form the poet. i shall be very far from attempting to examine philosophically into these verses, to lay down the pencil, and take up the rule and compass on this occasion; my only design in this letter being to display the genius of the english poets, and therefore i shall continue in the same view. the celebrated mr. waller has been very much talked of in france, and mr. de la fontaine, st. evremont, and bayle have written his eulogium, but still his name only is known. he had much the same reputation in london as voiture had in paris, and in my opinion deserved it better. voiture was born in an age that was just emerging from barbarity; an age that was still rude and ignorant, the people of which aimed at wit, though they had not the least pretensions to it, and sought for points and conceits instead of sentiments. bristol stones are more easily found than diamonds. voiture, born with an easy and frivolous, genius, was the first who shone in this aurora of french literature. had he come into the world after those great geniuses who spread such a glory over the age of louis xiv., he would either have been unknown, would have been despised, or would have corrected his style. boileau applauded him, but it was in his first satires, at a time when the taste of that great poet was not yet formed. he was young, and in an age when persons form a judgment of men from their reputation, and not from their writings. besides, boileau was very partial both in his encomiums and his censures. he applauded segrais, whose works nobody reads; he abused quinault, whose poetical pieces every one has got by heart; and is wholly silent upon la fontaine. waller, though a better poet than voiture, was not yet a finished poet. the graces breathe in such of waller's works as are writ in a tender strain; but then they are languid through negligence, and often disfigured with false thoughts. the english had not in his time attained the art of correct writing. but his serious compositions exhibit a strength and vigour which could not have been expected from the softness and effeminacy of his other pieces. he wrote an elegy on oliver cromwell, which, with all its faults, is nevertheless looked upon as a masterpiece. to understand this copy of verses you are to know that the day oliver died was remarkable for a great storm. his poem begins in this manner:-- "il n'est plus, s'en est fait, soumettons nous au sort, le ciel a signale ce jour par des tempetes, et la voix des tonnerres eclatant sur nos tetes vient d'annoncer sa mort. "par ses derniers soupirs il ebranle cet ile; cet ile que son bras fit trembler tant de fois, quand dans le cours de ses exploits, il brisoit la tete des rois, et soumettoit un peuple a son joug seul docile. "mer tu t'en es trouble; o mer tes flots emus semblent dire en grondant aux plus lointains rivages que l'effroi de la terre et ton maitre n'est plus. "tel au ciel autrefois s'envola romulus, tel il quitta la terre, au milieu des orages, tel d'un peuple guerrier il recut les homages; obei dans sa vie, sa mort adore, son palais fut un temple," &c. * * * * * "we must resign! heaven his great soul does claim in storms as loud as his immortal fame; his dying groans, his last breath shakes our isle, and trees uncut fall for his funeral pile: about his palace their broad roots are tost into the air; so romulus was lost! new rome in such a tempest missed her king, and from obeying fell to worshipping. on oeta's top thus hercules lay dead, with ruined oaks and pines about him spread. nature herself took notice of his death, and, sighing, swelled the sea with such a breath, that to remotest shores the billows rolled, th' approaching fate of his great ruler told." waller. it was this elogium that gave occasion to the reply (taken notice of in bayle's dictionary), which waller made to king charles ii. this king, to whom waller had a little before (as is usual with bards and monarchs) presented a copy of verses embroidered with praises, reproached the poet for not writing with so much energy and fire as when he had applauded the usurper (meaning oliver). "sir," replied waller to the king, "we poets succeed better in fiction than in truth." this answer was not so sincere as that which a dutch ambassador made, who, when the same monarch complained that his masters paid less regard to him than they had done to cromwell. "ah, sir!" says the ambassador, "oliver was quite another man--" it is not my intent to give a commentary on waller's character, nor on that of any other person; for i consider men after their death in no other light than as they were writers, and wholly disregard everything else. i shall only observe that waller, though born in a court, and to an estate of five or six thousand pounds sterling a year, was never so proud or so indolent as to lay aside the happy talent which nature had indulged him. the earls of dorset and roscommon, the two dukes of buckingham, the lord halifax, and so many other noblemen, did not think the reputation they obtained of very great poets and illustrious writers, any way derogatory to their quality. they are more glorious for their works than for their titles. these cultivated the polite arts with as much assiduity as though they had been their whole dependence. they also have made learning appear venerable in the eyes of the vulgar, who have need to be led in all things by the great; and who, nevertheless, fashion their manners less after those of the nobility (in england i mean) than in any other country in the world. letter xxii.--on mr. pope and some other famous poets i intended to treat of mr. prior, one of the most amiable english poets, whom you saw plenipotentiary and envoy extraordinary at paris in . i also designed to have given you some idea of the lord roscommon's and the lord dorset's muse; but i find that to do this i should be obliged to write a large volume, and that, after much pains and trouble, you would have but an imperfect idea of all those works. poetry is a kind of music in which a man should have some knowledge before he pretends to judge of it. when i give you a translation of some passages from those foreign poets, i only prick down, and that imperfectly, their music; but then i cannot express the taste of their harmony. there is one english poem especially which i should despair of ever making you understand, the title whereof is "hudibras." the subject of it is the civil war in the time of the grand rebellion, and the principles and practice of the puritans are therein ridiculed. it is don quixote, it is our "satire menippee" blended together. i never found so much wit in one single book as in that, which at the same time is the most difficult to be translated. who would believe that a work which paints in such lively and natural colours the several foibles and follies of mankind, and where we meet with more sentiments than words, should baffle the endeavours of the ablest translator? but the reason of this is, almost every part of it alludes to particular incidents. the clergy are there made the principal object of ridicule, which is understood but by few among the laity. to explain this a commentary would be requisite, and humour when explained is no longer humour. whoever sets up for a commentator of smart sayings and repartees is himself a blockhead. this is the reason why the works of the ingenious dean swift, who has been called the english rabelais, will never be well understood in france. this gentleman has the honour (in common with rabelais) of being a priest, and, like him, laughs at everything; but, in my humble opinion, the title of the english rabelais which is given the dean is highly derogatory to his genius. the former has interspersed his unaccountably- fantastic and unintelligible book with the most gay strokes of humour; but which, at the same time, has a greater proportion of impertinence. he has been vastly lavish of erudition, of smut, and insipid raillery. an agreeable tale of two pages is purchased at the expense of whole volumes of nonsense. there are but few persons, and those of a grotesque taste, who pretend to understand and to esteem this work; for, as to the rest of the nation, they laugh at the pleasant and diverting touches which are found in rabelais and despise his book. he is looked upon as the prince of buffoons. the readers are vexed to think that a man who was master of so much wit should have made so wretched a use of it; he is an intoxicated philosopher who never wrote but when he was in liquor. dean swift is rabelais in his senses, and frequenting the politest company. the former, indeed, is not so gay as the latter, but then he possesses all the delicacy, the justness, the choice, the good taste, in all which particulars our giggling rural vicar rabelais is wanting. the poetical numbers of dean swift are of a singular and almost inimitable taste; true humour, whether in prose or verse, seems to be his peculiar talent; but whoever is desirous of understanding him perfectly must visit the island in which he was born. it will be much easier for you to form an idea of mr. pope's works. he is, in my opinion, the most elegant, the most correct poet; and, at the same time, the most harmonious (a circumstance which redounds very much to the honour of this muse) that england ever gave birth to. he has mellowed the harsh sounds of the english trumpet to the soft accents of the flute. his compositions may be easily translated, because they are vastly clear and perspicuous; besides, most of his subjects are general, and relative to all nations. his "essay on criticism" will soon be known in france by the translation which l'abbe de resnel has made of it. here is an extract from his poem entitled the "rape of the lock," which i just now translated with the latitude i usually take on these occasions; for, once again, nothing can be more ridiculous than to translate a poet literally:-- "umbriel, a l'instant, vieil gnome rechigne, va d'une aile pesante et d'un air renfrogne chercher en murmurant la caverne profonde, ou loin des doux raions que repand l'oeil du monde la deesse aux vapeurs a choisi son sejour, les tristes aquilons y sifflent a l'entour, et le souffle mal sain de leur aride haleine y porte aux environs la fievre et la migraine. sur un riche sofa derriere un paravent loin des flambeaux, du bruit, des parleurs et du vent, la quinteuse deesse incessamment repose, le coeur gros de chagrin, sans en savoir la cause. n'aiant pense jamais, l'esprit toujours trouble, l'oeil charge, le teint pale, et l'hypocondre enfle. la medisante envie, est assise aupres d'elle, vieil spectre feminin, decrepite pucelle, avec un air devot dechirant son prochain, et chansonnant les gens l'evangile a la main. sur un lit plein de fleurs negligemment panchee une jeune beaute non loin d'elle est couchee, c'est l'affectation qui grassaie en parlant, ecoute sans entendre, et lorgne en regardant. qui rougit sans pudeur, et rit de tout sans joie, de cent maux differens pretend qu'elle est la proie; et pleine de sante sous le rouge et le fard, se plaint avec molesse, et se pame avec art." "umbriel, a dusky, melancholy sprite as ever sullied the fair face of light, down to the central earth, his proper scene, repairs to search the gloomy cave of spleen. swift on his sooty pinions flits the gnome, and in a vapour reached the dismal dome. no cheerful breeze this sullen region knows, the dreaded east is all the wind that blows. here, in a grotto, sheltered close from air, and screened in shades from day's detested glare, she sighs for ever on her pensive bed, pain at her side, and megrim at her head, two handmaids wait the throne. alike in place, but differing far in figure and in face, here stood ill-nature, like an ancient maid, her wrinkled form in black and white arrayed; with store of prayers for mornings, nights, and noons, her hand is filled; her bosom with lampoons. there affectation, with a sickly mien, shows in her cheek the roses of eighteen, practised to lisp, and hang the head aside, faints into airs, and languishes with pride; on the rich quilt sinks with becoming woe, wrapt in a gown, for sickness and for show." this extract, in the original (not in the faint translation i have given you of it), may be compared to the description of _la molesse_ (softness or effeminacy), in boileau's "lutrin." methinks i now have given you specimens enough from the english poets. i have made some transient mention of their philosophers, but as for good historians among them, i don't know of any; and, indeed, a frenchman was forced to write their history. possibly the english genius, which is either languid or impetuous, has not yet acquired that unaffected eloquence, that plain but majestic air which history requires. possibly too, the spirit of party which exhibits objects in a dim and confused light may have sunk the credit of their historians. one half of the nation is always at variance with the other half. i have met with people who assured me that the duke of marlborough was a coward, and that mr. pope was a fool; just as some jesuits in france declare pascal to have been a man of little or no genius, and some jansenists affirm father bourdaloue to have been a mere babbler. the jacobites consider mary queen of scots as a pious heroine, but those of an opposite party look upon her as a prostitute, an adulteress, a murderer. thus the english have memorials of the several reigns, but no such thing as a history. there is, indeed, now living, one mr. gordon (the public are obliged to him for a translation of tacitus), who is very capable of writing the history of his own country, but rapin de thoyras got the start of him. to conclude, in my opinion the english have not such good historians as the french have no such thing as a real tragedy, have several delightful comedies, some wonderful passages in certain of their poems, and boast of philosophers that are worthy of instructing mankind. the english have reaped very great benefit from the writers of our nation, and therefore we ought (since they have not scrupled to be in our debt) to borrow from them. both the english and we came after the italians, who have been our instructors in all the arts, and whom we have surpassed in some. i cannot determine which of the three nations ought to be honoured with the palm; but happy the writer who could display their various merits. letter xxiii.--on the regard that ought to be shown to men of letters neither the english nor any other people have foundations established in favour of the polite arts like those in france. there are universities in most countries, but it is in france only that we meet with so beneficial an encouragement for astronomy and all parts of the mathematics, for physic, for researches into antiquity, for painting, sculpture, and architecture. louis xiv. has immortalised his name by these several foundations, and this immortality did not cost him two hundred thousand livres a year. i must confess that one of the things i very much wonder at is, that as the parliament of great britain have promised a reward of , pounds sterling to any person who may discover the longitude, they should never have once thought to imitate louis xiv. in his munificence with regard to the arts and sciences. merit, indeed, meets in england with rewards of another kind, which redound more to the honour of the nation. the english have so great a veneration for exalted talents, that a man of merit in their country is always sure of making his fortune. mr. addison in france would have been elected a member of one of the academies, and, by the credit of some women, might have obtained a yearly pension of twelve hundred livres, or else might have been imprisoned in the bastile, upon pretence that certain strokes in his tragedy of _cato_ had been discovered which glanced at the porter of some man in power. mr. addison was raised to the post of secretary of state in england. sir isaac newton was made master of the royal mint. mr. congreve had a considerable employment. mr. prior was plenipotentiary. dr. swift is dean of st. patrick in dublin, and is more revered in ireland than the primate himself. the religion which mr. pope professes excludes him, indeed, from preferments of every kind, but then it did not prevent his gaining two hundred thousand livres by his excellent translation of homer. i myself saw a long time in france the author of _rhadamistus_ ready to perish for hunger. and the son of one of the greatest men our country ever gave birth to, and who was beginning to run the noble career which his father had set him, would have been reduced to the extremes of misery had he not been patronised by monsieur fagon. but the circumstance which mostly encourages the arts in england is the great veneration which is paid them. the picture of the prime minister hangs over the chimney of his own closet, but i have seen that of mr. pope in twenty noblemen's houses. sir isaac newton was revered in his lifetime, and had a due respect paid to him after his death; the greatest men in the nation disputing who should have the honour of holding up his pall. go into westminster abbey, and you will find that what raises the admiration of the spectator is not the mausoleums of the english kings, but the monuments which the gratitude of the nation has erected to perpetuate the memory of those illustrious men who contributed to its glory. we view their statues in that abbey in the same manner as those of sophocles, plato, and other immortal personages were viewed in athens; and i am persuaded that the bare sight of those glorious monuments has fired more than one breast, and been the occasion of their becoming great men. the english have even been reproached with paying too extravagant honours to mere merit, and censured for interring the celebrated actress mrs. oldfield in westminster abbey, with almost the same pomp as sir isaac newton. some pretend that the english had paid her these great funeral honours, purposely to make us more strongly sensible of the barbarity and injustice which they object to us, for having buried mademoiselle le couvreur ignominiously in the fields. but be assured from me, that the english were prompted by no other principle in burying mrs. oldfield in westminster abbey than their good sense. they are far from being so ridiculous as to brand with infamy an art which has immortalised a euripides and a sophocles; or to exclude from the body of their citizens a set of people whose business is to set off with the utmost grace of speech and action those pieces which the nation is proud of. under the reign of charles i. and in the beginning of the civil wars raised by a number of rigid fanatics, who at last were the victims to it; a great many pieces were published against theatrical and other shows, which were attacked with the greater virulence because that monarch and his queen, daughter to henry i. of france, were passionately fond of them. one mr. prynne, a man of most furiously scrupulous principles, who would have thought himself damned had he worn a cassock instead of a short cloak, and have been glad to see one-half of mankind cut the other to pieces for the glory of god, and the _propaganda fide_; took it into his head to write a most wretched satire against some pretty good comedies, which were exhibited very innocently every night before their majesties. he quoted the authority of the rabbis, and some passages from st. bonaventure, to prove that the oedipus of sophocles was the work of the evil spirit; that terence was excommunicated _ipso facto_; and added, that doubtless brutus, who was a very severe jansenist, assassinated julius caesar for no other reason but because he, who was pontifex maximus, presumed to write a tragedy the subject of which was oedipus. lastly, he declared that all who frequented the theatre were excommunicated, as they thereby renounced their baptism. this was casting the highest insult on the king and all the royal family; and as the english loved their prince at that time, they could not bear to hear a writer talk of excommunicating him, though they themselves afterwards cut his head off. prynne was summoned to appear before the star chamber; his wonderful book, from which father le brun stole his, was sentenced to be burnt by the common hangman, and himself to lose his ears. his trial is now extant. the italians are far from attempting to cast a blemish on the opera, or to excommunicate signor senesino or signora cuzzoni. with regard to myself, i could presume to wish that the magistrates would suppress i know not what contemptible pieces written against the stage. for when the english and italians hear that we brand with the greatest mark of infamy an art in which we excel; that we excommunicate persons who receive salaries from the king; that we condemn as impious a spectacle exhibited in convents and monasteries; that we dishonour sports in which louis xiv. and louis xv., performed as actors; that we give the title of the devil's works to pieces which are received by magistrates of the most severe character, and represented before a virtuous queen; when, i say, foreigners are told of this insolent conduct, this contempt for the royal authority, and this gothic rusticity which some presume to call christian severity, what an idea must they entertain of our nation? and how will it be possible for them to conceive, either that our laws give a sanction to an art which is declared infamous, or that some persons dare to stamp with infamy an art which receives a sanction from the laws, is rewarded by kings, cultivated and encouraged by the greatest men, and admired by whole nations? and that father le brun's impertinent libel against the stage is seen in a bookseller's shop, standing the very next to the immortal labours of racine, of corneille, of moliere, &c. letter xxiv.--on the royal society and other academies the english had an academy of sciences many years before us, but then it is not under such prudent regulations as ours, the only reason of which very possibly is, because it was founded before the academy of paris; for had it been founded after, it would very probably have adopted some of the sage laws of the former and improved upon others. two things, and those the most essential to man, are wanting in the royal society of london, i mean rewards and laws. a seat in the academy at paris is a small but secure fortune to a geometrician or a chemist; but this is so far from being the case at london, that the several members of the royal society are at a continual, though indeed small expense. any man in england who declares himself a lover of the mathematics and natural philosophy, and expresses an inclination to be a member of the royal society, is immediately elected into it. but in france it is not enough that a man who aspires to the honour of being a member of the academy, and of receiving the royal stipend, has a love for the sciences; he must at the same time be deeply skilled in them; and is obliged to dispute the seat with competitors who are so much the more formidable as they are fired by a principle of glory, by interest, by the difficulty itself; and by that inflexibility of mind which is generally found in those who devote themselves to that pertinacious study, the mathematics. the academy of sciences is prudently confined to the study of nature, and, indeed, this is a field spacious enough for fifty or threescore persons to range in. that of london mixes indiscriminately literature with physics; but methinks the founding an academy merely for the polite arts is more judicious, as it prevents confusion, and the joining, in some measure, of heterogeneals, such as a dissertation on the head-dresses of the roman ladies with a hundred or more new curves. as there is very little order and regularity in the royal society, and not the least encouragement; and that the academy of paris is on a quite different foot, it is no wonder that our transactions are drawn up in a more just and beautiful manner than those of the english. soldiers who are under a regular discipline, and besides well paid, must necessarily at last perform more glorious achievements than others who are mere volunteers. it must indeed be confessed that the royal society boast their newton, but then he did not owe his knowledge and discoveries to that body; so far from it, that the latter were intelligible to very few of his fellow members. a genius like that of sir isaac belonged to all the academies in the world, because all had a thousand things to learn of him. the celebrated dean swift formed a design, in the latter end of the late queen's reign, to found an academy for the english tongue upon the model of that of the french. this project was promoted by the late earl of oxford, lord high treasurer, and much more by the lord bolingbroke, secretary of state, who had the happy talent of speaking without premeditation in the parliament house with as much purity as dean swift wrote in his closet, and who would have been the ornament and protector of that academy. those only would have been chosen members of it whose works will last as long as the english tongue, such as dean swift, mr. prior, whom we saw here invested with a public character, and whose fame in england is equal to that of la fontaine in france; mr. pope, the english boileau, mr. congreve, who may be called their moliere, and several other eminent persons whose names i have forgot; all these would have raised the glory of that body to a great height even in its infancy. but queen anne being snatched suddenly from the world, the whigs were resolved to ruin the protectors of the intended academy, a circumstance that was of the most fatal consequence to polite literature. the members of this academy would have had a very great advantage over those who first formed that of the french, for swift, prior, congreve, dryden, pope, addison, &c. had fixed the english tongue by their writings; whereas chapelain, colletet, cassaigne, faret, perrin, cotin, our first academicians, were a disgrace to their country; and so much ridicule is now attached to their very names, that if an author of some genius in this age had the misfortune to be called chapelain or cotin, he would be under a necessity of changing his name. one circumstance, to which the english academy should especially have attended, is to have prescribed to themselves occupations of a quite different kind from those with which our academicians amuse themselves. a wit of this country asked me for the memoirs of the french academy. i answered, they have no memoirs, but have printed threescore or fourscore volumes in quarto of compliments. the gentleman perused one or two of them, but without being able to understand the style in which they were written, though he understood all our good authors perfectly. "all," says he, "i see in these elegant discourses is, that the member elect having assured the audience that his predecessor was a great man, that cardinal richelieu was a very great man, that the chancellor seguier was a pretty great man, that louis xiv. was a more than great man, the director answers in the very same strain, and adds, that the member elect may also be a sort of great man, and that himself, in quality of director, must also have some share in this greatness." the cause why all these academical discourses have unhappily done so little honour to this body is evident enough. _vitium est temporis potius quam hominis_ (the fault is owing to the age rather than to particular persons). it grew up insensibly into a custom for every academician to repeat these elogiums at his reception; it was laid down as a kind of law that the public should be indulged from time to time the sullen satisfaction of yawning over these productions. if the reason should afterwards be sought, why the greatest geniuses who have been incorporated into that body have sometimes made the worst speeches, i answer, that it is wholly owing to a strong propension, the gentlemen in question had to shine, and to display a thread-bare, worn-out subject in a new and uncommon light. the necessity of saying something, the perplexity of having nothing to say, and a desire of being witty, are three circumstances which alone are capable of making even the greatest writer ridiculous. these gentlemen, not being able to strike out any new thoughts, hunted after a new play of words, and delivered themselves without thinking at all: in like manner as people who should seem to chew with great eagerness, and make as though they were eating, at the same time that they were just starved. it is a law in the french academy, to publish all those discourses by which only they are known, but they should rather make a law never to print any of them. but the academy of the _belles lettres_ have a more prudent and more useful object, which is, to present the public with a collection of transactions that abound with curious researches and critiques. these transactions are already esteemed by foreigners; and it were only to be wished that some subjects in them had been more thoroughly examined, and that others had not been treated at all. as, for instance, we should have been very well satisfied, had they omitted i know not what dissertation on the prerogative of the right hand over the left; and some others, which, though not published under so ridiculous a title, are yet written on subjects that are almost as frivolous and silly. the academy of sciences, in such of their researches as are of a more difficult kind and a more sensible use, embrace the knowledge of nature and the improvements of the arts. we may presume that such profound, such uninterrupted pursuits as these, such exact calculations, such refined discoveries, such extensive and exalted views, will, at last, produce something that may prove of advantage to the universe. hitherto, as we have observed together, the most useful discoveries have been made in the most barbarous times. one would conclude that the business of the most enlightened ages and the most learned bodies, is, to argue and debate on things which were invented by ignorant people. we know exactly the angle which the sail of a ship is to make with the keel in order to its sailing better; and yet columbus discovered america without having the least idea of the property of this angle: however, i am far from inferring from hence that we are to confine ourselves merely to a blind practice, but happy it were, would naturalists and geometricians unite, as much as possible, the practice with the theory. strange, but so it is, that those things which reflect the greatest honour on the human mind are frequently of the least benefit to it! a man who understands the four fundamental rules of arithmetic, aided by a little good sense, shall amass prodigious wealth in trade, shall become a sir peter delme, a sir richard hopkins, a sir gilbert heathcote, whilst a poor algebraist spends his whole life in searching for astonishing properties and relations in numbers, which at the same time are of no manner of use, and will not acquaint him with the nature of exchanges. this is very nearly the case with most of the arts: there is a certain point beyond which all researches serve to no other purpose than merely to delight an inquisitive mind. those ingenious and useless truths may be compared to stars which, by being placed at too great a distance, cannot afford us the least light. with regard to the french academy, how great a service would they do to literature, to the language, and the nation, if, instead of publishing a set of compliments annually, they would give us new editions of the valuable works written in the age of louis xiv., purged from the several errors of diction which are crept into them. there are many of these errors in corneille and moliere, but those in la fontaine are very numerous. such as could not be corrected might at least be pointed out. by this means, as all the europeans read those works, they would teach them our language in its utmost purity--which, by that means, would be fixed to a lasting standard; and valuable french books being then printed at the king's expense, would prove one of the most glorious monuments the nation could boast. i have been told that boileau formerly made this proposal, and that it has since been revived by a gentleman eminent for his genius, his fine sense, and just taste for criticism; but this thought has met with the fate of many other useful projects, of being applauded and neglected. baron d'holbach a study of eighteenth century radicalism in france by max pearson cushing submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of doctor of philosophy, in the faculty of political science, columbia university new york press of the new era printing company lancaster, pa table of contents introduction. chapter i. holbach the man. early letters to john wilkes. holbach's family. relations with diderot, rousseau, hume, garrick and other important persons of the century. estimate of holbach. his character and personality. chapter ii. holbach's works. miscellaneous works. translations of german scientific works. translations of english deistical writers. boulanger's _antiquité dévoilée_. original works: _le christianisme devoilé_. _théologie portative_. _la contagion sacrée_. _essai sur les préjugés_. _le bons-sens_. chapter iii. the _système de la nature_ and its philosophy. voltaire's correspondence on the subject. goethe's sentiment. refutations and criticisms. holbach's philosophy. appendix. holbach's correspondence. five unpublished letters to john wilkes. [endnotes] bibliography. part i. editions of holbach's works in chronological order. part ii. general bibliography. baron d'holbach a une extréme justesse d'esprit il joignait une simplicité de moeurs tout-à-fait antique et patriarcale. j. a. naigeon, _journal de paris_, le fev. introduction diderot, writing to the princess dashkoff in , thus analysed the spirit of his century: chaque siècle a son esprit qui le caractérise. l'esprit du nôtre semble être celui de la liberté. la première attaque contre la superstition a été violente, sans mesure. une fois que les hommes ont osé d'une manière quelconque donner l'assaut à la barrière de la religion, cette barrière la plus formidable qui existe comme la plus respectée, il est impossible de s'arrêter. dès qu'ils ont tourné des regards menaçants contre la majesté du ciel, ils ne manqueront pas le moment d'après de les diriger contre la souveraineté de la terre. le câble qui tient et comprime l'humanité est formé de deux cordes, l'une ne peut céder sans que l'autre vienne à rompre. [endnote : ] the following study proposes to deal with this attack on religion that preceded and helped to prepare the french revolution. similar phenomena are by no means rare in the annals of history; eighteenth-century atheism, however, is of especial interest, standing as it does at the end of a long period of theological and ecclesiastical disintegration and prophesying a reconstruction of society on a purely rational and naturalistic basis. the anti-theistic movement has been so obscured by the less thoroughgoing tendency of deism and by subsequent romanticism that the real issue in the eighteenth century has been largely lost from view. hence it has seemed fit to center this study about the man who stated the situation with the most unmistakable and uncompromising clearness, and who still occupies a unique though obscure position in the history of thought. holbach has been very much neglected by writers on the eighteenth century. he has no biographer. m. walferdin wrote (in an edition of diderot's works, paris, , vol. xii p. ): "nous nous occupons depuis longtemps à rassembler les matériaux qui doivent servir à venger la mémoire du philosophe de la patrie de leibnitz, et dans l'ouvrage que nous nous proposons de publier sous le titre "d'holbach jugé par ses contemporains" nous espérons faire justement apprécier ce savant si estimable par la profondeur et la variété de ses connaissances, si précieux à sa famille et à ses amis par la pureté et la simplicité de ses moeurs, en qui la vertu était devenue une habitude et la bienfaisance un besoin." this work has never appeared and m. tourneux thinks that nothing of it was found among m. walferdin's papers. [ : ] in mr. james watson published in an english translation of the _système de la nature_, _a short sketch of the life and the writings of baron d'holbach_ by mr. julian hibbert, compiled especially for that edition from saint saurin's article in michaud's _biographie universelle_ (paris, , vol. xx, pp. - ), from barbier's _dict. des ouvrages anonymes_ (paris, ) and from the preface to the paris edition of the _système de la nature_ ( vols., mo, ). this sketch was later published separately (london, , mo, pp. ) but on account of the author's sudden death it was left unfinished and is of no value from the point of view of scholarship. another attempt to publish something on holbach was made by dr. anthony c. middleton of boston in . in the preface to his translation to the _lettres à eugenia_ he speaks of a "biographical memoir of baron d'holbach which i am now preparing for the press." if ever published at all this _memoir_ probably came to light in the _boston investigator_, a free-thinking magazine published by josiah p. mendum, cornhill, boston, but it is not to be found. mention should also be made of the fact that m. assézat intended to include in a proposed study of diderot and the philosophical movement, a chapter to be devoted to holbach and his society; but this work has never appeared. [ : ] of the two works bearing holbach's name as a title, one is a piece of libellous fiction by mme. de genlis, _les diners du baron d'holbach_ (paris, , vo), the other a romance pure and simple by f. t. claudon (paris, , vols., vo) called _le baron d'holbach_, the events of which take place largely at his house and in which he plays the rôle of a minor character. a good account of holbach, though short and incidental, is to be found in m. avézac-lavigne's _diderot et la société du baron d'holbach_ (paris, , vo), and m. armand gasté has a little book entitled _diderot et le cure de montchauvet, une mystification littéraire chez le baron d'holbach_ (paris, , vo). there are several works which devote a chapter or section to holbach. [ : ] the french critics and the histories of philosophy contain slight notices; rosenkranz's "diderot's leben" devotes a chapter to granval, holbach's country seat, and life there as described by diderot in his letters to mlle. volland; and he is included in such histories of ideas as soury, j., "bréviaire de l'histoire de matérialisme" (paris, ) and delvaille, j., _essai sur l'histoire de l'idée de progrès_ (paris, ); but nowhere else is there anything more than the merest encyclopedic account, often defective and incorrect. the sources are in a sense full and reliable for certain phases of his life and literary activity. his own publications, numbering about fifty, form the most important body of source material for the history and development of his ideas. next in importance are contemporary memoirs and letters including those of voltaire, rousseau, diderot, grimm, morellet, marmontel, mme. d'epinay, naigeon, garat, galiani, hume, garrick, wilkes, romilly and others; and scattered letters by holbach himself, largely to his english friends. in addition there is a large body of contemporary hostile criticism of his books, by voltaire, frederick ii, castillon, holland, la harpe, delisle de sales and a host of outraged ecclesiastics, so that one is well informed in regard to the scandal that his books caused at the time. out of these materials and other scattered documents and notices it is possible to reconstruct--though somewhat defectively--the figure of a man who played an important rôle in his own day; but whose name has long since lost its significance--even in the ears of scholars. it is at the suggestion of professor james harvey robinson that this reconstruction has been made. if it shall prove of any interest or value he must be credited with the initiation of the idea as well as constant aid in its realization. for rendering possible the necessary investigations, recognition is due to the administration and officers of the bibliothèque nationale, the british museum, the library of congress, the libraries of columbia and harvard universities, union and andover theological seminaries, and the public libraries of boston and new york. m. p. c. new york city, july, . chapter i. holbach, the man. paul heinrich dietrich, or as he is better known, paul-henri thiry, baron d'holbach, was born in january, , in the little village of heidelsheim (n.w. of carlsruhe) in the palatinate. of his parentage and youth nothing is known except that his father, a rich parvenu, according to rousseau, [ : ] brought him to paris at the age of twelve, where he received the greater part of his education. his father died when holbach was still a young man. it may be doubted if young holbach inherited his title and estates immediately as there was an uncle "messire francois-adam, baron d'holbach, seigneur de héeze, léende et autres lieux" who lived in the rue neuve s. augustin and died in . his funeral was held at saint-roch, his parish church, thursday, september th, where he was afterward entombed. [ : ] holbach was a student in the university of leyden in and spent a good deal of time at his uncle's estate at héeze, a little town in the province of north brabant (s.e. of eindhoven). he also traveled and studied in germany. there are two manuscript letters in the british museum (folio , pp. , , ) addressed by holbach to john wilkes, which throw some light on his school-days. it is interesting to note that most of holbach's friends were young englishmen of whom there were some twenty-five at the university of leyden at that time. [ : ] already at the age of twenty-three holbach was writing very good english, and all his life he was a friend of englishmen and english ideas. his friendship for wilkes, then a lad of nineteen, lasted all his life and increased in intimacy and dignity. the two letters following are of interest because they are the only documents we have bearing on holbach's early manhood. they reveal a certain sympathy and feeling--rather gushing to be sure--quite unlike anything in his later writings, and quite out of line with the supposedly cold temper of a materialist and an atheist. [footnote: these letters, contrary to modern usage, are printed with all the peculiarities of eighteenth century orthography. it was felt that they would lose their quaintness and charm if holbach's somewhat fantastic english were trifled with or his spelling, capitalization and punctuation modernized.] holbach to wilkes hÉeze aug. , _dearest friend_ i should not have felt by half enough the pleasure your kind letter gave me, if i had words to express it; i never doubted of your friendship, nor i hope do you know me so little as to doubt of mine, but your letter is full of such favorable sentiments to me that i must own i cannot repay them but by renewing to you the entire gift of my heart that has been yours ever since heaven favour'd me with your acquaintance. i need not tell you the sorrow our parting gave me, in vain philosophy cried aloud nature was still stronger and the philosopher was forced to yield to the friend, even now i feel the wound is not cur'd. therefore no more of that--_hope_ is my motto. telling me you are happy you make me so but in the middle of your happiness you dont forget your friend, what flattering thought to me! such are the charms of friendship every event is shar'd and nothing nor even the greatest intervals are able to interrupt the happy harmony of truly united minds. i left leyden about or days after you but before my departure i thought myself obliged to let mr dowdenwell know what you told me, he has seen the two letters mr johnson had received and i have been mediator of ye peace made betwixt the parties, i don't doubt but you have seen by this time messrs bland & weatherill who were to set out for engelland the same week i parted with them. when i was leaving leyden mr vernon happen'd to tell me he had a great mind to make a trip to spa. so my uncles' estate being on ye road i desir'd him to come along with me, he has been here a week and went on afterwards in his journey, at my arrival here, i found that general count palfi with an infinite number of military attendants had taken possession of my uncles' house, and that the thousd men lately come from germany to strengthen the allies army, commanded by count bathiani and that had left ye neighborhood of breda a few days before and was come to falkenswert (where you have past in your journey to spa) one hour from hence. prince charles arrived here the same day from germany to take ye command of the allies, the next day the whole army amounting to thd men went on towards the county of liège to prevent the french from beseiging namur, i hear now that the two armies are only one hour from another, so we expect very soon the news of a great battle but not without fear, count saxes army being, by all account of hundred ten thoud. men besides. prince counti's army of thd. this latter general is now employ'd at the siege of charleroy, that can't resist a long while, it is a report that the king of france is arrived in his army, i hope this long account will entertain you for want of news papers: mr. dowdeswell being left alone of our club at leyden i desir'd him to come and spend with me the time of his vacations here, which proposal i hope he will accept and be here next week. what happy triumvirat would be ours if you were to join: but that is impossible at present; however those who cant enjoy reality are fond of feeding their fancies with agreable dreams and charming pictures; that helps a little to sooth the sorrow of absence and makes one expect with more pati[ence] till fortune allows him to put in execution the cherish'd systems he has been fed upon fore some [time] i shall expect with great many thanks the books you are to send me; it will be for me a dubble pleasure to read them, being of your choice which i value as much as it deserves, and looking at them as upon a new proof of your benevolence, as to those i design'd to get from paris for you, i heard i could not get them before my uncles' return hither all commerce being stopt by the way betwixt this country and france. a few days before my departure from leyden i receiv'd a letter from mr freeman from berlin, he seams vastly pleas'd with our germany, and chiefly with hambourg where a beautiful lady has taken in his heart the room of poor mss. vitsiavius, my prophesy was just; traveling seems to have alter'd a good deal his melancholy disposition as i may conjecture by his way of writing. he desired his service to you. as to me, idleness renders me every day more philosopher every passion is languishing within me, i retain but one in a warm degree, viz, friendship in which you share no small part. i took a whim to study a little physic accordingly i purchased several books in that way, and my empty hours here are employ'd with them. i am sure your time will be much better employ'd at alesbury you'll find there a much nobler entertainment cupid is by far lovlier than esculapius, however i shall not envy your happiness, in the contrary i wish that all your desires be crown'd with success, that a passion that proves fatal to great many of men be void of sorrow for you, that all the paths of love be spred over with flowers in one word that you may not address in vain to the charming mss. m. i am almost tempted to fall in love with that unknown beauty, 't would not be quite like don quixotte for your liking to her would be for me a very strong prejudice of her merit, which the poor knight had not in his love for dulcinea. i shall not ask your pardon for the length of this letter i am sure friendship will forgive the time i steal to love however i cannot give up so easily a conversation with a true friend with whom i fancy to speak yet in one of those delightfull evening walks at leyden. it is a dream, i own it, but it is so agreable one to me that nothing but reality could be compared to the pleasure i feel: let me therefore insist a little more upon't and travel with my letter, we are gone! i think to be at alesbury! there i see my dear wilkes! what a flurry of panions! joy! fear of a second parting! what charming tears! what sincere kisses!--but time flows and the end of this love is now as unwelcome to me, as would be to another to be awaken'd in the middle of a dream wherein he is going to enjoy a beloved mistress; the enchantment ceases, the delightfull images vanish, and nothing is left to me but friendship, which is of all my possessions the fairest, and the surest, i am most sincerely dear wilkes your affectionate friend and humble servant de holbach heze the th august n. s. i shall expect with impatience the letter you are to write me from alesbury. will it be here very soon! holbach to wilkes [hÉeze dec. rd. ] _dearest wilkes_ during a little voyage i have made into germany i have received your charming letter of the th. september o. s. the many affairs i have been busy with for these months has hindered me hitherto from returning to you as speedy an answer as i should have done. i know too much your kindness for me to make any farther apology and i hope you are enough acquainted with the sincerety of my friendship towards you to adscribe my fault to forgetfulness or want of gratitude be sure, dear friend, that such a disposition will allways be unknown to me in regard to you. i don't doubt but you will be by this time returned at london, the winter season being an obstacle to the pleasures you have enjoyed following ye letter at alesbury during the last autumn. i must own i have felt a good deal of pride when you gave me the kind assurance that love has not made you forget an old friend, i need not tell you my disposition. i hope you know it well enough and like my friendship for you has no bounds i want expressions to show it. mr dowdeswell has been so good as to let me enjoy his company here in the month of august, and returned to leyden to pursue his studies in the middle of september. we often wished your company and made sincere libations to you with burgundy and champaigne i had a few weeks there after i set out for germany where i expected to spend the whole winter but the sudden death of my uncle's steward has forced me to come back here to put in order the affairs of this estate, i don't know how long i shall be obliged to stay in the meanwhile i act pretty well the part of a county squire, id est, hunting, shooting, fishing, walking every day without to lay aside the ever charming conversation of horace virgil homer and all our noble friends of the elysian fields. they are allways faithfull to me, with their aid i find very well how to employ my time, but i want in this country a true bosom friend like my dear wilkes to converse with, but my pretenssions are too high, for every abode with such a company would be heaven for me. i perceive by your last letter that your hopes are very like to succeed by mss mead, you are sure that every happines that can befall to you will make me vastly happy. i beseech you therefore to let me know everytime how far you are gone, i take it to be a very good omen for you, that your lovely mistress out of compliance has vouchsafed to learn a harsh high-dutch name, which would otherwise have made her starttle, at the very hearing of it. i am very thankful for her kind desire of seeing me in engelland which i dont wish the less but you know my circumstances enough, to guess that i cannot follow my inclinations. i have not heard hitherto anything about the books you have been so kind as to send me over by the opportunity of a friend. i have wrote about it to msrs conrad et bouwer of rotterdam, they answered that they were not yet there. nevertheless i am very much oblided to you for your kindness and wish to find very soon the opportunity of my revenge. mr dowderswell complains very much of mrs bland and weatherill, having not heard of them since their departure from leyden. i desire my compliments to mr dyer and all our old acquaintances. pray be so good as to direct your first letter under the covert of mr dowderwell at ms alliaume's at leyden he shall send it to me over immediately, no more at mr van sprang's like you used to do. i wish to know if mr lyson since his return to his native country, continues in his peevish cross temper. if you have any news besides i'll be glad to hear them by your next which i expect very soon. about politicks i cannot tell you anything at present, you have heard enough by this time the fatal battle fought near liège in ber last; everybody has little hopes of the congress of breda, the austrian and piedmontese are entered into provence, which is not as difficult as to maintain themselves therein, i wish a speedy peace would enable us both to see the rejoicings that will attend the marriage of the dauphin of france with a princess of saxony. i have heard that peace is made between england and spain, which you ought to know better than i. we fear very much for the next campaign the siege of maestrich in our neighborhood. these are all the news i know. i'll tell you another that you have known a long while viz. that nobody is with more sincerity my dear wilkes your faithfull humble servant and friend holbach heeze the d xber ns by holbach was established in paris as a young man of the world. his fortune, his learning, his sociability attracted the younger literary set toward him. in he was already holding his thursday dinners which later became so famous. among his early friends were diderot, rousseau and grimm. with them he took the side of the italian _opera buffa_ in the famous musical quarrel of , and published two witty brochures ridiculing french music. [ : ] he was an art connoisseur and bought oudry's _chienne allaitant ses petits_, the _chef d'oeuvre_ of the salon of . [ : ] during these years he was hard at work at his chosen sciences of chemistry and mineralogy. in he published in a huge volume in quarto with excellent plates, a translation of antonio neri's _art of glass making_, and in a translation of wallerius' _mineralogy_. on july , , the academy of berlin made him a foreign associate in recognition of his scholarly attainments in natural history, [ : ] and later he was elected to the academies of st. petersburg and mannheim. all that was now lacking to this brilliant young man was an attractive wife to rule over his salon. his friends urged him to wed, and in he married mlle. basile-genevieve-susanne d'aine, daughter of "maître marius-jean-baptiste nicolas d'aine, conseiller au roi en son grand conseil, associé externe de l'acad. des sciences et belles letters de prusse." [ : ] m. d'aine was also maître des requêtes and a man of means. mme. d'holbach was a very charming and gracious woman and holbach's good fortune seemed complete when suddenly mme. d'holbach died from a most loathsome and painful disease in the summer of . holbach was heart-broken and took a trip through the provinces with his friend grimm, to whom he was much attached, to distract his mind from his grief. he returned in the early winter and the next year ( ) got a special dispensation from the pope to marry his deceased wife's sister, mlle. charlotte-susanne d'aine. by her he had four children, two sons and two daughters. the first, charles-marius, was born about the middle of august, , and baptized in saint-germain-l'auxerrois, aug. . he inherited the family title and was a captain in the regiment of the schomberg-dragons. [ : ] the first daughter was born towards the end of and the second about the middle of jan., . [ : ] the elder married the marquis de châtenay and the younger the marquis de nolivos, "captaine au régiment de la seurre, dragons." their majesties the king and queen and the royal family signed their marriage contract may , . [ : ] of the second son there seem to be no traces. holbach's mother-in-law, madame d'aine, was a very interesting old woman as she is pictured in diderot's _mémoires_, and there was a brother-in-law, "messire marius-jean-baptiste-nicholas d'aine, chevalier, conseiller du roi en ses conseils, maître des requêtes honoraire de son hôtel, intendant de justice, police, et finances de la généralité de tours," who lived in rue saint dominique, paroisse saint-sulpice. there was in holbach's household for a long time an old scotch surgeon, a homeless, misanthropic old fellow by the name of hope, of whom diderot gives a most interesting account. [ : ] these are the only names we have of the personnel of holbach's household. his town house was in the rue royale, butte saint-roch. it was here that for an almost unbroken period of forty years he gave his sunday and thursday dinners. the latter day was known to the more intimate set of encyclopedists as the _jour du synagogue_. here the _église philosophique_ met regularly to discuss its doctrines and publish its propaganda of radicalism. holbach had a very pleasant country seat, the château of grandval, now in the arrondisement of boissy st. léger at sucy-en-brie. it is pleasantly situated in the valley of a little stream, the morbra, which flows into the marne. the property was really the estate of mme. d'aine who lived with the holbachs. here the family and their numerous guests passed the late summer and fall. here diderot spent weeks at a time working on the encyclopedia, dining, and walking on the steep slopes of the marne with congenial companions. to him we are indebted for our intimate knowledge of grandval and its inhabitants, their slightest doings and conversations; and as danou has well said, if we were to wish ourselves back in any past age we should choose with many others the mid-eighteenth century and the charming society of paris and grandval. [ : ] holbach's life, in common with that of most philosophers, offers no events, except that he came near being killed in the crush and riot in the rue royale that followed the fire at the dauphin's wedding in . [ : ] he was never an official personage. his entire life was spent in study, writing and conversation with his friends. he traveled very little; the world came to him, to the _café de l'europe_, as abbé galiani called paris. from time to time holbach went to contrexéville for his gout and once to england to visit david garrick; but he disliked england very thoroughly and was glad to get back to paris. the events of his life in so far as there were any, were his relations with people. he knew intimately practically all the great men of his century, except montesquieu and voltaire, who were off the stage before his day. [ : ] holbach's most intimate and life-long friend among the great figures of the century was diderot, of whom rousseau said, "À la distance de quelques siècles du moment où il a vécu, diderot paraîtra un homme prodigieux; on regardera de loin cette tête universelle avec une admiration mêlée d'étonnement, comme nous regardons aujourd'hui la tête des platon et des aristote." [ : ] all his contemporaries agreed that nothing was so charged with divine fire as the conversation of diderot. gautherin, in his fine bronze of him on the place saint-germain-des-près, seems to have caught the spirit of his talk and has depicted him as he might have sat in the midst of holbach's society, of which he was the inspiration and the soul. holbach backed diderot financially in his great literary and scientific undertaking and provided articles for the encyclopedia on chemistry and natural science. diderot had a high opinion of his erudition and said of him, "quelque système que forge mon imagination, je suis sur que mon ami d'holbach me trouve des faits et des autorités pour le justifier." [ : ] opinions differ in regard to the intellectual influence of these men upon each other. diderot was without doubt the greater thinker, but holbach stated his atheism with far greater clarity and diderot gave his sanction to it by embellishing holbach's books with a few eloquent pages of his own. diderot said to sir samuel romilly in , "il faut _sabrer_ la théologie," [ : ] and died in in the belief that complete infidelity was the first step toward philosophy. five years later holbach was buried by his side in the crypt of the chapel of the virgin behind the high altar in saint-roch. no tablet marks their tombs, and although repeated investigations have been made no light has been thrown on the exact position of their burial place. according to diderot's daughter, mme. vandeuil, their entire correspondence has been destroyed or lost. [ : ] holbach's relations with rousseau were less harmonious. the account of their mutual misunderstandings contained in the _confessions_, in a letter by cerutti in the _journal de paris_ dec. , , and in private letters of holbach's to hume, garrick, and wilkes, is a long and tiresome tale. the author of _eclaircissements relatifs à la publication des confessions de rousseau..._ (paris, ) blames the _club holbachique_ for their treatment of rousseau, but the fault seems to lie on both sides. according to rousseau's account, holbach sought his friendship and for a few years he was one of holbach's society. but, after the success of the _devin du village_ in , the _holbachiens_ turned against him out of jealousy of his genius as a composer. visions of a dark plot against him rose before his fevered and sensitive imagination, and after he left the society of the encyclopedists, never to return. holbach, on the other hand, while admitting rather questionable treatment of rousseau, never speaks of any personal injury on his part, and bewails the fact that "l'homme le plus éloquent s'est rendu ainsi l'homme le plus anti-littéraire, et l'homme le plus sensible s'est rendu le plus anti-social." [ : ] he did warn hume against taking him to england, and in a letter to wilkes predicted the quarrel that took place shortly after. in writing to garrick [ : ] he says some hard but true things about rousseau, who on his part never really defamed holbach but depicted him as the virtuous atheist under the guise of wolmar in the _nouvelle heloïse_. their personal incompatibility is best explained on the grounds of the radical differences in their temperaments and types of mind and by the fact that rousseau was too sensitive to get on with anybody for any great length of time. two other great frenchmen, buffon and d'alembert, were for a time members of holbach's society, but, for reasons that are not altogether clear, gradually withdrew. grimm suggests that buffon did not find the young philosophers sufficiently deferential to him and to the authorized powers, and feared for his dignity,--and safety, in their company. d'alembert, on the other hand, was a recluse by nature, and, after giving up his editorship on the encyclopedia, easily dropped out of diderot's society and devoted himself to mlle. lespinasse and mme. geoffrin. holbach and helvetius were life-long friends and spent much time together reading at helvetius's country place at voré. after his death in , holbach frequented mme. helvetius' salon where he knew and deeply influenced volney, cabanis, de tracy, and the first generation of the ideologists who continued his and helvetius' philosophical doctrines. among the other frenchmen of the day who were on intimate relations with holbach and frequented his salon were la condamine, condillac, condorcet, turgot, morellet, raynal, grimm, marmontel, colardeau, saurin, suard, saint-lambert, thomas, duclos, chastellux, boulanger, darcet, roux, rouelle, barthès, venel, leroy, damilaville, naigeon, lagrange and lesser names,--but well known in paris in the eighteenth century,--d'alinville, chauvelin, desmahis, gauffecourt, margency, de croismare, de pezay, coyer, de valory, charnoi, not to mention a host of others. among holbach's most intimate english friends were hume, garrick, wilkes, sterne, gibbon, horace walpole, adam smith, benjamin franklin, dr. priestley, lord shelburne, gen. barré, gen. clark, sir james macdonald, dr. gem, messrs. stewart, demster, fordyce, fitzmaurice, foley, etc. holbach addressed a letter to hume in , before making his acquaintance, in which he expressed his admiration of his philosophy and the desire to know him personally. [ : ] in hume came to paris as secretary of the british embassy and immediately called on holbach and became a regular frequenter of his salon. it was to holbach that he wrote first on the outbreak of his quarrel with rousseau and they corresponded at length in egard to the publication of the _exposé succinct_, which was to justify hume in the eyes of the french. hume and holbach had much in common intellectually, although the latter was far more thoroughgoing in his repudiation of theism. david garrick and his wife were frequent visitors at the rue royale on their trips to paris where they were very much liked by holbach's society. nothing is more cordial or gracious than the compliments passed between them in their subsequent correspondence. there are two published letters from holbach in mr. hedgecock's recent study of garrick and his french friends, excellent examples of the happy spontaneity and sympathy that were characteristic of french sociability in the eighteenth century. [ : ] holbach in turn spent several months with garrick at hampton. holbach's early friendship for wilkes has already been mentioned. wilkes spent a great deal of time in paris on the occasion of his exiles from england and became very intimate with holbach. they corresponded up to the very end of holbach's life and there was a constant interchange of friendly offices between them. [ : ] miss wilkes, who spent much time in paris, was a very good friend of mme. holbach and mlle. helvetius. adam smith often dined at holbach's with turgot and the economists; gibbon also found his dinners agreeable except for the dogmatism of the atheists; walpole resented it also and kept away. priestley seems to have gotten on very well, although the philosophers found his materialism and unitarianism a trifle inconsistent. it was at holbach's that shelburne met morellet with whom he carried on a long and serious correspondence on economics. there seem to be no details of holbach's relations with franklin, who was evidently more assiduous at the salon of mme. helvetius whom he desired to marry. holbach's best friend among the italians was abbé galiani, secretary of the neapolitan embassy, who spent ten years in the salons of paris. after his return to naples his longing for paris led him to a voluminous correspondence with his french friends including holbach. a few of their letters are extant. beccaria also came to paris at the invitation of the translator of his _crimes and punishments_, abbé morellet, made on behalf of holbach and his society. beccaria and his friend veri, who accompanied him, had long been admirers of french philosophy, and the frenchmen found much to admire in beccaria's book. one _avocat-général_, m. servan of the parlement of bordeaux, a friend of holbach's, tried to put his reforms in practice and shared the fate of most reformers. holbach was also in correspondence with beccaria, and one of his letters has been published in m. landry's recent study of beccaria. among the other italians whom holbach befriended were paulo frizi, the mathematician; dr. gatti; pincini, the musician; and mme. riccoboni, ex-actress and novelist; whose lively correspondence with garrick whom she met at holbach's sheds much light on the social relations of the century. among the other foreigners who were friends or acquaintances of holbach were his fellow countrymen, frederich melchon grimm, like himself a naturalized frenchman and the bosom friend of diderot; meister, his collaborator in the _literary correspondence_; kohant, a bohemian musician, composer, of the _bergère des alpes_ and mme. holbach's lute-teacher; baron gleichen, comte de creutz, danish and scandinavian diplomats; and a number of german nobles; the hereditary princes of brunswick and saxe gotha, baron alaberg, afterwards elector of mayence, baron schomberg and baron studitz. among the well known women of the century holbach was most intimate with mme. d'epinay, who became a very good friend of mme. holbach's and was present at the birth of her first son, and, in her will, left her a portrait by rembrandt. he was also a friend of mme. geoffrin, attended her salon, and knew mlle. de lespinasse, mme. houderot and most of the important women of the day. there are excellent sources from which to form an estimate of this man whose house was the social centre of the century. just after holbach's death on january , , naigeon, his literary agent, who had lived on terms of the greatest intimacy with him for twenty-four years, wrote a long eulogy which filled the issue of the _journal de paris_ for feb. . there was another letter to the _journal_ on feb. . grimm's _correspondance littéraire_ for march contains a long account of him by meister, and there are other notices in contemporary memoirs such as morellet's and marmontel's. all these accounts agree in picturing him as the most admirable of men. it must be remembered that holbach always enjoyed what was held to be a considerable fortune in his day. from his estates in westphalia he had a yearly income of , _livres_ which he spent in entertaining. this freedom from economic pressure gave him leisure to devote his time to his chosen intellectual pursuits and to his friends. he was a universally learned man. he knew french, german, english, italian and latin extremely well and had a fine private library of about three thousand works often of several volumes each, in these languages and in greek and hebrew. the catalogue of this library was published by debure in . it would be difficult to imagine a more comprehensive and complete collection of its size. he had also a rich collection of drawings by the best masters, fine pictures of which he was a connoisseur, bronzes, marbles, porcelains and a natural history cabinet, so in vogue in those days, containing some very valuable specimens. he was one of the most learned men of his day in natural science, especially chemistry and mineralogy, and to his translations from the best german scientific works is largely due the spread of scientific learning in france in the eighteenth century. holbach was also very widely read in english theology and philosophy of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and derived his anti-theological inspiration from these two sources. to this vast fund of learning, he joined an extreme modesty and simplicity. he sought no academic honors, published all his works anonymously, and, had it not been for the pleasure he took in communicating his ideas to his friends, no one would have suspected his great erudition. he had an extraordinary memory and the reputation of never forgetting anything of interest. this plenitude of information, coupled with his easy and pleasant manner of talking, made his society much sought after. naigeon said of him (in his preface to the works of lagrange): personne n'était plus communicatif que m. le baron d'holbach; personne ne prenait aux progrès de la raison un intérêt plus vif, plus sincère, et ne s'occupait avec plus de zèle et l'activité des moyens de les accélérer. Également versé dans la plupart des matières sur lesquelles il importe le plus à des êtres raisonnables d'avoir une opinion arrêtée, m. le baron d'holbach portait dans leur discussion un jugement sain, une logique sévère, et une analyse exacte et précise. quelque fut l'objet de ses entretiens avec ses amis, ou même avec des indifférens, tels qu'en offrent plus ou moins toutes les sociétés; il inspirait sans effort à ceux qui l'écoutaient l'enthousiasme de l'art ou de la science dont il parlait; et on ne le quittait jamais sans regretter de n'avoir pas cultivé la branche particulière de connaissances qui avait fait le sujet de la conversation, sans désirer d'être plus instruit, plus éclairé, et surtout sans admirer la claret, la justesse de son esprit, et l'ordre dans lequel il savait présenter ses idées. this virtue of communicativeness, of _sociabilité_, holbach carried into all the relations of life. he was always glad to lend or give his books to anyone who could make use of them. "je suis riche," he used to say, "mais je ne vois dans la fortune qu'un instrument de plus pour opérer le bien plus promptement et plus efficacement." in fact holbach's whole principle of life and action was to increase the store of human well being. and he did this without any religious motive whatsoever. as julie says of wolmar in _la nouvelle heloïse_, "il fait le bien sans espoir de récompense, il est plus vertueux, plus désintéressé que nous." there are many recorded instances of holbach's gracious benevolence. as he said to helvetius, "vous êtes brouillé avec tous ceux que vous avez obligé, mais j'ai gardé tous mes amis." holbach had the faculty of attaching people to him. diderot tells how at the salon of after holbach had bought oudry's famous picture, all the collectors who had passed it by came to him and offered him twice what he paid for it. holbach went to find the artist to ask him permission to cede the picture to his profit, but oudry refused, saying that he was only too happy that his best work belonged to the man who was the first to appreciate it. instances of holbach's liberality to kohant, a poor musician, and to suard, a poor literary man, are to be found in the pages of diderot and meister, and his constant generosity to his friends is a commonplace in their memoirs and correspondence. only rousseau was ungrateful enough to complain that holbach's free-handed gifts insulted his poverty. his kindness to lagrange, a young literary man whom he rescued from want, has been well told by m. naigeon in the preface to the works of lagrange (p. xviii). but perhaps the most touching instances of holbach's benevolence are his relations with the peasants of contrexéville, one of which was published in the _journal de lecture_, , the other in an anonymous letter to the _journal de paris_, feb. , . the first concerns the reconciliation of two old peasants who, not wanting to go to court, brought their differences to their respected friend for a settlement. nothing is more simple and beautiful than this homely tale as told in a letter of holbach's to a friend of his. the second, which john wilkes said ought to be written in letters of gold, deserves to be reproduced as a whole. l'éloge funèbre que m. naigeon a consacré à la mémoire de m. le baron d'holbach suffit pour donner une idée juste de ses lumières, mais le hasard m'a mis à portée de les juger encore mieux. j'ai vu m. le baron d'holbach dans deux voyages que j'ai faits aux eaux de contrexéville. s'occuper de sa souffrance et de sa guérison, c'est le soin de chaque malade. m. le baron d'holbach devenait le médecin, l'ami, le consolateur de quiconque venait aux eaux et il semblait bien moins occupé de ses infirmités que de celles des autres. lorsque des malades indigens manquaient de secours, ou pécuniaires ou curatifs, il les leur procurait avec un plaisir qui lui faisait plus de bien que les eaux. je me promenais un soir avec lui sur une hauteur couverte d'un massif de bois qui fait perspective de loin et près duquel s'élève un petit hermitage. là, demeure un cénobite qui n'a de revenu que les aumônes de ceux dont il reçoit les visites. nous acquittâmes chacun notre dette hospitalière. en prenant congé de l'hermite, m. le baron d'holbach me dit de le précéder un instant et qu'il allait me suivre. je le précédai, et comme il ne me suivait pas je m'arrêtai, pour l'attendre sur un terte exhaussé d'où l'on découvre tout le pays. je contemplais le canton que je dominais, plongé dans une douce rêverie. j'en fus tiré par des cris et je me retournai vers l'endroit d'òu ils partaient. je vis m. le baron d'holbach environné d'une vieille femme et de deux villageois, l'un vieux comme elle et l'autre jeune. tous trois, les larmes aux yeux, l'embrassaient hautement. allez vous-en donc, s'écrait m. le baron d'holbach; laissez moi, on m'attend, ne me suivez pas, adieu; je reviendrai l'année prochaine. en me voyant arriver vers eux, les trois personnes reconnaissantes disparurent. je lui demandai le sujet de tant de bénédictions. ce jeune paysan que vous avez vu s'etait engagé, j'ai obtenu de son colonel sa liberté en payant les cents écus prescrits par l'ordonnance. il est amoureux d'une jeune paysanne aussi pauvre que lui, je viens d'acheter pour eux un petit bien qui m'a coûté huit cent francs. le vieux père est perclus, aux deux bras, de rhumatismes, je lui ai fourni trois boîtes du baume des valdejeots, si estimé en ce pays-ci. la vieille mère est sujetté à des maux d'estomac, et je lui ai apporté un pot de confection d'hyacinthe. ils travaillaient dans le champ, voisin du bois, je suis allé les voir tandis que vous marchiez en avant. ils m'ont suivi malgré moi. ne parlez de cela à personne. on dirait que je veux faire le généreux et le bon philosophe, mais je ne suis que humain, et mes charités sont la plus agréable dépense de mes voyages. this humanity of holbach's is the very keynote of his character and of his intellectual life as well. as m. walferdin has said, the denial of the supernatural was for him the base of all virtue, and resting on this principle, he exemplified social qualities that do the greatest honor to human nature. he and madame holbach are the only conspicuous examples of conjugal fidelity and happiness among all the people that one has occasion to mention in a study of the intellectual and literary circles of the eighteenth century. they were devoted to each other, to their children and to their friends. considering the traits of holbach's character that have been cited, there can scarcely be two opinions in regard to completeness with which he realized his ideal of humanity and sociability. m. naigeon has well summed up in a few words holbach's relation to the only duties that he recognized, "he was a good husband, a good father and a good friend." chapter ii. holbach's works. holbach's published works, with the exception of a few scattered ones, may be divided into three classes, viz., translations of german scientific works, translations of english deistical writings, and his own works on theology, philosophy, politics and morals. those which fall into none of these categories can be dealt with very summarily. they are: . two pamphlets on the musical dispute of ; _lettre à une dame d'un certain âge sur l'état présent de l'opéra_, ( vo, pp. ) and _arrêt rendu à l'amphithéâtre de l'opéra_, ( vo, pp. ,) both directed against french music and in line with grimm's _petit prophète_ and rousseau's _lettre sur la musique française_. . a translation in prose of akenside's _the pleasures of imagination_ (paris, , vo). . a translation of swift's _history of the reign of queen anne_ in collaboration with m. eidous (amsterdam, , mo, pp. xxiv + ). . translations of an _ode on human life_ and a _hymn to the sun_ in the _variétés littéraires_ ( ). . articles on natural science in the _encyclopédie_ and article _prononciation des langues_ in the _dictionnaire de grammaire_ of the _encyclopédie méthodique_. . translation of wallerius' _agriculture reduced to its true principles_ (paris, , mo). . two _facéties philosophiques_ published in grimm's _correspondence littéraire. l'abbé et le rabbin_, and _essai sur l'art de ramper, à l'usage des courtisans_. . parts of raynal's _histoire philosophique des deux indes_. . notes to lagrange's _vie de senèque_. holbach's translations of german scientific works are as follows: (complete titles to be found in bibliography, pt. i.) . _art de la verrerie de neri, merret, et kunckel_ (paris, durand, ). original work in italian. latin translation by christopher merret. german translation by j. kunckel of löwenstern. holbach's translation comprises the seven books of antionio neri, merret's notes on neri, kunckel's observations on both these authors, his own experiments and others relative to glass-making. the translation was dedicated to malesherbes who had desired to see the best german scientific works published in french. in his _préface du traducteur_ holbach writes: l'envie de me rendre utile, dont tout citoyen doit être animé, m'a fait entreprendre l'ouvrage que je présente au public. s'il a le bonheur de mériter son approbation, quoiqu'il y ait peu de gloire attachée au travail ingrat et fastidieux d'un traducteur, je me déterminerai à donner les meilleurs ouvrages allemands, sur l'histoire naturelle, la minéralogie, la métallurgie et la chymie. tout le monde sait que l'allemagne possede en ce genre des trésors qui ont été jusqu'ici comme enfouis pour la france. . _minéralogie ou description générale du règne mineral par j. g. wallerius_ (paris, durand, ) followed by _hydrologie_ by the same author. second edition, paris, herrissant, . originally in swedish (wallerius was a professor of chemistry in the university of upsala). german translation by j. d. denso, professor of chemistry, stargard, pomerania. holbach's translation was made from the german edition which wallerius considered preferable to the swedish. he was assisted by bernard de jussien and rouelle, and the work was dedicated to a friend and co-worker in the natural sciences, monsieur d'arclais de montamy. . _introduction à la minéralogie... oeuvre posthume de m. j. f. henckel_, paris, cavelier, , first published under title _henckelius in mineralogiâ redivivus_, dresden, , by his pupil, m. stephani, as an outline of his lectures. holbach's translation made from a german edition, corrected, with notes on new discoveries added. . _chimie métallurgique... par m. c. gellert_. paris, briasson, , translated earlier. approbation may , , privilege dec. , . originally a text written by gellert for four artillery officers whom the king of sardinia sent to freyburg to learn mining-engineering. . _traités de physique, d'histoire naturelle, de mineralogy et de métallurgie_. paris, herrissant, , by j. g. lehmann, three vols. i. l'art des mines, ii. traité de la formation des métaux, iii. essai d'une histoire naturelle des couches de la terre. in his preface to the third volume holbach has some interesting remarks about the deluge, the irony of which seems to have escaped the royal censor, millet, _docteur en théologie_. "la description si précise et si détaillée que moïse fait du deluge dans la genèse, ayant une autorité infaillible, puis qu'elle n'est autre que celle de dieu même, nous rend certains de la réalité et de l'universalité de ce châtiment terrible. il s'agit simplement d'examiner si les naturalistes, tels que woodward, schenchzer, buttner et m. lehmann lui-même ne se sont points trompés, lorsqu'ils ont attribué à cet événement seul la formation des couches de la terre et lorsqu'ils s'en sont servis pour expliquer l'état actuel de notre globe. il semble que rien ne doit nous empêcher d'agiter cette question; l'ecriture sainte se contente de nous apprendre la voie miraculeuse dont dieu s'est servi pour punir les crimes du genre humain; elle ne dit rien qui puisse limiter les sentiments des naturalistes sur les autres effets physiques que le déluge a pu produire. c'est une matière qu'elle paroît avoir abandonnée aux disputes des hommes." he then proceeds to question whether the deluge could have produced the results attributed to it and argues against catastrophism which, it must be remembered, was the received geological doctrine down to the days of lyell. "les causes les plus simples sont capables de produire au bout des siècles les effets les plus grands, surtout lorsqu'elles agissent incessament; et nous voyons toutes ces causes réunies agir perpétuellement sous nos yeux. concluons, donc, de tout ce qui précède, que le déluge, seul et les feux souterrains seuls ne suffisent point pour expliquer la formation des couches de la terre. on risquera toujours de se tromper, lorsque par l'envie de simplifier on voudra dériver tous les phénomènes de la nature d'une seule et unique cause." . _pyritologie_ by j. f. henkel, paris, herrissant, , a large volume in quarto, translated by holbach. it contains _flora saturnisans_ (translated by m. charas and reviewed by m. roux), henkel's _opuscules minéralogiques_ and other treatises. original editions: _pyritologia_, leipzig, , ; _flora saturnisans_, leipzig, ; _de appropriatione chymica_, dresden, , and _de lapidum origine_, dresden, , translated into german, with excellent notes, dresden, , by m. c. f. zimmermann, a pupil of m. henkel. holbach's translations seem to have been well received because he writes in this preface: "je m'estimerai heureux si mon travail peut contribuer à entretenir et augmenter le goût universel qu'on a conçu pour le saine physique." . _oeuvres métallurgiques_ de m. j. c. orschall, paris, hardy, . orschall still accepted the old alchemist tradition but was sound in practice and was the best authority on copper. holbach does not attempt to justify his physics which was that of the preceding century. orschall was held in high esteem by henckel and stahl. . _recueil des mémoires des académies d'upsal et de stockholm_, paris, didot, . these records of experiments made in the royal laboratories of sweden, founded in by charles xi, had already been translated into german and english. holbach's translation was made from the german and latin. he promises further treatises on agriculture, natural history and medicine. . _traité du soufre_ by g. e. stahl, paris, didot, . in speaking of stahl's theories holbach says: "il ne faut pas croire que ces connaissances soient des vérités stériles propres seulement à satisfaire une vaine curiosité, elles ont leur application aux travaux de la métallurgie qui leur doivent la perfection où on les a portés depuis quelques temps." holbach understood very clearly the utility of science in his scheme of increasing the store of human well-being, and would doubtless have translated other useful works had not other interests prevented. there is a mss. note of his in the bibliothèque nationale to m. malesherbes, then administrateur de la librairie royale; suggesting other german treatises that might well be translated. (mss. ). holbach to malesherbes _monsieur_ j'ai l'honneur de vous envoyer ci-joint la liste des ouvrages dont m. liège fils pourrait entreprendre la traduction. je n'en connais actuellement point d'autres qui méritent l'attention du public. m. macquer m'a écrit une lettre qui a pour objet les mêmes choses dont vous m'avez fait l'honneur de me parler, et je lui fais la même réponse. j'ai l'honneur d'être avec respect, monsieur, votre très obéissant serviteur d'holbach à paris ce d'avril the list of books was as follows: . johann kunckel's _laboratorium chymicum_, vo. . georg ernest stahl's _commentary on becher's metallurgy_, vo. . _concordantia chymica becheri_, º, published by stahl. . _cadmologia_, or the _natural history of cobalt_, by j. g. lehmann, berlin, , °. after holbach became interested in another line of intellectual activity, namely the writing and translation of anti-religious literature. his first book of this sort really appeared in although no copies bear this date. from on however he published a great many works of this character. it is convenient to deal first with his translations of english deistical writers. they are in chronological order. . _esprit du clergé, ou le christianisme primitif vengé des entreprises et des excès de nos prêtres modernes_. londres (amsterdam), . this book appeared in england in under the title of _the independent whig_; its author was thomas gordon (known through his commentaries on sallust and tacitus) who wrote in collaboration with john trenchard. the book was partially rewritten by holbach and then touched up by naigeon, who, according to a manuscript note by his brother, "atheised it as much as possible." it was sold with great secrecy and at a high price--a reward which the colporters demanded for the risk they ran in peddling seditious literature. the book was a violent attack on the spirit of domination which characterized the christian priesthood at that time. . _de l'imposture sacerdotale, ou recueil de pièces sur le clergé_, londres (amsterdam), . another edition under title _de la monstruosité pontificale_ etc. contains translations of various pamphlets including davisson, _a true picture of popery_; brown, _popery a craft_, london ; gordon, _apology for the danger of the church_, ; gordon, _the creed of an independent whig_, . . _examen des prophéties qui servent de fondement à la religion chrétienne_, londres (amsterdam), . translation of anthony collins, _a discourse on the grounds and reasons of the christian religion_, london, . contains also _the scheme of literal prophecy considered_, , also by collins in answer to the works of clarke, sherlock, chandler, sykes, and especially to whiston's _essay towards restoring the text of the old testament_, one of the thirty-five works directed against collins' original _"discourse"_. copies of this work have become very rare. . _david, ou l'histoire de l'homme selon le coeur de dieu_. londres (amsterdam), . this work appeared in england in and is attributed to peter annet, also to john noorthook. some english eulogists of george ii, messrs. chandler, palmer and others, had likened their late king to david, "the man after god's own heart." the deists, struck by the absurdity of the comparison, proceeded to relate all the scandalous facts they could find recorded of david, and by clever distortions painted him as the most execrable of kings, in a work entitled _david or the man after god's own heart_, which formed the basis of holbach's translation. . _les prêtres démasqués ou des iniquités du clergé chrétien_. londres, . translation of four discourses published under the title _the ax laid to the root of christian priestcraft by a layman_, london, t. cooper, . a rare volume. . _lettres philosophiques..._ londres (amsterdam, ). translation of j. toland's _letters to serena_, london, . the book, which had become very rare in holbach's time, had caused a great scandal at the time of its publication and was much sought after by collectors. it contains five letters, the first three of which are by toland, the other two and the preface by holbach and naigeon. the matters treated are, the origin of prejudices, the dogma of the immortality of the soul, idolatry, superstition, the system of spinoza and the origin of movement in matter. diderot said of these works, in writing to mlle. volland nov. , (_oeuvres_, vol. xviii, p. ): "il pleut des bombes dans la maison du seigneur. je tremble toujours que quelqu'un de ces téméraires artilleurs-là ne s'en trouve mal. ce sont les _lettres philosophiques_ traduites, ou supposées traduites, de l'anglais de toland; c'est _l'examen des prophéties_; c'est la _vie de david ou de l'homme selon là coeur de dieu_, ce sont mélle diables déchainés.--ah! madame de blacy, je crains bien que le fils de l'homme ne soit à la porte; que la venue d'elie ne soit proche, et que nous ne touchions au règne de l'anti-christ. tous les jours, quand je me lève, je regarde par ma fenêtre, si la grande prostituée de babylone ne se promène point déjà dans les rues avec sa grande coupe à la main et s'il ne se fait aucun des signes prédits dans le firmament." . _de la cruauté religieuse_, londres (amsterdam). _considerations upon war, upon cruelty in general and religious cruelty in particular_, london, printed for thomas hope, . . _dissertation critique sur les tourmens de l'enfer_ printed in an original work, _l'enfer détruit_, londres (amsterdam), . a translation of whitefoot's _the torments of hell, the foundation and pillars thereof discover'd, search'd, shaken and remov'd_. london, . . in the _recueil philosophique_ edited by naigeon, londres (amsterdam), . i. dissertation sur l'immortalité de l'âme. translated from hume. ii. dissertation sur le suicide (hume). iii. extrait d'un livre anglais qui a pour titre le christianisme aussi ancien que le monde. (tindal, christianity as old as creation.) . _esprit de judaïsme, ou examen raisonné de la loi de moyse_. londres (amsterdam), ( ), translated from anthony collins. with the exception of some of holbach's own works this is one of the fiercest denunciations of judaism and christianity to be found in print. in fact, it is very much in the style of holbach's anti-religious works and shows beyond a doubt that holbach derived his inspiration from collins and the more radical of the english school. the volume has become exceedingly rare. after outlining the history of judaism the book ends thus: ose, donc enfin, ô europe! secouer le joug insupportable des préjugés qui t'affligent. laisse à des hébreux stupides, à des frénétiques imbéciles, à des asiatiques lâches et dégradés, ces superstitions aussi avilissantes qu'insensées: elles ne sont point faites pour les habitans de ton climat. occupe-toi du soin de perfectionner tes gouvernemens, de corriger tes lois, de réformer tes abus, de régler tes moeurs, et ferme pour toujours les yeux à ces vraies chimères, qui depuis tant de siècles n'ont servi qu'à retarder tes progrès vers la science véritable et à t'écarter de la route du bonheur. . _examen critique de la vie et des ouvrages de saint paul_, londres (amsterdam), . a free translation of peter annet's _history and character of st. paul examined_, written in answer to lyttelton. new edition and translated back into english "from the french of boulanger," london, r. carlile, . a rather unsympathetic account, but with flashes of real insight into "le système religieux des chrétiens dont s. paul fut évidemment le véritable architecte." (epître dédicatoire.) annet said of paul's type of man "l'enthousiaste s'enivre, pour l'ainsi dire, de son propre vin, il se persuade que la cause de ses passions est la cause de dieu (p. ), mais quelque violent qu'ait pu être l'enthousiasme de s. paul, il sentait très bien que la doctrine qu'il prêchait devait paraître bizarre et insensée à des êtres raisonnables" (p. ). . _de la nature humaine, ou exposition des facultés, des actions et des passions de l'âme_, londres (amsterdam), . (thomas hobbes.) reprinted in a french edition of hobbes' works by holbach and sorbière, . appeared first in english in , omitted in a latin edition of hobbes printed in amsterdam. in spite of its brevity, holbach considered this one of hobbes' most important and luminous works. . _discours sur les miracles de jesus christ_ (amsterdam, ?). translated from woolston, whom holbach admired very much for his uncompromising attitude toward truth. he suffered fines and imprisonments, but would not give up the privilege of writing as he pleased. the present discourse was the cause of a quarrel with his friend whiston. he died jan. , , "avec beaucoup de fermeté... il se ferma les yeux et la bouche de ses propres mains, et rendit l'esprit." this work exists in a manuscript book of pages, written very fine, in the bibliothèque nationale (mss. français ) and was current in france long before . in fact it is mentioned by grimm before , but the dictionaries (barber, quérard) generally date it from . before turning to holbach's original works mention should be made of a very interesting and extraordinary book that he brought to light, retouched, and later used as a kind of shield against the attacks of the parliaments upon his own works. in he published a work entitled _l'antiquité dévoilée par ses usages, ou examen critique des principales opinions, cérémonies et institutions religieuses et politiques des différens peuples de la terre_. par feu m. boulanger, amsterdam, . this is a work based on an original manuscript by boulanger, who died in , preceded by an excellent letter on him by diderot, published also in the _gazette littéraire_. the use made by holbach of boulanger's name makes it necessary to consider for a moment this almost forgotten writer. nicholas antoine boulanger was born in . as a child he showed so little aptitude for study that later his teachers could scarcely believe that he had turned out to be a really learned man. as diderot observes, "ces exemples d'enfans, rendus ineptes entre les mains des pédans qui les abrutissent en dépit de la nature la plus heureuse, ne sont pas rares, cependant ils surprennent toujours" (p. ). boulanger studied mathematics and architecture, became an engineer and was employed by the government as inspector of bridges and highways. he passed a busy life in exacting outdoor work but at the same time his active intellect played over a large range of human interests. he became especially concerned with historical origins and set himself to learn latin and greek that he might get at the sources. not satisfied that he had come to the root of the matter he learned arabic, syriac, hebrew and chaldean. diderot says "il lisait et étudiait partout, je l'ai moi-même rencontré sur les grandes routes avec un auteur rabinnique à la main." he made a _mappemonde_ in which the globe is divided in two hemispheres, one occupied by the continents, the other by the oceans, and by a singular coincidence he found that the meridian of the continental hemisphere passed through paris. some such rearrangement of hemispheres is one of the commonplaces of modern geography. he furnished such articles as, _deluge, corvée, société_ for the encyclopedia and wrote several large and extremely learned books, among them _recherches sur l'origine du despotisme oriental_ and _antiquité dévoilée_. he died from overwork at the age of thirty-seven. boulanger's ideas on philosophy, mythology, anthropology and history are of extraordinary interest today. diderot relates his saying--"que si la philosophie avait trouvé tant d'obstacles parmi nous c'était qu'on avait commencé par où il aurait fallu finir, par des maximes abstraites, des raisonnemens généraux, des réflexions subtiles qui ont révolté par leur étrangeté et leur hardiesse et qu'on aurait admises sans peine si elles avaient été précédées de l'histoire des faits." he carried over this inductive method into realm of history, which he thought had been approached from the wrong side, i.e., the metaphysical, "par consulter les lumières de la raison" (p. ). he continues, "j'ai pensé qu'il devait y avoir quelques circonstances _particulières_. un fait et non une spéculation métaphysique m'a toujours semblé devoir être et tribut naturel et nécessaire de l'histoire." curiously enough the central fact in history appeared to boulanger to be the deluge, and on the basis of it he attempted to interpret the _kulturgeschichte_ of humanity. it is a bit unfortunate that he took the deluge quite as literally as he did; his idea, however, is obviously the influence of environmental pressure on the changing beliefs and practices of mankind. under the spell of this new point of view, he writes, "ce qu'on appelle l'histoire n'en est que la partie la plus ingrate, la plus uniforme, la plus inutile, quoi qu'elle soit la plus connue. la véritable histoire est couverte par le voile des temps" (p. ). boulanger however was not to be daunted and on the firm foundation of the fact of some ancient and universal catastrophe, as recorded on the surface of the earth and in human mythology, he proceeds to inquire into the moral effects of the changes in the physical environment back to which if possible the history of antiquity must be traced. man's defeat in his struggle with the elements made him religious, _hinc prima mali labes_. "son premier pas fut un faux pas, sa première maxime fut une erreur" (p. sq). but it was not his fault nor has time repaired the evil moral effects of that early catastrophe. "les grandes révolutions physiques de notre globe sont les véritables époques de l'histoire des nations" (p. ). hence have arisen the various psychological states through which mankind has passed. contemporary savages are still in the primitive state--boulanger properly emphasizes the relation of anthropology to history--"on aperçoit qu'il y a une nouvelle manière de voir et d'écrire l'histoire des hommes" (p. ) and with a vast store of anthropological and folklorist learning he writes it so that his assailant, fabry d'autrey, in his _antiquité justifiée_ (paris, ) is obliged to say with truth, "ce n'est point ici un tissus de mensonges grossiers, de sophismes rebattus et bouffons, appliqués d'un air méprisant aux objets les plus intéressants pour l'humanité. c'est une enterprise sérieuse et réfléchie" (p. ). in holbach published his first original work, a few copies of which had been printed in nancy in . this work was _le christianisme dévoilé ou examen des principes et des effets de la religion chrétienne_. par feu m. boulanger. londres (amsterdam), . there were several other editions the same year, one printed at john wilkes' private press in westminster. it was reprinted in later collections of boulanger's works, and went through several english and spanish editions. the form of the title and the attribution of the work to boulanger were designed to set persecution on the wrong track. there has been some discussion as to its authorship. voltaire and laharpe attributed it to damilaville, at whose book shop it was said to have been sold, but m. barbier has published detailed information given him by naigeon to the effect that holbach entrusted his manuscript to m. de saint-lambert, who had it printed by leclerc at nancy in . most of the copies that got to paris at that time were bought by several officers of the king's regiment then in garrison at nancy, among them m. de villevielle, a friend of voltaire and of condorcet. damilaville did not sell a single copy and even had a great deal of trouble to get one for holbach who waited for it a long time. this circumstantial evidence is of greater value than the statement of voltaire who was in the habit of attributing anonymous works to whomever he pleased. [ : ] the edition of was printed in amsterdam as were most of holbach's works. we have the details of their publication from naigeon _cadet_, a copyist, whose brother, j. a. naigeon, was holbach's literary factotum. in a manuscript note in his copy of the _système de la nature_ he tells how he copied nearly all holbach's works, either at paris or at sedan, where he was stationed, and where his friend blon, the postmaster, aided him, passing the manuscripts on to a madame loncin in liège, who in turn was a correspondent of marc-michel rey, the printer in amsterdam. sometimes they were sent directly by the diligence or through travellers. this account agrees perfectly with information given m. barbier orally by naigeon _aîné_. after being printed in holland the books were smuggled into france _sous le manteau_, as the expression is, and sold at absurd rates by colporters. [ : ] diderot writing to falconet early in [ : ] says: "il pleut des livres incrédules. c'est un feu roulant qui crible le sanctuaire de toutes parts... l'intolérance du gouvernment s'accroit de jour en jour. on dirait que c'est un projet formé d'éteindre ici les lettres, de ruiner le commerce de librairie et de nous réduire à la besace et à la stupidité... _le christianisme dévoilé_ s'est vendu jusqu'à quatre louis." when caught the colporters were severely punished. diderot gives the following instance in a letter to mlle. volland oct. , (avézac-lavigne, _diderot_, p. ): "un apprenti avait reçu, en payment ou autrement, d'un colporteur appelé lécuyer, deux exemplaires du _christianisme dévoilé_ et il avait vendu un de ces exemplaires à son patron. celui-ci le défère au lieutenant de police. le colporteur, sa femme et l'apprenti sont arrêtés tous les trois; ils viennent d'être piloriés, fouettés et marqués, et l'apprenti condamné à neuf ans de galères, le colporteur à cinq ans, et la femme à l'hôpital pour toute sa vie." there are two very interesting pieces of contemporary criticism of _le christianisme dévoilé_, one by voltaire, the other by grimm. voltaire writes in a letter to madame de saint julien december , (_oeuvres_, xliv, p. , ed. garnier): "vous m'apprenez que, dans votre société, on m'attribue _le christianisme dévoilé_ par feu m. boulanger, mais je vous assure que les gens au fait ne m'attribuent point du tout cet ouvrage. j'avoue avec vous qu'il y a de la clarté, de la chaleur, et quelque fois de l'éloquence; mais il est plein de répétitions, de négligences, de fautes contre la langue et je serais très-fâché de l'avoir fait, non seulement comme académicien, mais comme philosophe, et encore plus comme citoyen. "il est entièrement opposé à mes principes. ce livre conduit à l'athéisme que je déteste. j'ai toujours regardé l'athéisme comme le plus grand égarement de la raison, parce qu'il est aussi ridicule de dire que l'arrangement du monde ne prouve pas un artisan suprême qu'il serait impertinent de dire qu'une horloge ne prouve pas un horloger. "je ne réprouve pas moins ce livre comme citoyen; l'auteur paraît trop ennemi des puissances. des hommes qui penseraient comme lui ne formeraient qu'une anarchie: et je vois trop, par l'example de genève, combien l'anarchie est à craindre. ma coutume est d'écrire sur la marge de mes livres ce que je pense d'eux, vous verrez, quand vous daignerez venir à ferney, les marges de _christianisme dévoilé_ chargés de remarques qui montrent que l'auteur s'est trompé sur les faits les plus essentiels." these notes may be read in voltaire's works (vol. xxxi, p. , ed. garnier) and the original copy of _le christianisme dévoilé_ in which he wrote them is in the british museum (c , k ) where it is jealously guarded as one of the most precious autographs of the patriarch of ferney. grimm's notice is from the _correspondance littéraire_ of august , (vol. v, p. ). "il existe un livre intitulé _le christianisme dévoilé ou examen des principes et des effets de la religion chrétienne_, par feu m. boulanger, volume in º. on voit d'abord qu'on lui a donné ce titre pour en faire le pendant de _l'antiquité dévoilée_; mais il ne faut pas beaucoup se connaître en manière pour sentir que ces deux ouvrages ne sont pas sortis de la même plume. on peut assurer avec la même certitude que celui dont nous parlons ne vient point de la fabrique de ferney, parce que j'aimerais mieux croire que le patriache eût pris la lune avec ses dents; cela serait moins impossible que de guetter sa manière et son allure si complètement qu'il n'en restât aucune trace quelconque. par la même raison, je ne crois ce livre d'aucun de nos philosophes connus, parce que je n'y trouve la manière d'aucun de ceux qui ont écrit. d'òu vient-il donc? ma foi, je serais fâché de le savoir, et je crois que l'auteur aura sagement fait de ne mettre personne dans son secret. c'est le livre le plus hardi et le plus terrible qui ait jamais parti dans aucun lieu du monde. la préface consiste dans une lettre où l'auteur examine si la réligion est reéllement nécessaire ou seulement utile au maintien ou à la police des empires, et s'il convient de la respecter sous ce point de vue. comme il établit la négative, il entreprend en conséquence de prouver, par son ouvrage, l'absurdité et l'incohérence du dogme chrétien et de la mythologie qui en résulte, et l'influence de cette absurdité sur les têtes et sur les âmes. dans la seconde partie, il examine la morale chrétienne, et il prétend prouver que dans ses principes généraux elle n'a aucun avantage sur toutes les morales du monde, parce que la justice et la bonté sont recommandées dans tous les catéchismes de l'univers, et que chez aucun peuple, quelque barbare qu'il fut, on n'a jamais enseigné qu'il fallût être injuste et méchant. quant à ce que la morale chrétienne a de particulier, l'auteur pretend démontrer qu'elle ne peut convenir qu'à des enthousiastes peu propres aux devoirs de la société, pour lesquels les hommes sont dans ce monde. il entreprend de prouver, dans la troisième partie, que la religion chrétienne a eu les effets politiques les plus sinistres et les plus funestes, et que le genre humain lui doit tous les malheurs dont il a été accablé depuis quinze à dix-huit siècles, sans qu'on en puisse encore prévoir la fin. ce livre est écrit avec plus de véhémence que de véritable éloquence; il entraine. son style est châtié et correct, quoique un peu dur et sec; son ton est grave et soutenu. on n'y apprend rien de nouveau, et cependant il attache et intéresse. malgré son incroyable témérité, on ne peut refuser à l'auteur la qualité d'homme de bien fortement épris du bonheur de sa race et de la prospérité des sociétés; mais je pense que ses bonnes intentions seraient une sauvegarde bien faible contre les mandements et les réquisitions." this is a clear and fair account of a book that is without doubt the severest criticism of the theory and practice of historical christianity ever put in print. the church very naturally did not let such a book pass unanswered. abbé bergier, a heavy person, triumphantly refuted holbach in eight hundred pages in his _apologia de la religion chrétienne contre l'auteur du christianisme dévoilé_, paris, , which finishes with the fatal prophecy, "nous avons de surs garans de nos espérances: tant que le sang auguste de s. louis sera sur le trône, _il n'y a point de révolutions à craindre ni dans la religion ni dans la politique_. la religion chrétienne fondée sur la parole de dieu... triomphera des nouveaux philosophes. dieu qui veille sur son ouvrage n'a pas besoin de nos faibles mains pour le soutenir" (psaume , vs. , ). . there already existed in another work by holbach entitled _théologie portative ou dictionnaire abrégé de la religion chrétienne. par mr abbé bernier_. londres (amsterdam), ( ). this book went through many editions and was augmented by subsequent authors and editors. voltaire was already writing to d'alembert about it august , . [ : ] in a letter to damilaville, october , he writes (vol. xiv, p. ): depuis trois mois il y a une douzaine d'ouvrages d'une liberté extrême, imprimés en hollande. _la théologie portative_ n'est nullement théologique: ce n'est qu'une plaisanterie continuelle par ordre alphabétique; mais il faut avouer qu'il y a des traits si comiques que plusieurs théologiens mêmes ne pourront s'empêcher d'en rire. les jeunes gens et les femmes lisent cette folie avec avidité. les éditions de tous les livres dans ce goût se multiplient. and on february , , he wrote: on fait tous les jours des livres contre la religion, dont je voudrais bien imiter le style pour la défendre. y a-t-il de plus salé, que la plupart des traits qui se trouvent dans la _théologie portative_? y a-t-il rien de plus vigoreux, de plus profondément raisonné, d'écrit avec une éloquence plus audacieuse et plus terrible, que le _militaire philosophe_, ouvrage qui court toute l'europe? [by naigeon and holbach] lisez la _théologie portative_, et vous ne pourrez vous empêcher de rire, en condammant la coupable hardiesse de l'auteur. lisez _l'imposture sacerdotale_--vous y verrez le style de démosthène. ces livres malheuresement inondent l'europe; mais quelle est la cause de cette inondation? il n'y en a point d'autre que les querelles théologiques qui ont révolté les laïques. _il s'est fait une révolution dans l'esprit humain que rien ne peut plus arrêter: les persécutions ne pourraient qu'irriter le mal_. [footnote: the italics are mine.] it is to be noted however that voltaire's sentiments varied according to the point of view of the person to whom he was writing. in a letter to d'alembert, may , (vol. lxv, p. ), he calls the _théologie portative_ "un ouvrage à mon gré, très plaisant, auquel je n'ai assurément nulle part, ouvrage que je serais très fâché d'avoir fait, et que je voudrais bien avoir été capable de faire." but in a letter to the bishop of annecy june, , he writes (vol. xxviii, p. ): "vous lui [m. de saint florentin] imputez, à ce que je vois par vos lettres, des livres misérables, et jusqu'à _la theologie portative_, ouvrage fait apparemment dans quelque cabaret; vous n'êtes pas obligé d'avoir du goût, mais vous êtes obligé d'être juste" (vol. xxviii, p. ). diderot even said of the book: "c'est un assez bon nombre de bonnes plaisanteries noyées dans un beaucoup plus grand nombre de mauvaises" and this criticism is just. a few examples of the better jokes will suffice: _adam:_ c'est le premier homme, dieu en fait un grand nigaud, qui pour complaire à sa femme eut la bêtise de mordre dans une pomme que ses descendans n'ont point encore pu digérer. _idées innées:_ notions inspirées des prêtres de si bonne heure, si souvent répétées, que devenu grand l'on croît les avoir eu toujours ou les avoir reçus dès le ventre de sa mère. _jonas:_ la baleine fut à la fin obligée de le vomir tant un prophète est un morceau difficile à digérer. _magie:_ il y en a de deux sortes, la blanche et la noire. la première est très sainte et se pratique journellement dans l'église. _protestants:_ chrétiens amphibies. _vierge:_ c'est la mère du fils de dieu et belle-mère de l'église. _visions:_ lanternes magiques que de tout temps le père eternel s'est amusé à montrer aux saintes et aux prophètes. . holbach furnished the last chapter of naigeon's book _le militaire philosophe, ou difficulties sur la religion_, londres (amsterdam), . voltaire ascribed the work to st. hyacinthe. grimm recognized that the last chapter was by another hand and considered it the weakest part of the book. it attempts to demonstrate that all supernatural religions have been harmful to society and that the only useful religion is natural religion or morals. the book was refuted by guidi, in a "_lettre a m. le chevalier de... [barthe] entraîné dans l'irreligion par un libelle intitulé le militaire philosophe_ ( , mo). . holbach's next book was _la contagion sacrée ou l'histoire naturelle de la superstition_, londres (amsterdam), . in his preface holbach attributed the alleged english original of this work to john trenchard but that was only a ruse to avoid persecution. the book is by holbach. it has gone through many editions and been translated into english and spanish. the first edition had an introduction by naigeon. according to him manuscripts of this book became quite rare at one time and were supposed to have been lost. later they became more common and this edition was corrected by collation with six others. [pg transcriber's note: at this point there appears to be a break in the original text. a sentence introducing the fifth book in this list, "letters to eugenie", has evidently been lost.] the letters were written in , according to lequinio (_feuilles posthumes_), who had his information from naigeon, to marguerite, marchioness de vermandois in answer to a very touching and pitiful letter from that lady who was in great trouble over religion. her young husband was a great friend of the holbachs, but having had a strict catholic bringing up she was shocked at their infidelity and warned by her confessor to keep away from them. "yet in their home she saw all the domestic virtues exemplified and beheld that sweet and unchangeable affection for which the d'holbachs were eminently distinguished among their acquaintances and which was remarkable for its striking contrast with the courtly and christian habits of the day. her natural good sense and love for her friends struggled with her monastic education and reverence for the priests. the conflict rendered her miserable and she returned to her country seat to brood over it. in this state of mind she at length wrote to the baron and laid open her situation requesting him to comfort, console, and enlighten her." [ : ] his letters accomplished the desired effect and he later published them in the hope that they would do as much for others. they were carefully revised before they were sent to the press. all the purely personal passages were omitted and others added to hide the identity of the persons concerned. letters of the sort to religious ladies were common at this time. fréret's were preventive, holbach's curative, but appear to be rather strong dose for a _dévote_. other examples are voltaire's _epître à uranie_ and diderot's _entretien d'un philosophe avec la maréchale de..._. . in holbach published two short treatises on the doctrine of eternal punishment which claimed to be translations from english, but the originals are not to be found. the titles are _de l'intolérance convaincue de crime et de folie_ as it is sometimes given, and-- . _l'enfer détruit ou examen raisonné du dogme de l'eternité des peines_. londres, amsterdam, . this letter was translated into english under the title _hell destroyed!_ "now first translated from the french of d'alembert without any mutilations," london , which led mr. j. hibbert to say, "i know not why english publishers attribute this awfully sounding work to the cautious, not to say timid d'alembert. it was followed by whitefoot's _'torments of hell,'_ now first translated from the french." [ : ] of holbach's remaining works on religion two, _histoire critique de jésus christ_ and _tableau des saints_, date from when he began to publish his more philosophical works. . the _histoire critique de jésus christ ou analyse raisonnée des evangiles_ was published without name of place or date. it was preceded by voltaire's _epître à uranie_. it is an extremely careful but unsympathetic analysis of the gospel accounts, emphasizing all the inconsistencies and interpreting them with a literalness that they can ill sustain. from this rationalistic view-point holbach found the gospels a tissue of absurdities and contradictions. his method, however, would not be followed by the critique of today. . the _tableau des saints_ is a still more severe criticism of the heroes of christendom. holbach's proposition is "la raison ne connaît qu'une mesure pour juger et les hommes et les choses, c'est l'utilité réelle et permanente, qui en résulte pour notre espèce," (p. ). judged by this standard, the saints with their eyes fixed on another world have fallen far short. "ils se flattèrent de mériter le ciel en se rendant parfaitement inutile à la terre" (p. xviii). holbach much prefers the heroes of classical antiquity. the book is violent but learned throughout, and deals not only with the jewish patriarchs from moses on but with the church fathers and christian princes down to the contemporary defenders of the faith. after a rather one-sided account of the most dreary characters and events in christian history, holbach concludes: "tel fut, tel est, et tel sera toujours l'esprit du christianisme: il est aisé de sentir qu'il est incompatible avec les principes les plus évidens de la morale et de la saine politique" (p. ). . in _recueil philosophique_, londres (amsterdam), , edited by naigeon. réflexions sur les craintes de la mort. problème important--la religion est-elle nécessaire à la morale et utile à la politique. par m. mirabaud. . _essai sur les préjugés, ou de l'influence des opinions sur les moeurs et sur le bonheur des hommes_. londres (amsterdam), , under name of dumarsais. the book pretended to be an elaboration of dumarsais' essay on the _philosophe_ published in the _nouvelles libertés de penser_, . the special interest connected with it was the refutation frederick the great published under the title _examen de l'essai sur les préjugés_, londres, nourse, ( mo). the king of prussia writing from the point of view of a practical, enlightened despot, took special exception to holbach's remarks on government. "il l'outrage avec autant de grossièreté que d'indécence, il force le gouvernement de prendre fait et cause avec l'église pour s'opposer à l'ennemi commun. mais, quand avec un acharnement violent et les traits de la plus âcre satire, il calomnie son roi et le gouvernement de son pays, on le prend pour un frénétique echappé de ses chaînes, et livré aux transports les plus violens de sa rage. quoi, monsieur le philosophe, protecteur des moeurs et de la vertu, ignorez vous qu'un bon citoyen doit respecter la forme de gouvernement sous laquelle il vit, ignorez vous qu'il ne convient point à un particulier d'insulter les puissances..." (p. ). "non content d'insulter à toutes les têtes couronnés de l'europe, notre philosophe s'amuse, en passant, à répandre du ridicule sur les ouvrages de hugo grotius. j'oserais croire qu'il n'en sera pas cru sur sa parole, et que le _droit de la guerre et de la paix_ ira plus loin à la postérité que _l'essai sur les préjugés_" (p. ). holbach in his anti-militaristic enthusiasm had used the words "bourreaux mercenaires"; "epithète élégante," continues frederick, "dont il honore les guerriers. mais souffrions nous qu'un cerveau brûlé insulte au plus noble emploi de la societé?" (p. ). he goes on to defend war in good old-fashioned terms. "vous déclamez contre la guerre, elle est funeste en elle-même; mais c'est un mal comme ces autres fléaux du ciel qu'il faut supposer nécessaires dans l'arrangement de cet univers parce qu'ils arrivent périodiquement et qu'aucun siècle n'a pu jusqu'à présent d'en avoir été exempt. j'ai prouvé que de tout temps l'erreur a dominé dans ce monde; et comme une chose aussi constante peut être envisagée comme une loi général de la nature, j'en conclus que ce qui a été toujours sera toujours le même" (p. ). frederick sent his little refutation to voltaire for his compliments which were forthcoming. a few days after voltaire wrote to d'alembert: le roi de prusse vous a envoyé, sans doute, son petit écrit contre un livre imprimé cette année, intitulé _essai sur les préjugés_, ce roi a aussi les siens, qu'il faut lui pardonner; on n'est pas roi pour rien. mais je voudrais savoir quel est l'auteur de cet _essai_ contre lequel sa majesté prussienne s'amuse à écrire un peu durement. serait-il de diderot? serait-il de damilaville? serait-il d'helvetius? peut-être ne le connaissez-vous point, je le crois imprimé en hollande (vol. lxvi, p. ). d'alembert answered: oui, le roi de prusse m'a envoyé son écrit contre _l'essai sur les préjugés_. je ne suis point étonné que ce prince n'ait pas goûté l'ouvrage; je l'ai lu depuis cette réfutation et il m'a paru bien long, bien monotone et trop amer. il me semble que ce qu'il y de bon dans ce livre aurait pu et dû être noyé dans moins de pages et je vois que vous en avez porté à peu près le même jugement (vol. lxvi, p. ). in spite of these unfavorable judgments the _essai_ was reprinted as late as by the bibliotheque nationale in its _collection des meilleurs auteurs anciens et modernes_, still attributed to dumarsais with the account of his life by "le citoyen daube" which graced the edition of the year i. ( ) . early in appeared holbach's most famous book, the _système de la nature_, the only book that is connected with his name in the minds of most historians and philosophers. it seems wiser, however, to deal with this work in a chapter apart and continue the account of his later publications. . the next of which was _le bon-sens, ou idées naturelles opposées aux idées surnaturelles. par l'auteur du système de la nature_, londres (amsterdam), . this work has gone through twenty-five editions or more and has been translated into english, german, italian and spanish. as early as it began to be published under the name of the curé jean meslier d'etrépigny, made so famous by voltaire's publication of what was supposed to be his last will and testament in which on his death bed he abjured and cursed christianity. some editions contain in the preface letters by voltaire and his sketch of jean meslier. the last reprint was by de laurence, scott & co., chicago, . the book is nothing more or less than the _système de la nature_, in a greatly reduced and more readable form. voltaire, to whom it was attributed by some, said to d'alembert, "il y a plus que du bon sens dans ce livre, il est terrible. s'il sort de la boutique du _système de la nature_, l'auteur s'est bien perfectionné." d'alembert answered: "je pense comme vous sur le _bon-sens_ qui me paraît un bien plus terrible livre que le _système de la nature_." these remarks were inscribed by thomas jefferson on the title page of his copy of _bon-sens_. the book has gone through several editions in the united states and was sold at a popular price. the german translation was published in baltimore on the basis of a copy found in a second-hand book store in new orleans. the most serious work written against it is a long and carefully written treatise against materialism by an italian monk, gardini, entitled _l'anima umana e sue proprietà dedotte da soli principi de ragione, dal p. lettore d. antonmaria gardini, monaco camaldalese, contro i materialisti e specialmente contro l'opera intitulata, le bon-sens, ou idées naturelles opposées aux idées surnaturelles. in padova mdcclxxxi nella stamperia del seminario. appresso giovanni manfré, con licenza de superiori e privilegio_ ( vo, p. xx + ). . in holbach published his _recherches sur les miracles_, a much more sober work than his previous writings on religion. in this book he raises the well known difficulties with belief in miracles and brings a great deal of real learning and logic to bear on the question. the entire work is in a reasonable and philosophic spirit. his conclusion is that "une vraie religion doit avoir au défaut de bonnes raisons, des preuves sensibles, capables de faire impression sur tout ceux qui la cherchent de bonne foi. ce ne sont pas les miracles." the same year he published two serious but somewhat tiresome works on politics. . _la politique naturelle_. . _système social_ in which he attempts to reduce government to the naturalistic principles which were the basis of his entire philosophy. the first is also attributed to malesherbes. there is a long and keen criticism of the _système social_ by mme. d'epinay in a letter to abbé galiani jan. , (gal. _corresp._, vol. ii, p. ). but the most interesting reaction upon it was that of the abbé richard who criticized it from point of view of the divine right of kings in his long and tiresome work entitled _la défense de la religion, de la morale, de la vertu, de la politique et de la société, dans la réfutation des ouvrages qui ont pour titre, l'un système social etc. vautre la politique naturelle par le r. p. ch. l. richard, professeur de théologie_, etc., paris, moulard, . in a preface of forty-seven pages the fears of the conservative old abbé are well expressed. the aim of these modern philosophers who are poisoning public opinion by their writings is to "démolir avec l'antique édifice de la religion chrétienne, celui des moeurs, de la vertu, de la saine politique etc. rompre tous les canaux de communication entre la terre et le ciel, bannir, exterminer du monde le dieu qui le tira du néant, y introduire l'impiété la plus complète, la licence la plus consomnée, l'anarchie la plus entière, la confusion la plus horrible." . holbach's next work, _ethocratie ou gouvernement fondé sur la morale_, amsterdam, rey, , is interesting mainly for its unfortunate dedication and peroration, inscribed to louis xvi, who was hailed therein as a long expected messiah. . holbach's last works dealt exclusively with morals. they are _la morale universelle ou les devoirs de l'homme fondés sur la nature_, amsterdam, , and . a posthumous work, _elements de la morale universelle, ou catechisme de la nature_, paris, . this is a beautiful little book. it is simple and clear to the last degree. there have been several translations in spanish for the purposes of elementary education in morals in the public schools. it was composed in . holbach's attitude towards morals is indicated by his _avertissement_--"la morale est une science dont les principes sont susceptibles d'une démonstration aussi claire et aussi rigoureuse que ceux du calcul et de la géometrie." chapter iii. the systÈme de la nature. early in appeared the famous _système de la nature, ou des loix du monde physique et du monde morale, par m. mirabaud, secrétaire perpétuel et l'un des quarante de l'académie française_, londres (amsterdam), . this work has gone through over thirty editions in france, spain, germany, england and the united states. no book of a philosophic or scientific character has ever caused such a sensation at the time of its publication, excepting perhaps darwin's _origin of species_, the thesis of which is more than hinted at by holbach. there were several editions in . a very few copies contain a _discours préliminaire de l'auteur_ of sixteen pages which naigeon had printed separately in london. the _abrégé du code de la nature_, which ends the book was also published separately and is sometimes attributed to diderot, vo, pp. [ : ] there is also a book entitled _le vrai sens du système de la nature_, , attributed to helvetius, a very clear, concise epitome largely in holbach's own short and telling sentences, and much more effective than the original because of its brevity. holbach himself reproduced the _système de la nature_ in a shortened form in _bon-sens_, , and payrard plagiarized it freely in _de la nature et de ses lois_, paris, . the book has been attributed to diderot, helvetius, robinet, damilaville and others. naigeon is certain that it is entirely by holbach, although it is generally held that diderot had a hand in it. it was published under the name of mirabaud to obviate persecution. the manuscript, it was alleged, had been found among his papers as a sort of "testament" or philosophical legacy to posterity. this work may be called the bible of scientific materialism and dogmatic atheism. nothing before or since has ever approached it in its open and unequivocal insistence on points of view commonly held, if at all, with reluctance and reserve. it is impossible in a study of this length to deal fully with the attacks and refutations that were published immediately. we may mention first the condemnation of the book by the _parlement de paris_, august , , to be burned by the public hangman along with voltaire's _dieu et les hommes_, and holbach's _discours sur les miracles_, _la contagion sacrée_ and _le christianisme dévoilé_, which had already been condemned on september , . [ : ] the _réquisitoire_ of seguier, _avocat général_, on the occasion of the condemnation of the _système de la nature_ was so weak and ridiculous that the _parlement de paris_ refused to sanction its publication, and it was printed by the express order of the king. as grimm observed, it seemed designed solely to acquaint the ignorant with this dangerous work, without opposing any of its propositions. one would look in vain for a better example of the conservatism of the legal profession. [ : ] le poison des nouveautés profanes ne peut corrompre la sainte gravité des moeurs qui caractérise les vrais magistrats: tout peut changer autour d'eux, _ils restent immuables avec la loi_ (page ). n'est-ce pas ce fatal abus de la liberté de penser, qui a enfanté cette multitude de sectes, d'opinions, de partis, et cet esprit d'indépendance dont d'autres nations ont éprouvé les sinstres révolutions. le même abus produira en france des effets peut-être plus funestes. la liberté indéfinie trouveroit, dans la caractère de la nation, dans son activité, dans son amour pour la nouveauté, un moyen de plus pour préparer les plus affreuses révolutions (p. ). the most interesting private attacks on the _système de la nature_ came from two somewhat unexpected quarters, from ferney and sans souci. voltaire, as usual, was not wholly consistent in his opinions of it, as is revealed in his countless letters on the subject. grimm attributed his hostility to jealousy, and the fear that the _système de la nature_ might "renverse le rituel de ferney et que le patriarcat ne s'en aille au diable avec lui." [ : ] george leroy went so far as to write a book entitled _réflexions sur la jalousie, pour servir de commentaire aux derniers ouvrages de m. de voltaire_, . frederick ii naturally felt bound to defend the kings who, as voltaire said, were no better treated than god in the _système de la nature_. [ : ] voltaire's correspondence during this period is so interesting that it seems worth while to quote at length, especially from his letters to fredrick the great. in may , shortly after the publication of the _système de la nature_ voltaire wrote to m. vernes: [ : ] "on a tant dit de sottises sur la nature que je ne lis plus aucun de ces livres là." but by july he had read it and wrote to grimm: [ : ] "si l'ouvrage eut été plus serré il aurait fait un effet terrible, mais tel qu'il est il en a fait beaucoup. il est bien plus éloquent que spinoza... j'ai une grande curiosité de savoir ce qu'on en pense à paris." in writing to d'alembert about this time he seemed to have a fairly favorable impression of the book. "il m'a paru qu'il y avait des longueurs, des répétitions et quelques inconséquences, mais il y a trop de bon pour qu'on n'éclate avec fureur contre ce livre. si on garde le silence, ce sera une preuve du prodigieux progrès que la tolérance fait tous les jours." [ : ] but there was little likelihood that philosophers or theologians would keep silent about this scandalous book. before the end of the month voltaire was writing to d'alembert about his own and the king of prussia's refutations of it, and the same day wrote to frederick: "il me semble que vos remarques doivent être imprimées; ce sont des leçons pour le genre humain. vous soutenez d'un bras la cause de dieu et vous écrasez de l'autre la superstition." [ : ] later voltaire confessed to frederick that he also had undertaken to rebuke the author of the système de la nature. "ainsi dieu a pour lui les deux hommes les moins superstitieux de l'europe, ce que devrait lui plaire beaucoup" (p. ). frederick, however, hesitated to make his refutation public, and wrote to voltaire: "lorsque j'eus achevé mon ouvrage contre l'athéisme, je crus ma réfutation très orthodoxe, je la relus, et je la trouvai bien éloignée de l'être. il y a des endroits qui ne saurait paraître sans effaroucher les timides et scandaliser les dévots. un petit mot qui m'est échappé sur l'éternité du monde me ferait lapider dans votre patrie, si j'y étais né particulier, et que je l'eusse fait imprimer. je sens que je n'ai point du tout ni l'âme ni le style théologique." [ : ] voltaire, in his "petite drôlerie en faveur de la divinité" (as he called his work) and in his letters, could not find terms harsh enough in which to condemn the _système de la nature_. he called it "un chaos, un grand mal moral, un ouvrage de ténèbres, un péché contre la nature, un système de la folie et de l'ignorance," and wrote to delisle de sales: "je ne vois pas que rien ait plus avili notre siècle que cette énorme sottise." [ : ] voltaire seemed to grow more bitter about holbach's book as time went on. his letters and various works abound in references to it, and it is difficult to determine his motives. he was accused, as has been suggested, by holbach's circle "de caresser les gens en place, et d'abandonner ceux qui n'y sont plus." [ : ] m. avenel believed that he suspected holbach himself of making these accusations. voltaire's letter to the duc de richelieu, nov. , , [ : ] seems to give them foundation. a very different reaction was that of goethe and his university circle at strasburg to whom the _système de la nature_ appeared a harmless and uninteresting book, "grau," "cimmerisch," "totenhaft," "die echte quintessenz der greisenheit." to these fervent young men in the youthful flush of romanticism, its sad, atheistic twilight seemed to cast a veil over the beauty of the earth and rob the heaven of stars; and they lightheardedly discredited both holbach and voltaire in favor of shakespeare and the english romantic school. one would look far for a better instance of the romantic reaction which set in so soon and so obscured the clarity of the issues at stake in the eighteenth century thought. [ : ] the leading refutations directed explicitly against the _système de la nature_ are: . , rive, abbé j. j., lettres philosophiques contre le _ système de la nature_. (portefeuille hebdomadaire de bruxelles.) . frederick ii, _examen critique du livre intitulé, système de la nature_. (political miscellanies, p. .) . voltaire, dieu, réponse de m. de voltaire au _système de la nature_. au château de ferney, , vo, pp. . . , bergier, abbé n. f., examen du matérialisme, ou réfutation du _système de la nature_. paris, humbolt, , vols., mo. . camuset, abbé j. n., principes contre l'incrédulité, a l'occasion du _système de la nature_. paris, pillot, , mo, pp. viii + . . castillon, j. de (salvernini di castiglione), observations sur le livre intitulé, _système de la nature_. berlin, decker, , vo. ( sols broché.) . rochford, dubois de, pensées diverses contre le système des matérialistes, à l'occasion d'un écrit intitulé; _système de la nature_. paris, lambert, , mo. . , l'impie démasqué, ou remontrance aux écrivains incrédules. londres, heydinger, . holland, j. h., réflexions philosophiques sur le _système de la nature_. paris, , vols., vo. . , buzonnière, nouel de, observations sur un ouvrage intitulé le _système de la nature_. paris, debure, père, , vo, pp. . (prix livre, sols broché.) . , fangouse, abbé, la religion prouvée aux incrédules, avec une lettre à l'auteur du _système de la nature_ par un homme du monde. paris, debure l'aîné, mo, p. . same under title réflexions importantes sur la religion, etc., . . , paulian, a. j., le véritable système de la nature, etc., avignon, niel, vols., mo. . , mangold, f. x. von, unumstossliche widerlegung des materialismus gegen den verfasser des _systems der natur_. augsburg, . of these and other refutations of materialism such as saint-martin's _des erreurs et de la vérité_, dupont de nemours' _philosophie de l'univers_, delisles de sales' _philosophie de la nature_, etc., which are not directed explicitly against the _système de la nature_, the works of voltaire and frederick the great are the most interesting but by no means the most serious or convincing. morley finds voltaire very weak and much beside the point, especially in his discussion of order and disorder in nature which holbach had denied. voltaire's argument is that there must be an intelligent motor or cause behind nature (p. ). this is god (p. ). he admits at the outset that all systems are mere dreams but he continues to insist with a dogmatism equal to holbach's on the validity of his dream. he repeatedly asserts without foundation that holbach's system is based on the false experiment of needham (pp. , ), and even goes so far as to ridicule the evolutionary hypothesis altogether (p. ). he speaks of the necessity of a belief in god, by a kind of natural logic. god and matter exist in the nature of things, "tout nous announce un Être suprême, rien ne nous dit ce qu'il est." god himself seems to be a kind of fatalistic necessity. "c'est ce que vous appellerez nature et c'est ce que j'appelle dieu." at the end he shifts the argument from the base of necessity to that of utility. which is the more consoling doctrine? if the idea of god has prevented ten crimes i hold that the entire world should embrace it (p. ). as morley has said, such arguments could scarcely have convinced voltaire himself. frederick was surprised that voltaire and d'alembert had found anything good in the book. his refutation was more methodical than that of voltaire, who called it a "homage to the divinity" but wrote to d'alembert that it was written in the style of a notary. two other refutations emanating from the academy of berlin were those of castillon and holland. the first of these is a very heavy and learned work, formidable and forbidding in its logic. castillon reduces holbach's propositions to three. the self-existence of matter, the essential relation of movement to it, and the possibility of deriving everything from it or some mode of it. castillon concludes after five hundred pages of reasoning that matter is contingent, movement not inherent in it, and that purely spiritual beings exist in independence of it. hence the _système de la nature_ is a "long and wicked error." holland's is a still more serious work, which the sorbonne recommended strongly as an antidote against holbach's _système_ which it qualified as "une malheureuse production que notre siècle doit rougir d'avoir enfantée." but when it was discovered that holland was a protestant his work was condemned forthwith, jan. , . bergier's refutation is interesting as an attack from a churchman of extraordinary keenness and insight into the progress of the new philosophy. in the _système de la nature_ he recognized the hand of the author of _la contagion sacrée_ and the _essai sur les préjugés_ and dealt with it as he did the _christianisme dévoilé_. buzonniere, rochfort and fangouse are milder and more naive in their demonstrations and their works are of no weight or interest. _l'impie démasqué_ is a brutal work which qualifies holbach as a "vile apostle of vice and crime," and the _système de la nature_ as the most impudent treatise on atheism that has yet dishonored the globe--one which covers the century with shame and will be the scandal of future generations. the work of paulian is of a different sort. coming comparatively late, it attempted to review the hostile opinions of many years and then mass them in an overwhelming final attack on the _système de la nature_. to this end paulian rewrites the entire book chapter by chapter, giving the "true version." he then reviews holland's outline and bergier's comments, together with seven articles directed explicitly against the _système de la nature_ in such works as the _lettres helviennes_, of abbé barruel, _dict. des philosophes_, _dict. anti-philosophe_, his own _dict. théologique_, etc., besides many other writings against the new philosophy in general. he then reviews articles by members of the philosophic school against materialism and then goes back to holbach's sources, diderot, bayle, spinoza, lucretius, epicurus, etc. the work is not scholarly but comprehensive and evidently discouraged further formal refutations. the _système de la nature_ had many critics in the stormy days that followed . delisle de sales found it a monstrosity--a _fratras_; la harpe called it an infamous book, "un amas de bêtises qu'on ose appeler philosophie, inconcevables inepties, un immense échafaudage de mensonge et d'invective"; m. villemain is much more calm and fair; lord brougham, like damiron, buzonnière, and many others, found it seductive but full of false reasoning; lerminier was so severe that st.-beuve was moved to defend holbach against him. samuel wilkinson, the english translator of , is one of the few whose criticism is at all favorable. holbach has always appealed to a certain type of radical mind and his translators and editors have generally been men who were often over-enthusiastic. for example, mr. wilkinson says of the _système de la nature_, [ : ] "no work, ancient or modern, has surpassed it in the eloquence and sublimity of its language or in the facility with which it treats the most abstruse and difficult subjects. it is without exception the boldest effort the human mind has yet produced in the investigation of morals and theology. the republic of letters has never produced another author whose pen was so well calculated to emancipate mankind from all those trammels with which the nurse, the school master, and the priest have successively locked up their noblest faculties, before they were capable of reasoning and judging for themselves." it seems unnecessary to analyze the _système de la nature_. this has been done by damiron, soury, fabre, lange, morley, the historians of philosophy, and encyclopaedists; and the book itself is easily available in the larger libraries. the substance of holbach's philosophy is susceptible of clearer treatment apart from it or any one of his books, although it permeates all of them. m. jules soury has said, in describing a certain type of mind: "il est d'heureux esprits, des âmes fortes et saines, que n'effraie point le silence éternel des espaces infinis où s'anéantissait la raison de pascal. naïves et robustes natures, mâles et vigoureux penseurs, qui gardent toute la vie quelque chose des dons charmants de la jeunesse et de l'enfance même, une foi vive dans le témoinage immédiat de nos sens et de notre conscience, une humeur alerte, toute de joyeuse ardeur, et comme une intrépidité d'esprit que rien n'arrête. pour eux tout est clair et uni; ou à peu près, et là où ils soupçonnent quelque bas-bond insondable, ils se détournent et poursuivent fièrement leur chemin. comme cet epicurien dont parle cicéron au commencement du _de natura deorum_, ils ont toujours l'air de sortir de l'assemblée des dieux et de descendre des intermondes d'epicure." such was holbach. his philosophy is based on the child-like assumption that things are as they seem, provided they are observed with sufficient care by a sufficient number of people. this brings us at once to the very heart of holbach's method which was experimental and inductive to the last degree. holbach was nourished on what might be called scientific rather than philosophical traditions. as m. tourneux has pointed out, he had been a serious student of the natural sciences, especially those connected with the constitution of the earth. these studies led him to see the disparity between certain accepted and traditional cosmologies and a scientific interpretation of the terrestrial globe and the forms of life which flourish upon it. finding the supposed sacred and infallible records untrustworthy in one regard, he began to question their veracity at other points. being of a critical frame of mind, he took the records rather more literally than a sympathetic, allegorical apologist would have done, although it cannot be said that he used much historical insight. after having studied the sacred texts for purposes of writing or having translated other men's studies on moses, david, the prophets, jesus, paul, the christian theologians and saints, miracles, etc., he concluded that these accounts were untrustworthy and mendacious. he knew ancient and modern philosophy and found in the greater part of it an unwarranted romantic or theological trend which his scientific training had caused him to suspect. it must be admitted that however false or illogical holbach's conclusions may be considered, he was by no means ignorant of the subjects he chose to treat, as some of his detractors would have one believe. his theory of knowledge was that of locke and condillac, and on this foundation he built up his system of scientific naturalism and dogmatic atheism. his initial assumption is, as has been suggested, that experience (application réitérée des sens) and reason are trustworthy guides to knowledge. by them we become conscious of an external objective world, of which sentient beings themselves are a part, from which they receive impressions through their sense organs. these myriad impressions when compared and reflected upon form reasoned knowledge or truth, provided they are substantiated by repeated experiences carefully made. that is, an idea is said to be true when it conforms perfectly with the actual external object. this is possible unless one's senses are defective, or one's judgment vitiated by emotion and passion. holbach's contention is that if one applies experience and reason to the external universe, or nature, "ce vaste assemblage de tout ce qui existe"; it reveals a _single objective reality_, i. e., _matter_, which is in itself essentially active or in a state of motion. from matter in motion are derived all the phenomena that strike our senses. all is matter or a function of it. matter, then, is not an effect, but a cause. it is not caused; it is from eternity and of necessity. the cardinal point in holbach's philosophy is an inexorable materialistic necessity. nothing, then, is exempt from the laws of physics and chemistry. inorganic substance and organic life fall into the same category. man himself with all his differentiated faculties is but a function of matter and motion in extraordinary complex and involved relations. man's imputation to himself of free will and unending consciousness apart from his machine is an idle tale built on his desires, not on his experiences nor his knowledge of nature. this imputation of a will or soul to nature, independent of it or in any sense above it, is a still more idle one derived from his renunciation of the witness of his senses and his following after the phantoms of his imagination. it is ignorance or disregard of nature then that has given rise to supernatural ideas that have "no correspondence with true sight," or, as holbach expressed it, have no counterpart in the external object. in other words, theology, or poetry about god, as petrarch said, is ignorance of natural causes reduced to a system. man is a purely natural or physical being, like a tree or a stone. his so-called spiritual nature (l'homme moral) is merely a phase of his physical nature considered under a special aspect. he is all matter in motion, and when that ceases to function in a particular way, called life, he ceases to be as a conscious entity. he is so organized, however that his chief desires are to survive and render his existence happy. by happiness holbach means the presence of pleasure and the absence of pain. in all his activity, then, man will seek pleasure and avoid pain. the chief cause of man's misery or lack of well being is his ignorance of the powers and possibilities of his own nature and the universal nature. all he needs is to ascertain his place in nature and adjust himself to it. from the beginning of his career he has been the dupe of false ideas, especially those connected with supernatural powers, on whom he supposed he was dependent. but, if ignorance of nature gave birth to the gods, knowledge of nature is calculated to destroy them and the evils resulting from them, the introduction of theistic ideas into politics and morals. in a word, the truth, that is, _correct ideas of nature_ is the one thing needful to the happiness and well-being of man. the application of these principles to the given situation in france in would obviously have produced unwelcome results. holbach's theory was that religion was worse than useless in that it had inculcated false and pernicious ideas in politics and morals. he would do away completely with it in the interest of putting these sciences on a natural basis. this basis is self-interest, or man's inevitable inclination toward survival and the highest degree of well-being, "l'objet de la morale est de faire connaître aux hommes que leur plus grand intérêt exige qu'ils pratiquent la vertu; le but du gouvernement doit être de la leur faire pratiquer." government then assumes the functions of moral restraint formally delegated to religion; and punishments render virtue attractive and vice repugnant. holbach's theory of social organization is practically that of aristotle. men combine in order to increase the store of individual well-being, to live the good life. if those to whom society has delegated sovereignty abuse their power, society has the right to take it from them. sovereignty is merely an agent for the diffusion of truth and the maintenance of virtue, which are the prerequisites of social and individual well-being. the technique of progress is enlightenment and good laws. nothing could be clearer or simpler than holbach's system. as diderot so truly said, he will not be quoted on both sides of any question. his uncompromising atheism is the very heart and core of his system and clarifies the whole situation. all supernatural ideas are to be abandoned. experience and reason are once for all made supreme, and henceforth refuse to share their throne or abdicate in favor of faith. holbach's aim was as he said to bring man back to nature and render reason dear to him. "il est tempts que cette raison injustement dégradée quitte un ton pusillamine qui la rendront complice du mensonge et du délire." if reason is to rule, the usurper, religion, must be ejected; hence atheism was fundamental to his entire system. he did not suppose by any means that it would become a popular faith, because it presupposed too much learning and reflection, but it seemed to him the necessary weapon of a reforming party at that time. he defines an atheist as follows: "c'est un homme, qui détruit des chimères nuisibles au genre humain, pour ramener les hommes à la nature, à l'expérience, à la raison. c'est un penseur qui, ayant médité la matière, ses propriétés et ses façons d'agir, n'a pas besoin, pour expliquer les phénomènes de l'univers et les opérations de la nature, d'imaginer des puissances idéales, des intelligences imaginaires, des êtres de raison; qui loin de faire mieux connaître cette nature, ne font que la rendre capricieuse, inexplicable, et méconnaissable, inutile au bonheur des hommes." appendix holbach's correspondence the following letters of holbach are extant: holbach to hume, aug. , . holbach to hume, mar. , . holbach to hume, july , . holbach to hume, aug. , . holbach to hume, sept. , . these were printed in hume's _private correspondence_, london, , pp. - , and deal largely with hume's quarrel with rousseau. holbach to garrick, june , . holbach to garrick, feb. , . these two letters are in manuscript in lansdowne house, coll. forster, and were published by f. a. hedgcock, _david garrick et ses amis français_. paris, , pp. - . holbach to wilkes, aug., , (brit. mus. mss., vol. , p. ). holbach to wilkes, dec. , (brit. mus. mss., vol. , p. ). holbach to wilkes, may , (brit. mus. mss., vol. , p. ) holbach to wilkes, nov. , (brit. mus. mss., vol. , p. ). holbach to wilkes, dec. , (brit. mus. mss., vol. , p. ). holbach to wilkes, july , (brit. mus. mss., vol. , p. ). holbach to wilkes, mar. , (brit. mus. mss., vol. , p. ). holbach to wilkes, april , , (wilkes, _correspondence_, london, , vol. iv, p. ). the first seven of these letters are published for the first time in the present volume, pp. - and pp. - . holbach to galiani, aug. , (_critica_, vol. i, pp. sq.). galiani to holbach, april , (galiani, _correspondence_, paris, , vol. i, p. ). galiani to holbach, july , (galiani, _correspondence_, paris, , vol. i, p. ). holbach to galiani, aug. , (_critica_, vol. i, p. ). there are references to other letters in _critica_ which i have not been able to find. holbach to beccaria, mar. , , published by m. landry _beccaria, scritte e lettre inediti_, , p. . holbach to malesherbes, april , (hitherto unpublished). see present volume, p. . holbach to hume (hume, private correspondence, london, , pp. - ) paris, the rd. of august, _sir,_-- i have received with the deepest sense of gratitude your very kind and obliging letter of the th. inst: favors of great men ought to give pride to those that have at least the merit of setting the value that is due upon them. this is my case with you, sir; the reading of your valuable works has not only inspired me with the strongest admiration for your genius and amiable parts, but gave me the highest idea of your person and the strongest desire of getting acquainted with one of the greatest philosophers of my age, and of the best friend to mankind. these sentiments have emboldened me to send formally, though unknown to you, the work you are mentioning to me. i thought you were the best to judge of such a performance, and i took only the liberty of giving a hint of my desires, in case it should meet with your approbation, nor was i surprized, or presumed to be displeased, at seeing my wishes disappointed. the reasons appeared very obvious to me; not withstanding the british liberty, i conceived there were limits even to it. however, my late friend's book has appeared since and there is even an edition of it lately done in england: i believe it will be relished by the friends of truth, who like to see vulgar errors struck at the root. this has been your continued task, sir; and you deserve for it the praises of all sincere wellwishers of humanity: give me leave to rank myself among them, and express to you, by this opportunity you have been so kind as to give me, the fervent desire we have to see you in this country. messrs. stuart, dempster, fordyce, who are so good as to favor me with their company, have given me some hopes of seeing you in this metropolis, where you have so many admirers as readers, and as many sincere friends as there are disciples of philosophy. i don't doubt but my good friend m. helvétius will join in our wishes, and prevail upon you to come over. i assure you, sir, you won't perceive much the change of the country, for all countries are alike for people that have the same minds. i am, with the greatest veneration and esteem, sir, your most obedient and most humble servant. d'holbach. rue royale, butte st. roch, à paris. holbach to garrick (coll. forster, vol. xxi; pub., hedgcock, p. ) paris, feb ye th, . i received, my very dear sir, with a great deal of pleasure, your agreeable letter of ye th of january, but was very sorry to hear that you are inlisted in the numerous troup of _gouty_ people. tho' i have myself the honour of being of that tribe i dont desire my friends should enter into the same corporation. i am particularly griev'd to see you among the invalids for you have, more than any other, occasion for the free use of your limbs. however, don't be cross and peevish for that would be only increasing you distemper; and i charge you especially of not scolding that admirable lady mrs garrick, whose sweetness of temper and care must be a great comfort in your circumstances. i beg leave to present her with my respects and ye compliments of my wife, that has enjoyed but an indifferent state of health, owing to the severity of the winter. mr and made helvetius desire you both their best wishes and so do all your friends, for whom i can answer that every one of them keeps a kind remembrance of your valuable persons. dr. gem thinks you'll do very well to go to bath, but his opinion is that a thin diet would be more serviceable to you than anything else; believe he is in the right. abbé morellet pays many thanks for the answers to his queries, but complains of their shortness and laconism; however it is not your fault. he is glad to hear you have receiv'd his translation of beccaria's book, _des délits et des peines_ and the compliments of our friend dr gatti to whom i gave your direction before he went to london. our friend suard has entered his neck into the matrimonial halter; we are all of us very sorry for it for we know that nothing combin'd with love, will at last make nothing at all. i was not much surpris'd at the particulars you are pleas'd to mention about rousseau. according to the thorough knowledge i have had of him i look on that man as a mere philosophical quack, full of affectation, of pride, of oddities and even villainies; the work he is going to publish justifies the last imputation. is his memory so short as to forget that mr grimm, for those years past, has taken care of the mother of his wench or _gouvernante_ whom he left to starve here after having debauch'd her daughter and having got her or times with child. that great philosopher should remember that mr. grimm has in his hands letters under his own hand-writing that prove him the most ungrateful dogg in the world. during his last stay in paris he made some attempts to see mr diderot, and being refused that favor, he pretended that diderot endeavoured to see him, but that himself had refused peremptorily to comply with his request. i hope these particulars will suffice to let you know what you are to think of that illustrious man. i send you here a copy of a letter supposed to come from the king of prussia, but done by mr horace walpole, whereby you'll see that gentleman has found out his true character. but enough of that rascal who deserves not to be in mr hume's company but rather among the bears, if there are any in the mountains of wales. i am surprized you have not receiv'd yet the _encyclopédie_, for a great number of copies have been sent over already to england unless you have left your subscription here, where hitherto not one copy has been delivered for prudent reasons. we have had in the french comedy a new play called _le philosophie sans le savoir_ done and acted in a new stile, quite natural and moving: it has a prodigious success and deserves it extremely well. marmontel will give us very soon upon the italian stage his comical opera of _la bergère des alpes_. i hope it will prove very agreeable to the publick, having been very much delighted by the rehearsal of it; the music was done by mr cohaut who teaches my wife to play on the luth. we expect a tragedy of the dutch barnvelt. mr wilkes is still in this town, where he intends to stay until you give him leave to return to his native country. we have had the pleasure of seeing mr chanquion, your friend, who seems to be a very discerning gentleman and to whom in favor of your friendship i have shown all the politeness i could. i hear that sr james macdonald has been ill at parma, but is now recovered and in rome. abbé galliani is still at naples and stands a fair chance of being employ'd in the ministry there. adieu, very dear sir and remember your affectionate friend d'holbach holbach to wilkes (brit. mus. mss., vol. , p. ) paris the d of may ( ) _my dear sir_ i am extremely glad to know your lucky passage and happy arrival in your native country. i hope you know too well the sincere dispositions of my heart as to doubt of the friendship i have vowed to you for life; it has been of too long a duration to be shaken by any circumstances, and especially by those that do honor to you. i shall be very happy if your affairs (that seem to be in a fair way) permit you to drop over very soon to spend some time in this place along with miss wilkes to whom made d'holbach and i pay our best compliments. i can easily paint to my imagination the pleasure you both felt at your first meeting; everybody that has any sensibility must be acquainted with the grateful pangs in those moving circumstances. your case with the hawker at your entry in london is very odd and whimsical you did extremely well to humour the man in his opinion about mr. wilkes. i dare say if you had done otherwise his fist would have convinc'd you of the goodness of your cause, and then it would have been impossible for you to pass for a dead man any longer; which however, i think was very necessary for you in the beginning. i expect with great eagerness the settlement of your affairs with the ministry to your own satisfaction; be persuaded, dear sir, that nobody interests himself in your happiness than myself, and nothing will conduce more to it than your steady attachment to the principles of honor and patriotism. if you don't find a way of disposing of the little packet, you need not take much trouble about it, and you may bring it back along with you, when you come to this place, as to the kind offers you are so good as to make me about commissions, experience has taught me that it is unsafe to trust you with them, so i beg leave with gratitude to decline your proposals as that point. all our common friends and acquaintances desire their best compliments to you, and believe me, my dear sir. your affectionate oblig'd humble servant d'holbach holbach to wilkes (brit. mus. mss., vol , p. ) paris ber th _my very dear sir_ i receiv'd with the greatest pleasure the news of your lucky arrival in engelland. you know the sentiments of my heart, and are undoubtedly convinc'd how much i wish for the good success of all your enterprises tho i am to be a great looser by it. i rejoice very heartily at the fine prospect you have now in view and don't doubt but the persons you mention will succeed if they are in good earnest: which is allways a little doubtful in people of that kidney. we have had the pleasure of seeing miss wilkes three or four times since your departure, she is extreamly well and longs for the return of her friend mlle helvetius the th of this month. rousseau will very likely hate the english very cordially for making him pay so dear for his books, it is however a sign that he told us a lye when he pretended in his writings to have no books at all, as to his guitar he should buy a new one to tune his heart a little better than he did before. we have no news here, except the election of mr thomas as a member of the french academy. marquis beccaria is going to leave us very soon being obliged to return to milan: count veri will at the same time set out for england. i'll be oblig'd to you for a copy or two of the book printed in holland you mentioned in your letter you may send it by some private opportunity to miss wilkes, with, proper directions. a gentleman of our society should be glad to get copies of baskervilles' virgil _in octavo_. tho mr davenport and rousseau seem to be pleased very much with one another, i suppose they may very soon be tired of their squabbling, and the latter like the apostles will shake of against the barbarous britons the dust of his feet. receive the hearty compliments of my wife and all our friends. you know the true sentiments of my heart for you, dear sir. i am with great sincerity your most obedient humble servant d'holbach holbach to wilkes (brit. mus. mss., vol. , p. ) _dear sir_ i receiv'd with a great deal of pleasure your friendly letter from ostende of the th. nov. i was extreamly glad to hear your happy arrival at that place, and do not doubt but you met with a lucky passage to dover the following day, we are now enjoying the conversation of your british friends about elections; that will not be tedious for you if, according to your hopes, you should succeed in your projects. i see by your letter that instead of coming back directly by calais you intend to travel with miss wilkes through antwerp and the low countries, which i should think not very advisable in this rigorous season of the year, for generally at that time the waters are lock'd up by the frost and travelling is bad et tedious and may be would prove hurtful to your tender fellow traveler to whom my wife and i desire our best compliments. such a scheme will be more advantagious for you both and more conformable to the wishes of your friends in this place. i hope your arrival in london will contribute to reconcile abbé galliani to that place, where he complains of having not heard of the sun since he set his foot on british shore, however he may comfort himself for we have had very little of it in this country. the abbé must be overjoy'd at the news of the jesuits being expell'd from his native country for now he may say _gens inimica mihi tyrrhenum navigat aquor_. we have no material news in this country, except that the queen continues to be in a very bad state of health. if there is some good new romance i'll be oblig'd to bring it over along with you as, well as a couple of french books call'd _militaire philosophe_ and _théologie portative_ in case you may easily find them in london, for we cannot get them here. i am told the works of one morgan have been esteem'd in your country but i don't know the titles of them, if you should know them and meet with them with facility, i should be very much oblig'd to you provided you make me pay a little more than you have done hitherto for your commissions. all our common friends beg their compliments and i wish for your speedy return, and i am sincerely dear sir your faithful affectionate humble servant d'holbach paris the th of decemb. holbach to wilkes (brit. mus. mss., vol. , p. ) grandval, th of july _dear sir_ i receiv'd with a great deal of pleasure your very agreeable letter of the th of last month. i am extreamly glad that your generous soul is very far from sinking under the weight of these misfortunes, and to see that you don't give up the hopes of carrying triumphantly your point notwithstanding the discouragements you have met with lately. i need not tell you how much your friends in paris and i in particular interest ourselves in all the events that may befall you. our old friendship ought to be a sure pledge of my sincere sentiments for you, and of my best wishes for your good success in all your undertakings. i believe you can do no better but to keep strictly to the rules you have laid down for your conduct, and i don't doubt but you'll find it will answer the best to your purpose. i am very much oblig'd to you, dear sir, for the kind offers you make in your friendly letter. i have desir'd already mr suard to bring over a few books lately published in your metropolis. i am very glad to hear that gentleman is pleas'd with his journey. there's no possibility of getting for you a compleat sett of callots engravings. such a collection must be the business of many years; it is to be found only after the decease of some curious men who have taken a great deal of trouble to collect them. i found indeed in two shops or of them, but the proofs (les épreuves) were very indifferent and they wanted to sell them excessively dear; in general guineas would procure a collection very far from being compleat. my wife and all our common acquaintence desire their best compliments to you and to miss wilkes and you know the sentiments wherewith i am for ever dear sir your affectionate friend and very humble servant d'holbach holbach to wilkes (brit. mus. mss., vol. , p. ) paris the th of march _dear sir_ i receiv'd with a due sense of gratitude the favour of your last letter, and was overjoy'd to hear from yourself that your long confinement has not been able hitherto to obstruct the lively flow of your spirits. a little more patience and you'll reach the end of all your misfortunes, that have been faithfully partaken by your friends in england and abroad, for my own part i wish most sincerely that everything for the future may turn to your profit and welfare, without hurting that of your country, to whom, as a lover of mankind, i am a well wisher. my wife desires her best compliments to you and your beloved daughter, whom we both expect to see again with a great deal of pleasure in this country next month. notwithstanding our bad circumstances we are making very great preparations for the wedding of the dauphin, and our metropolis begins already to be filled with foreigners that flock hither from all parts of the world. our friend mr d'alainville is to set out at the end of april to fetch the archdutchess at strasbourg and bring mask (ed) (?) her different stages on the road to versailles. we have no news in the literary world except that voltaire is become lately _le père temporal_, that is to say the benefactor of the _capucins du pays de gex_ where he lives, a title of which all his pranks seemd to exclude him, but grace you know, is omnipotent, and monks are not over nice when there is something to be got by their condescension. if the hurry of affairs whould leave you any moments to read curious books i would advise you to peruse two very strange works lately publish'd viz _recherches philosophiques sur les américains_, le _système de la nature_ par mirabaud. i suppose you'll find them cheaper and more easily in london that at paris. all your late acquaintances in this town desire me to present you with their sincere compliments and best wishes; as to mine you know that they have no other object but your welfare. i am, dear sir, for ever your most affectionate friend and humble servant d'holbach p. s. i'll be very much oblig'd to you for sending over to me in vol. small octavo. holbach to wilkes (wilkes, correspondence, london, , vol. , p. ) paris, april ; "_my lord_, "i received with the utmost gratitude your lordship's friendly letter of the th of march. ( ?) i should have done myself the honor of answering sooner to your kind propositions, if i had not been prevented by some gouty infirmities that have assailed in the beginning of this spring. i esteem myself very happy to find that the hurry of business, and your exhaltation to the rank of chief-magistrate, could not make you forget your friendship to me; though my present circumstances do not permit me to make use of your friendly invitation, be persuaded my very dear lord that madame d'holbach and myself shall forever keep these signs of your kindness, in very grateful remembrance. we both desire our best compliments to your very amiable lady-mayoress: who acted so well her part lately in the egyptian hall, to the satisfaction of that prodigious crowd you have been entertaining there. all members of our society that have had the happiness of being acquainted with you, desire to be kindly remembered; and a continuation of your valuable friendship shall for ever be the utmost ambition my lord of your most sincerely devoted d'holbach" galiani to holbach (galiani, corresp., vol. i, p. ) naples, le juillet, _bonjour, mon cher baron,_ j'ai vu le _système de la nature_. c'est la ligne où finit la tristesse de la morne et sèche vérité, au-delà commence la gaieté du roman. il n'y a rien de mieux que de se persuader que les dés sont pipés: cette idée en enfante milles autres, et un nouveau monde se régénère. le m. mirabaud est un vrai abbé terray de la métaphysique. il fait des réductions, des suspensions, et cause la banqueroute du savoir, du plaisir et de l'esprit humain. mais vous allez me dire qu'aussi il y avait trop de nonvaleurs: on était trop endetté, il courait trop de papiers non réels sur la place. c'est vrai aussi, et voilà pourquoi la crise est arrivée. adieu, mon cher baron. ecrivez-moi de longues lettres, pour que le plaisir en soit plus grand. embrassez moi longuement la baronne, et soyez longue dans tout que vous faites, dans tout ce que vous patientez, dans tout ce que vous espérer. la longanimité est une belle vertu; c'est elle qui me fait espérer de revoir paris. adieu. holbach to galiani (critica, vol. i, , p. ) grandval, le d'août _bonjour, mon très délicieux abbé,_ j'ai bien reçu votre très-précieuse lettre du de juillet qui m'accuse la réception de celle que je vous avais écrite le de juin. je vois que celle-ci a été longtemps en route, attendu que m. torcia à qui m. diderot s'était chargé de la remettre, a encore traînassé quelque temps à paris, suivant la louable coutume des voyageurs qui nous quittent toujours avec peine. je suis bien aise que vous ayez lu le livre de mirabaud qui fait un bruit affreux dans ce pays. l'abbé bergier l'a déjà réfuté très-longuement et sa réponse paraîtra cet hiver. la sorbonne est, dit-on, occupée à détruire ce maudit _système_ qui lui paraît au moins hérétique. voltaire lui-même se prépare à le pulvériser; en attendant nos seigneurs du parlement y viennent d'y répondre par des fagots, ainsi qu'à quelque autres ouvrages de même trempe. ce qu'il y a de fâcheux c'est que l'ouvrage de v. qui a pour titre _dieu et les hommes_ a été enveloppé dans la même condamnation, ce qui doit déplaire souverainement à l'auteur. je me rappelle à cette occasion ce que m. hume dit d'un catholique que henri viii fit conduire au bûcher avec quelques hérétiques, et dont le seul chagrin était d'être brûlé en si mauvaise compagnie. nonobstant toutes ces réfutations, il parait tous les jours quelques nouveaux ouvrages impies, au point que je suis très surpris que la récolte ait été si bonne dans le royaume. en dernier lieu on vient de publier un ouvrage sous le titre de _droit des souverains sur les biens du clergé_, qui, sans contenir des impiétés n'en est pas moins déplaisant pour cela: il va droit à la cuisine, et veut que pour liquider la dette nationale on vende tous les biens ecclésiastiques et que l'on met nos pontifes à la pension. vous sentez qu'une proposition si mal sonnante n'a pu manquer de mettre le ciel en courroux; sa colère s'est déchargé sur cinq ou six libraires et colporteurs qui ont été mis en prison. [endnotes] [ : ] diderot, _oeuvres_, ed. assézat et tourneaux, vol. xx, p. . [ : ] grimm, _corr. lit._, vol. xv, p. . [ : ] diderot, _oeuvres_, vol. xx, p. . [ : ] among the most important are damiron j. p., _mémoires pour servir à l'histoire de la philosophie au dix-huitième siècle_ (paris, , vols., vo); lange, _geschichte des materialismus_ (eng. tr., boston, ); morley, _diderot and the encyclopedists_ (n. y., , vols., mo); plekhanow, g., _beiträge zur geschichte des materialismus_ (stuttgart, ); hancock, a. e., _the french revolution and the english poets_ (n. y., ); tallentyre, _the friends of voltaire_ (london, ); fabre, _les pères de la révolution_ (paris, ), etc. [ : ] confessions, _oeuvres_, vol. xxiv, p. . [ : ] bib. nat. mss. _pièces originales,_ , d'holbach, , . [ : ] carlyle, rev. dr. a., _autobiography_, ed. burton, boston, , p. sq. for holbach's english friends mentioned in his letters to wilkes. [ : ] see chap. ii and bibliography, pt. i, for these and his other works. [ : ] grimm _cor. lit._, vol. ii, p. . [ : ] _gazette de france_, aug. , . [ : ] jal, _dict. critique_, p. . [ : ] his career is somewhat doubtful. he travelled in italy in and abbé galiani, an old friend of holbach's, got a very agreeable impression of him. john wilkes, in a letter to his daughter in , seems to imply that he had not turned out very well, and hopes that the baron's second son will make good the deficiencies of the first. in he published a translation of weiland's _oberon_ or _huon de bordeaux_ which went thru another edition in , but those are the only details that have come to light. [ : ] diderot, in writing to mlle volland sep. , says: "on nourrit, à chenvières, les deux filles de madame d'holbach. l'aînée est belle comme un chérubin; c'est un visage rond, de grands yeux bleus, des levres fines, une bouche riante, la peau la plus blanche et la plus animée, des cheveux châtains qui ceignent un très joli front. la cadette est un peloton d'embonpoint où l'on ne distingue encore que du blanc et du vermillon." [ : ] gazette de france, june , . [ : ] holbach's intendant was [a] jew, berlise. after his death several of his old servants vincent, david, and plocque, contested holbach's will, in which they thought they were legatees. the case was in the courts for several years and was finally decided against them. douarche, _les tribunaux civil de paris pendant la révolution_, paris, , vol. i., pp. , , , . [ : ] avézac-lavigne, _diderot_, p. . [ : ] _critica_, vol. i, p. , note. [ : ] he met voltaire in paris in , however, and naigeon relates that voltaire greeted him very cordially and said that he had long desired to make his acquaintance. [ : ] collignon, _diderot_, p. . [ : ] avézac-lavigne, _diderot_, p. , note. [ : ] romilly, _memoirs_, vol. i, p. . [ : ] diderot, _oeuvres_, vol. i, p. lxvi, note. [ : ] journal de paris, dec. , . [ : ] see appendix, p. , p. . [ : ] see appendix, p. . [ : ] see appendix, p. . [ : ] see p. sq. and appendix pp. sq. [ : ] barbier, _dict._, vol. i, p. sq. [ : ] barbier, vol. i, p. xxxiii, note. [ : ] _oeuvres_, vol. xviii, p. . [ : ] _oeuvres_, vol. xiv, p. . [ : ] middleton's translation, preface. [ : ] cf. p. . [bibliography part i] [ : ] morley, _diderot_, vol. ii, p. . [ : ] later _bon-sens_ and _théologie portative_ were doomed to the flames by the condemnations of jan. , , and february , . [ : ] _système de la nature_, ed. , vol. ii, p. . [ : ] grimm, _cor. lit._, vol. ix, p. . [ : ] voltaire, _oeuvres_, ed. beuchot, vol. lxvi, p. . subsequent references to voltaire are from this edition. [ : ] vol. lxvii, p. . [ : ] grimm, _cor. lit._, vol. ix, p. . [ : ] vol. lxvi, p. . [ : ] vol. lxvi, p. . [ : ] vol. lxvi, p. . [ : ] vol. lxvi, p. . [ : ] vol. xxviii, p. . [ : ] vol. lxvi, p. . [ : ] goethe, _wahrheit und dichtung_, th book, goethe's _werke_, stuttgart, vol. , p. . auf philosophische weise erleuchtet und gefödert zu werden, hatten wir keinen trieb noch hang: über religiöse gegenstände glaubten wir uns selbst aufgeklärt zu haben, und so war der heftige streit französischer philosophen mit dem pfafftum uns ziemlich gleichgültig. verbotene, zurn feuer verdaminte bücher, welche damals grossen lärmen machten, übten keine wirkung auf uns. ich gedenke statt aller des _système de la nature_, das wir aus neugier in die hand nahmen. wir begriffen nicht, wie ein solches buch gefährlich sein könnte. es kam uns so grau, so cimmerisch, so totenhaft vor, das wir mühe hatten, seine gegenwart auszuhalten, dass wir davor wie vor einern gespenste schauderten. der verfasser glaubt sein buch ganz eigens zu empfehlen, wenn er in der vorrede versichert, dass er, als ein abgelebter greis, soeben in die grube stiegend, der mit- und nachwelt die wahrheit verkünden wolle. wir lachten ihn aus: denn wir glaubten bemerkt zu haben, dass von alten leuten eigentlich an der welt nichts geschätzt werde, was liebenswürdig und gut an ihr ist. "alte kirchen haben dunkle gläser" "wie kirschen und beeren schmecken, muss mann kinder und sperlinge fragen"--dies waren unsere lust und leibworte: und so schien uns jenes buch, als die rechte quintessenz der greisenheit, unschmachhaft, ja abgeschmackt alles sollte notwendig sein und deswegen kein gott. "könnte es denn aber nicht auch notwendig einen gott geben?" fragten wir. dabei gestanden wir freilich, das wir uns den notwendigkeiten der tage und nächte, der jahrszeiten, der klirnatischen einflusse, der physichen und animalischen zustände nicht wohl entziehen könnten: doch fühlten wir etwas in uns, das als vollkommene willkür erschien, und wieder etwas, das sich mit dieser willkür ins gleichgewicht zu setzen suchte. die hoffnung, immer vernünftiger zu werden, uns von den aussern dingen, ja von uns selbst immer unabhängiger zu machen, konnten wir nicht aufgeben. das wort freiheit klingt so schon, dass mann es nicht entbehren könnte und wenn es einen irrtum bezeichnete. keiner von uns hatte das buch hinausgelesen; denn wir fanden uns in der erwartung getäuscht, in der wir es auf geschlagen hatten. _system der natur_ ward angekündigt und wir hofften also wirklich etwas von der natur, unsere abgötten, zu erfahren. physik und chemie, himmels- und erdbeschriebung, naturgeschichte und anatomie und so manches andere hatte nun zeit jahren und bis auf den letzten tag uns immer auf die geschmüchte grosse welt hingeweisen, und wir hatten gern von sonnen und sternen, von planeten und monden, von bergen, thälern, flüssen und meeren und von allem, was dann lebt und webt, das nähere sowie das allgemeinere erfahren. das hierbei wohl manches vorkommen müsste, was dem gemeinen menschen als schädlich, der geistlichkeit als gefährlich, dem staat als unzulässig erschienen möchte, daran hatten wir keinen zweifel, und wir hofften, dieses büchlein sollte nicht unwürdig die feuerprobe bestauden haben. allein wie hohl und leer ward uns in deiser tristen atheistischen halbnacht zu mute, in welcher die erde mit allen ihren gebilden, der himmel mit allen seinen gestirnen verschwand! eine materie sollte sein von ewigkeit und von ewigkeit her bewegt, und sollte nun mit dieser bewegung rechts und links und nach allen seiten ohne weiteres die unendlichen phänomene des daseins hervorbringen. dies alles wären wir sogar zufrieden gewesen, wenn der verfasser wirklich aus seiner bewegten materie die welt vor unsern augen aufgebaut hätte. aber er mochte von der natur so wenig wissen als wir; denn indem er einige allgemeine begriffe hingepfahlt, verlässt er sie sogleich, um dasjenige, was höher als die natur oder als höhere natur in der natur erschient, zur materiellen schweren, zwar bewegten, aber doch richtungs- und gestaltlosen natur zu verwandeln, und glaubt dadurch recht viel gewonnen zu haben. wenn uns jedoch dieses buch einigen schaden gebracht hat, so war es der, das wir allen philosophie, besonderers aber der metaphysick recht herzlich gram wurden, und bleiben, dagegen aber auf lebendige wissen, erfahren, thun und dichten uns nur desto lebhafter und leidenschaftlicher hinwarfen. [ : ] vol. ii, p. , ed. . bibliography--part i. editions of holbach's works in chronological order. as the works of holbach are not yet cataloged in the bibliothèque nationale, the following list is doubtless incomplete. the numbers given are those of the bibliothèque nationale and the british museum where the books were used, except in cases where they were available in boston, new york or washington. abbreviations b. n., bibliothèque nationale. b. m., british museum. l. c., library of congress. c. u., columbia university. h. u., harvard university. u. t. s., union theological seminary. g. t. s., general theological seminary. a. t. s., andover theological seminary. n. y., new york public library. b. p., boston public library. of about editions consulted, c. u. had ; u. t. s. ; n. y. ; h. u. ; b. p. ; l. c. ; a. t. s. ; g. t. s. i. there are or more editions in existence that were not to be found in the library catalogs consulted. . lettre à une dame d'un certain âge sur l'état présent de l'opéra. en arcadie aux dépens de l'académie royale de musique, (paris, vo, pp. .) b. m. b ( ). . arrêt rendu à l'amphithéâtre de l'opéra, sur la plainte du milieu du parterre intervenant dans la querelle des deux coins. (paris, , vo, pp. .) b. n. yf (attributed to diderot). . art de la verrerie, de neri, merret et kunckel; auquel on a ajouté le _sol sine veste_ d'orschall; _l'helioscopium videndi sine veste solem chymicum_; le _sol non sine veste_: le chapitre xi du _flora saturnizans_ de henckel, sur la vitrification des végétaux; un mémoire sur la manière de faire le saffre; le secret des vraies porcelaines de la chine et de saxe; ouvrages où l'on trouvera la manière de faire le verre et le crystal, d'y porter des couleurs, d'imiter les pierres précieuses, de préparer et colorer les emaux, de faire la potasse, de peindre sur le verre, de préparer des vernis, de composer de couvertes pour des fayances et poteries, d'extraire la couleur pourpre de l'or, de contrefaire les rubis, de faire le soffre, de faire et peindre les porcelaines, etc. traduits de l'allemand par m. d... a paris durand, rue st. jacques, au griffon. pissot, quai des augustins, à la sagesse. avec approbation et privilège du roi (in quarto). b. n. v. . c. u. a. n h (avery library). . minéralogie, ou description générale des substances du règne minéral. par mr. jean gotshalk wallerius, professeur royale de chymie, de métallurgie et de pharmacie dans l'université d'upsal, de l'académie impériale des curieux de la nature. ouvrage traduit de l'allemand, a paris, chez durand, rue s. jacques, au griffon. pissot, quai de conti, à la croix d'or, mdcclii. avec approbation et privilège du roi ( vols., vo, pp. xlvii + + ). followed by (second title page) hydrologie, ou description du règne aquatique, divisés par classes, gendres, espèces et variétés, avec la manière de faire l'essai des eaux ( p.). b. n., s. ( ). b. m. h. - . --ibid. (paris, herissant, durand, , vols., vo.) n. y., p. w. d. h. u. geol. - . b. m. h.l. . introduction à la minéralogie; ou connoissance des eaux, des sucs terrestres, des sels, des terres, des pierres, des minéraux, et des métaux: avec une description abrégée des opérations de métallurgie. ouvrage posthume de m. j. f. henckel, publié sous le titre de _henckelius in mineralogiâ redivivus_ et traduit de l'allemand. a paris, chez guillaume cavelier, libraire, rue s. jacques, au lys d'or. mdcclvi. avec approbation et privilège du roi. ( vols., vo, pp. lxxi + + .) b. n. ( ). . chimie métallurgique, dans laquelle on trouvera la théorie et la pratique de cet art. avec des experiences sur la densité des alliages des métaux, et des demi-métaux; et un abrégé de docimastique. avec figures. par m. c. e. gellert, conseiller des mines de saxe et de l'académie imperiale de petersbourg. ouvrages traduits de l'allemand. a paris, chez briasson, rue saint jacques; avec approbation et privelège. ( vols., mo, pp. xii + + xvii + .) b. n., r. ( ). . traités de physique, d'histoire naturelle, de minéralogie et de métallurgie. (paris, , vols., mo.) (general title.) tome i. l'art des mines, ou introduction aux connoissances nécessaires pour l'exploitation des mines métalliques avec un traité des exhalaisons minérales ou moufettes, et plusieurs mémoires sur differens sujets d'histoire naturelle-avec figures. par m. jean gotlob lehmann, docteur en médecine, conseiller des mines de sa majesté prussienne, de l'académie royale des sciences de berlin et de celle des sciences utiles de mayence. traduit de l'allemand. a paris, chez jean thomas herrisant mdcclix. avec approbation et privilège du roi. tome ii. traité de la formation des métaux et de leurs matrices ou minières, ouvrage fondé sur les principes de la physique et de la minéralogie et confirmé par des expériences chymiques. par m. j. g. lehmann, etc. traduit de l'allemand. tome iii. essai d'une histoire naturelle des couches de la terre. dans lequel on traite de leur formation, de leur situation, des minéraux, des métaux et des fossiles qu'elles contiennent. avec des considerations physiques sur les causes des tremblements de terre et de leur propagation. ouvrages traduits de l'allemand, et augmentés de notes du traducteur etc. h. u., m, z. b. m. c. - . . les plaisirs de l'imagination, poème en trois chants, par m. akenside. traduit de l'anglais. a amsterdam, arkstée et merkus, et se trouve à paris chez pissot, quai de conti mdcclix ( vo). b. n. ex. yk et . b. m. f . --ibid. les plaisirs de l'imagination, poème en trois chants, par akenside, traduit de l'anglais par le baron d'holbach, augmenté de notes historiques et littéraires, de la vie de l'auteur et du traducteur, par pissot. paris, hubert mdcccvi ( - vo). b. n. yk . b. m. b ( ). . pyritologie, ou histoire naturelle de la pyrite, ouvrage dans lequel on examine l'origine, la nature, les propriétés et les usages de ce minéral important, et de la plupart des autres substances du même règne: on y a joint le flora saturnisans où l'auteur dèmontre l'alliance qui se trouve entre les végétaux et les minéraux; et les orpuscules minéralogiques, qui comprennent un traité de l'appropriation, un traité de l'origine des pierres, plusieurs mémoires sur la chymie et l'histoire naturelle, avec un traité des maladies des mineurs et des fondeurs. par m. jean-frederic henkel, docteur en médicine, conseiller des mines du roi de pologne, electeur de saxe; de l'académie imperiale des curieux de la nature et de celle de berlin. ouvrages traduit de l'allemand [by baron d'holbach and m., charas] à paris, chez jean thomas hérissant, libraire, rue s. jacques, à s. paul et à s. hilaire. mdcclx. avec approbation et privilège du roi. (paris, , quarto, pp. xvi + .) b. n. . b. m. c . . oeuvres métallurgiques de m. jean-christian orschall, inspecteur des mines de s. a. s. le land-grave de hesse-cassel. contenant i. l'art de la fonderie; ii. un traité de la siquation; iii. le traité de la macération des mines; iv. le traité des trois merveilles; (traduit de l'allemand) le prix est de sols broché et de liv. relié. a paris, chez hardy, libraire, rue s. jacques au dessus de celle de la parcheminerie à la colonne d'or. mdcclx. avec approbation et privilège du roi. ( mo, pp. + .) b. n., s , . . recueil des mémoires les plus intéressants de chymie, et d'histoire naturelle, contenus dans les actes de l'académie d'upsal, et dans les mémoires de l'académie royale des sciences de stockholm; publiés depuis jusqu'en . traduits du latin et de l'allemand. a paris, chez pierre-fr. didot, le jeune, quai des augustins, à s. augustin. mdcclxiv. avec approbation et privilège du roi. ( vols., mo, pp. viii + .) b. n. r ( ). . histoire du règne de la reine anne d'angleterre, contenant les négociations de la paix d'utrecht, et les démêlés qu'elle occasionna en angleterre. ouvrage posthume du docteur jonathan swift. doyen de s. patrice en irelande: publié sur un manuscrit corrigé de la propre main de l'auteur, et traduit de l'anglais par m... [d'holbach and eidous]. a amsterdam, chez marc-michel rey, et arkstée et merkus. mdcclxv. ( mo, pp. xxiv + .) b. n. vo nc . . traité du soufre, ou remarques sur la dispute qui s'est élevée entre les chymistes, au sujet du soufre, tant commun, combustible ou volatil, que fixe, etc. traduit de l'allemand de stahl. a paris, chez pierre-francois didot, le jeune. quai de augustins à saint-augustin. mdcclxvi. avec approbation et privilège du roi. ( mo, pp. .) b. n., r . b. m. b . . l'antiquité dévoilée par ses usages, ou examen critique des principales opinions, cérémonies et institutions réligieuses et politiques des différens peuples de la terre. par feu m., boulanger. homo, quod rationis est particeps, consequentiam cernit causas rerum videt, earumque progressus et quasi antecessiones non ignorat, similitudines compare, rebus praesentibus adjungit at anectit futuras. --cicero, de offic. lib. i. c. . a amsterdam, chez marc-michel rey, mdcclxvi. (quarto pp. viii + .) b. n., e . c. u., a p. b (avery library). --ibid. ( , vols., mo.) b. n. *e - . --ibid. ( , vols., ( mo.) b. n. *e (viii). b. m. a . --ibid. (amsterdam, , vols., mo, pp. lx + + + .) b. m. b . --ibid. in oeuvres de boulanger t. i-iv en suisse. de l'imprimerie philosophique mdccxci. ( vols., ( mo.) b. n., z - . --ibid. in _oeuvres de boulanger_ t. i-ii amsterdam. (paris, vols., vo.) (quérard.) . le christianisme dévoilé, ou examen des principes et des effets de la religion chrétienne. par feu m. boulanger. superstitio error infanus est, amandos timet, quos colit violat; quid enim interest, utrum deos neges, an infames? senec. ep. . a londres, mdcclvi (nancy, leclerc, , vo, pp. xxviii + ). b. n., d . b. m. bb . b. m., c (another copy with ms. notes by voltaire). --ibid. (londres, , vo, pp. xx + .) printed at john wilkes' private press in george st. westminster, according to ms. note in title page. b. m. de. . --ibid. (londres, , vo, pp. .) a. t. s. . --ibid. (a paris, chez les libraires associés, , vo, pp. xvii + .) b. n., d . --ibid. (londres [amsterdam], , mo.) b. m. b --ibid. oeuvres de boulanger t. vii. (en suisse de l'imprimerie philosophique, , mo.) b. n., z . --ibid. oeuvres de boulanger t. v, . --christianity unveiled; being an examination of the principles and effects of the christian religion, from the french of boulanger, author of _researches into the origin of oriental despotism_, by w. m. johnson. new york, , printed at the columbian press by robertson and gowan for the editor and sold by the principal book sellers in the united states. ( mo, pp. ix + .) b. m. de . b. m. i. , ( ) another copy with ms. notes. b. p.... a . --ibid. london, printed and published by r. carlile, fleet st. ( vo, pp. .) b. m. d. . --ibid. the deist, etc. vol. ii, published by r. carlile, . ( vo, pp. vii + .) b. m. f . --el cristianismo a descurbierto, ó examen de los principios y efectos de la religion cristiana. escrito en francés por boulanger y traducido al castellano por s. d. v.... londres en la emprenta de davidson, . ( mo, pp. xxvi + .) b. m. df . . l'esprit du clergé, ou le christianisme primitif vengé des entreprises et des excès de nos prêtres modernes. traduit de l'anglois à londres (amsterdam) mdcclxvii ( vols. vo, pp. + + ). b. m. pp. . . de l'imposture sacerdotale, ou recueil de pièces sur le clergé. traduites de l'anglois. londres (amsterdam) mdcclxvii. ( mo, pp. .) b. n., d ( ). contains, tableau fidèle des papes. _traduit d'une brochure anglaise_ de m. davisson, publie sous le titre de _a true picture of popery_, pp. - . de l'insolence pontificale, ou des prétentions ridicules du pape et des flatteurs de la cour de rome. _extrait de la profession de foi du célèbre giannone_, par. m. davisson, pp. - . sermon. sur les fourberies et les impostures du clergé romain, _traduit de l'anglois sur une brochure publiée à londres en _ par m. bourn birmingham, sous le titre de _popery a craft_, pp. - . le prêtrianisme opposé au christianisme. ou la religion des prêtres comparée à celle de jésus-christ, ou examen de la différence qui se trouve entre les apôtres et les membres du clergé moderne. _publié en anglois en sous le titre de_ priestanity. or a view of the disparity between the apostles and the modern clergy, pp. - . des dangers de l'eglise, _traduit de anglois sur une brochure publiée eu _. par m., thomas gordon, sous le titre d'_apology for the danger of the church_, etc., pp. - . le simbole d'un laïque, ou profession de foi d'un homme désintéressé. traduit de l'anglois de m. gordon, sur une brochure publiée en . sous le titre de _the creed of an independent whig_, pp. - . --ibid. published under title de la monstruosité pontificale, ou tableau fidèle des papes. _traduit de l'anglois_ londres mdcclxxii. ( vo, pp. .) b. n., h. . . examen des prophéties qui servent de fondement à la religion chrétienne, avec un essai de critique sur les prophètes et les prophéties en général. ouvrages traduits de l'anglois. londres mdcclxviii. ( vo, pp. .) b. n., d . b. m. de . contains, discours sur les fondements de la religion chrétienne, pp. - . extrait de l'ouvrage qui a pour titre: examen du septème de ceux qui prétendent que les prophéties se sont accomplies à la lettre. the scheme of literal prophecy considered, etc., . ( vo, pp. - .) . david, ou l'histoire de l'homme selon le coeur de dieu, ouvrage traduit de l'anglois. saül, et david, tragédie en actes d'après l'anglois.... (londres, , vo.) b. n. ex. ld , hz , et rès z. beuchot ( ). b. m. a ( ). . les prêtres démasqués, ou des iniquités du clergé chrétien. ouvrage traduit de l'anglois. londres. mdcclxviii. ( vo, pp. .) b. n., d . b. m. de . . lettres philosophiques, sur l'origine des préjugés, du dogme de l'immortalité de l'ame, de l'idolâtrie et de la superstition; sur le système de spinoza et sur l'origine du mouvement dans la matière. traduites de l'anglois de j. toland. opinionum commenta delet dies, naturae judicia confirmat. cicero, de nat. deor. lib. ii. a londres (amsterdam). . mdcclxviii. ( vo, pp. .) b. n., d . b. m. de . containing, préface ou lettre à un ami, en lui envoyant les dissertations suivantes, dans laquelle l'auteur rend compte des motifs qui les ont fait écrire. (pp. - .) première lettre. de l'origine et de la force de ces préjugés. (pp. - .) seconde lettre. histoire du dogme de l'immortalité de l'ame chez les payens. (pp. - .) troisième lettre. sur l'origine de l'idolâtrie et sur les fondements de la religion payenne. (pp. - .) quartrième lettre. a un gentilhomme hollandois pour lui prouver que le système de spinoza est dépourvu de fondements et pèche dans ses principes. (pp. - .) cinquième lettre. dans laquelle on prouve que le mouvement est essentiel à la matière; en réponse à quelques remarques qui ont été faites à l'auteur au sujet de sa réfutation du système de spinoza. nunc quae mobilitas fit reddita materiaë corporibus paucis licet hinc cognoscere, memmi. lucret., lib. ii, vers . (pp. - .) . théologie portative, ou dictionnaire abrégé de la religion chrétienne. par mr. l'abbé bernier, licencié en théologie. audite hoc sacerdotes, et attendite domus israël, et domus regis auscultate; quia vobis judicium est, quoniam laquens facti estis speculationi et rete expansum super thabor. osée, chap. v, vers. i. londres (amsterdam), mdcclxviii ( ), ( mo, pp. ). b. n., d . b. m. a . --ibid. londres (suisse), . --ibid. a rome, mdcclxxv ( vo, pp. ). b. n., d . --ibid. augmentée d'un volume. a rome, avec permission et privilège du conclave. ( vols., mo ( ).) b. n., d . --ibid. under title. manuel théologique, en form de dictionnaire. ouvrage très utile aux personnes des deux sexes pour le salut de leurs âmes, par l'abbé bernier etc. rome, au vatican de l'imprimerie du conclave. ( vols., vo.) --ibid. . . le militaire philosophe, ou difficultés sur la religion, proposées au r. p. malebranche, prêtre de l'oratoire. par un ancien officier. londres (amsterdam) mdcclxviii. ( vo, pp. .) c. u. n . --ibid. ( vo). b. m. bb . --ibid. ( vo). b. m. de . (last chapter by d'holbach.) . la contagion sacrée, ou histoire naturelle de la superstition. ouvrage traduit de l'anglois. _prima mali labes_. londres (amsterdam), mdcclxvii. ( vols. in , vo.) b. n., d . c. u. h p. --ibid. avec des notes relatives aux circonstances. nouvelle edition. a paris, de l'imprimerie de lemaire, rue d'enfer no. , an de la republique ( ). ( vols. in , vo, pp. - .) u. t. s. b. h. c. --el contagion sagrado, ó historia natural de la supersticion. paris, rodriguez, . ( vols., vo.) (quérard.) . lettres à eugénia, ou préservatif contre les préjugés... arctis relligionum animos nodis exsolvere pergo.--lucret. de rer. nat., lib. , v. - . a londres, mdcclxviii. ( vols., vo, pp. xii + + ) --ibid. oeuvres de nicolas fréret, t. i, pp. - . paris, . ( vo.) h. u. - , vol. i. --cartas á eugenia, por mr. freret. paris. imprenta de f. didot, ( vo, pp. viii + ). b. m. de . --letters to eugenia on the absurd, contradictory and demoralizing dogmas and mysteries of the christian religion. now first translated from the french of fréret, but supposed to be written by baron holbach, author of the system of nature, christianity unveiled, common sense, universal morality, natural morality. r. carlile, the deist, etc., vol. ii, , etc. ( vo, pp. .) b. m. f. . --cartas à eugenia. madrid, , por don benito cano. v. n. y., z f f. --letters to eugenia on the absurd, contradictory and demoralizing dogmas and mysteries of the christian religion, by baron d'holbach, new york, published by h. m. dubecquet, no. william street, . ( vo, pp. .) u. t. s. b. --letters to eugenia etc., translated by anthony c. middleton, m.d. boston, josiah p. mendum, . b. p. . . de la cruauté religieuse. a londres, mdcclxix. ( vo, pp. .) b. n., d . b. m. aa . u. t. s. h . --ibid. amsterdam, , vo. . le la tolérance dans la religion, ou de la liberté de conscience par crellius. l'intolérance convaincue de crime et de folie. ouvrage traduit de l'anglois, londres, mdcclxix. ( vo, pp. .) contains de la tolérance dans la religion, ou de la liberté de conscience (crellius). de l'intolérance dans la religion (d'holbach), p. . enfer détruit ou examen raisonné du dogme de l'eternité des peines. ouvrages, tr. de l'anglois à londres, mdcclxix, p. . dissertation critique sur les tourmens de l'enfer. traduit de l'anglois, p. (by whitefoot). b. n., d . --ibid. hell destroyed! now first translated from the french of d'alembert without any mutilations. london. printed and published by j. w. trust, newgate st., . ( vo, pp. .) (followed by whitefoot's torments of hell, "now first translated from the french," to p. .) . l'esprit du judaïsme, ou examen raisonné de la loi de moyse, et de son influence sur la religion chrétienne. atque utinam nunquam judaea sub acta fuisset pompeii bellis, imperioque titi. latius excisae pestes contagie serpunt, victoresques suos natio victa premit. rutilius, itinerar. lia i, vs. , londres, mdcclxx. ( mo, pp. xxii + .) b. n., d . b. m. bb . . examen critique de la vie et des ouvrages de saint paul, avec une dissertation sur saint pierre par feu m. boulanger. londres, ( vo), (by peter annet). b. n. ex. [d ( ) et h. ]. b. m. o aa . --ibid. nouvelle edition, londres, . ( vo.) b. n. [h ]. --critical examination of the life of st. paul. translated from the french of boulanger. "paul, thou art beside thyself, much learning doth make thee mad." acts, chap, , v . london. printed and published by r. carlile, water lane, fleet st., . ( vo, pp. .) b. m. h g ( ). . histoire critique de jésus-christ, ou analyse raisonnée des evangiles. ecce homo. pudet me humani generis, cuius mentis et aures talia ferre potuerunt. s. augustin. (no date [amsterdam, ?], mo, pp. viii + xxxii + .) b. n, , . b. m. a. . u. t. s. h . --ecce homo! or a critical enquiry into the history of jesus christ, being a rational analysis of the gospels. edinburg, . --ecce homo! or a critical enquiry into the history of jesus christ, being a rational analysis of the gospels. ( d ed.) london, . printed, published and sold by d. i. easton. g. t. s. g. h. . --historia critica de jesus christo, o anáilisis razonado le los evangelios. traducida del frances, por el p. f. de t, ex-jesuita. ecce homo. vel. aqui el hombre. s. juan, cap. , v. . londres, en la imprenta de davidson, . ( vols., mo, pp. xiii + + .) contains advertencia del traductor. . tableau des saints, ou examen de l'esprit, de la conduite, des maximes, et du mérite des personnages que le christianisme révère et propose pour modèles. hoc admonere simplices etiam potest, opinione alterius ne quid ponderent; ambitio namque diffidens mortalium aut gratiae subscribunt, aut odio suo; erit ille nottis, quem per te cognoveris. phaed., lib. iii, fab. . a londres, mdcclxx. ( vols., mo, pp. xxviii + + .) b. n., h , . b. m. , a a a a . . recueil philosophique, ou mélange de pièces sur la religion et la morale. par différents auteurs (ed. naigeon). ovando enim ista observans quieto et libero animo esse poteris, ut ad vem gerendam non superstionem habeas, sed rationem ducem. --cicero, de divinat., lib. . londres, mdcclxx. ( vols., mo.) b. n., d . vol. i, p. (vi), réflexions sur les craintes de la mort. vol. ii, p. (ix), dissertation sur l'immortalité de l'âme. traduite de l'anglais. vol. ii, p. (x), dissertation sur le suicide. traduit de l'anglais. vol. ii, p. (xi). problème important. la religion est elle nécessaire à la morale et utile à la politique? par m. mirabaud. vol. ii, p. (xiii). extrait d'un ecrit anglais qui a pour titre _le christianisme aussi ancien que le monde_. . essai sur les préjugés, ou, de l'influence des opinions sur les moeurs et sur le bonheur des hommes. ouvrage contenant l'apologie de la philosophie par mr. d. m. assiduite quotidiana et consuetudine oculorum assuescunt animi, neque admirantur, neque requerunt rationes earum rerum quas vident. --cicero de nat. deorum, lib. ii. londres, mdcclxx. ( vo, pp. .) b. n., r . b. m. b b b . h. u. phil. . --ibid. paris desray an ( ). ( vols., vo, cortina.) --ibid. oeuvres de dumarsais. paris, pougin, . t. vi vo, pp. - . b. n., z - . h. u. vi. --ibid. paris, niogret, . c. u. d . --essayo sobre las preocupaciones ó del influjo de las opiniones en las costumbres y felicidad de las hombres. por dumarsais. en paris. hallase en la casa de rosa, librero. gran pacio del palacio real. . ( vo, pp. .) b. n., r , . --(bibliothèque nationale. collection des meilleurs auteurs anciens et modernes.) dumarsais. essai sur les préjugés. précédé d'un discours préliminaire et d'un précis historique de la vie de dumarsais par le citoyen daube. paris. librairie de la bibliothèque nationale. rue de richelieu , près le théâtre francais. ci-devant rue de valois . tous droits resérvés ( centimes). b. n. vo r. . . système de la nature, ou des loix du monde physique et du monde moral. par m. mirabaud, secrétaire perpétuel et l'un des quarante de l'académie française. natura rerum vis atque majestas in omnibus momentis fide caret, si quis modè partes ejus, ac non totam complectatur animo.--plin. hist., lib. vii. londres, mdcclxx. ( vols., vo, pp. + .) b. m. f u. t. s. h . --ibid, londres, mdcclxx. (second edition, vols., in vo, pp. + .) b. m., d - . contains discours préliminaire de l'auteur (pp. ). avis de l'editeur. préface de l'auteur, etc. --abrégé du code de la nature, par m., mirabaud, secrétaire perpétuel et l'un des quarante de l'académe française. londres. mdcclxx. ( vo, p.) --ibid. nouvelle Édition augmentée par l'auteur à laquelle on a joint plusieurs pièces des meilleurs auteurs relatives aux mêmes objets, etc. (ed. naigeon.) londres, mdcclxxi. ( vols. in vo, pp. - .) contains vol. ii, p. , réquisitoire, sur lequel est intervenu l'arrêt du parlement du août qui condamne à être brûlés, differens livres ou brochures, intitulés. . la contagion sacrée... . dieu et les hommes. . discours sur les miracles. . examen des apologistes. . examen impartial des principales religions du monde. . christianisme dévoilé. . système de la nature. imprimé par ordre exprès du roi. b. m., d . reprinted in , - . --ibid. nouvelle Édition. londres, , vo, pp. xii + + . contains _sentiments de voltaire sur le système de la nature_. séguier's _réquisitoire_ and holbach's _réplique_. b. m. . . --ibid. nouvelle Édition. londres, . ( vols. in vo, pp. + .) b. n., d g. --ibid. german translation, schreiter. leipzig and frankfort, . --ibid. paris, an. iii ( ). ( vols. in vo.) --the system of nature. translated from the french of m. mirabeau. london, . printed for g. kearsley. l. of c. b -s g e- - . --ibid. philadelphia, . pub. by r. benson. l. of c., b -s g e - - g. --nature and her laws, as applicable to the happiness of man living in society, contrasted with superstitions and imaginary systems. done from the french of m. mirabaud. london in . w. hodgson. c. u. h s. l. of c., b s g e - . --système de la nature,... avec notes de diderot. nouvelle édition. ed. lemonnier, paris, . b. roquefort. ( vols. in vo.) --the system of nature, or the laws of the moral and physical world. translated by samuel wilkinson from the original french of m. mirabaud. printed and published by thomas davison. (vols. , , r. helder, .) london, . vols in vo, pp. xi + - - .) contains life of mirabaud, vol. , pp. - . b. m. . de ? u. s. . h . --système de la nature... par le baron d'holbach. nouvelle edition avec des notes et des corrections par diderot. paris, etienne ledoux, . ( vols. in vo, pp. xvi + + .) b. n., d . b. m. i. . c. u, h . r. n. y., y c o. contains extract of grimm's literary correspondence, aug. , . --système de la nature, ou des lois du monde physique et du monde morale, par le baron d'holbach. nouvelle Édition avec des notes et des corrections par diderot etc. paris, domère, . ( vols. in mo.) contains avis de naigion. avertissement du nouvel éditeur, pp. - . pièces diverses, pp. - . --sistema de la naturaleza, con notas y correcciones por diderot; trad, al castell. por f. a. f.... paris, masson hijo, , vols. in mo. b. n., d . --selections from mirabaud's system of nature in the law of reason, etc. london, . ( mo, pp. .) selections from bon-sens, pp. - , - . b. m. . b. . --nature and her laws, as applicable to the happiness of man living in society, contrasted with superstitions and imaginary systems. from the french of m. de mirabaud. james watson. london, . ( vols. in mo, pp. xxiv + + .) sold for s. d. b. m. b . contains . publisher's preface (by james watson). . preface. . a short account of the life and writings of the baron d'holbach (by julian hibbert). --system of nature, new and improved edition with notes by diderot. translated by h. d. robinson. new york, , published by matsell. n. y., y b x. --system of nature, or the laws of the moral and physical world, from the french of m. mirabaud. (new edition, pp. + .) london, . c. u. h . r . --system der natur von mirabaud. deutsch bearbeitet und mit anmerkungen versehen von biedermann. leipzig, . ( vo, pp. .) georg. wigands verlag. t. s. (andover ). --system der natur.... translated by schreiter, . --system of nature, new and improved edition with notes by diderot, translated by h. d. robinson. stereotype edition, boston, , in vo. published by j. p. mendum. b. p. . - . . --system der natur..., tr. allhusen, . --system of nature..., tr. robinson, boston. . published by j. p. mendum. b. p. . . n. y., y c o - / l. of c., b. . s g e . --the system of nature; or, the laws of the moral and physical world, by the baron d'holbach, originally attributed to m. de mirabaud with memoir by charles bradlaugh. reprinted verbatim from the best edition. london. published by e. truelove, high holborn, . in vo, pp. xi + . b. m. a a . . le bon-sens ou idées naturelles opposées aux idées surnaturelles. detexit quo doloso vaticinandi furore sacerdotes mysteria, illis saepe ignota, audacter publicant. --petronii satyricon. londres (amsterdam) , vo, pp. xii - . u. t. s. h. . --ibid. le bon-sens du curé j. meslier d'etrépigny. rome (paris), , vo. --ibid. another edition, , vo, pp. x- . --ibid. londres (amsterdam), , mo, pp. xii- . u. t. s. h. . --ibid. le bon-sens du curé meslier d'etrépigny. rome (paris), , vo. --ibid. nouvelle édition, suivi du testament du curé meslier. paris, bouqueton, l'an i de la république. ( , vols., mo.) --ibid. le bon-sens du curé j. meslier suivi de son testament. paris, , vo, pp. . c. u. m d . --ibid. paris, palais des thermes de julien, ( ), mo. --ibid. paris, guillaumin, , mo. --ibid. paris, guillaumin, , mo. --common sense, h. d. robinson, new york, circa . --le bon-sens du curé j. meslier, etc. paris, bacquenois, , mo. --ibid. paris, guillaumin, , mo. --ibid. nancy, haener, , mo. --der gesunde menschenverstand. baltimore, . --ibid. baltimore, (second edition), h. u. --ibid. tr. into german by miss anna knoop. circa . --ibid., under title, superstition in all ages; by jean meslier... who left to the world the following pages entitled _common sense_. translated from the french original by miss anna knoop, new york, . c. u. l. m. --ibid. new york, peter eckler, , pp. vi- . u. t. s. --le bon-sens du curé j. meslier, paris, palais des thermes de julien, . (garnier frères, .) h. u. --superstition in all ages, etc. translated from the french original by miss anna knoop; arranged for publication in its present form and manner with new title-page and preface by dr. l. w. delaurence. same to now serve as "text-book" number five for "the congress of ancient, divine, mental and christian masters," chicago, ill., delaurence, scott & co., , pp. xx- - . l. of c. , a . l. w. de laurence. . de la nature humaine, ou exposition des facultés, des actions et des passions de l'âme, et de leurs causes, déduites d'après des principes philosophiques qui ne sont communément ni reçus ni connus. par thomas hobbes; ouvrage traduit de l'anglois. londres (amsterdam), mdcclxxii. ( vo, pp. iv + .) b. m. c c . (bookmark of richard chase sidney.) --ibid. oeuvres philosophiques et politiques de thomas hobbes. . ( vols., vo.) (tr. by sorbière and holbach.) b. m. . . recherches sur les miracles. par l'auteur de l'examen des apologistes de la religion chrétienne. a genus attonitum. ovid. metam. londres, mdcclxxiii. ( vo. pp. .) b. m. de . . la politique naturelle, ou, discours sur les vrais principes du governement. par un ancien magistrat. vis consili expers mole ruit suâ. --horat., ode iv, lib. iii, vers. londres (amsterdam), mdcclxxiii. ( vols. in vo. pp. vii + + .) b. m. h. . u. s. e. h. (ex libris baron carl de vinck, ministre de belgique). c. u. h. . (ascribed also to c. g. lamoignon de malesherbes.) --ibid. londres, . ( vols, in vo.) --la politica naturale: discorsi sui veri principi di governo. traduzione di luigi salvadori. mantova, balbiani e donelli, ' - . ( vols., (l. ).) . système social, ou principes naturels de la moral et de la politique, avec un examen de l'influence du governement sur les moeurs. discenda virtus est, ars est bonum fieri; erras si existimas vitia nobiscum nasci; supervenerunt in gesta sunt. --seneca, epis. . londres, mdcclxxiii. ( vo, pp. + + , in three parts.) b. n., r . e . c. u. . h. . n. y. sc. --ibid. par l'auteur du système de la nature, londres, . ( vols., vo, pp. + + .) b. m. . h . --ibid. a paris, servière, . ( vols., vo, pp. + .) b. m. dc. (ex libris j. gomez de la cortina et amicorum. fallitur hora legendo). --ibid....par le baron d'holbach. paris, niogret, . ( vols, vo.) c. u. . h. . . agriculture réduit à ses vrais principes par jean gottschalk wallerius, paris, lacombe, . ( mo.) . ethocratie ou le gouvernement fondé sur la morale. constituit bonos mores civitati princips. --seneca, de clementia, lib. i. a amsterdam. chez marc michel rey. mdcclxxvi. ( vo, pp. + + .) c. u. . h . . morale universelle, ou les devoirs de l'homme fondés sur la nature. naturâ duce utendum est: hanc ratio observe, hanc consulit, idem est ergo beatè vivere et secundum naturam. --seneca de vita beata, cap. viii init. a amsterdam. chez marc-michel rey, mdcclxxvi. ( vols., vo, pp. + + .) b. n., r - - .. b. m. h- --ibid. a tours, chez letourmy le jeune et compagnie, a angers, de l'imprimerie de jahyer et geslin. imprimeurs-libraries, rue milton, . ( vo.) b. m. . k. - h. u. phil. . . --ibid. paris, smith (rey et gravier), an , . ( vols., vo.) --ibid. par le baron d'holbach. paris, masson et fils. libraires, rue de tournon, no. , . ( vols., vo, pp. xxxii + + + .) c. u. h . b. m. k . --moral universal ódeberes del hombre, fundatos en su naturaleza. obra escrita en francès por el baron de holbach y traducida al castellano por d. manuel diaz moreno zaragoza, , imp. de m. heras. ( vols., vo.) --la moral universel por el baron de holbach. madrid, , imp. y lib. del establecimiento central. ( vols. in to.) --ibid. translated into german by johann umminger. leipzig, . . elements de la morale universelle, ou catechisme de la nature. par feu m., le baron d'holbach des académies de pétersbourg de manheim et de berlin. numquam aliud natura aliud sapientia dicit.--juvenal. a paris. chez g. de bure. rue serpente, no. , mdccxc. ( vo, pp. vi + .) b. m. . a. . b. p., g. . . --elementos de la moral universel, ó catecismo de la naturaleza, por el baron de holbach. madrid, , imp. que fué de fuentenebro, lib de sanchez en vo past. --principios de moral, ó manuel de los deberes del hombre fundados en la naturaleza. obra póstuma de baron de holbach. traducida al espanol por d. l. m. g. adoptada en su mayor parte de la escuelas de primera educacion para instruccion de los ninos. madrid, , imp. de ferrer y compania lib de j sanz. (in mo.) bibliography part ii. general bibliography. allgemeine deutsche biographie. avézac-lavigne, diderot et la société du baron d'holbach. paris, . bachaumont, mémoires secrètes. paris, . barbier, dictionnaire des ouvrages anonymes et pseudonymes. paris, . barni, histoire des idées morales et politiques en france au dix-huitième siècle. paris, . barruel, mémoire pour servir à l'histoire de jacobinisme. hamburg, . lettres helviennes. hamburg, - . bartholmess, histoire philosophique de l'académie de prusse. paris, . bergier, apologie de la religion chrétienne contre l'auteur du _christianisme dévoilé_. paris, . examen du matérialisme, ou réfutation du _système de la nature_. paris, . bibliothèque nationale, pièces originales. d'holbach. manuscrits français, , (col. anisson). boiteau, mémoires de mme. d'epinay. paris. british museum manuscript index, - . mss. folios - , , . brougham, a discourse of natural theology. london, . brunel, les philosophes et l'académie française. paris. brunet, manuel du librairie. paris, . bucherberger, kirche-lexikon. burton, life and correspondence of david hume. edinburgh, . letters of prominent persons addressed to david hume. edinburgh and london, . buzonnière, observations sur un ouvrage intitulé le _système de la nature_. paris, . camuset, principes contre l'incrédulité, à l'occasion du _système de la nature_. paris, . carlile, the deist. london, . carlyle, rev. dr. alexander, autobiography, ed. burton. london, . castillon, observations sur un livre intitulé, _système de la nature_. berlin, . catalogue des manuscrits français dans les bibliothèques départementales. chaudon, dictionnaire anti-philosophique etc. avignon, . claudon, le baron d'holbach. paris, . collignon, diderot. paris, . critica, - damiron, mémoires pour servir à l'histoire de la philosophie au me siècle. paris, . etudes sur la philosophie de d'holbach. mémoires de l'académie des sciences morales et politiques, vol. iv du compte rendu des séances. debure, catalogue des livres de la bibliothèque du feu m. le baron d'holbach. paris, . delisle de sales, philosophie de la nature. paris, . mémoire en faveur de dieu. paris, . delvaille, essai sur l'histoire de l'idée de progrès. paris, . diderot, oeuvres, ed brière. paris, . mémoires, correspondance, et ouvrages inédits de diderot. paris, . oeuvres complètes de diderot, ed. assézat et tourneux. paris, . douarche, les tribunaux civils de paris pendant la révolution. paris, - . dupont de nemours, philosophie de l'univers. paris, l'an iv ( ). duprat, les encyclopédists. paris, . duvoisin, l'autorité des livres du nouveau testament contre les incrédules. paris, . l'autorité des livres de moïse, etc. paris, . eclaircissements relatifs à la publication des _confessions_ de rousseau, avec des réflexions sur les apologies de mm. cerutti et d'holbach etc. paris, . encyclopédie des sciences religieuses. epinay, mme. d' mémoires et correspondance. paris, . fabre, les pères de la révolution. de bayle à condorcet. paris, . fabry d'autrey, antiquité justifiée etc. paris, . fangouse, la religion prouvée aux incrédules, etc. paris, . ferraz, histoire de la philosophie pendant la révolution. paris, . histoire de la philosophie en france au me siecle. paris, . fitzmaurice, life of william, earl of shelburne. london, . fortnightly review, vol. xxviii, . frederick ii, king of prussia, examen critique du livre intitulé _système de la nature_. berlin, . fréret, lettre de thrasybule à leucippe. funck, les sophistes français et la révolution européenne. paris, . galiani, lettres, ed. e. asse. paris. correspondance, ed. perey et maugras. paris, . garrick. private correspondence. london, . gasté, diderot et le curé de montchauvet, etc. paris, . garat, mémoires historiques sur le me siècle. paris, . gazette de france, aug. , . june , . genlis, mme de, les dîners du baron d'holbach, etc. paris, . gibbon, autobiography, ed. murray. london, . private letters, - , ed prothero. london, . grande encyclopédie. grimm, correspondance littéraire et critique. paris, . nouveaux mémoires secrets et inédits, etc. paris, . hammard, mme. de genlis. new york, . hancock, the french revolution and the english poets. new york, . hedgcock, david garrick et ses amis français. paris, . helvetius, le vrai sens du _système de la nature_. paris, . herzog, real-encyklopedie. hibbert, a short sketch of the life and the writings of baron d'holbach. london, . holland, réflexions philosophiques sur la _système de la nature_. paris, . hume, private correspondence, etc. london, . l'impie démasqué, etc. london, . independent whig. london, . jal, dictionnaire critique de biographie et d'histoire. paris, . journal de lecture, vol. i, . journal de paris, . laharpe, cours de littérature. paris, . philosophie du me siècle. paris, . lagrange, oeuvres complètes de senèque. paris, . landry, beccaria, scritte e lettre inediti. . lange, history of materialism. boston, . lanson, manuel bibliographique de la littérature française moderne - . paris, . lenel, un homme de lettres au me siècle, marmontel. paris, . lerminier, de l'influence de la philosophie au siècle. paris, . lévy-bruhle, history of modern philosophy in france. chicago, . lowell, the eve of the french revolution. boston, . magasin encyclopédique. mai, . mangold, von, unumstossliche widerlegung des materialismus gegen den verfasser des systèms der natur. augsburg, . maréchal, dictionnaire des athées (paris). an. viii ( ). marmontel, mémoires, ed. tourneur. paris, . martin, histoire de france, - . th ed. michaud, biographie universelle. morellet, mémoires. paris, . lettres à lord shelburne. paris, . mornet, les sciences de la nature au me siècle. paris, . myers, konversations-lexikon. naigeon, mémoires historiques et philosophiques sur la vie et les ouvrages de denis diderot. paris, . nouvelle revue, june, july, . paulian, la religion prouvée aux incrédules, etc. paris, . paulian, le véritable système de la nature. paris, . payrard, de la nature et de ses lois. paris, . perey et maugras, dernières années de mme. d'epinay. paris, . picavet, les idéologues. paris, . plechanow, beiträge zur geschichte des materialismus. stuttgart, . quérard, la france littéraire. paris, . superchéries littéraires dévoilées. paris, . littérature française contemporaine (continuation). rabbe, biographie. répertoire de la gazette de france. revue bleue, june, . revue de l'histoire littéraire de la france, jan.-june, . revue de synthèse historique, , vol. i. revue des cours et conférences, - . revue des deux mondes, apr., ; june, . revue encyclopédique, vol. xvi. rey, rousseau. paris, . rietstap, armorial général. gonda, . robinet, le personnel municipale de paris pendant la révolution. paris, . rochfort, l'esprit révolutionnaire avant la révolution. paris, . romilly, sir s., memoirs. london, . rosenkrantz, diderot's leben und werke. leipzig, . rousseau, oeuvres complètes. paris, . roustan, les philosophes et la société française au me siècle. paris, . st.-beuve, portraits littéraires. paris, . causeries de lundi. paris, . st.-martin, des erreurs et de la vérité. edinburgh, . soury, bréviaire de l'histoire de matérialisme. paris, . stupuy, chez diderot, comédie en deux actes, en vers. paris, . tallentyre, the friends of voltaire. london, . villemain, cours de littérature française. paris, . voltaire, oeuvres complètes, ed. beuchot. paris, - . oeuvres complètes, ed. garnier. paris, . walpole, h., letters, ed, toynbee. london, . weiland, oberon, tr. holbach fils. paris, . wetzer & welte, kirchen-lexikon. wilkes, correspondence with his friends. london, . letters from the year to , addressed to his daughter. london, . wright, a history of french literature. london, . vita max pearson cushing, born in bangor, maine, october , ; bangor high school, ; a.b. bowdown college, . instructor in english, robert college, constantinople, - ; graduate student in history, columbia university, - ; a.m. columbia, , instructor in history, reed college, portland, oregon, . "tis sixty years since" address of charles francis adams founders' day, january , "'tis sixty years since" in the single hour self-allotted for my part in this occasion there is much ground to cover,--the time is short, and i have far to go. did i now, therefore, submit all i had proposed to say when i accepted your invitation, there would remain no space for preliminaries. yet something of that character is in place. i will try to make it brief.[ ] as the legend or text of what i have in mind to submit, i have given the words "'tis sixty years since." as some here doubtless recall, this is the second or subordinate title of walter scott's first novel, "waverley," which brought him fame. given to the world in ,--hard on a century ago,--"waverley" told of the last stuart effort to recover the crown of great britain,--that of "the ' ." it so chances that scott's period of retrospect is also just now most appropriate in my case, inasmuch as i entered harvard as a student in the year --"sixty years since!" it may fairly be asserted that school life ends, and what may in contradistinction thereto be termed thinking and acting life begins, the day the young man passes the threshold of the institution of more advanced education. for him, life's responsibilities then begin. prior to that confused, thenceforth things with him become consecutive,--a sequence. insensibly he puts away childish things. [ ] owing to its length, this "address" was compressed in delivery, occupying one hour only. it is here printed in the form in which it was prepared,--the parts omitted in delivery being included. in those days, as i presume now, the college youth harkened to inspired voices. sir walter scott belonged to a previous generation. having held the close attention of a delighted world as the most successful story-teller of his own or any preceding period, he had passed off the stage; but only a short twenty years before. other voices no less inspired had followed; and, living, spoke to us. perhaps my scheme to-day is best expressed by one of these. when just beginning to attract the attention of the english-speaking world, alfred tennyson gave forth his poem of "locksley hall,"--very familiar to those of my younger days. written years before, at the time of publication he was thirty-three. in , a man of seventy-five, he composed a sequel to his earlier effort,--the utterance entitled "locksley hall sixty years after." he then, you will remember, reviewed his young man's dreams,--dreams of the period when he " ... dip't into the future, far as human eye could see, saw the vision of the world, and all the wonder that would be," --threescore years later contrasting in sombre verse an old man's stern realities with the bright anticipations of youth. such is my purpose to-day. "wandering back to living boyhood," to the time when i first simultaneously passed the harvard threshold and the threshold of responsible life, i propose to compare the ideals and actualities of the present with the ideals, anticipations and dreams of a past now somewhat remote. to say that in life and in the order of life's events it is the unexpected which is apt to occur, is a commonplace. that it has been so in my own case, i shall presently show. meanwhile, not least among the unexpected things is my presence here to-day. if, when i entered harvard in , it had been suggested that in , i,--born of the new england sanhedrim, a brahmin yankee by blood, tradition and environment--had it been suggested that i, being such, would sixty years later stand by invitation here in columbia before the faculty and students of the university of south carolina, i should under circumstances then existing have pronounced the suggestion as beyond reasonable credence. here, however, i am; and here, from this as my rostrum, i propose to-day to deliver a message,--such as it is. and yet, though such a future outcome, if then foretold, would have seemed scarcely possible of occurrence, there, after all, were certain conditions which would have rendered the contingency even at that time not only possible, but in accordance with the everlasting fitness of things. for, curiously enough, personal relations of a certain character held with this institution would have given me, even in , a sense of acquaintance with it such as individually i had with no other institution of similar character throughout the entire land. it in this wise came about. at that period, preceding as it did the deluge about to ensue, it was the hereditary custom of certain families more especially of south carolina and of louisiana,--but of south carolina in particular--to send their youth to harvard, there to receive a college education. it thus chanced that among my associates at harvard were not a few who bore names long familiarly and honorably known to carolinian records,--barnwell and preston, rhett and alston, parkman and eliot; and among these were some i knew well, and even intimately. gone now with the generation and even the civilization to which they belonged, i doubt if any of them survive. indeed only recently i chanced on a grimly suggestive mention of one who had left on me the memory of a character and personality singularly pure, high-toned and manly,--permeated with a sense of moral and personal obligation. i have always understood he died five years later at sharpsburg, as you call it, or antietam, as it was named by us, in face-to-face conflict with a massachusetts regiment largely officered by harvard men of his time and even class,--his own familiar friends. this is the record, the reference being to a marriage service held at st. paul's church in richmond, in the late autumn of : "an indefinable feeling of gloom was thrown over a most auspicious event when the bride's youngest sister glided through a side door just before the processional. tottering to a chancel pew, she threw herself upon the cushions, her slight frame racked with sobs. scarcely a year before, the wedding march had been played for her, and a joyous throng saw her wedded to gallant breck parkman. before another twelvemonth rolled around the groom was killed at the front."[ ] samuel breck parkman was in the harvard class following that to which i belonged. graduating in , fifty-five years later i next saw his name in the connection just given. it recorded an incident of not infrequent occurrence in those dark and cruel days. it was, however, in breck parkman and his like that i first became conscious of certain phases of the south carolina character which subsequently i learned to bear in high respect. so far as this university of south carolina was concerned, it also so chanced that, by the merest accident, i, a very young man, was thrown into close personal relations with one of the most eminent of your professors,--francis lieber. few here, i suppose, now personally remember francis lieber. to most it gives indeed a certain sense of remoteness to meet one who, as in my case, once held close and even intimate relations with a german emigrant, distinguished as a publicist, who as a youth had lain, wounded and helpless, a prussian recruit, on the field above namur. occurring in june, , two days after waterloo, the affair at namur will soon be a century gone. of those engaged in it, the last obeyed the fell sergeant's summons a half score years ago. it seems remote; but at the time of which i speak waterloo was appreciably nearer those in active life than are shiloh and gettysburg now. the waterloo campaign was then but thirty-eight years removed, whereas those last are fifty now; and, while lieber was at waterloo, i was myself at gettysburg. [ ] deleon, "belles, beaux and brains of the sixties," p. . subsequently, later in life, it was again my privilege to hold close relations with another columbian,--an alumnus of this university as it then was--in whom i had opportunity to study some of the strongest and most respect-commanding traits of the southern character. i refer to one here freshly remembered,--alexander cheves haskell,--soldier, jurist, banker and scholar, one of a septet of brothers sent into the field by a south carolina mother calm and tender of heart, but in silent suffering unsurpassed by any recorded in the annals whether of judea or of rome. it was the fourth of the seven haskells i knew, one typical throughout, in my belief, of what was best in your carolinian development. with him, as i have said, i was closely and even intimately associated through years, and in him i had occasion to note that almost austere type represented in its highest development in the person and attributes of calhoun. of strongly marked descent, haskell was, as i have always supposed, of a family and race in which could be observed those virile scotch-irish and presbyterian qualities which found their representative types in the two jacksons,--andrew, and him known in history as "stonewall." to alec haskell i shall in this discourse again have occasion to refer. thus, though in , and for long years subsequent thereto, it would not have entered my mind as among the probabilities that i should ever stand here, reviewing the past after the manner of tennyson in his "locksley hall sixty years after," yet if there was any place in the south, or, i may say, in the entire country, where, as a matter of association, i might naturally have looked so to stand, it would have been where now i find myself. but i must hasten on; for, as i have said, if i am to accomplish even a part of my purpose, i have no time wherein to linger. not long ago i chanced, in a country ramble, to be conversing with an eminent foreigner, known, and favorably known, to all americans. in the course of leisurely exchange of ideas between us, he suddenly asked if i could suggest any explanation of the fact that not only were the publicists who had the greatest vogue in our college days now to a large extent discredited, but that almost every view and theory advanced by them, and which we had accepted as fixed and settled, was, where not actually challenged, silently ignored. nor did the assertion admit of denial; for, looking back through the vista of threescore years, of the principles of what may be called "public polity" then advanced as indisputable, few to-day meet with general acceptance. to review the record from this point of view is curious. when in i entered harvard, so far as this country and its polity were concerned certain things were matters of contention, while others were accepted as axiomatic,--the basic truths of our system. among the former--the subjects of active contention--were the question of slavery, then grimly assuming shape, and that of nationality intertwined therewith. subordinate to this was the issue of free trade and protection, with the school of so-called american political economy arrayed against that of adam smith. beyond these as political ideals were the tenets and theories of jeffersonian democracy. that the world had heretofore been governed too much was loudly acclaimed, and the largest possible individualism was preached, not only as a privilege but as a right. the area of government action was to be confined within the narrowest practical limits, and ample scope was to be allowed to each to develop in the way most natural to himself, provided only he did not infringe upon the rights of others. materially, we were then reaching out to subdue a continent,--a doctrine of manifest destiny was in vogue. beyond this, however, and most important now to be borne in mind, compared with the present the control of man over natural agencies and latent forces was scarcely begun. not yet had the railroad crossed the missouri; electricity, just bridled, was still unharnessed. i have now passed in rapid review what may perhaps without exaggeration be referred to as an array of conditions and theories, ideals and policies. it remains to refer to the actual results which have come about during these sixty years as respects them, or because of them; and, finally, to reach if possible conclusions as to the causes which have affected what may not inaptly be termed a process of general evolution. having thus, so to speak, diagnosed the situation, the changes the situation exacts are to be measured, and a forecast ventured. an ambitious programme, i am well enough aware that the not very considerable reputation i have established for myself hardly warrants me in attempting it. this, i premise. let us, in the first place, recur in somewhat greater detail to the various policies and ideals i have referred to as in vogue in the year . first and foremost, overshadowing all else, was the political issue raised by african slavery, then ominously assuming shape. the clouds foreboding the coming tempest were gathering thick and heavy; and, moreover, they were even then illumined by electric flashes, accompanied by a mutter of distant thunder. though we of the north certainly did not appreciate its gravity, the situation was portentous in the extreme. involved in this problem of african slavery was the incidental issue of free trade and protection,--apparently only economical and industrial in character, but in reality fundamentally crucial. and behind this lay the constitutional question, involving as it did not only the conflicting theories of a strict or liberal construction of the fundamental law, but nationality also,--the right of a sovereign state to withdraw from the union created in , and developed through two generations. these may be termed concrete political issues, as opposed to basic truths generally accepted and theories individually entertained. the theories were constitutional, social, economical. constitutionally, they turned upon the obligations of citizenship. there was no such thing then as a citizen of the united states of and by itself. the citizen of the united states was such simply because of his citizenship of a sovereign state,--whether massachusetts or virginia or south carolina; and, of course, an instrument based upon a divided sovereignty admitted of almost infinitely diverse interpretation. it is a scriptural aphorism that no man can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will hold to the one and despise the other. and in the fulness of time it literally with us so came about. the accepted economical theories of the period were to a large extent corollaries of the fundamental proposition, and differing material and social conditions. beyond all this, and coming still under the head of individual theories, was the doctrine enunciated by thomas jefferson in the declaration of independence,--the doctrine that all men were created equal,--meaning, of course, equal before the law. but the theorist and humanitarian of the north, accepting the fundamental principle laid down in the declaration, gave to it a far wider application than had been intended by its authors,--a breadth of application it would not bear. such science as he had being of scriptural origin, he interpreted the word "equal" as signifying equal in the possibilities of their attributes,--physical, moral, intellectual; and in so doing, he of course ignored the first principles of ethnology. it was, i now realize, a somewhat wild-eyed school of philosophy, that of which i myself was a youthful disciple. but, on the other hand, beside these, between and a class of trained and more cautious thinkers, observers, scientists and theologians was coming to the front. their investigations, though we did not then foresee it, were a generation later destined gently to subvert the accepted fundamentals of religious and economical thought, literary performance, and material existence. the work they had in hand to do was for the next fifteen years to be subordinate, so far as this country was concerned, to the solution of the terrible political problems which were first insistent on settlement; yet, as is now apparent, an initial movement was on foot which foreboded a revolution world-wide in its nature, and one in comparison with which the issues of slavery and american constitutionality became practically insignificant,--in a word, local and passing incidents. finally, it remains to consider specifically the political theories then in vogue in their relation to the individual. in this country, it was the period of the equality of man and individuality in the development of the type. it was generally believed that the world had hitherto been governed too much,--that the day of caste, and even class, was over and gone; and finally, that america was a species of vast modern melting-pot of humanity, in which, within a comparatively short period of time, the characteristics of all branches of indo-aryan origin would resolve themselves. a new type would emerge,--the american. these theories were also in their consequences far-reaching. practically, antedates all our present industrial organizations so loudly in evidence,--the multifarious trades-unions which now divide the population of the united states into what are known as the "masses" and the "classes." as recently as a century ago, it used to be said of the french army under the empire, that every soldier carried the baton of the field-marshal in his knapsack. and this ideal of equality and individuality was fixed in the american mind. not that i for a moment mean to imply that in my belief the middle of the last century, or the twenty years anterior to the civil war, was a species of golden age in our american annals. on the contrary, it was, as i remember it, a phase of development very open to criticism; and that in many respects. it was crude, self-conscious and self-assertive; provincial and formative, rather than formed. socially and materially we were, compared with the present era of motors and parlor-cars, in the "one-hoss shay" and stove-heated railroad-coach stage. nevertheless, what is now referred to as "predatory wealth" had not yet begun to accumulate in few hands; much greater equality of condition prevailed; nor was the "wage-earner" referred to as constituting a class distinct from the holders of property. thus the individual was then encouraged,--whether in literature, in commerce, or in politics. in other words, there being a free field, one man was held to be in all respects the equal of the rest. especially was what i have said true of the northern, or so-called free states, as contrasted with the states of the south, where the presence of african slavery distinctly affected individual theories, no matter where or to what extent entertained. such, briefly and comprehensively stated, having been the situation in , it remains to consider the practical outcome thereof during the sixty years it has been my fortune to take part, either as an actor or as an observer, in the great process of evolution. it is curious to note the extent to which the unexpected has come about. in the first place, consider the all-absorbing mid-century political issue, that involving the race question, to which i first referred,--the issue which divided the south from the north, and which, eight years only after i had entered college, carried me from the walks of civil life into the calling of arms. and here i enter on a field of discussion both difficult and dangerous; and, for reasons too obvious to require statement, what i am about to say will be listened to with no inconsiderable apprehension as to what next may be forthcoming. nevertheless, this is a necessary part of my theme; and i propose to say what i have in mind to say, setting forth with all possible frankness the more mature conclusions reached with the passage of years. let it be received in the spirit in which it is offered. so far, then, as the institution of slavery is concerned, in its relations to ownership and property in those of the human species,--i have seen no reason whatever to revise or in any way to alter the theories and principles i entertained in , and in the maintenance of which i subsequently bore arms between and . economically, socially, and from the point of view of abstract political justice, i hold that the institution of slavery, as it existed in this country prior to the year , was in no respect either desirable or justifiable. that it had its good and even its elevating side, so far at least as the african is concerned, i am not here to deny. on the contrary, i see and recognize those features of the institution far more clearly now than i should have said would have been possible in . that the institution in itself, under conditions then existing, tended to the elevation of the less advanced race, i frankly admit i did not then think. on the other hand, that it exercised a most pernicious influence upon those of the more advanced race, and especially upon that large majority of the more advanced race who were not themselves owners of slaves,--of that i have become with time ever more and more satisfied. the noticeable feature, however, so far as i individually am concerned, has been the entire change of view as respects certain of the fundamental propositions at the base of our whole american political and social edifice brought about by a more careful and intelligent ethnological study. i refer to the political equality of man, and to that race absorption to which i have alluded,--that belief that any foreign element introduced into the american social system and body politic would speedily be absorbed therein, and in a brief space thoroughly assimilated. in this all-important respect i do not hesitate to say we theorists and abstractionists of the north, throughout that long anti-slavery discussion which ended with the clash of arms, were thoroughly wrong. in utter disregard of fundamental, scientific facts, we theoretically believed that all men--no matter what might be the color of their skin, or the texture of their hair--were, if placed under exactly similar conditions, in essentials the same. in other words, we indulged in the curious and, as is now admitted, utterly erroneous theory that the african was, so to speak, an anglo-saxon, or, if you will, a yankee "who had never had a chance,"--a fellow-man who was guilty, as we chose to express it, of a skin not colored like our own. in other words, though carved in ebony, he also was in the image of god. following out this theory, under the lead of men to whom scientific analysis and observation were anathema if opposed to accepted cardinal political theories as enunciated in the declaration as read by them, the african was not only emancipated, but so far as the letter of the law, as expressed in an amended constitution, would establish the fact, the quondam slave was in all respects placed on an equality, political, legal and moral, with those of the more advanced race. i do not hesitate here,--as one who largely entertained the theoretical views i have expressed,--i do not hesitate here to say, as the result of sixty years of more careful study and scientific observation, the theories then entertained by us were not only fundamentally wrong, but they further involved a problem in the presence of which i confess to-day i stand appalled. it is said,--whether truthfully or not,--that when some years ago john morley, the english writer and thinker, was in this country, on returning to england he remarked that the african race question, as now existing in the united states, presented a problem as nearly, to his mind, insoluble as any human problem well could be. i do not care whether lord morley made this statement or did not make it. i am prepared, however, to say that, individually, so far as my present judgment goes, it is a correct presentation. to us in the north, the african is a comparatively negligible factor. so far as massachusetts, for instance, or the city of boston more especially, are concerned, as a problem it is solving itself. proportionately, the african infusion is becoming less--never large, it is incomparably less now than it was in the days of my own youth. thus manifestly a negligible factor, it is also one tending to extinction. indeed, it would be fairly open to question whether a single afro-american of unmixed ethiopian descent could now be found in boston. that the problem presents itself with a wholly different aspect here in carolina is manifest. the difference too is radical; it goes to the heart of the mystery. as i have already said, the universal "melting-pot" theory in vogue in my youth was that but seven, or at the most fourteen, years were required to convert the alien immigrant--no matter from what region or of what descent--into an american citizen. the educational influences and social environment were assumed to be not only subtle, but all-pervasive and powerful. that this theory was to a large and even dangerous extent erroneous the observation of the last fifty years has proved, and our massachusetts experience is sadly demonstrating to-day. it was oliver wendell holmes, who, years ago, when asked by an anxious mother at what age the education of a child ought to begin, remarked in reply that it should begin about one hundred and fifty years before the child is born. it has so proved with us; and the fact is to-day in evidence that this statement of dr. holmes should be accepted as an undeniable political aphorism. so far from seven or fourteen years making an american citizen, fully and thoroughly impregnated with american ideals to the exclusion of all others, our experience is that it requires at least three generations to eliminate what may be termed the "hyphen" in citizenship. not in the first, nor in the second, and hardly in the third, generation, does the immigrant cease to be an irish-american, or a french-american, or a german-american, or a slavonic-american, or yet a dago. nevertheless, in process of tune, those of the caucasian race do and will become americans. ultimately their descendants will be free from the traditions and ideals, so to speak, ground in through centuries passed under other conditions. not so the ethiopian. in his case, we find ourselves confronted with a situation never contemplated in that era of political dreams and scriptural science in which our institutions received shape. stated tersely and in plain language, so far as the african is concerned--the cause and, so to speak, the motive of the great struggle of to --we recognize the presence in the body politic of a vast alien mass which does not assimilate and which cannot be absorbed. in other words, the melting-pot theory came in sharp contact with an ethnological fact, and the unexpected occurred. the problem of african servitude was solved after a fashion; but in place of it a race issue of most uncompromising character evolved itself. a survivor of the generation which read "uncle tom's cabin" as it week by week appeared,--fresh to-day from massachusetts with its lawrence race issues of a different character, i feel a sense of satisfaction in discussing here in south carolina this question and issue in a spirit the reverse of dogmatic, a spirit purely scientific, observant and sympathetic. and in this connection let me say i well remember repeatedly discussing it with your fellow-citizen and my friend, colonel alexander haskell, to whom i have already made reference. rarely have i been more impressed by a conclusion reached and fixed in the mind of one who to the study of a problem had obviously given much and kindly thought. as those who knew him do not need to be told, alexander cheves haskell was a man of character, pure and just and thoughtful. he felt towards the african as only a southerner who had himself never been the owner of slaves can feel. he regarded him as of a less advanced race than his own, but one who was entitled not only to just and kindly treatment but to sympathetic consideration. when, however, the question of the future of the afro-american was raised, as matter for abstract discussion, it was suggestive as well as curious to observe the fixed, hard expression which immediately came over haskell's face, as with stern lips, from which all suggestion of a smile had faded away, he pronounced the words:--"sir, it is a dying race!" to express the thought more fully, colonel haskell maintained, as i doubt not many who now listen to me will maintain, that the nominal afro-american increase, as shown in the figures of the national census, is deceptive,--that in point of fact, the ethiop in america is incurring the doom which has ever befallen those of an inferior and less advanced race when brought in direct and immediate contact, necessarily and inevitably competitive, with the more advanced, the more masterful, and intellectually the more gifted. in other words, those of the less advanced race have a fatal aptitude for contracting the vices, both moral and physical, of the superior race, in the end leading to destruction; while the capacity for assimilating the elevating qualities and attributes which constitute a saving grace is denied them. elimination, therefore, became in haskell's belief a question of time only,--the law of the survival of the fittest would assert itself. the time required may be long,--numbered by centuries; but, however remotely, it nevertheless would come. god's mill grinds slowly, but it grinds uncommon small; and, i will add, its grinding is apt to be merciless. the solution thus most pronouncedly laid down by colonel haskell may or may not prove in this case correct and final. it certainly is not for me, coming from the north, to undertake dogmatically to pass upon it. i recur to it here as a plausible suggestion only, in connection with my theme. as such, it unquestionably merits consideration. i am by no means prepared to go the length of an english authority in recently saying that "emancipation on two continents sacrificed the real welfare of the slave and his intrinsic worth as a person, to the impatient vanity of an immediate and theatrical triumph."[ ] this length i say, i cannot go; but so far as the present occasion is concerned, with such means of observation as are within my reach, i find the conclusion difficult to resist that the success of the abolitionists in effecting the emancipation of the afro-american, as unexpected and sweeping as it was sudden, has led to phases of the race problem quite unanticipated at least. for instance, as respects segregation. instead of assimilating, with a tendency to ultimate absorption, the movement in the opposite direction since is pronounced. it has, moreover, received the final stamp of scientific approval. this implies much; for in the old days of the "peculiar institution" there is no question the relations between the two races were far more intimate, kindly, and even absorptive than they now are. that african slavery, as it existed in the united states anterior to the year , presented a mild form of servitude, as servitude then existed and immemorially had almost everywhere existed, was, moreover, incontrovertibly proven in the course of the civil war. before , it was confidently believed that any severe social agitation within, or disturbance from without, would inevitably lead to a southern servile insurrection. in europe this result was assumed as of course; and, immediately after it was issued, the emancipation proclamation of president [ ] bussell's (dr. f.w.) "christian theology and social progress." bampton lectures, . lincoln was denounced in unmeasured terms by the entire london press. not a voice was raised in its defence. it was regarded as a measure unwarranted in civilized warfare, and a sure and intentional incitement to the horrors which had attended the servile insurrections of haiti and san domingo; and, more recently, the unspeakable sepoy incidents of the indian mutiny. what actually occurred is now historic. the confident anticipations of our english brethren were, not for the first time, negatived; nor is there any page in our american record more creditable to those concerned than the attitude held by the african during the fierce internecine struggle which prevailed between april, , and april, . in it there is scarcely a trace, if indeed there is any trace at all, of such a condition of affairs as had developed in the antilles and in hindustan. the attitude of the african towards his confederate owner was submissive and kindly. although the armed and masterful domestic protector was at the front and engaged in deadly, all-absorbing conflict, yet the women and children of the southern plantation slept with unbarred doors,--free from apprehension, much more from molestation. moreover, as you here well know, during the old days of slavery there was hardly a child born, of either sex, who grew up in a southern household of substantial wealth without holding immediate and most affectionate relations with those of the other race. every typical southern man had what he called his "daddy" and his "mammy," his "uncle" and his "aunty," by him familiarly addressed as such, and who were to him even closer than are blood relations to most. they had cared for him in his cradle; he followed them to their graves. is it needful for me to ask to what extent such relations still exist? of those born thirty years after emancipation, and therefore belonging distinctly to a later generation, how many thus have their kindly, if humble, kin of the african blood? i fancy i would be safe in saying not one in twenty. here, then, as the outcome of the first great issue i have suggested as occupying the thought and exciting the passions of that earlier period, is a problem wholly unanticipated,--a problem which, merely stating, i dismiss. passing rapidly on, i come to the next political issue which presented itself in my youth,--the constitutional issue,--that of state sovereignty, as opposed to the ideal, nationality. and, whether for better or worse, this issue, i very confidently submit, has been settled. we now, also, looking at it in more observant mood, in a spirit at once philosophical and historical, see that it involved a process of natural evolution which, under the conditions prevailing, could hardly result in any other settlement than that which came about. we now have come to a recognition of the fact that anglo-saxon nationality on this continent was a problem of crystallization, the working out of which occupied a little over two centuries. it was in new england the process first set in, when, in , the scattered english-speaking settlements under the hegemony of the colony of massachusetts bay united in a confederation. it was the initial step. i have no time in which to enumerate successive steps, each representing a stage in advance of what went before. the war of independence,--mistakenly denominated the revolutionary war, but a struggle distinctly conservative in character, and in no way revolutionary,--the war of independence gave great impetus to the process, resulting in what was known as federation. then came the constitution of and the formation of the, so called, united states as a distinct nationality. the united states next passed through two definite processes of further crystallization,--one in - , when the second war with great britain, and more especially our naval victories, kindled, especially in the north, the fire of patriotism and the conception of nationality; the other, half a century later, presented the stern issue in a concrete form, and at last the complete unification of a community--whether for better or for worse is no matter--was hammered by iron and cemented in blood. it is there now; an established fact. secession is a lost cause; and, whether for good or for ill, the united states exists, and will continue to exist, a unified world power. sovereignty now rests at washington, and neither in columbia for south carolina nor in boston for massachusetts. the state exists only as an integral portion of the united states. that issue has been fought out. the result stands beyond controversy; brought about by a generation now passed on, but to which i belonged. meanwhile, the ancient adage, the rose is not without its thorn, receives new illustration; for even this great result has not been wrought without giving rise to considerations suggestive of thought. speaking tersely and concentrating what is in my mind into the fewest possible words, i may say that in our national growth up to the year the play of the centrifugal forces predominated,--that is, the necessity for greater cohesion made itself continually felt. a period of quiescence then followed, lasting until, we will say, . since , it is not unsafe to say, the centripetal, or gravitating, force has predominated to an extent ever more suggestive of increasing political uneasiness. it is now, as is notorious, more in evidence than ever before. the tendency to concentrate at washington, the demand that the central government, assuming one function after another, shall become imperial, the cry for the national enactment of laws, whether relating to marital divorce or to industrial combinations,--all impinge on the fundamental principle of local self-government, which assumed its highest and most pronounced form in the claim of state sovereignty. i am now merely stating problems. i am not discussing the political ills or social benefits which possibly may result from action. nevertheless, all, i think, must admit that the tendency to gravitation and attraction is to-day as pronounced and as dangerous, especially in the industrial communities of the north, as was the tendency to separation and segregation pronounced and dangerous seventy years ago in the south. to this i shall later return. i now merely point out what i apprehend to be a tendency to extremes--an excess in the swinging of our political pendulum. we next come to that industrial factor which i have referred to as the issue between the free trade of adam smith and protection, as inculcated by the so-called american school of political economists. the phases which this issue has assumed are, i submit, well calculated to excite the attention of the observant and thoughtful. i merely allude to them now; but, in so far as it is in my power to make it so, my allusion will be specific. i frankly acknowledge myself a free-trader. a free-trader in theory, were it in my power i would be a free-trader in national practice. there has been, so far as i know, but one example of absolute free trade on the largest scale in world history. that one example, moreover, has been a success as unqualified as undeniable. i refer to this american union of ours. we have here a country consisting of fifty local communities, stretching from the atlantic to the pacific, from tropical porto rico to glacial alaska, representing every conceivable phase of soil, climate and material conditions, with diverse industrial systems. with a union established on the principle of absolutely unrestricted commercial intercourse, you here in south carolina, and more especially in columbia, are to-day making it, so to speak, uncomfortable for the cotton manufacturer in new england; and i am glad of it! a sharp competition is a healthy incentive to effort and ingenuity, and the brutal injunction, "root hog or die!" is one from which i in no way ask to have new england exempt. when massachusetts is no longer able to hold its own industrially in a free field, the time will, in my judgment, have come for massachusetts to go down. with communities as with children, paternalism reads arrested development. one of the great products of massachusetts has been what is generically known as "footwear." yet i am told that under the operation of absolute free trade, st. louis possesses the largest boot and shoe factory in its output in the entire world. that is, the law of industrial development, as natural conditions warrant and demand, has worked out its results; and those results are satisfactory. i am aware that the farmer of massachusetts has become practically extinct; he cannot face the competition of the great west: but the massachusetts consumer is greatly advantaged thereby. so far as agricultural products are concerned, massachusetts is to-day reduced to what is known as dairy products and garden truck; and it is well! summer vegetables manufactured under glass in winter prove profitable. so, turning his industrial efforts to that which he can do best, even the massachusetts agriculturalist has prospered. on the other hand, wherever in this country protection has been most completely applied, i insist that if its results are analyzed in an unprejudiced spirit, it will be pronounced to have worked unmitigated evil,--an unhealthy, because artificially stimulated and too rapid, growth. let lawrence, in massachusetts, serve as an example. look at the industrial system there introduced in the name of protection against the pauper labor of europe! no growth is so dangerous as a too rapid growth; and i confidently submit that politically, socially, economically and industrially, america to-day, on the issues agitating us, presents an almost appalling example of the results of hot-house stimulation. nor is this all, nor the worst. there is another article, and far more damaging, in the indictment. through protection, and because of it, paternalism has crept in; and, like a huge cancerous growth, is eating steadily into the vitals of the political system. instead of supporting a government economically administered by money contributed by the people, a majority of the people to-day are looking to the government for support, either directly through pension payments or indirectly through some form of industrial paternalism. incidentally, a profuse public expenditure is condoned where not actually encouraged. jeffersonian simplicity is preached; extravagance is practised. as the new york showman long since shrewdly observed: "the american people love to be fooled!" but i must pass on; i still have far to go. as respects legislation, i have said that sixty years ago, when my memories begin, the american ideal was the individual, and individuality. this, implied adherence to the jeffersonian theory that heretofore the world had been governed too much. the great secret of true national prosperity, happiness and success was, we were taught, to allow to each individual the fullest possible play, provided only he did not infringe on the rights of others. how is it to-day? america is the most governed and legislated country in the world! with one national law-making machine perpetually at work grinding out edicts, we have some fifty provincial mills engaged in the same interesting and, to my mind, pernicious work. no one who has given the slightest consideration to the subject will dispute the proposition that, taking america as a whole, we now have twenty acts of legislation annually promulgated, and with which we are at our peril supposed to be familiar, where one would more than suffice. then we wonder that respect for the law shows a sensible decrease! the better occasion for wonder is that it survives at all. we are both legislated and litigated out of all reason. passing to the other proposition of individuality, there has been, as all men know and no one will dispute, a most perceptible tendency of late years towards what is known as the array of one portion of the community--the preponderating, voting portion--against another--the more ostentatious property-holding portion. it is the natural result, i may say the necessary as well as logical outcome, of a period of too rapid growth,--production apportioned by no rule or system other or higher than greed and individual aptitude for acquisition. i will put the resulting case in the most brutal, and consequently the clearest, shape of which i am capable. working on the combined theories of individualism controlled and regulated by competition, it has been one grand game of grab,--a process in which the whole tendency of our legislation, national or state, has during the last twenty years been, first, to create monopolies of capital and, later, to bring into existence a counter, but no less privileged, class, known as the "wage-earner." of the first class it is needless to speak, for, as a class, it is sufficiently pilloried by the press and from the hustings. much in evidence, those prominent in it are known as the possessors of "predatory wealth"; "unjailed malefactors," they are subjects of continuous "grilling" in the congressional and legislative committee rooms. the effort to make them "disgorge" is as continual as it is noisy, and, as a rule, futile. it constitutes a curious and in some respects instructive exhibition of misdirected popular feeling and legislative incompetence. none the less, the existence of a monopolist class calls for no proof at the bar of public opinion. not so the other and even more privileged class,--the so-called "wage-earner"; for, disguise it as the trades-unionist will, angrily deny it as he does, the fact remains that to-day under the operation of our jury system and of our laws, the wage-earner and the member of the trades-union has become, as respects the rest of the community, himself a monopolist and, moreover, privileged as such. practically, crimes urged and even perpetrated in behalf of so-called "labor" receive at the hands of juries, and also not infrequently of courts, an altogether excessive degree of merciful consideration. at the same time, both here and in europe organized labor is instant in its demand that immunity, denied to ordinary citizens, and those whom it terms "the classes," shall by special exemption be conferred upon the labor union and upon the wage-earner. the tendency on both sides and at each extreme to inequality in the legislature and before the law is thus manifest. viewing conditions face to face and as they now are, no thoughtful observer can, in my judgment, avoid the conviction that, whether for good or ill, for better or for worse, this country as a community has, within the last thirty years--that is, we will say, since our centennial year, --cast loose from its original moorings. it has drifted, and is drifting, into unknown seas. nor is this true of english-speaking america alone. i have already quoted lord morley in another connection. lord morley, however, only the other day delivered, as chancellor of manchester university, a most interesting and highly suggestive address, in which, referring to conservative great britain, he thus pictured a phase of current belief: "political power is described as lying in the hands of a vast and mobile electorate, with scanty regard for tradition or history. democracy, they say, is going to write its own programme. the structure of executive organs and machinery is undergoing half-hidden, but serious alterations. men discover a change of attitude towards law as law; a decline in reverence for institutions as institutions." while, however, the influences at work are thus general and the manifestations whether on the other side of the atlantic or here bear a strong resemblance, yet difference of conditions and detail --constitutional peculiarities, so to speak--must not be disregarded. one form of treatment may not be prescribed for all. in our case, therefore, it remains to consider how best to adapt this country and ourselves to the unforeseeable,--the navigation of uncharted waters; and this adaptation cannot be considered hi any correct and helpful, because scientific, spirit, unless the cause of change is located. surface manifestations are, in and of themselves, merely deceptive. a physician, diagnosing the chances of a patient, must first correctly ascertain, or at least ascertain with approximate correctness, the seat of the trouble under which the patient is suffering. so, we. and here i must frankly confess to small respect for the politician,--the man whose voice is continually heard, whether from the senate chamber or the hustings. there is in those of his class a continual and most noticeable tendency to what may best be described as the _post ergo propter_ dispensation. with them, the eye is fixed on the immediate manifestation. because one event preceded another, the first event is obviously and indisputably the cause of the later event. for instance, in the present case, the cause or seat of our existing and very manifest social, political and financial disturbances is attributed as of course to some peculiarity of legislation, either a subtreasury bill passed in the administration of general jackson, or a tariff bill passed in the administration of mr. taft, or the demonetization of silver in the hayes period,--that "crime of the century," the crucifixion of labor on the cross of gold! once for all, let me say, i contemplate this school of politicians and so-called "thinkers" with sentiments the reverse of respectful. in plain language, i class them with those known in professional parlance as quacks and charlatans. not always, not even in the majority of cases, does that which preceded bear to that which follows the relation of cause and effect. a marked example of this false attribution is afforded in more recent political history by the everlasting recurrence of the statement that american prosperity is the result of an american protective system. yet in the protectionist dispensation, this has become an article of faith. to my mind, it is undeserving of even respectful consideration. if i were asked the cause of that change, little short of revolutionary, if indeed in any respect short of it, which has occurred in the material condition of the american people, and consequently in all its theories and ideals, within the last thirty years, i should attribute it to a wholly different cause. mr. lecky some years ago, in his book entitled "liberty and democracy," made the following statement, in no way original, but, as he put it, sufficiently striking: "the produce of the american mines [incident to the discoveries made by columbus] created, in the most extreme form ever known in europe, the change which beyond all others affects most deeply and universally the material well-being of men: it revolutionized the value of the precious metals, and, in consequence, the price of all articles, the effects of all contracts, the burden of all debts." in other words, referring to the first half of the sixteenth century,--the sixty years, we will say, following the land-fall of columbus,--the historian attributed the great change which then occurred and which stands forth so markedly in history, to the increased new-world production of the precious metals, combined with the impetus given to trade and industry as a consequence of that discovery, and of the mastery of man over additional globe areas. now, dismissing from consideration the so-called american protective system, likewise our currency issues and, generally, the patchwork, so to speak, of crazy-quilt legislation to which so much is attributed during the last thirty years, i confidently submit that in the production of the results under discussion, they are quantities and factors hardly worthy of consideration. the cause of the change which has taken place lies far deeper and must be sought in influences of a wholly different nature, influences developed into an increased and still ever increasing activity, over which legislation has absolutely no control. i refer, of course, to man's mastery over the latent forces of nature. of these steam and electricity are the great examples, which, because always apparent, at once strike the imagination. these, as tools, it is to be remembered, date practically from within one hundred years back. it may, indeed, safely be asserted that up to , the end of the wars of napoleon and the time of your professor lieber, steam even had not as yet practically affected the operations of man, while electricity, when not a terror, was as yet but a toy. commerce was still exclusively carried on by the sailing ship and canal-boat. the years from the fall of napoleon to our own war of secession--from waterloo to gettysburg--were practically those of early and partial development. not until well after appomattox, that is, since the year ,--a period covering but little more than the life of a generation,--did what is known to you here as the applied sciences cover a range difficult to specialize. as factors in development, it is safe to say that those three tremendous agencies--steam, electricity, chemistry--have, so to speak, worked all their noticeable results within the lifetime of the generation born since we celebrated the centennial of independence. the manifestations now resulting and apparent to all are the natural outcome of the use of these modern appliances, become in our case everyday working tools in the hands of the most resourceful, adaptive, ingenious and energetic of communities, developing a virgin continent of undreamed-of wealth. naturally, under such conditions, the advance has been not only general and continuous, but one of ever increasing celerity. so protection and the currency become flies on the fast revolving wheel! but what has otherwise resulted?--an unrest, social, economical, political. not contentment, but a lamentation and an ancient tale of wrong! we hear it in the continual cry over what is known as the increased cost of living, and feel its pressure in the higher standard of living. what was considered wealth by our ancestors is to-day hardly competence. what sufficed for luxury in our childhood barely now supplies what are known as the comforts of life. take, for instance, the motor,--the automobile. i speak within bounds, i think, when i say there are many fold more motors to-day racing over the streets, the highways and the byways of america than there were one-horse wagons thirty-five years ago. six hundred, i am told, are to be found within the immediate neighborhood of columbia; and, since i have been here i have seen in your streets just one man on horse-back! these figures and that statement tell the tale. a few years only back, every carolinian rode to town, and the motor was unknown. a single illustrative example, this could be duplicated in innumerable ways everywhere and in all walks of life. the result is obvious, and was inevitable. entered on a new phase of existence, the world is not as it was in the days of columbus, when a single new continent was discovered containing in it what we would now regard as a limited accumulation of the precious metals. it is, on the contrary, as if, in the language of dr. johnson, "the potentiality of wealth" had been revealed "beyond the dreams of avarice"; together with not one or two, but a dozen continents, the existence and secrets of which are suddenly laid bare. the applied sciences have been the magicians,--not protection or the currency. and still scientists are continually dinning in our ears the question whether this state of affairs is going to continue,--whether the era of disturbance has reached its limit! i hold such a question to be little short of childish. that era has not reached its limits, nor has it even approximated those limits. on the contrary, we have just entered on the uncharted sea. we know what the last thirty years have brought about as the result of the agencies at work; but as yet we can only dimly dream of what the next sixty years are destined to see brought about. imagination staggers at the suggestion. what, then, has been of this the inevitable consequence,--the consequence which even the blindest should have foreseen? it has resulted in all those far-reaching changes suggested in the earlier part of what i have said to-day, as respects our ideals, our political theories, our social conditions. in other words, the old era is ended; what is implied when we say a new era is entered upon? to attempt a partial answer to the query implies no claim to a prophetic faculty. whether we like to face the fact or not, far-reaching changes in our economical theories and social conditions are imminent, involving corresponding readjustments in our constitutional arrangements and political machinery. tennyson foreshadowed it all in his "locksley hall" seventy years ago:--"the individual withers, and the world is more and more." the day of individualism as it existed in the american ideal of sixty years since is over; that of collectivism and possibly socialism has opened. the day of social equality is relegated to what may be considered a somewhat patriarchal past,--that patriarchal past having come to a close during the memory of those still in active life. and yet, though all this can now be studied in the political discussion endlessly dragging on, strangely and sadly enough that discussion carries in it hardly a note of encouragement. it is, in a word, unspeakably shallow. and here, having sufficiently for my present purpose though in hurried manner, diagnosed the situation,--located the seat of disturbance,--we come to the question of treatment. involving, as it necessarily does, problems of the fundamental law, and a rearrangement and different allocation of the functions of government, this challenges the closest thought of the publicist. that the problem is here crying aloud for solution is apparent. the publications which cumber the counters of our book-stores, those for which the greatest popular call to-day exists--treatises relating to trade interests, to collectivism, to socialism, even to anarchism--tell the tale in part; in part it is elsewhere and otherwise told. only recently, in once puritan massachusetts, processions paraded the streets carrying banners marked with this device, more suggestive than strange:--"no master and no god!" what are the remedies popularly proposed? in that important branch of polity known as political ethics, or, as he termed them, hermeneutics, which your professor lieber sixty years ago endeavored to treat of, what advance has since his time been effected?--nay! what advance has been effected since the time, over two thousand years, of his great predecessor, aristotle? i confidently submit that what progress is now being made in this most erudite of sciences is in the nature of that of the crab--backwards! in the discussions of aristotle, the problem in view was, how to bring about government by the wisest,--that is, the most observant and expert. in other words, government, the object of politics, was by aristotle treated in a scientific spirit. and this is as it should be. take, for example, any problem,--i do not care whether it is legal or medical or one of engineering: how successfully dispose of it? uniformly, in one way. those problems are successfully solved, if at all, only when their solution is placed in the hands of the most proficient. judged by the discussions of to-day, what advance has in politics been effected? do the _outlook_ and the _commoner_ imply progress since the stagirite? not to any noticeable extent. we are, on the contrary, fumbling and wallowing about where the greek pondered and philosophized. democracy, as it is called, is to-day the great panacea,--the political nostrum; as such it is confidently advocated by statesmen and professors and even by the presidents of our institutions of the advanced education. "trust the people" is the shibboleth! "let the people rule!" "the cure for too much liberty is more liberty!" to democracy plain and simple--composite wisdom--i frankly confess i feel no call,--no call greater than, for instance, towards autocracy or aristocracy or plutocracy. taken simply, and applied as hitherto applied, all and each lead to but one result,--failure! and that result, let me here predict, will, in the future, be the same in the case of pure democracy that, in the past, it was in the case of the pure autocracy of the caesars, or the case of the pure aristocracy of rome or of the so-called republics of the middle ages. a political edifice on shifting sands. yet, to-day what do we see and hear in america? tell it not in gath; publish it not in the streets of askalon i two thousand years after the time of aristotle, we see a prevailing school working directly back to the condition of affairs which existed in the athenian agora under the disapproving eyes of the father of political philosophy. panaceas, universal cure-alls, and quack remedies--the initiative, the referendum, and the recall are paraded as if these--nostrums of the mountebanks of the county fair--would surely remedy the perplexing ills of new and hitherto unheard-of social, economical, and political conditions. democracy! what is democracy? democracy, as it is generally understood, i submit, is nothing but the reaching of political conclusions through the frequent counting of noses; or, as macaulay two generations ago better phrased it, "the majority of citizens told by the head";--the only question at just this juncture being whether, in order to the arriving at more acceptable results, both sexes shall be "told," instead of one sex only. moreover, i with equal confidence make bold to suggest that while conceded, and while men have even persuaded themselves that they have faith in it, and really do believe in this "telling" of noses as the best and fairest attainable means of reaching correct results, yet in so doing and so professing they simply, as men are prone to do, deceive themselves. in other words, victims of their own cant, they preach a panacea in which they really do not believe. nor of this is proof far to seek. _vox populi, vox dei_! if you extend the application of this principle by a single step, its loudest advocates draw back in alarm from the inevitable. they seek refuge in the assertion--"oh! that is different!" for instance, take a concrete case; so best can we illustrate. one of the greatest scientific triumphs reached in modern times--perhaps i might fairly say the greatest--is the discovery of the cause of yellow fever, and its consequent control. as a result of the studies, the patient experimentation and self-sacrifice of the wisest,--that is, the most observant and expert,--the amazing conclusion was reached that not only the yellow fever but the innumerable ills of the flesh known under the caption of "malarial," were due to causes hitherto unsuspected, though obvious when revealed,--to the existence in the atmosphere of a venomous insect, in comparison with the work of which the ravages on mankind of the entire carnivorous and reptile creation were of comparatively small account. the mosquito flew disclosed, the atmospheric viper,--a viper most venomous and deadly. how was the disclosure brought about? what was the remedy applied? was the discovery effected through universal suffrage? was the remedy sought for and decided upon by the initiative, or through a referendum at an election held on the tuesday succeeding the first monday of a certain month and year? had recourse in this case been had to the panacea now in greatest political vogue, we all know perfectly well what would have followed. history tells us. the quarantine, as it is called, would have been decreed, and a day of fasting, humiliation and prayer appointed. the mosquito, quite ignored, would then have gone on in his deadly work. we all equally well know that the man, even the politician or the statesman, who had suggested a solution of that problem by a count of noses would have been effaced with ridicule. even the most simple minded would have rejected that method of reaching a result. yet the ilia of the body politic, too, are complicated. indeed, far more intricate in their processes and more deceitful in their aspects, they more deeply affect the general well-being and happiness than any ill or epidemic which torments the physical being, even the mosquito malaria. yet the ills of the body politic, the complications which surround us on every side,--for these the unfailing panacea is said to lie in universal suffrage, that remedy which is immediately and of course laughed out of court if suggested in case of the simpler ills of the flesh. this, i submit, is demonstration. the true remedy is not to be sought in that direction in the one case any more than the other. there is a considerable element of truth, though possibly a not inconsiderable one of exaggeration, in this statement from a paper i recently chanced upon in the issue of the sober and classical _edinburgh review_ for october last,--a paper entitled "democracy and liberalism":--"history testifies unmistakably and unanimously to the passion of democracies for incompetence. there is nothing democracy dislikes and suspects so heartily as technical efficiency, particularly when it is independent of the popular vote." but to-day, what is politically proposed by our senatorial charlatans and the mountebanks of the market-place? the referendum, the constant and easy recall, the everlasting initiative are dinned into our ears as the cure-alls of every ill of the body politic. on the contrary, i submit that, while in the absence of any better method as yet devised and accepted, the process of reaching results by a count of the "majority told by the head" of the citizens then present and voting has certain political advantages, yet, for all this, as a final, scientific, political process, it is unworthy of consideration. a passing expedient, it in no degree reflects credit on twentieth-century intelligence. and now i come to the crux of my discussion. thus rejecting results reached by the ballot as now in practical use, a query is already in the minds of those who listen. at once suggesting itself and flung in my face, it is asked as a political poser, and not without a sneer,--what else or better have i to propose? would i advise a return to old and discarded methods,--heredity, caste, autocracy, plutocracy? i respectfully submit this is a question no one has a right to put, and one i am not called upon to answer. again, let me take a concrete case. once more i appeal to the yellow fever precedent. the first step towards a solution of a medical, as of a political, problem is a correct diagnosis. then necessarily follows a long period devoted to observation, to investigation and experiment. if, in the case of the yellow fever, a score of years only ago an observer had pointed out the nature of the disease and the manifest inadequacy of current theories and prevailing methods of prevention and treatment, do you think others would have had a right to turn upon him and demand that he instantly prescribe a remedy which should be not only complete, but at once recognized as such and so accepted? in the present case, as i have already observed, from the days of aristotle down through two and twenty centuries, men had been experimenting in all, to them, conceivable ways, on the government of the body politic, exactly as they experimented on the disorders of the physical body. but only yesterday was the source of the yellow fever, for instance, diagnosed and located, and the proper means of prevention applied. the cancer and tuberculosis are to-day unsolved problems. by analogy, they are inviting subjects for an initiative and a referendum! yet would any person who to-day, standing where i stand, expressed a disbelief, at once total and contemptuous, of such a procedure as respects them, be met by a demand for some other panacea of immediate and guaranteed efficiency? and so with the body politic. i here to-day am merely attempting a diagnosis, pointing out the disorders, and exposing as best i can the utter crudeness and insufficiency of the market-place remedies proposed. have you a right, then, to turn on me, and call for some other prescription, warranted to cure, in place of the nostrums so loudly advertised by the sciolists and the dabblers of the day, and by me so contemptuously set aside? i confess i am unable to respond, or even to attempt a response to any such demand. i am not altogether a quack, nor is this a county fair. "paracelsus," so denominated, was one of robert browning's earlier poems. in it he causes the fifteenth-century alchemist and forerunner of all modern pharmaceutical chemistry, to declare that as the result of long travel and much research "i possess two sorts of knowledge: one,--vast, shadowy, hints of the unbounded aim.... the other consists of many secrets, caught while bent on nobler prize,--perhaps a few prime principles which may conduct to much: these last i offer." so, _longo intervallo_, i have a few suggestions,--the result of an observation extending, as i said at the beginning, over the lives of two generations and a connection with many great events in which i have borne a part,--a part not prominent indeed, and more generally, i acknowledge, mistaken than correct. my errors, however, have at least made me cautious and doubtful of my own conclusions. i submit them for what they are worth. not much, i fear. what, then, would i do, were it in my power to prescribe alterations and curatives for the ills of our american body politic, of which i have spoken; or, more correctly, the far-reaching disturbances manifestly due to the agencies at work, to which i have made reference? let us come at once to the point, taking the existing constitution of the united states as a concrete example, and recognizing the necessity for its revision and readjustment to meet radically changed conditions,--conditions social, material, geographical, changed and still changing. it was mr. gladstone who, years ago, made the often-quoted assertion that the constitution of the united states was "the most wonderful work ever struck off at a given time by the brain and purpose of man." i do not think he was far wrong; though we, of course, realize that the federal constitution was a growth and in no degree an inspiration. that constitution has through a century and a quarter stood the test of time and stress of war, during a period of almost unlimited growth of the community for which it was devised. it has outlasted many nationalities and most of the dynasties in existence at the time of its adoption; and that, too, under conditions sufficiently trying. i, therefore, regard it with profound respect; and, so regarding it, i would treat it with a cautious and tender hand. not lightly pronouncing it antiquated, what changes would i make in it if to-morrow it were given me to prescribe alterations adapting it to the altered conditions which confront us? i do not hesitate to say, and i am glad to say, the changes i would suggest would be limited; yet, i fancy, far-reaching. and, in the first place, let us have a clear conception of the end in view. that end is, i submit, exactly the same to-day which aristotle had in view more than twenty centuries ago. it is, not to solve all political problems, but to put political problems as they arise in the hands of those whom he termed the "best,"--but whom we know as the most intelligent, observant and expert,--to be, through their agency, in the way of ultimate solution. if, adopting every ill-considered and half-fledged measure of so-called reform which might be the fancy of the day, we incorporated them in our fundamental law, but one thing could result therefrom,--ultimate confusion. the constitution is neither a legislative crazy-quilt nor a receptacle of fads. to make it such is in every respect the reverse of scientific. the work immediately in hand, therefore, is to devise such changes in the fundamental law as will tend most effectually to bring about the solution of issues as they may arise, by the most expert, observant and reliable. this accomplished, if its accomplishment were only practicable, all possible would have been done; and the necessary and inevitable readjustment of things would, in politics as in medicine and in science, be left to solve itself as occasion arose. provision cannot be made against every contingency. this premised, the constitution of the united states is an instrument through which powers are delegated by several local communities to a central government. the instrument, it was originally held, should be strictly construed and the powers delegated limited; and in this respect, with certain alterations made obviously necessary to meet changed conditions, i would return to the fundamental idea of the framers. in saying this i feel confidence also that here in south carolina at least i shall meet with an earnest response. the time is not yet remote when local self-government worked salvation for south carolina, as for her sister states of the confederacy. you here will never forget what immediately followed the close of our civil war. as an historic fact, the constitution was then suspended. it was suspended by act of an irresponsible congress, exercising revolutionary but unlimited powers over a large section of the common country. you then had an illustration, not soon to be forgotten, of concentration of legislative power. an episode at once painful and discreditable, it is not necessary here to refer to it in detail. appeal, however, was made to the principle of local self-government,--it was, so to speak, a recurrence to the theory of state sovereignty. the appeal struck a responsive, because traditional, chord; and it was through a recurrence to state sovereignty as the agency of local self-government that loyalty and contentment were restored, and, i may add, that i am here to-day. ceasing to be a military department, south carolina once more became a state. not improbably the demand will in a not remote future be heard that state lines and local autonomy be practically obliterated. in that event, i feel a confident assurance that, recurring in memory to the evil days which followed , the spirit of enlightened conservatism will assert itself here and in the sister states of what was once the confederacy; and again it will prevail. in the future, as in the past, you in south carolina at least will cling to what in proved the ark of your social and political salvation. taking another step in the discussion of changes, the constitution is founded on that well-known distribution and allocation of powers first theoretically suggested by montesquieu. there is a division, accompanied by a mutual limitation of authority, through the judiciary, the executive, and the legislative. as respects this allocation, how would i modify that instrument? i freely say that the tendency of my thought, based on observation, is to conservatism. i have never yet in a single instance found that when the people of this or any other country accustomed to parliamentary government desired a thing, they failed to obtain it within a reasonable limit of time. hasty changes are wisely deprecated; but i think i speak within limitation when i say that neither in the history of great britain,--the mother of parliaments--nor in the history of the united states, has any modification which the people, on sober second thought, have considered to be for the best, long been deferred. action, revolutionary in character, has not, as a rule, been needful, or, when taken, proved salutary. this is a record and result that no careful student of our history will, i take it, deny. such being the case, so far as our judiciary is concerned, i do not hesitate to say i would adhere to older, and, as i think, better principles, or revert to them where they have been experimentally abandoned. it took the anglo-saxon race two centuries of incessant conflict to wrest from a despotic executive, practically an autocracy, judicial independence. that was effected through what is known as a tenure during good behavior, as opposed to a tenure at the will of the monarch. this, then, for two centuries, was accepted as a fundamental principle of constitutional government. of late, a new theory has been propounded, and by those chafing at all restraint--constitutionally lawless in disposition--it is said the recall should also be applied to the judiciary. having, therefore, wrested the independence of the judiciary from the hand of the autocrat, we now propose to place it, in all trustfulness, in the hands of the democrat. to me the proposition does not commend itself. it is founded on no correct principle, for the irresponsible democratic majority is even more liable to ill-considered and vacillating action than is the responsible autocrat. in that matter i would not trust myself; why, then, should i trust the composite democrat? in the case of the judiciary, therefore, i would so far as the fundamental law is concerned abide by the older and better considered principles of the framers. next, the executive. again, we hear the demand of democracy,--the recall! once more i revert to the record. this republic has now been in working operation, and, taken altogether, most successful operation, for a century and a quarter. during that century and a quarter we have had, we will say, some five and twenty different chief magistrates. there is an ancient and somewhat vulgar adage to the effect that the proof of a certain dietary article is in its eating. apply that homely adage to the matter under consideration. what is the lesson taught? it is simply this,--during a whole century and a quarter of existence there has not been one single chief executive of the united states to whom the arbitrary recall could have been applied with what would now be agreed upon as a fortunate result. in the andrew johnson impeachment case was it not better that things were as they were? on the other hand, every one of the seven independent, self-respecting senators who then by a display of high moral courage saved the country from serious prejudice would have been recalled out-of-hand had the recall now demanded been in existence. its working would have received prompt exemplification; as it was, the recall was effected in time, and after due deliberation. the delay occasioned no public detriment. in this life, experience is undeniably worth something; and the experience here referred to is fairly entitled to consideration. no political system possible to devise is wholly above criticism,--not open to exceptional contingencies or to dangers possible to conjure up. such have from time to time arisen in the past; in the future such will inevitably arise. this consideration must, however, be balanced against a general average of successful working; and i confidently submit that, weighing thus the proved advantage of the system we have against the possibilities of danger which hereafter may occur, but which never yet have occurred, the scale on which are the considerations in favor of change kicks the beam. in view, however, of the growth of the country, the vastly increased complexity of interests involved, the intricacy and the cost of the election processes to which recourse is necessarily had, i would substitute for the present brief tenure of the presidential office--a tenure well enough perhaps in the comparatively simple days which preceded our civil war--a tenure sufficiently long to enable the occupant of the presidential chair to have a policy and to accomplish at least something towards its adoption. as the case stands to-day, a president for the first time elected has during his term of four years, one year, and one year only, in which really to apply himself to the accomplishment of results. the first year of his term is necessarily devoted to the work of acquiring a familiarity with the machinery of the government, and the shaping of a policy. the second year may be devoted to a more or less strenuous effort at the adoption of the policy thus formulated. as experience shows, the action of the third and fourth years is gravely affected--if not altogether perverted from the work in hand--by what are known as the political exigencies incident to a succession. manifestly, this calls for correction. the remedy, however, to my mind, is obvious and suggests itself. as the presidency is the one office under our constitution national in character, and in no way locally representative, i would extend the term to seven years, and render the occupant of the office thereafter ineligible for reëlection. seven years is, i am aware, under our political system, an unusual term; and here my ears will, i know, be assailed by the great "mandate" cackle. the count of noses being complete, the mind of the composite democrat is held to be made up. it only remains to formulate the consequent decree; and, with least possible delay, put it in way of practical enforcement. again, i, as a publicist, demur. it is the old issue, that between instant action and action on second thought, presented once more. briefly, the experience of sixty years strongly inclines me to a preference of matured and considerate action over that immediate action which notoriously is in nine cases out of ten as ill-advised as it is precipitate. only in the field of politics is the expediency of the latter assumed as of course; yet, as in science and literature and art so in politics, final, because satisfactory, results are at best but slowly thrashed out. as respects wisdom, the modern statute book does not loom, monumental. its contemplation would indeed perhaps even lead to a surmise that reasonable delay in formulating his "mandate" might, in the case of the composite democrat as in that of the individual autocrat, prove a not altogether unmixed, and so in the end an intolerable, evil. thus while a change of the executive and legislative branches of the government might not be always simultaneously effected, by selecting seven years as the presidential term the election would be brought about, as frequently as might be, by itself, uncomplicated by local issues connected with the fortunes or political fate of individual candidates for office, whether state, congressional, or senatorial; and during the seven years of tenure, four, at least, it might reasonably be anticipated, would be devoted to the promotion of a definite policy, in place of one year in a term of four, as now. if also ineligible for reelection, there is at least a fair presumption that the occupant of the position might from start to finish apply himself to its duties and obligations, without being distracted therefrom by ulterior personal ends as constantly as humanly held in view. having thus disposed of the judiciary and the executive, we come to the legislative. and here i submit is the weak point in our american system,--manifestly the weak point, and to those who, like myself, have had occasion to know, undeniably so. i am here as a publicist; not as a writer of memoirs: so, on this head, i do not now propose to dilate or bear witness. i will only briefly say that having at one period, and for more than the lifetime of a generation, been in charge of large corporate and financial interests, i have had much occasion to deal with legislative bodies, national, state and municipal. that page of my experiences is the one i care least to recall, and would most gladly forget. i am not going to specify, or give names of either localities or persons; but, knowing what i know, it is useless to approach me on this topic with the usual good-natured and optimistic, if somewhat unctuous and conventional, commonplaces on general uprightness and the tendency to improved conditions and a higher standard. i know better! i have seen legislators bought like bullocks--they selling themselves. i have watched them cover their tracks with a cunning more than vulpine. i have myself been black-mailed and sandbagged, while whole legislative bodies watched the process, fully cognizant at every step of what was going on. this, i am glad to say, was years ago. the legislative conditions were then bad, scandalously bad; nor have i any reason to believe in a regeneration since. the stream will never rise higher than its source; but it generally indicates the level thereof. in this case, i can only hope that in my experience it failed so to do. running at a low level, the waters of that stream were deplorably dirty. that the legislative branch of our government has fallen so markedly in public estimation is not, i think, open to denial. to my mind, under the conditions i have referred to, such could not fail to be the case. it has, consequently, lost public confidence. hence this popular demand for immediate legislation by the people,--this twentieth-century appeal to the agora and forum methods which antedate the era of christ. it is true the world outgrew them two thousand years ago, and they were discarded; but, living in a progressive and not a reactionary period, all that, we are assured, is changed! the heart is no longer on the right-hand side of the body. to secure desired results it is only necessary to start quite fresh, as a mere preliminary discarding all lessons of experience. such reasoning does not commend itself to my judgment. on the contrary, the failure of the american legislative to command an increasing public confidence, while both natural and obvious, is, if my observation guides me to conclusions in any degree correct, traceable to two reasons. so far as government is concerned, the law-making branch is assumed to be made up of the wisest and the most expert. meanwhile, it is as a matter of fact chosen by the process i have not over-respectfully referred to as the counting of noses; and, moreover, by an unwritten law more binding than any in the statute book, that counting of noses is with us localized. in other words, when it comes to the choice of our law-makers, reducing provincialism to a system we make the local numerical majority supreme, and any one is considered competent to legislate. he can do that, even if by common knowledge he is incompetent or untrustworthy in every other capacity. localization thus becomes the stronghold of mediocrity, the sure avenue to office of the second-and third-rate man,--he who wishes always to enjoy his share of a little brief authority, to have, he also, a taste of public life. in this respect our american system is, i submit, manifestly and incomparably inferior to the system of parliamentary election existing in great britain, itself open to grave criticism. in great britain the public man seeks the constituency wherever he can find it; or the constituency seeks its representative wherever it recognizes him. the present prime minister of great britain, for instance, represents a small scotch constituency in which he never resided, but by which he was elected more than twenty years ago, and through which he has since consecutively remained in public life. on the other hand, look at the waste and extravagance of the system now and traditionally in use with us. to get into public life a man must not only be in sympathy with the majority of the citizens of the locality in which he lives, but he must continue to be in sympathy with that majority; or, at any election, like mr. cannon in the election just held, where for any passing cause a majority of his neighbors in the locality in which he lives may fail to support him, he must go into retirement. i cannot here enlarge on this topic, vital as i see it; i have neither space nor time, and must, therefore, needs content myself with the "hints" of paracelsus. i will merely say that as an outcome this localized majority system practically disfranchises the more intelligent and the more disinterested, the more individual and independent of every constituency. it reduces their influence, and negatives their action. it operates in like fashion everywhere. my field of observation has been at home, here in america; but it has been the same in france. for instance, while preparing this address i came across the following in that most respectable sheet, the london _athenaum_. a very competent frenchman was there criticising a recent book entitled "idealism in france." reference was by him made to what, in france, is known as the "_scrutin d'arrondissement,"_ or, in other words, the district representative system. the critic declares that this system has there "created a party machine which has brought the country under the sway of a sort of radical-socialist tammany, and bound together the voter and the deputy by a tie of mutual corruption, the candidate promising government favors to the elector in return for his vote, and the elector supporting the candidate who promises most. hence a policy in which ideas and ideals are forgotten for personal and local interests, as each candidate strives to outbid his rivals in the bribes that he offers to his constituents. hence, finally, a general lowering in the tone of french home politics, every question being made subservient by the deputies to that of their reëlection." i would respectfully inquire if the above does not apply word for word to the condition of affairs with which we are familiar in america. but let me here again cite a concrete case, still fresh in memory; nothing in abstract discussion tells so much. take the late carl schurz. if there was one man in our public life since who showed a genius for the parliamentary career, and who in six short years in the united states senate--a single term--displayed there constructive legislating qualities of the highest order, it was carl schurz. yet at the end of that single senatorial term, for local and temporary reasons he failed to obtain the support of a majority, or the support of anything approaching a majority, of those composing the constituency upon which he depended. consequently he was retired from that parliamentary position necessary for the accomplishment, through him, of best public results. yet at that very time there was no man in the united states who commanded so large and so personal a constituency as carl schurz; for he represented the entire germanic element in the united states. distributed as that element was, however, with its vote localized under our law, unwritten as well as statutory, there was no possibility of any constituency so concentrating itself that carl schurz could be kept in the position where he could continue to render services of the greatest possible value to the country. i, therefore, confidently here submit a doubt whether human ingenuity could devise any system calculated to lead to a greater waste of parliamentary ability, or more effectually keep from the front and position of influence that legislative superiority which was the arm of aristotle to secure. "cant-patriotism," as your francis lieber termed it; and, on this score, he waxed eloquent. "do we not live in a world of cant," he wrote from columbia here to a friend at the north seventy-five years ago, "that cant-patriotism which plumes itself in selecting men from within the state confines only. the truer a nation is, the more essentially it is elevated, the more it disregards petty considerations, and takes the true and the good from whatever quarter it may come. look at history and you find the proof. look around you, where you are, and you find it now." and, were lieber living to-day, he would find a striking exemplification of the consequences of a total and systematic disregard of this elementary proposition in studying the united states senate from and through its reporters' gallery. the decline in the standards of that body, whether of aspect, intelligence, education or character, under the operation of the local primary has been not less pronounced than startling. the outcome and ripe result of "cant-patriotism," it affords to the curious observer an impressive object-lesson,--provincialism reduced to a political system; what a witty and incisive french writer has recently termed the "cult of incompetence." speaking of conditions prevailing not here but in france, this observer says:--"democracy in its modern form chooses its' delegates in its own image.... what ought the character of the legislator to be? the very opposite, it seems to me, of the democratic legislator, for he ought to be well-informed and entirely devoid of prejudice." taken as a whole, and a few striking individual exceptions apart, are those composing the senate of the united states conspicuous in these respects? they certainly do not so impress the casual observer. that, as a body, they increasingly fail to command confidence and attention is matter of common remark. nor is the reason far to seek. it would be the same as respects literature, science and art, were their representatives chosen and results reached through a count of noses localized, with selection severely confined to home talent. i am well aware of the criticism which will at once be passed on what i now advance. local representation through choice by numerical majorities within given confines, geographically and mathematically fixed, is a system so rooted and intrenched in the convictions and traditions of the american community that even to question its wisdom evinces a lack of political common-sense. it in fact resembles nothing so much as the attempt to whistle down a strongly prevailing october wind from the west. the attempt so to do is not practical politics! in reply, however, i would suggest that such a criticism is wholly irrelevant. the publicist has nothing to do with practical politics. it is as if it were objected to a physician who prescribed sanitation against epidemics that the community in question was by custom and tradition wedded to filth and surface-drainage, and could not possibly be induced to abandon them in favor of any new-fangled theories of soap-and-water cleanliness. so why waste time in prescribing such? better be common-sensed and practical, taking things as they are. in the case suggested, and confronted with such criticism, the medical adviser simply shrugs his shoulders, and is silent; the alternative he knows is inescapable. after a sufficiency of sound scourgings the objecting community will probably know better, and may listen to reason; in a way, conforming thereto. so, also, the body politic. if ephraim is indeed thus joined to idols, the publicist simply shrugs his shoulders, and passes on; possibly, after ephraim has been sufficiently scourged, he may in that indefinite future popularly known as "one of these days" be more clear sighted and wiser. none the less, so far as our national parliamentary system is concerned, could i have my way in a revision of the constitution, i would increase the senatorial term to ten years, and i would, were such a thing within the range of possibility, break down the system of the necessary senatorial selection by a state of an inhabitant of the state. if i could, i would introduce the british system. for example, though i never voted for mr. bryan and have not been in general sympathy with mr. roosevelt, yet few things would give me greater political satisfaction than to see mr. bryan, we will say, elected a senator from arizona or oregon, mr. roosevelt elected from illinois or pennsylvania, president taft from utah or vermont. they apparently best represent existing feelings and the ideals prevailing in those communities; why, then, should they not voice those feelings and ideals in our highest parliamentary chamber? as respects our house of representatives, it would in principle be the same. i do not care to go into the rationale of what is known as proportional representation, nor have i time so to do; but, were it in my power, i would prescribe to-morrow that hereafter the national house of representatives should be constituted on the proportional basis,--the choice of representatives to be by states, but, as respects the nomination of candidates, irrespective of district lines. like many others, i am very weary of provincial nobodies, "good men" locally known to be such! as i have already said, in parliamentary government all depends in the end on the truly representative character of the legislative body. if that is as it should be, the rest surely follows. the objective of aristotle is attained. exceeding the limits assigned to it, my discussion has, however, extended too far. i must close. one word before so doing. why am i here? i am here,--a man considerably exceeding in age the allotted threescore and ten--to deliver a message, be the value of the same greater or less. i greatly fear it is less. i would, however, impart the lessons of an experience stretching over sixty years,--the results of such observation as my intelligence has enabled me to exercise. i do so, addressing myself to a local institution of the advanced education. why? because, looking over the country, diagnosing its conditions as well as my capacity enables me, observing the evolution of the past and forecasting, in as far as i may, the outcome, i am persuaded that the future of the country rests more largely in the hands of such institutions as this than in those of any other agency or activity. do not say i flatter; for, while i can hope for no advancement, i think i have not overstated the case; i certainly have not overstated my conviction. there has been no man who has influenced the course of modern thought more deeply and profoundly than adam smith, a professor in a scotch university of the second class. so here in columbia seventy years ago, francis lieber prepared and published his "manual of political ethics." adam smith and francis lieber were but prototypes--examples of what i have in mind. the days were when the senate of the united states afforded a rostrum from which thinkers and teachers first formulated, and then advanced, great policies. those days, and i say it regretfully, are past. unless i am greatly mistaken, however, a new political force is now asserting itself. i have recently, at a meeting of historical and scientific associations in boston, had my attention forcibly called to this aspect of the situation now shaping itself. i there met young men, many, and not the least noticeable of whom, came from this section. they inspired me with a renewed confidence in our political future. essentially teachers,--i might add, they were publicists as well as professors. observers and students, they actively followed the course of developing thought in europe as in this country. exact in their processes, philosophical and scientific in their methods, unselfish in their devotion, they were broad of view. it is for them to realize in a future not remote the university ideal pictured, and correctly pictured, from this stage by one who here preceded me a short six months ago. they, constituting the university, are the "hope of the state in the direction of its practical affairs; in teaching the lawyer the better standards of his profession, his duty to place character above money making; in teaching the legislator the philosophy of legislation, and that the constructive forces of legislation carefully considered should precede every effort to change an existing status; in teaching those in official life, executive and judicial, that demagogy, and theories of life uncontrolled by true principles, do not make for success, when final success is considered, but that, if they did lead to success, they should be avoided for their inherent imperfection.... the province of the university is to educate citizenship in the abstract." it is the presence of this class, to those composing which i bow as distinctly of a period superior to mine, that you owe my presence to-day,--whatever that presence may be worth. i regard their existence and their coming forward in such institutions as this university of south carolina, as the arc of the bow of promise spanning the political horizon of our future. through you, to them my message is addressed. a pluralistic universe hibbert lectures at manchester college on the present situation in philosophy by william james contents lecture i the types of philosophic thinking our age is growing philosophical again, . change of tone since , . empiricism and rationalism defined, . the process of philosophizing: philosophers choose some part of the world to interpret the whole by, . they seek to make it seem less strange, . their temperamental differences, . their systems must be reasoned out, . their tendency to over-technicality, . excess of this in germany, . the type of vision is the important thing in a philosopher, . primitive thought, . spiritualism and materialism: spiritualism shows two types, . theism and pantheism, . theism makes a duality of man and god, and leaves man an outsider, . pantheism identifies man with god, . the contemporary tendency is towards pantheism, . legitimacy of our demand to be essential in the universe, . pluralism versus monism: the 'each- form' and the 'all-form' of representing the world, . professor jacks quoted, . absolute idealism characterized, . peculiarities of the finite consciousness which the absolute cannot share, . the finite still remains outside of absolute reality, . lecture ii monistic idealism recapitulation, . radical pluralism is to be the thesis of these lectures, . most philosophers contemn it, . foreignness to us of bradley's absolute, . spinoza and 'quatenus,' . difficulty of sympathizing with the absolute, . idealistic attempt to interpret it, . professor jones quoted, . absolutist refutations of pluralism, . criticism of lotze's proof of monism by the analysis of what interaction involves, . vicious intellectualism defined, . royce's alternative: either the complete disunion or the absolute union of things, . bradley's dialectic difficulties with relations, . inefficiency of the absolute as a rationalizing remedy, . tendency of rationalists to fly to extremes, . the question of 'external' relations, . transition to hegel, . lecture iii hegel and his method hegel's influence. . the type of his vision is impressionistic, . the 'dialectic' element in reality, . pluralism involves possible conflicts among things, . hegel explains conflicts by the mutual contradictoriness of concepts, . criticism of his attempt to transcend ordinary logic, . examples of the 'dialectic' constitution of things, . the rationalistic ideal: propositions self-securing by means of double negation, . sublimity of the conception, . criticism of hegel's account: it involves vicious intellectualism, . hegel is a seer rather than a reasoner, . 'the absolute' and 'god' are two different notions, . utility of the absolute in conferring mental peace, . but this is counterbalanced by the peculiar paradoxes which it introduces into philosophy, . leibnitz and lotze on the 'fall' involved in the creation of the finite, . joachim on the fall of truth into error, . the world of the absolutist cannot be perfect, . pluralistic conclusions, . lecture iv concerning fechner superhuman consciousness does not necessarily imply an absolute mind, . thinness of contemporary absolutism, . the tone of fechner's empiricist pantheism contrasted with that of the rationalistic sort, . fechner's life, . his vision, the 'daylight view,' . his way of reasoning by analogy, . the whole universe animated, . his monistic formula is unessential, . the earth-soul, . its differences from our souls, . the earth as an angel, . the plant-soul, . the logic used by fechner, . his theory of immortality, . the 'thickness' of his imagination, . inferiority of the ordinary transcendentalist pantheism, to his vision, . lecture v the compounding of consciousness the assumption that states of mind may compound themselves, . this assumption is held in common by naturalistic psychology, by transcendental idealism, and by fechner, . criticism of it by the present writer in a former book, . physical combinations, so-called, cannot be invoked as analogous, . nevertheless, combination must be postulated among the parts of the universe, . the logical objections to admitting it, . rationalistic treatment of the question brings us to an _impasse_, . a radical breach with intellectualism is required, . transition to bergson's philosophy, . abusive use of concepts, . lecture vi bergson and his critique of intellectualism professor bergson's personality, . achilles and the tortoise, . not a sophism, . we make motion unintelligible when we treat it by static concepts, . conceptual treatment is nevertheless of immense practical use, . the traditional rationalism gives an essentially static universe, . intolerableness of the intellectualist view, . no rationalist account is possible of action, change, or immediate life, . the function of concepts is practical rather than theoretical, . bergson remands us to intuition or sensational experience for the understanding of how life makes itself go, . what bergson means by this, . manyness in oneness must be admitted, . what really exists is not things made, but things in the making, . bergson's originality, . impotence of intellectualist logic to define a universe where change is continuous, . livingly, things _are_ their own others, so that there is a sense in which hegel's logic is true, . lecture vii the continuity of experience green's critique of sensationalism, . relations are as immediately felt as terms are, . the union of things is given in the immediate flux, not in any conceptual reason that overcomes the flux's aboriginal incoherence, . the minima of experience as vehicles of continuity, . fallacy of the objections to self-compounding, . the concrete units of experience are 'their own others,' . reality is confluent from next to next, . intellectualism must be sincerely renounced, . the absolute is only an hypothesis, . fechner's god is not the absolute, . the absolute solves no intellectualist difficulty, . does superhuman consciousness probably exist? . lecture viii conclusions specifically religious experiences occur, . their nature, . they corroborate the notion of a larger life of which we are a part, . this life must be finite if we are to escape the paradoxes of monism, . god as a finite being, . empiricism is a better ally than rationalism, of religion, . empirical proofs of larger mind may open the door to superstitions, . but this objection should not be deemed fatal, . our beliefs form parts of reality, . in pluralistic empiricism our relation to god remains least foreign, . the word 'rationality' had better be replaced by the word 'intimacy,' . monism and pluralism distinguished and defined, . pluralism involves indeterminism, . all men use the 'faith-ladder' in reaching their decision, . conclusion, . notes appendices a. the thing and its relations b. the experience of activity c. on the notion of reality as changing index lecture i the types of philosophic thinking as these lectures are meant to be public, and so few, i have assumed all very special problems to be excluded, and some topic of general interest required. fortunately, our age seems to be growing philosophical again--still in the ashes live the wonted fires. oxford, long the seed-bed, for the english world, of the idealism inspired by kant and hegel, has recently become the nursery of a very different way of thinking. even non-philosophers have begun to take an interest in a controversy over what is known as pluralism or humanism. it looks a little as if the ancient english empirism, so long put out of fashion here by nobler sounding germanic formulas, might be repluming itself and getting ready for a stronger flight than ever. it looks as if foundations were being sounded and examined afresh. individuality outruns all classification, yet we insist on classifying every one we meet under some general head. as these heads usually suggest prejudicial associations to some hearer or other, the life of philosophy largely consists of resentments at the classing, and complaints of being misunderstood. but there are signs of clearing up, and, on the whole, less acrimony in discussion, for which both oxford and harvard are partly to be thanked. as i look back into the sixties, mill, bain, and hamilton were the only official philosophers in britain. spencer, martineau, and hodgson were just beginning. in france, the pupils of cousin were delving into history only, and renouvier alone had an original system. in germany, the hegelian impetus had spent itself, and, apart from historical scholarship, nothing but the materialistic controversy remained, with such men as büchner and ulrici as its champions. lotze and fechner were the sole original thinkers, and fechner was not a professional philosopher at all. the general impression made was of crude issues and oppositions, of small subtlety and of a widely spread ignorance. amateurishness was rampant. samuel bailey's 'letters on the philosophy of the human mind,' published in , are one of the ablest expressions of english associationism, and a book of real power. yet hear how he writes of kant: 'no one, after reading the extracts, etc., can be surprised to hear of a declaration by men of eminent abilities, that, after years of study, they had not succeeded in gathering one clear idea from the speculations of kant. i should have been almost surprised if they had. in or about , lord grenville, when visiting the lakes of england, observed to professor wilson that, after five years' study of kant's philosophy, he had not gathered from it one clear idea. wilberforce, about the same time, made the same confession to another friend of my own. "i am endeavoring," exclaims sir james mackintosh, in the irritation, evidently, of baffled efforts, "to understand this accursed german philosophy."[ ] what oxford thinker would dare to print such _naïf_ and provincial-sounding citations of authority to-day? the torch of learning passes from land to land as the spirit bloweth the flame. the deepening of philosophic consciousness came to us english folk from germany, as it will probably pass back ere long. ferrier, j.h. stirling, and, most of all, t.h. green are to be thanked. if asked to tell in broad strokes what the main doctrinal change has been, i should call it a change from the crudity of the older english thinking, its ultra-simplicity of mind, both when it was religious and when it was anti-religious, toward a rationalism derived in the first instance from germany, but relieved from german technicality and shrillness, and content to suggest, and to remain vague, and to be, in, the english fashion, devout. by the time t.h. green began at oxford, the generation seemed to feel as if it had fed on the chopped straw of psychology and of associationism long enough, and as if a little vastness, even though it went with vagueness, as of some moist wind from far away, reminding us of our pre-natal sublimity, would be welcome. green's great point of attack was the disconnectedness of the reigning english sensationalism. _relating_ was the great intellectual activity for him, and the key to this relating was believed by him to lodge itself at last in what most of you know as kant's unity of apperception, transformed into a living spirit of the world. hence a monism of a devout kind. in some way we must be fallen angels, one with intelligence as such; and a great disdain for empiricism of the sensationalist sort has always characterized this school of thought, which, on the whole, has reigned supreme at oxford and in the scottish universities until the present day. but now there are signs of its giving way to a wave of revised empiricism. i confess that i should be glad to see this latest wave prevail; so--the sooner i am frank about it the better--i hope to have my voice counted in its favor as one of the results of this lecture-course. what do the terms empiricism and rationalism mean? reduced to their most pregnant difference, _empiricism means the habit of explaining wholes by parts, and rationalism means the habit of explaining parts by wholes_. rationalism thus preserves affinities with monism, since wholeness goes with union, while empiricism inclines to pluralistic views. no philosophy can ever be anything but a summary sketch, a picture of the world in abridgment, a foreshortened bird's-eye view of the perspective of events. and the first thing to notice is this, that the only material we have at our disposal for making a picture of the whole world is supplied by the various portions of that world of which we have already had experience. we can invent no new forms of conception, applicable to the whole exclusively, and not suggested originally by the parts. all philosophers, accordingly, have conceived of the whole world after the analogy of some particular feature of it which has particularly captivated their attention. thus, the theists take their cue from manufacture, the pantheists from growth. for one man, the world is like a thought or a grammatical sentence in which a thought is expressed. for such a philosopher, the whole must logically be prior to the parts; for letters would never have been invented without syllables to spell, or syllables without words to utter. another man, struck by the disconnectedness and mutual accidentality of so many of the world's details, takes the universe as a whole to have been such a disconnectedness originally, and supposes order to have been superinduced upon it in the second instance, possibly by attrition and the gradual wearing away by internal friction of portions that originally interfered. another will conceive the order as only a statistical appearance, and the universe will be for him like a vast grab-bag with black and white balls in it, of which we guess the quantities only probably, by the frequency with which we experience their egress. for another, again, there is no really inherent order, but it is we who project order into the world by selecting objects and tracing relations so as to gratify our intellectual interests. we _carve out_ order by leaving the disorderly parts out; and the world is conceived thus after the analogy of a forest or a block of marble from which parks or statues may be produced by eliminating irrelevant trees or chips of stone. some thinkers follow suggestions from human life, and treat the universe as if it were essentially a place in which ideals are realized. others are more struck by its lower features, and for them, brute necessities express its character better. all follow one analogy or another; and all the analogies are with some one or other of the universe's subdivisions. every one is nevertheless prone to claim that his conclusions are the only logical ones, that they are necessities of universal reason, they being all the while, at bottom, accidents more or less of personal vision which had far better be avowed as such; for one man's vision may be much more valuable than another's, and our visions are usually not only our most interesting but our most respectable contributions to the world in which we play our part. what was reason given to men for, said some eighteenth century writer, except to enable them to find reasons for what they want to think and do?--and i think the history of philosophy largely bears him out, 'the aim of knowledge,' says hegel,[ ] 'is to divest the objective world of its strangeness, and to make us more at home in it.' different men find their minds more at home in very different fragments of the world. let me make a few comments, here, on the curious antipathies which these partialities arouse. they are sovereignly unjust, for all the parties are human beings with the same essential interests, and no one of them is the wholly perverse demon which another often imagines him to be. both are loyal to the world that bears them; neither wishes to spoil it; neither wishes to regard it as an insane incoherence; both want to keep it as a universe of some kind; and their differences are all secondary to this deep agreement. they may be only propensities to emphasize differently. or one man may care for finality and security more than the other. or their tastes in language may be different. one may like a universe that lends itself to lofty and exalted characterization. to another this may seem sentimental or rhetorical. one may wish for the right to use a clerical vocabulary, another a technical or professorial one. a certain old farmer of my acquaintance in america was called a rascal by one of his neighbors. he immediately smote the man, saying,'i won't stand none of your diminutive epithets.' empiricist minds, putting the parts before the whole, appear to rationalists, who start from the whole, and consequently enjoy magniloquent privileges, to use epithets offensively diminutive. but all such differences are minor matters which ought to be subordinated in view of the fact that, whether we be empiricists or rationalists, we are, ourselves, parts of the universe and share the same one deep concern in its destinies. we crave alike to feel more truly at home with it, and to contribute our mite to its amelioration. it would be pitiful if small aesthetic discords were to keep honest men asunder. i shall myself have use for the diminutive epithets of empiricism. but if you look behind the words at the spirit, i am sure you will not find it matricidal. i am as good a son as any rationalist among you to our common mother. what troubles me more than this misapprehension is the genuine abstruseness of many of the matters i shall be obliged to talk about, and the difficulty of making them intelligible at one hearing. but there two pieces, 'zwei stücke,' as kant would have said, in every philosophy--the final outlook, belief, or attitude to which it brings us, and the reasonings by which that attitude is reached and mediated. a philosophy, as james ferrier used to tell us, must indeed be true, but that is the least of its requirements. one may be true without being a philosopher, true by guesswork or by revelation. what distinguishes a philosopher's truth is that it is _reasoned_. argument, not supposition, must have put it in his possession. common men find themselves inheriting their beliefs, they know not how. they jump into them with both feet, and stand there. philosophers must do more; they must first get reason's license for them; and to the professional philosophic mind the operation of procuring the license is usually a thing of much more pith and moment than any particular beliefs to which the license may give the rights of access. suppose, for example, that a philosopher believes in what is called free-will. that a common man alongside of him should also share that belief, possessing it by a sort of inborn intuition, does not endear the man to the philosopher at all--he may even be ashamed to be associated with such a man. what interests the philosopher is the particular premises on which the free-will he believes in is established, the sense in which it is taken, the objections it eludes, the difficulties it takes account of, in short the whole form and temper and manner and technical apparatus that goes with the belief in question. a philosopher across the way who should use the same technical apparatus, making the same distinctions, etc., but drawing opposite conclusions and denying free-will entirely, would fascinate the first philosopher far more than would the _naïf_ co-believer. their common technical interests would unite them more than their opposite conclusions separate them. each would feel an essential consanguinity in the other, would think of him, write _at_ him, care for his good opinion. the simple-minded believer in free-will would be disregarded by either. neither as ally nor as opponent would his vote be counted. in a measure this is doubtless as it should be, but like all professionalism it can go to abusive extremes. the end is after all more than the way, in most things human, and forms and methods may easily frustrate their own purpose. the abuse of technicality is seen in the infrequency with which, in philosophical literature, metaphysical questions are discussed directly and on their own merits. almost always they are handled as if through a heavy woolen curtain, the veil of previous philosophers' opinions. alternatives are wrapped in proper names, as if it were indecent for a truth to go naked. the late professor john grote of cambridge has some good remarks about this. 'thought,' he says,'is not a professional matter, not something for so-called philosophers only or for professed thinkers. the best philosopher is the man who can think most _simply_. ... i wish that people would consider that thought--and philosophy is no more than good and methodical thought--is a matter _intimate_ to them, a portion of their real selves ... that they would _value_ what they think, and be interested in it.... in my own opinion,' he goes on, 'there is something depressing in this weight of learning, with nothing that can come into one's mind but one is told, oh, that is the opinion of such and such a person long ago. ... i can conceive of nothing more noxious for students than to get into the habit of saying to themselves about their ordinary philosophic thought, oh, somebody must have thought it all before.'[ ] yet this is the habit most encouraged at our seats of learning. you must tie your opinion to aristotle's or spinoza's; you must define it by its distance from kant's; you must refute your rival's view by identifying it with protagoras's. thus does all spontaneity of thought, all freshness of conception, get destroyed. everything you touch is shopworn. the over-technicality and consequent dreariness of the younger disciples at our american universities is appalling. it comes from too much following of german models and manners. let me fervently express the hope that in this country you will hark back to the more humane english tradition. american students have to regain direct relations with our subject by painful individual effort in later life. some of us have done so. some of the younger ones, i fear, never will, so strong are the professional shop-habits already. in a subject like philosophy it is really fatal to lose connexion with the open air of human nature, and to think in terms of shop-tradition only. in germany the forms are so professionalized that anybody who has gained a teaching chair and written a book, however distorted and eccentric, has the legal right to figure forever in the history of the subject like a fly in amber. all later comers have the duty of quoting him and measuring their opinions with his opinion. such are the rules of the professorial game--they think and write from each other and for each other and at each other exclusively. with this exclusion of the open air all true perspective gets lost, extremes and oddities count as much as sanities, and command the same attention; and if by chance any one writes popularly and about results only, with his mind directly focussed on the subject, it is reckoned _oberflächliches zeug_ and _ganz unwissenschaftlich_. professor paulsen has recently written some feeling lines about this over-professionalism, from the reign of which in germany his own writings, which sin by being 'literary,' have suffered loss of credit. philosophy, he says, has long assumed in germany the character of being an esoteric and occult science. there is a genuine fear of popularity. simplicity of statement is deemed synonymous with hollowness and shallowness. he recalls an old professor saying to him once: 'yes, we philosophers, whenever we wish, can go so far that in a couple of sentences we can put ourselves where nobody can follow us.' the professor said this with conscious pride, but he ought to have been ashamed of it. great as technique is, results are greater. to teach philosophy so that the pupils' interest in technique exceeds that in results is surely a vicious aberration. it is bad form, not good form, in a discipline of such universal human interest. moreover, technique for technique, doesn't david hume's technique set, after all, the kind of pattern most difficult to follow? isn't it the most admirable? the english mind, thank heaven, and the french mind, are still kept, by their aversion to crude technique and barbarism, closer to truth's natural probabilities. their literatures show fewer obvious falsities and monstrosities than that of germany. think of the german literature of aesthetics, with the preposterousness of such an unaesthetic personage as immanuel kant enthroned in its centre! think of german books on _religions-philosophie_, with the heart's battles translated into conceptual jargon and made dialectic. the most persistent setter of questions, feeler of objections, insister on satisfactions, is the religious life. yet all its troubles can be treated with absurdly little technicality. the wonder is that, with their way of working philosophy, individual germans should preserve any spontaneity of mind at all. that they still manifest freshness and originality in so eminent a degree, proves the indestructible richness of the german cerebral endowment. let me repeat once more that a man's vision is the great fact about him. who cares for carlyle's reasons, or schopenhauer's, or spencer's? a philosophy is the expression of a man's intimate character, and all definitions of the universe are but the deliberately adopted reactions of human characters upon it. in the recent book from which i quoted the words of professor paulsen, a book of successive chapters by various living german philosophers,[ ] we pass from one idiosyncratic personal atmosphere into another almost as if we were turning over a photograph album. if we take the whole history of philosophy, the systems reduce themselves to a few main types which, under all the technical verbiage in which the ingenious intellect of man envelops them, are just so many visions, modes of feeling the whole push, and seeing the whole drift of life, forced on one by one's total character and experience, and on the whole _preferred_--there is no other truthful word--as one's best working attitude. cynical characters take one general attitude, sympathetic characters another. but no general attitude is possible towards the world as a whole, until the intellect has developed considerable generalizing power and learned to take pleasure in synthetic formulas. the thought of very primitive men has hardly any tincture of philosophy. nature can have little unity for savages. it is a walpurgis-nacht procession, a checkered play of light and shadow, a medley of impish and elfish friendly and inimical powers. 'close to nature' though they live, they are anything but wordsworthians. if a bit of cosmic emotion ever thrills them, it is likely to be at midnight, when the camp smoke rises straight to the wicked full moon in the zenith, and the forest is all whispering with witchery and danger. the eeriness of the world, the mischief and the manyness, the littleness of the forces, the magical surprises, the unaccountability of every agent, these surely are the characters most impressive at that stage of culture, these communicate the thrills of curiosity and the earliest intellectual stirrings. tempests and conflagrations, pestilences and earthquakes, reveal supramundane powers, and instigate religious terror rather than philosophy. nature, more demonic than divine, is above all things _multifarious_. so many creatures that feed or threaten, that help or crush, so many beings to hate or love, to understand or start at--which is on top and which subordinate? who can tell? they are co-ordinate, rather, and to adapt ourselves to them singly, to 'square' the dangerous powers and keep the others friendly, regardless of consistency or unity, is the chief problem. the symbol of nature at this stage, as paulsen well says, is the sphinx, under whose nourishing breasts the tearing claws are visible. but in due course of time the intellect awoke, with its passion for generalizing, simplifying, and subordinating, and then began those divergences of conception which all later experience seems rather to have deepened than to have effaced, because objective nature has contributed to both sides impartially, and has let the thinkers emphasize different parts of her, and pile up opposite imaginary supplements. perhaps the most interesting opposition is that which results from the clash between what i lately called the sympathetic and the cynical temper. materialistic and spiritualistic philosophies are the rival types that result: the former defining the world so as to leave man's soul upon it as a soil of outside passenger or alien, while the latter insists that the intimate and human must surround and underlie the brutal. this latter is the spiritual way of thinking. now there are two very distinct types or stages in spiritualistic philosophy, and my next purpose in this lecture is to make their contrast evident. both types attain the sought-for intimacy of view, but the one attains it somewhat less successfully than the other. the generic term spiritualism, which i began by using merely as the opposite of materialism, thus subdivides into two species, the more intimate one of which is monistic and the less intimate dualistic. the dualistic species is the _theism_ that reached its elaboration in the scholastic philosophy, while the monistic species is the _pantheism_ spoken of sometimes simply as idealism, and sometimes as 'post-kantian' or 'absolute' idealism. dualistic theism is professed as firmly as ever at all catholic seats of learning, whereas it has of late years tended to disappear at our british and american universities, and to be replaced by a monistic pantheism more or less open or disguised. i have an impression that ever since t.h. green's time absolute idealism has been decidedly in the ascendent at oxford. it is in the ascendent at my own university of harvard. absolute idealism attains, i said, to the more intimate point of view; but the statement needs some explanation. so far as theism represents the world as god's world, and god as what matthew arnold called a magnified non-natural man, it would seem as if the inner quality of the world remained human, and as if our relations with it might be intimate enough--for what is best in ourselves appears then also outside of ourselves, and we and the universe are of the same spiritual species. so far, so good, then; and one might consequently ask, what more of intimacy do you require? to which the answer is that to be like a thing is not as intimate a relation as to be substantially fused into it, to form one continuous soul and body with it; and that pantheistic idealism, making us entitatively one with god, attains this higher reach of intimacy. the theistic conception, picturing god and his creation as entities distinct from each other, still leaves the human subject outside of the deepest reality in the universe. god is from eternity complete, it says, and sufficient unto himself; he throws off the world by a free act and as an extraneous substance, and he throws off man as a third substance, extraneous to both the world and himself. between them, god says 'one,' the world says 'two,' and man says 'three,'--that is the orthodox theistic view. and orthodox theism has been so jealous of god's glory that it has taken pains to exaggerate everything in the notion of him that could make for isolation and separateness. page upon page in scholastic books go to prove that god is in no sense implicated by his creative act, or involved in his creation. that his relation to the creatures he has made should make any difference to him, carry any consequence, or qualify his being, is repudiated as a pantheistic slur upon his self-sufficingness. i said a moment ago that theism treats us and god as of the same species, but from the orthodox point of view that was a slip of language. god and his creatures are _toto genere_ distinct in the scholastic theology, they have absolutely _nothing_ in common; nay, it degrades god to attribute to him any generic nature whatever; he can be classed with nothing. there is a sense, then, in which philosophic theism makes us outsiders and keeps us foreigners in relation to god, in which, at any rate, his connexion with us appears as unilateral and not reciprocal. his action can affect us, but he can never be affected by our reaction. our relation, in short, is not a strictly social relation. of course in common men's religion the relation is believed to be social, but that is only one of the many differences between religion and theology. this essential dualism of the theistic view has all sorts of collateral consequences. man being an outsider and a mere subject to god, not his intimate partner, a character of externality invades the field. god is not heart of our heart and reason of our reason, but our magistrate, rather; and mechanically to obey his commands, however strange they may be, remains our only moral duty. conceptions of criminal law have in fact played a great part in defining our relations with him. our relations with speculative truth show the same externality. one of our duties is to know truth, and rationalist thinkers have always assumed it to be our sovereign duty. but in scholastic theism we find truth already instituted and established without our help, complete apart from our knowing; and the most we can do is to acknowledge it passively and adhere to it, altho such adhesion as ours can make no jot of difference to what is adhered to. the situation here again is radically dualistic. it is not as if the world came to know itself, or god came to know himself, partly through us, as pantheistic idealists have maintained, but truth exists _per se_ and absolutely, by god's grace and decree, no matter who of us knows it or is ignorant, and it would continue to exist unaltered, even though we finite knowers were all annihilated. it has to be confessed that this dualism and lack of intimacy has always operated as a drag and handicap on christian thought. orthodox theology has had to wage a steady fight within the schools against the various forms of pantheistic heresy which the mystical experiences of religious persons, on the one hand, and the formal or aesthetic superiorities of monism to dualism, on the other, kept producing. god as intimate soul and reason of the universe has always seemed to some people a more worthy conception than god as external creator. so conceived, he appeared to unify the world more perfectly, he made it less finite and mechanical, and in comparison with such a god an external creator seemed more like the product of a childish fancy. i have been told by hindoos that the great obstacle to the spread of christianity in their country is the puerility of our dogma of creation. it has not sweep and infinity enough to meet the requirements of even the illiterate natives of india. assuredly most members of this audience are ready to side with hinduism in this matter. those of us who are sexagenarians have witnessed in our own persons one of those gradual mutations of intellectual climate, due to innumerable influences, that make the thought of a past generation seem as foreign to its successor as if it were the expression of a different race of men. the theological machinery that spoke so livingly to our ancestors, with its finite age of the world, its creation out of nothing, its juridical morality and eschatology, its relish for rewards and punishments, its treatment of god as an external contriver, an 'intelligent and moral governor,' sounds as odd to most of us as if it were some outlandish savage religion. the vaster vistas which scientific evolutionism has opened, and the rising tide of social democratic ideals, have changed the type of our imagination, and the older monarchical theism is obsolete or obsolescent. the place of the divine in the world must be more organic and intimate. an external creator and his institutions may still be verbally confessed at church in formulas that linger by their mere inertia, but the life is out of them, we avoid dwelling on them, the sincere heart of us is elsewhere. i shall leave cynical materialism entirely out of our discussion as not calling for treatment before this present audience, and i shall ignore old-fashioned dualistic theism for the same reason. our contemporary mind having once for all grasped the possibility of a more intimate _weltanschauung_, the only opinions quite worthy of arresting our attention will fall within the general scope of what may roughly be called the pantheistic field of vision, the vision of god as the indwelling divine rather than the external creator, and of human life as part and parcel of that deep reality. as we have found that spiritualism in general breaks into a more intimate and a less intimate species, so the more intimate species itself breaks into two subspecies, of which the one is more monistic, the other more pluralistic in form. i say in form, for our vocabulary gets unmanageable if we don't distinguish between form and substance here. the inner life of things must be substantially akin anyhow to the tenderer parts of man's nature in any spiritualistic philosophy. the word 'intimacy' probably covers the essential difference. materialism holds the foreign in things to be more primary and lasting, it sends us to a lonely corner with our intimacy. the brutal aspects overlap and outwear; refinement has the feebler and more ephemeral hold on reality. from a pragmatic point of view the difference between living against a background of foreignness and one of intimacy means the difference between a general habit of wariness and one of trust. one might call it a social difference, for after all, the common _socius_ of us all is the great universe whose children we are. if materialistic, we must be suspicious of this socius, cautious, tense, on guard. if spiritualistic, we may give way, embrace, and keep no ultimate fear. the contrast is rough enough, and can be cut across by all sorts of other divisions, drawn from other points of view than that of foreignness and intimacy. we have so many different businesses with nature that no one of them yields us an all-embracing clasp. the philosophic attempt to define nature so that no one's business is left out, so that no one lies outside the door saying 'where do _i_ come in?' is sure in advance to fail. the most a philosophy can hope for is not to lock out any interest forever. no matter what doors it closes, it must leave other doors open for the interests which it neglects. i have begun by shutting ourselves up to intimacy and foreignness because that makes so generally interesting a contrast, and because it will conveniently introduce a farther contrast to which i wish this hour to lead. the majority of men are sympathetic. comparatively few are cynics because they like cynicism, and most of our existing materialists are such because they think the evidence of facts impels them, or because they find the idealists they are in contact with too private and tender-minded; so, rather than join their company, they fly to the opposite extreme. i therefore propose to you to disregard materialists altogether for the present, and to consider the sympathetic party alone. it is normal, i say, to be sympathetic in the sense in which i use the term. not to demand intimate relations with the universe, and not to wish them satisfactory, should be accounted signs of something wrong. accordingly when minds of this type reach the philosophic level, and seek some unification of their vision, they find themselves compelled to correct that aboriginal appearance of things by which savages are not troubled. that sphinx-like presence, with its breasts and claws, that first bald multifariousness, is too discrepant an object for philosophic contemplation. the intimacy and the foreignness cannot be written down as simply coexisting. an order must be made; and in that order the higher side of things must dominate. the philosophy of the absolute agrees with the pluralistic philosophy which i am going to contrast with it in these lectures, in that both identify human substance with the divine substance. but whereas absolutism thinks that the said substance becomes fully divine only in the form of totality, and is not its real self in any form but the _all_-form, the pluralistic view which i prefer to adopt is willing to believe that there may ultimately never be an all-form at all, that the substance of reality may never get totally collected, that some of it may remain outside of the largest combination of it ever made, and that a distributive form of reality, the _each_-form, is logically as acceptable and empirically as probable as the all-form commonly acquiesced in as so obviously the self-evident thing. the contrast between these two forms of a reality which we will agree to suppose substantially spiritual is practically the topic of this course of lectures. you see now what i mean by pantheism's two subspecies. if we give to the monistic subspecies the name of philosophy of the absolute, we may give that of radical empiricism to its pluralistic rival, and it may be well to distinguish them occasionally later by these names. as a convenient way of entering into the study of their differences, i may refer to a recent article by professor jacks of manchester college. professor jacks, in some brilliant pages in the 'hibbert journal' for last october, studies the relation between the universe and the philosopher who describes and defines it for us. you may assume two cases, he says. either what the philosopher tells us is extraneous to the universe he is accounting for, an indifferent parasitic outgrowth, so to speak; or the fact of his philosophizing is itself one of the things taken account of in the philosophy, and self-included in the description. in the former case the philosopher means by the universe everything _except_ what his own presence brings; in the latter case his philosophy is itself an intimate part of the universe, and may be a part momentous enough to give a different turn to what the other parts signify. it may be a supreme reaction of the universe upon itself by which it rises to self-comprehension. it may handle itself differently in consequence of this event. now both empiricism and absolutism bring the philosopher inside and make man intimate, but the one being pluralistic and the other monistic, they do so in differing ways that need much explanation. let me then contrast the one with the other way of representing the status of the human thinker. for monism the world is no collection, but one great all-inclusive fact outside of which is nothing--nothing is its only alternative. when the monism is idealistic, this all-enveloping fact is represented as an absolute mind that makes the partial facts by thinking them, just as we make objects in a dream by dreaming them, or personages in a story by imagining them. to _be_, on this scheme, is, on the part of a finite thing, to be an object for the absolute; and on the part of the absolute it is to be the thinker of that assemblage of objects. if we use the word 'content' here, we see that the absolute and the world have an identical content. the absolute is nothing but the knowledge of those objects; the objects are nothing but what the absolute knows. the world and the all-thinker thus compenetrate and soak each other up without residuum. they are but two names for the same identical material, considered now from the subjective, and now from the objective point of view--gedanke and gedachtes, as we would say if we were germans. we philosophers naturally form part of the material, on the monistic scheme. the absolute makes us by thinking us, and if we ourselves are enlightened enough to be believers in the absolute, one may then say that our philosophizing is one of the ways in which the absolute is conscious of itself. this is the full pantheistic scheme, the _identitätsphilosophie_, the immanence of god in his creation, a conception sublime from its tremendous unity. and yet that unity is incomplete, as closer examination will show. the absolute and the world are one fact, i said, when materially considered. our philosophy, for example, is not numerically distinct from the absolute's own knowledge of itself, not a duplicate and copy of it, it is part of that very knowledge, is numerically identical with as much of it as our thought covers. the absolute just _is_ our philosophy, along with everything else that is known, in an act of knowing which (to use the words of my gifted absolutist colleague royce) forms in its wholeness one luminously transparent conscious moment. but one as we are in this material sense with the absolute substance, that being only the whole of us, and we only the parts of it, yet in a formal sense something like a pluralism breaks out. when we speak of the absolute we _take_ the one universal known material collectively or integrally; when we speak of its objects, of our finite selves, etc., we _take_ that same identical material distributively and separately. but what is the use of a thing's _being_ only once if it can be _taken_ twice over, and if being taken in different ways makes different things true of it? as the absolute takes me, for example, i appear _with_ everything else in its field of perfect knowledge. as i take myself, i appear _without_ most other things in my field of relative ignorance. and practical differences result from its knowledge and my ignorance. ignorance breeds mistake, curiosity, misfortune, pain, for me; i suffer those consequences. the absolute knows of those things, of course, for it knows me and my suffering, but it doesn't itself suffer. it can't be ignorant, for simultaneous with its knowledge of each question goes its knowledge of each answer. it can't be patient, for it has to wait for nothing, having everything at once in its possession. it can't be surprised; it can't be guilty. no attribute connected with succession can be applied to it, for it is all at once and wholly what it is, 'with the unity of a single instant,' and succession is not of it but in it, for we are continually told that it is 'timeless.' things true of the world in its finite aspects, then, are not true of it in its infinite capacity. _quâ_ finite and plural its accounts of itself to itself are different from what its account to itself _quâ_ infinite and one must be. with this radical discrepancy between the absolute and the relative points of view, it seems to me that almost as great a bar to intimacy between the divine and the human breaks out in pantheism as that which we found in monarchical theism, and hoped that pantheism might not show. we humans are incurably rooted in the temporal point of view. the eternal's ways are utterly unlike our ways. 'let us imitate the all,' said the original prospectus of that admirable chicago quarterly called the 'monist.' as if we could, either in thought or conduct! we are invincibly parts, let us talk as we will, and must always apprehend the absolute as if it were a foreign being. if what i mean by this is not wholly clear to you at this point, it ought to grow clearer as my lectures proceed. lecture ii monistic idealism let me recall to you the programme which i indicated to you at our last meeting. after agreeing not to consider materialism in any shape, but to place ourselves straightway upon a more spiritualistic platform, i pointed out three kinds of spiritual philosophy between which we are asked to choose. the first way was that of the older dualistic theism, with ourselves represented as a secondary order of substances created by god. we found that this allowed of a degree of intimacy with the creative principle inferior to that implied in the pantheistic belief that we are substantially one with it, and that the divine is therefore the most intimate of all our possessions, heart of our heart, in fact. but we saw that this pantheistic belief could be held in two forms, a monistic form which i called philosophy of the absolute, and a pluralistic form which i called radical empiricism, the former conceiving that the divine exists authentically only when the world is experienced all at once in its absolute totality, whereas radical empiricism allows that the absolute sum-total of things may never be actually experienced or realized in that shape at all, and that a disseminated, distributed, or incompletely unified appearance is the only form that reality may yet have achieved. i may contrast the monistic and pluralistic forms in question as the 'all-form' and the 'each-form.' at the end of the last hour i animadverted on the fact that the all-form is so radically different from the each-form, which is our human form of experiencing the world, that the philosophy of the absolute, so far as insight and understanding go, leaves us almost as much outside of the divine being as dualistic theism does. i believe that radical empiricism, on the contrary, holding to the each-form, and making of god only one of the eaches, affords the higher degree of intimacy. the general thesis of these lectures i said would be a defence of the pluralistic against the monistic view. think of the universe as existing solely in the each-form, and you will have on the whole a more reasonable and satisfactory idea of it than if you insist on the all-form being necessary. the rest of my lectures will do little more than make this thesis more concrete, and i hope more persuasive. it is curious how little countenance radical pluralism has ever had from philosophers. whether materialistically or spiritualistically minded, philosophers have always aimed at cleaning up the litter with which the world apparently is filled. they have substituted economical and orderly conceptions for the first sensible tangle; and whether these were morally elevated or only intellectually neat they were at any rate always aesthetically pure and definite, and aimed at ascribing to the world something clean and intellectual in the way of inner structure. as compared with all these rationalizing pictures, the pluralistic empiricism which i profess offers but a sorry appearance. it is a turbid, muddled, gothic sort of an affair, without a sweeping outline and with little pictorial nobility. those of you who are accustomed to the classical constructions of reality may be excused if your first reaction upon it be absolute contempt--a shrug of the shoulders as if such ideas were unworthy of explicit refutation. but one must have lived some time with a system to appreciate its merits. perhaps a little more familiarity may mitigate your first surprise at such a programme as i offer. first, one word more than what i said last time about the relative foreignness of the divine principle in the philosophy of the absolute. those of you who have read the last two chapters of mr. bradley's wonderful book, 'appearance and reality,' will remember what an elaborately foreign aspect _his_ absolute is finally made to assume. it is neither intelligence nor will, neither a self nor a collection of selves, neither truthful, good, nor beautiful, as we understand these terms. it is, in short, a metaphysical monster, all that we are permitted to say of it being that whatever it is, it is at any rate _worth_ more (worth more to itself, that is) than if any eulogistic adjectives of ours applied to it. it is us, and all other appearances, but none of us _as such_, for in it we are all 'transmuted,' and its own as-suchness is of another denomination altogether. spinoza was the first great absolutist, and the impossibility of being intimate with _his_ god is universally recognized. _quatenus infinitus est_ he is other than what he is _quatenus humanam mentem constituit_. spinoza's philosophy has been rightly said to be worked by the word _quatenus_. conjunctions, prepositions, and adverbs play indeed the vital part in all philosophies; and in contemporary idealism the words 'as' and 'quâ' bear the burden of reconciling metaphysical unity with phenomenal diversity. quâ absolute the world is one and perfect, quâ relative it is many and faulty, yet it is identically the self-same world--instead of talking of it as many facts, we call it one fact in many aspects. _as_ absolute, then, or _sub specie eternitatis_, or _quatenus infinitus est_, the world repels our sympathy because it has no history. _as such_, the absolute neither acts nor suffers, nor loves nor hates; it has no needs, desires, or aspirations, no failures or successes, friends or enemies, victories or defeats. all such things pertain to the world quâ relative, in which our finite experiences lie, and whose vicissitudes alone have power to arouse our interest. what boots it to tell me that the absolute way is the true way, and to exhort me, as emerson says, to lift mine eye up to its style, and manners of the sky, if the feat is impossible by definition? i am finite once for all, and all the categories of my sympathy are knit up with the finite world _as such_, and with things that have a history. 'aus dieser erde quellen meine freuden, und ihre sonne scheinet meinen leiden.' i have neither eyes nor ears nor heart nor mind for anything of an opposite description, and the stagnant felicity of the absolute's own perfection moves me as little as i move it. if we were _readers_ only of the cosmic novel, things would be different: we should then share the author's point of view and recognize villains to be as essential as heroes in the plot. but we are not the readers but the very personages of the world-drama. in your own eyes each of you here is its hero, and the villains are your respective friends or enemies. the tale which the absolute reader finds so perfect, we spoil for one another through our several vital identifications with the destinies of the particular personages involved. the doctrine on which the absolutists lay most stress is the absolute's 'timeless' character. for pluralists, on the other hand, time remains as real as anything, and nothing in the universe is great or static or eternal enough not to have some history. but the world that each of us feels most intimately at home with is that of beings with histories that play into our history, whom we can help in their vicissitudes even as they help us in ours. this satisfaction the absolute denies us; we can neither help nor hinder it, for it stands outside of history. it surely is a merit in a philosophy to make the very life we lead seem real and earnest. pluralism, in exorcising the absolute, exorcises the great de-realizer of the only life we are at home in, and thus redeems the nature of reality from essential foreignness. every end, reason, motive, object of desire or aversion, ground of sorrow or joy that we feel is in the world of finite multifariousness, for only in that world does anything really happen, only there do events come to pass. in one sense this is a far-fetched and rather childish objection, for so much of the history of the finite is as formidably foreign to us as the static absolute can possibly be--in fact that entity derives its own foreignness largely from the bad character of the finite which it simultaneously is--that this sentimental reason for preferring the pluralistic view seems small.[ ] i shall return to the subject in my final lecture, and meanwhile, with your permission, i will say no more about this objection. the more so as the necessary foreignness of the absolute is cancelled emotionally by its attribute of _totality_, which is universally considered to carry the further attribute of _perfection_ in its train. 'philosophy,' says a recent american philosopher, 'is humanity's hold on totality,' and there is no doubt that most of us find that the bare notion of an absolute all-one is inspiring. 'i yielded myself to the perfect whole,' writes emerson; and where can you find a more mind-dilating object? a certain loyalty is called forth by the idea; even if not proved actual, it must be believed in somehow. only an enemy of philosophy can speak lightly of it. rationalism starts from the idea of such a whole and builds downward. movement and change are absorbed into its immutability as forms of mere appearance. when you accept this beatific vision of what _is_, in contrast with what _goes on_, you feel as if you had fulfilled an intellectual duty. 'reality is not in its truest nature a process,' mr. mctaggart tells us, 'but a stable and timeless state.'[ ] 'the true knowledge of god begins,' hegel writes, 'when we know that things as they immediately are have no truth.'[ ] 'the consummation of the infinite aim,' he says elsewhere, 'consists merely in removing the illusion which makes it seem yet unaccomplished. good and absolute goodness is eternally accomplishing itself in the world: and the result is that it needs not wait upon _us_, but is already ... accomplished. it is an illusion under which we live. ... in the course of its process the idea makes itself that illusion, by setting an antithesis to confront it, and its action consists in getting rid of the illusion which it has created.'[ ] but abstract emotional appeals of any kind sound amateurish in the business that concerns us. impressionistic philosophizing, like impressionistic watchmaking or land-surveying, is intolerable to experts. serious discussion of the alternative before us forces me, therefore, to become more technical. the great _claim_ of the philosophy of the absolute is that the absolute is no hypothesis, but a presupposition implicated in all thinking, and needing only a little effort of analysis to be seen as a logical necessity. i will therefore take it in this more rigorous character and see whether its claim is in effect so coercive. it has seemed coercive to an enormous number of contemporaneous thinkers. professor henry jones thus describes the range and influence of it upon the social and political life of the present time:[ ] 'for many years adherents of this way of thought have deeply interested the british public by their writings. almost more important than their writings is the fact that they have occupied philosophical chairs in almost every university in the kingdom. even the professional critics of idealism are for the most part idealists--after a fashion. and when they are not, they are as a rule more occupied with the refutation of idealism than with the construction of a better theory. it follows from their position of academic authority, were it from nothing else, that idealism exercises an influence not easily measured upon the youth of the nation--upon those, that is, who from the educational opportunities they enjoy may naturally be expected to become the leaders of the nation's thought and practice.... difficult as it is to measure the forces ... it is hardly to be denied that the power exercised by bentham and the utilitarian school has, for better or for worse, passed into the hands of the idealists.... "the rhine has flowed into the thames" is the warning note rung out by mr. hobhouse. carlyle introduced it, bringing it as far as chelsea. then jowett and thomas hill green, and william wallace and lewis nettleship, and arnold toynbee and david eitchie--to mention only those teachers whose voices now are silent--guided the waters into those upper reaches known locally as the isis. john and edward caird brought them up the clyde, hutchison stirling up the firth of forth. they have passed up the mersey and up the severn and dee and don. they pollute the bay of st. andrews and swell the waters of the cam, and have somehow crept overland into birmingham. the stream of german idealism has been diffused over the academical world of great britain. the disaster is universal.' evidently if weight of authority were all, the truth of absolutism would be thus decided. but let us first pass in review the general style of argumentation of that philosophy. as i read it, its favorite way of meeting pluralism and empiricism is by a _reductio ad absurdum_ framed somewhat as follows: you contend, it says to the pluralist, that things, though in some respects connected, are in other respects independent, so that they are not members of one all-inclusive individual fact. well, your position is absurd on either point. for admit in fact the slightest modicum of independence, and you find (if you will only think accurately) that you have to admit more and more of it, until at last nothing but an absolute chaos, or the proved impossibility of any connexion whatever between the parts of the universe, remains upon your hands. admit, on the other hand, the most incipient minimum of relation between any two things, and again you can't stop until you see that the absolute unity of all things is implied. if we take the latter _reductio ad absurdum_ first, we find a good example of it in lotze's well-known proof of monism from the fact of interaction between finite things. suppose, lotze says in effect, and for simplicity's sake i have to paraphrase him, for his own words are too long to quote--many distinct beings _a, b, c_, etc., to exist independently of each other: _can a in that case ever act on b_? what is it to act? is it not to exert an influence? does the influence detach itself from _a_ and find _b_? if so, it is a third fact, and the problem is not how _a_ acts, but how its 'influence' acts on _b_. by another influence perhaps? and how in the end does the chain of influences find _b_ rather than _c_ unless _b_ is somehow prefigured in them already? and when they have found _b_, how do they make _b_ respond, if _b_ has nothing in common with them? why don't they go right through _b_? the change in _b_ is a _response_, due to _b_'s capacity for taking account of _a_'s influence, and that again seems to prove that _b_'s nature is somehow fitted to _a_'s nature in advance. _a_ and _b_, in short, are not really as distinct as we at first supposed them, not separated by a void. were this so they would be mutually impenetrable, or at least mutually irrelevant. they would form two universes each living by itself, making no difference to each other, taking no account of each other, much as the universe of your day dreams takes no account of mine. they must therefore belong together beforehand, be co-implicated already, their natures must have an inborn mutual reference each to each. lotze's own solution runs as follows: the multiple independent things supposed cannot be real in that shape, but all of them, if reciprocal action is to be possible between them, must be regarded as parts of a single real being, m. the pluralism with which our view began has to give place to a monism; and the 'transeunt' interaction, being unintelligible as such, is to be understood as an immanent operation.[ ] the words 'immanent operation' seem here to mean that the single real being m, of which _a_ and _b_ are members, is the only thing that changes, and that when it changes, it changes inwardly and all over at once. when part _a_ in it changes, consequently, part _b_ must also change, but without the whole m changing this would not occur. a pretty argument, but a purely verbal one, as i apprehend it. _call_ your _a_ and _b_ distinct, they can't interact; _call_ them one, they can. for taken abstractly and without qualification the words 'distinct' and 'independent' suggest only disconnection. if this be the only property of your _a_ and _b_ (and it is the only property your words imply), then of course, since you can't deduce their mutual influence from _it_, you can find no ground of its occurring between them. your bare word 'separate,' contradicting your bare word 'joined,' seems to exclude connexion. lotze's remedy for the impossibility thus verbally found is to change the first word. if, instead of calling _a_ and _b_ independent, we now call them 'interdependent,' 'united,' or 'one,' he says, _these_ words do not contradict any sort of mutual influence that may be proposed. if _a_ and _b_ are 'one,' and the one changes, _a_ and _b_ of course must co-ordinately change. what under the old name they couldn't do, they now have license to do under the new name. but i ask you whether giving the name of 'one' to the former 'many' makes us really understand the modus operandi of interaction any better. we have now given verbal permission to the many to change all together, if they can; we have removed a verbal impossibility and substituted a verbal possibility, but the new name, with the possibility it suggests, tells us nothing of the actual process by which real things that are one can and do change at all. in point of fact abstract oneness as such _doesn't_ change, neither has it parts--any more than abstract independence as such interacts. but then neither abstract oneness nor abstract independence _exists_; only concrete real things exist, which add to these properties the other properties which they possess, to make up what we call their total nature. to construe any one of their abstract names as _making their total nature impossible_ is a misuse of the function of naming. the real way of rescue from the abstract consequences of one name is not to fly to an opposite name, equally abstract, but rather to correct the first name by qualifying adjectives that restore some concreteness to the case. don't take your 'independence' _simpliciter_, as lotze does, take it _secundum quid_. only when we know what the process of interaction literally and concretely _consists_ in can we tell whether beings independent _in definite respects_, distinct, for example, in origin, separate in place, different in kind, etc., can or cannot interact. _the treating of a name as excluding from the fact named what the name's definition fails positively to include, is what i call 'vicious intellectualism_.' later i shall have more to say about this intellectualism, but that lotze's argument is tainted by it i hardly think we can deny. as well might you contend (to use an instance from sigwart) that a person whom you have once called an 'equestrian' is thereby forever made unable to walk on his own feet. i almost feel as if i should apologize for criticising such subtle arguments in rapid lectures of this kind. the criticisms have to be as abstract as the arguments, and in exposing their unreality, take on such an unreal sound themselves that a hearer not nursed in the intellectualist atmosphere knows not which of them to accuse. but _le vin est versé, il faut le boire_, and i must cite a couple more instances before i stop. if we are empiricists and go from parts to wholes, we believe that beings may first exist and feed so to speak on their own existence, and then secondarily become known to one another. but philosophers of the absolute tell us that such independence of being from being known would, if once admitted, disintegrate the universe beyond all hope of mending. the argument is one of professor royce's proofs that the only alternative we have is to choose the complete disunion of all things or their complete union in the absolute one. take, for instance, the proverb 'a cat may look at a king' and adopt the realistic view that the king's being is independent of the cat's witnessing. this assumption, which amounts to saying that it need make no essential difference to the royal object whether the feline subject cognizes him or not, that the cat may look away from him or may even be annihilated, and the king remain unchanged,--this assumption, i say, is considered by my ingenious colleague to lead to the absurd practical consequence that the two beings _can_ never later acquire any possible linkages or connexions, but must remain eternally as if in different worlds. for suppose any connexion whatever to ensue, this connexion would simply be a third being additional to the cat and the king, which would itself have to be linked to both by additional links before it could connect them, and so on _ad infinitum_, the argument, you see, being the same as lotze's about how _a_'s influence does its influencing when it influences _b_. in royce's own words, if the king can be without the cat knowing him, then king and cat 'can have no common features, no ties, no true relations; they are separated, each from the other, by absolutely impassable chasms. they can never come to get either ties or community of nature; they are not in the same space, nor in the same time, nor in the same natural or spiritual order.'[ ] they form in short two unrelated universes,--which is the _reductio ad absurdum_ required. to escape this preposterous state of things we must accordingly revoke the original hypothesis. the king and the cat are not indifferent to each other in the way supposed. but if not in that way, then in no way, for connexion in that way carries connexion in other ways; so that, pursuing the reverse line of reasoning, we end with the absolute itself as the smallest fact that can exist. cat and king are co-involved, they are a single fact in two names, they can never have been absent from each other, and they are both equally co-implicated with all the other facts of which the universe consists. professor royce's proof that whoso admits the cat's witnessing the king at all must thereupon admit the integral absolute, may be briefly put as follows:-- first, to know the king, the cat must intend _that_ king, must somehow pass over and lay hold of him individually and specifically. the cat's idea, in short, must transcend the cat's own separate mind and somehow include the king, for were the king utterly outside and independent of the cat, the cat's pure other, the beast's mind could touch the king in no wise. this makes the cat much less distinct from the king than we had at first naïvely supposed. there must be some prior continuity between them, which continuity royce interprets idealistically as meaning a higher mind that owns them both as objects, and owning them can also own any relation, such as the supposed witnessing, that may obtain between them. taken purely pluralistically, neither of them can own any part of a _between_, because, so taken, each is supposed shut up to itself: the fact of a _between_ thus commits us to a higher knower. but the higher knower that knows the two beings we start with proves to be the same knower that knows everything else. for assume any third being, the queen, say, and as the cat knew the king, so let the king know his queen, and let this second knowledge, by the same reasoning, require a higher knower as its presupposition. that knower of the king's knowing must, it is now contended, be the same higher knower that was required for the cat's knowing; for if you suppose otherwise, you have no longer the _same king_. this may not seem immediately obvious, but if you follow the intellectualistic logic employed in all these reasonings, i don't see how you can escape the admission. if it be true that the independent or indifferent cannot be related, for the abstract words 'independent' or 'indifferent' as such imply no relation, then it is just as true that the king known by the cat cannot be the king that knows the queen, for taken merely 'as such,' the abstract term 'what the cat knows' and the abstract term 'what knows the queen' are logically distinct. the king thus logically breaks into two kings, with nothing to connect them, until a higher knower is introduced to recognize them as the self-same king concerned in any previous acts of knowledge which he may have brought about. this he can do because he possesses all the terms as his own objects and can treat them as he will. add any fourth or fifth term, and you get a like result, and so on, until at last an all-owning knower, otherwise called the absolute, is reached. the co-implicated 'through-and-through' world of monism thus stands proved by irrefutable logic, and all pluralism appears as absurd. the reasoning is pleasing from its ingenuity, and it is almost a pity that so straight a bridge from abstract logic to concrete fact should not bear our weight. to have the alternative forced upon us of admitting either finite things each cut off from all relation with its environment, or else of accepting the integral absolute with no environment and all relations packed within itself, would be too delicious a simplification. but the purely verbal character of the operation is undisguised. because the _names_ of finite things and their relations are disjoined, it doesn't follow that the realities named need a _deus ex machina_ from on high to conjoin them. the same things disjoined in one respect _appear_ as conjoined in another. naming the disjunction doesn't debar us from also naming the conjunction in a later modifying statement, for the two are absolutely co-ordinate elements in the finite tissue of experience. when at athens it was found self-contradictory that a boy could be both tall and short (tall namely in respect of a child, short in respect of a man), the absolute had not yet been thought of, but it might just as well have been invoked by socrates as by lotze or royce, as a relief from his peculiar intellectualistic difficulty. everywhere we find rationalists using the same kind of reasoning. the primal whole which is their vision must be there not only as a fact but as a logical necessity. it must be the minimum that can exist--either that absolute whole is there, or there is absolutely nothing. the logical proof alleged of the irrationality of supposing otherwise, is that you can deny the whole only in words that implicitly assert it. if you say 'parts,' of _what_ are they parts? if you call them a 'many,' that very word unifies them. if you suppose them unrelated in any particular respect, that 'respect' connects them; and so on. in short you fall into hopeless contradiction. you must stay either at one extreme or the other.[ ] 'partly this and partly that,' partly rational, for instance, and partly irrational, is no admissible description of the world. if rationality be in it at all, it must be in it throughout; if irrationality be in it anywhere, that also must pervade it throughout. it must be wholly rational or wholly irrational, pure universe or pure multiverse or nulliverse; and reduced to this violent alternative, no one's choice ought long to remain doubtful. the individual absolute, with its parts co-implicated through and through, so that there is nothing in any part by which any other part can remain inwardly unaffected, is the only rational supposition. connexions of an external sort, by which the many became merely continuous instead of being consubstantial, would be an irrational supposition. mr. bradley is the pattern champion of this philosophy _in extremis_, as one might call it, for he shows an intolerance to pluralism so extreme that i fancy few of his readers have been able fully to share it. his reasoning exemplifies everywhere what i call the vice of intellectualism, for abstract terms are used by him as positively excluding all that their definition fails to include. some greek sophists could deny that we may say that man is good, for man, they said, means only man, and good means only good, and the word _is_ can't be construed to identify such disparate meanings. mr. bradley revels in the same type of argument. no adjective can rationally qualify a substantive, he thinks, for if distinct from the substantive, it can't be united with it; and if not distinct, there is only one thing there, and nothing left to unite. our whole pluralistic procedure in using subjects and predicates as we do is fundamentally irrational, an example of the desperation of our finite intellectual estate, infected and undermined as that is by the separatist discursive forms which are our only categories, but which absolute reality must somehow absorb into its unity and overcome. readers of 'appearance and reality' will remember how mr. bradley suffers from a difficulty identical with that to which lotze and royce fall a prey--how shall an influence influence? how shall a relation relate? any conjunctive relation between two phenomenal experiences _a_ and _b_ must, in the intellectualist philosophy of these authors, be itself a third entity; and as such, instead of bridging the one original chasm, it can only create two smaller chasms, each to be freshly bridged. instead of hooking _a_ to _b_, it needs itself to be hooked by a fresh relation _r�_ to _a_ and by another _r�_ to _b_. these new relations are but two more entities which themselves require to be hitched in turn by four still newer relations--so behold the vertiginous _regressus ad infinitum_ in full career. since a _regressus ad infinitum_ is deemed absurd, the notion that relations come 'between' their terms must be given up. no mere external go-between can logically connect. what occurs must be more intimate. the hooking must be a penetration, a possession. the relation must _involve_ the terms, each term must involve _it_, and merging thus their being in it, they must somehow merge their being in each other, tho, as they seem still phenomenally so separate, we can never conceive exactly how it is that they are inwardly one. the absolute, however, must be supposed able to perform the unifying feat in his own inscrutable fashion. in old times, whenever a philosopher was assailed for some particularly tough absurdity in his system, he was wont to parry the attack by the argument from the divine omnipotence. 'do you mean to limit god's power?' he would reply: 'do you mean to say that god could not, if he would, do this or that?' this retort was supposed to close the mouths of all objectors of properly decorous mind. the functions of the bradleian absolute are in this particular identical with those of the theistic god. suppositions treated as too absurd to pass muster in the finite world which we inhabit, the absolute must be able to make good 'somehow' in his ineffable way. first we hear mr. bradley convicting things of absurdity; next, calling on the absolute to vouch for them _quand même_. invoked for no other duty, that duty it must and shall perform. the strangest discontinuity of our world of appearance with the supposed world of absolute reality is asserted both by bradley and by royce; and both writers, the latter with great ingenuity, seek to soften the violence of the jolt. but it remains violent all the same, and is felt to be so by most readers. whoever feels the violence strongly sees as on a diagram in just what the peculiarity of all this philosophy of the absolute consists. first, there is a healthy faith that the world must be rational and self-consistent. 'all science, all real knowledge, all experience presuppose,' as mr. ritchie writes, 'a coherent universe.' next, we find a loyal clinging to the rationalist belief that sense-data and their associations are incoherent, and that only in substituting a conceptual order for their order can truth be found. third, the substituted conceptions are treated intellectualistically, that is as mutually exclusive and discontinuous, so that the first innocent continuity of the flow of sense-experience is shattered for us without any higher conceptual continuity taking its place. finally, since this broken state of things is intolerable, the absolute _deus ex machina_ is called on to mend it in his own way, since we cannot mend it in ours. any other picture than this of post-kantian absolutism i am unable to frame. i see the intellectualistic criticism destroying the immediately given coherence of the phenomenal world, but unable to make its own conceptual substitutes cohere, and i see the resort to the absolute for a coherence of a higher type. the situation has dramatic liveliness, but it is inwardly incoherent throughout, and the question inevitably comes up whether a mistake may not somewhere have crept in in the process that has brought it about. may not the remedy lie rather in revising the intellectualist criticism than in first adopting it and then trying to undo its consequences by an arbitrary act of faith in an unintelligible agent. may not the flux of sensible experience itself contain a rationality that has been overlooked, so that the real remedy would consist in harking back to it more intelligently, and not in advancing in the opposite direction away from it and even away beyond the intellectualist criticism that disintegrates it, to the pseudo-rationality of the supposed absolute point of view. i myself believe that this is the real way to keep rationality in the world, and that the traditional rationalism has always been facing in the wrong direction. i hope in the end to make you share, or at any rate respect, this belief, but there is much to talk of before we get to that point. i employed the word 'violent' just now in describing the dramatic situation in which it pleases the philosophy of the absolute to make its camp. i don't see how any one can help being struck in absolutist writings by that curious tendency to fly to violent extremes of which i have already said a word. the universe must be rational; well and good; but _how_ rational? in what sense of that eulogistic but ambiguous word?--this would seem to be the next point to bring up. there are surely degrees in rationality that might be discriminated and described. things can be consistent or coherent in very diverse ways. but no more in its conception of rationality than in its conception of relations can the monistic mind suffer the notion of more or less. rationality is one and indivisible: if not rational thus indivisibly, the universe must be completely irrational, and no shadings or mixtures or compromises can obtain. mr. mctaggart writes, in discussing the notion of a mixture: 'the two principles, of rationality and irrationality, to which the universe is then referred, will have to be absolutely separate and independent. for if there were any common unity to which they should be referred, it would be that unity and not its two manifestations which would be the ultimate explanation ... and the theory, having thus become monistic,'[ ] would resolve itself into the same alternative once more: is the single principle rational through and through or not? 'can a plurality of reals be possible?' asks mr. bradley, and answers, 'no, impossible.' for it would mean a number of beings not dependent on each other, and this independence their plurality would contradict. for to be 'many' is to be related, the word having no meaning unless the units are somehow taken together, and it is impossible to take them in a sort of unreal void, so they must belong to a larger reality, and so carry the essence of the units beyond their proper selves, into a whole which possesses unity and is a larger system.[ ] either absolute independence or absolute mutual dependence--this, then, is the only alternative allowed by these thinkers. of course 'independence,' if absolute, would be preposterous, so the only conclusion allowable is that, in ritchie's words, 'every single event is ultimately related to every other, and determined by the whole to which it belongs.' the whole complete block-universe through-and-through, therefore, or no universe at all! professor taylor is so _naïf_ in this habit of thinking only in extremes that he charges the pluralists with cutting the ground from under their own feet in not consistently following it themselves. what pluralists say is that a universe really connected loosely, after the pattern of our daily experience, is possible, and that for certain reasons it is the hypothesis to be preferred. what professor taylor thinks they naturally must or should say is that any other sort of universe is logically impossible, and that a totality of things interrelated like the world of the monists is not an hypothesis that can be seriously thought out at all.[ ] meanwhile no sensible pluralist ever flies or wants to fly to this dogmatic extreme. if chance is spoken of as an ingredient of the universe, absolutists interpret it to mean that double sevens are as likely to be thrown out of a dice box as double sixes are. if free-will is spoken of, that must mean that an english general is as likely to eat his prisoners to-day as a maori chief was a hundred years ago. it is as likely--i am using mr. mctaggart's examples--that a majority of londoners will burn themselves alive to-morrow as that they will partake of food, as likely that i shall be hanged for brushing my hair as for committing a murder,[ ] and so forth, through various suppositions that no indeterminist ever sees real reason to make. this habit of thinking only in the most violent extremes reminds me of what mr. wells says of the current objections to socialism, in his wonderful little book, 'new worlds for old.' the commonest vice of the human mind is its disposition to see everything as yes or no, as black or white, its incapacity for discrimination of intermediate shades. so the critics agree to some hard and fast impossible definition of socialism, and extract absurdities from it as a conjurer gets rabbits from a hat. socialism abolishes property, abolishes the family, and the rest. the method, mr. wells continues, is always the same: it is to assume that whatever the socialist postulates as desirable is wanted without limit of qualification,--for socialist read pluralist and the parallel holds good,--it is to imagine that whatever proposal is made by him is to be carried out by uncontrolled monomaniacs, and so to make a picture of the socialist dream which can be presented to the simple-minded person in doubt--'this is socialism'--or pluralism, as the case may be. 'surely!--surely! you don't want _this!_' how often have i been replied to, when expressing doubts of the logical necessity of the absolute, of flying to the opposite extreme: 'but surely, surely there must be _some_ connexion among things!' as if i must necessarily be an uncontrolled monomanic insanely denying any connexion whatever. the whole question revolves in very truth about the word 'some.' radical empiricism and pluralism stand out for the legitimacy of the notion of _some_: each part of the world is in some ways connected, in some other ways not connected with its other parts, and the ways can be discriminated, for many of them are obvious, and their differences are obvious to view. absolutism, on its side, seems to hold that 'some' is a category ruinously infected with self-contradictoriness, and that the only categories inwardly consistent and therefore pertinent to reality are 'all' and 'none.' the question runs into the still more general one with which mr. bradley and later writers of the monistic school have made us abundantly familiar--the question, namely, whether all the relations with other things, possible to a being, are pre-included in its intrinsic nature and enter into its essence, or whether, in respect to some of these relations, it can _be_ without reference to them, and, if it ever does enter into them, do so adventitiously and as it were by an after-thought. this is the great question as to whether 'external' relations can exist. they seem to, undoubtedly. my manuscript, for example, is 'on' the desk. the relation of being 'on' doesn't seem to implicate or involve in any way the inner meaning of the manuscript or the inner structure of the desk--these objects engage in it only by their outsides, it seems only a temporary accident in their respective histories. moreover, the 'on' fails to appear to our senses as one of those unintelligible 'betweens' that have to be separately hooked on the terms they pretend to connect. all this innocent sense-appearance, however, we are told, cannot pass muster in the eyes of reason. it is a tissue of self-contradiction which only the complete absorption of the desk and the manuscript into the higher unity of a more absolute reality can overcome. the reasoning by which this conclusion is supported is too subtle and complicated to be properly dealt with in a public lecture, and you will thank me for not inviting you to consider it at all.[ ] i feel the more free to pass it by now as i think that the cursory account of the absolutistic attitude which i have already given is sufficient for our present purpose, and that my own verdict on the philosophy of the absolute as 'not proven'--please observe that i go no farther now--need not be backed by argument at every special point. flanking operations are less costly and in some ways more effective than frontal attacks. possibly you will yourselves think after hearing my remaining lectures that the alternative of an universe absolutely rational or absolutely irrational is forced and strained, and that a _via media_ exists which some of you may agree with me is to be preferred. _some_ rationality certainly does characterize our universe; and, weighing one kind with another, we may deem that the incomplete kinds that appear are on the whole as acceptable as the through-and-through sort of rationality on which the monistic systematizers insist. all the said systematizers who have written since hegel have owed their inspiration largely to him. even when they have found no use for his particular triadic dialectic, they have drawn confidence and courage from his authoritative and conquering tone. i have said nothing about hegel in this lecture, so i must repair the omission in the next. lecture iii hegel and his method directly or indirectly, that strange and powerful genius hegel has done more to strengthen idealistic pantheism in thoughtful circles than all other influences put together. i must talk a little about him before drawing my final conclusions about the cogency of the arguments for the absolute. in no philosophy is the fact that a philosopher's vision and the technique he uses in proof of it are two different things more palpably evident than in hegel. the vision in his case was that of a world in which reason holds all things in solution and accounts for all the irrationality that superficially appears by taking it up as a 'moment' into itself. this vision was so intense in hegel, and the tone of authority with which he spoke from out of the midst of it was so weighty, that the impression he made has never been effaced. once dilated to the scale of the master's eye, the disciples' sight could not contract to any lesser prospect. the technique which hegel used to prove his vision was the so-called dialectic method, but here his fortune has been quite contrary. hardly a recent disciple has felt his particular applications of the method to be satisfactory. many have let them drop entirely, treating them rather as a sort of provisional stop-gap, symbolic of what might some day prove possible of execution, but having no literal cogency or value now. yet these very same disciples hold to the vision itself as a revelation that can never pass away. the case is curious and worthy of our study. it is still more curious in that these same disciples, altho they are usually willing to abandon any particular instance of the dialectic method to its critics, are unshakably sure that in some shape the dialectic method is the key to truth. what, then, is the dialectic method? it is itself a part of the hegelian vision or intuition, and a part that finds the strongest echo in empiricism and common sense. great injustice is done to hegel by treating him as primarily a reasoner. he is in reality a naïvely observant man, only beset with a perverse preference for the use of technical and logical jargon. he plants himself in the empirical flux of things and gets the impression of what happens. his mind is in very truth _impressionistic_; and his thought, when once you put yourself at the animating centre of it, is the easiest thing in the world to catch the pulse of and to follow. any author is easy if you can catch the centre of his vision. from the centre in hegel come those towering sentences of his that are comparable only to luther's, as where, speaking of the ontological proof of god's existence from the concept of him as the _ens perfectissimum_ to which no attribute can be lacking, he says: 'it would be strange if the notion, the very heart of the mind, or, in a word, the concrete totality we call god, were not rich enough to embrace so poor a category as being, the very poorest and most abstract of all--for nothing can be more insignificant than being.' but if hegel's central thought is easy to catch, his abominable habits of speech make his application of it to details exceedingly difficult to follow. his passion for the slipshod in the way of sentences, his unprincipled playing fast and loose with terms; his dreadful vocabulary, calling what completes a thing its 'negation,' for example; his systematic refusal to let you know whether he is talking logic or physics or psychology, his whole deliberately adopted policy of ambiguity and vagueness, in short: all these things make his present-day readers wish to tear their hair--or his--out in desperation. like byron's corsair, he has left a name 'to other times, linked with one virtue and a thousand crimes.' the virtue was the vision, which was really in two parts. the first part was that reason is all-inclusive, the second was that things are 'dialectic.' let me say a word about this second part of hegel's vision. the impression that any _naïf_ person gets who plants himself innocently in the flux of things is that things are off their balance. whatever equilibriums our finite experiences attain to are but provisional. martinique volcanoes shatter our wordsworthian equilibrium with nature. accidents, either moral, mental, or physical, break up the slowly built-up equilibriums men reach in family life and in their civic and professional relations. intellectual enigmas frustrate our scientific systems, and the ultimate cruelty of the universe upsets our religious attitudes and outlooks. of no special system of good attained does the universe recognize the value as sacred. down it tumbles, over it goes, to feed the ravenous appetite for destruction, of the larger system of history in which it stood for a moment as a landing-place and stepping-stone. this dogging of everything by its negative, its fate, its undoing, this perpetual moving on to something future which shall supersede the present, this is the hegelian intuition of the essential provisionality, and consequent unreality, of everything empirical and finite. take any concrete finite thing and try to hold it fast. you cannot, for so held, it proves not to be concrete at all, but an arbitrary extract or abstract which you have made from the remainder of empirical reality. the rest of things invades and overflows both it and you together, and defeats your rash attempt. any partial view whatever of the world tears the part out of its relations, leaves out some truth concerning it, is untrue of it, falsifies it. the full truth about anything involves more than that thing. in the end nothing less than the whole of everything can be the truth of anything at all. taken so far, and taken in the rough, hegel is not only harmless, but accurate. there is a dialectic movement in things, if such it please you to call it, one that the whole constitution of concrete life establishes; but it is one that can be described and accounted for in terms of the pluralistic vision of things far more naturally than in the monistic terms to which hegel finally reduced it. pluralistic empiricism knows that everything is in an environment, a surrounding world of other things, and that if you leave it to work there it will inevitably meet with friction and opposition from its neighbors. its rivals and enemies will destroy it unless it can buy them off by compromising some part of its original pretensions. but hegel saw this undeniable characteristic of the world we live in in a non-empirical light. let the _mental idea_ of the thing work in your thought all alone, he fancied, and just the same consequences will follow. it will be negated by the opposite ideas that dog it, and can survive only by entering, along with them, into some kind of treaty. this treaty will be an instance of the so-called 'higher synthesis' of everything with its negative; and hegel's originality lay in transporting the process from the sphere of percepts to that of concepts and treating it as the universal method by which every kind of life, logical, physical, or psychological, is mediated. not to the sensible facts as such, then, did hegel point for the secret of what keeps existence going, but rather to the conceptual way of treating them. concepts were not in his eyes the static self-contained things that previous logicians had supposed, but were germinative, and passed beyond themselves into each other by what he called their immanent dialectic. in ignoring each other as they do, they virtually exclude and deny each other, he thought, and thus in a manner introduce each other. so the dialectic logic, according to him, had to supersede the 'logic of identity' in which, since aristotle, all europe had been brought up. this view of concepts is hegel's revolutionary performance; but so studiously vague and ambiguous are all his expressions of it that one can hardly tell whether it is the concepts as such, or the sensible experiences and elements conceived, that hegel really means to work with. the only thing that is certain is that whatever you may say of his procedure, some one will accuse you of misunderstanding it. i make no claim to understanding it, i treat it merely impressionistically. so treating it, i regret that he should have called it by the name of logic. clinging as he did to the vision of a really living world, and refusing to be content with a chopped-up intellectualist picture of it, it is a pity that he should have adopted the very word that intellectualism had already pre-empted. but he clung fast to the old rationalist contempt for the immediately given world of sense and all its squalid particulars, and never tolerated the notion that the form of philosophy might be empirical only. his own system had to be a product of eternal reason, so the word 'logic,' with its suggestions of coercive necessity, was the only word he could find natural. he pretended therefore to be using the _a priori_ method, and to be working by a scanty equipment of ancient logical terms--position, negation, reflection, universal, particular, individual, and the like. but what he really worked by was his own empirical perceptions, which exceeded and overflowed his miserably insufficient logical categories in every instance of their use. what he did with the category of negation was his most original stroke. the orthodox opinion is that you can advance logically through the field of concepts only by going from the same to the same. hegel felt deeply the sterility of this law of conceptual thought; he saw that in a fashion negation also relates things; and he had the brilliant idea of transcending the ordinary logic by treating advance from the different to the different as if it were also a necessity of thought. 'the so-called maxim of identity,' he wrote, 'is supposed to be accepted by the consciousness of every one. but the language which such a law demands, "a planet is a planet, magnetism is magnetism, mind is mind," deserves to be called silliness. no mind either speaks or thinks or forms conceptions in accordance with this law, and no existence of any kind whatever conforms to it. we must never view identity as abstract identity, to the exclusion of all difference. that is the touchstone for distinguishing all bad philosophy from what alone deserves the name of philosophy. if thinking were no more than registering abstract identities, it would be a most superfluous performance. things and concepts are identical with themselves only in so far as at the same time they involve distinction.'[ ] the distinction that hegel has in mind here is naturally in the first instance distinction from all other things or concepts. but in his hands this quickly develops into contradiction of them, and finally, reflected back upon itself, into self-contradiction; and the immanent self-contradictoriness of all finite concepts thenceforth becomes the propulsive logical force that moves the world.[ ] 'isolate a thing from all its relations,' says dr. edward caird,[ ] expounding hegel, 'and try to assert it by itself; you find that it has negated itself as well as its relations. the thing in itself is nothing.' or, to quote hegel's own words: 'when we suppose an existent a, and another, b, b is at first defined as the other. but a is just as much the other of b. both are others in the same fashion.... "other" is the other by itself, therefore the other of every other, consequently the other of itself, the simply unlike itself, the self-negator, the self-alterer,' etc.[ ] hegel writes elsewhere: 'the finite, as implicitly other than what it is, is forced to surrender its own immediate or natural being, and to turn suddenly into its opposite.... dialectic is the universal and irresistible power before which nothing can stay.... _summum jus, summa injuria_--to drive an abstract right to excess is to commit injustice.... extreme anarchy and extreme despotism lead to one another. pride comes before a fall. too much wit outwits itself. joy brings tears, melancholy a sardonic smile.'[ ] to which one well might add that most human institutions, by the purely technical and professional manner in which they come to be administered, end by becoming obstacles to the very purposes which their founders had in view. once catch well the knack of this scheme of thought and you are lucky if you ever get away from it. it is all you can see. let any one pronounce anything, and your feeling of a contradiction being implied becomes a habit, almost a motor habit in some persons who symbolize by a stereotyped gesture the position, sublation, and final reinstatement involved. if you say 'two' or 'many,' your speech betrayeth you, for the very name collects them into one. if you express doubt, your expression contradicts its content, for the doubt itself is not doubted but affirmed. if you say 'disorder,' what is that but a certain bad kind of order? if you say 'indetermination,' you are determining just _that_. if you say 'nothing but the unexpected happens,' the unexpected becomes what you expect. if you say 'all things are relative,' to what is the all of them itself relative? if you say 'no more,' you have said more already, by implying a region in which no more is found; to know a limit as such is consequently already to have got beyond it; and so forth, throughout as many examples as one cares to cite. whatever you posit appears thus as one-sided, and negates its other, which, being equally one-sided, negates _it_; and, since this situation remains unstable, the two contradictory terms have together, according to hegel, to engender a higher truth of which they both appear as indispensable members, mutually mediating aspects of that higher concept of situation in thought. every higher total, however provisional and relative, thus reconciles the contradictions which its parts, abstracted from it, prove implicitly to contain. rationalism, you remember, is what i called the way of thinking that methodically subordinates parts to wholes, so hegel here is rationalistic through and through. the only whole by which _all_ contradictions are reconciled is for him the absolute whole of wholes, the all-inclusive reason to which hegel himself gave the name of the absolute idea, but which i shall continue to call 'the absolute' purely and simply, as i have done hitherto. empirical instances of the way in which higher unities reconcile contradictions are innumerable, so here again hegel's vision, taken merely impressionistically, agrees with countless facts. somehow life does, out of its total resources, find ways of satisfying opposites at once. this is precisely the paradoxical aspect which much of our civilization presents. peace we secure by armaments, liberty by laws and constitutions; simplicity and naturalness are the consummate result of artificial breeding and training; health, strength, and wealth are increased only by lavish use, expense, and wear. our mistrust of mistrust engenders our commercial system of credit; our tolerance of anarchistic and revolutionary utterances is the only way of lessening their danger; our charity has to say no to beggars in order not to defeat its own desires; the true epicurean has to observe great sobriety; the way to certainty lies through radical doubt; virtue signifies not innocence but the knowledge of sin and its overcoming; by obeying nature, we command her, etc. the ethical and the religious life are full of such contradictions held in solution. you hate your enemy?--well, forgive him, and thereby heap coals of fire on his head; to realize yourself, renounce yourself; to save your soul, first lose it; in short, die to live. from such massive examples one easily generalizes hegel's vision. roughly, his 'dialectic' picture is a fair account of a good deal of the world. it sounds paradoxical, but whenever you once place yourself at the point of view; of any higher synthesis, you see exactly how it does in a fashion take up opposites into itself. as an example, consider the conflict between our carnivorous appetites and hunting instincts and the sympathy with animals which our refinement is bringing in its train. we have found how to reconcile these opposites most effectively by establishing game-laws and close seasons and by keeping domestic herds. the creatures preserved thus are preserved for the sake of slaughter, truly, but if not preserved for that reason, not one of them would be alive at all. their will to live and our will to kill them thus harmoniously combine in this peculiar higher synthesis of domestication. merely as a reporter of certain empirical aspects of the actual, hegel, then, is great and true. but he aimed at being something far greater than an empirical reporter, so i must say something about that essential aspect of his thought. hegel was dominated by the notion of a truth that should prove incontrovertible, binding on every one, and certain, which should be _the_ truth, one, indivisible, eternal, objective, and necessary, to which all our particular thinking must lead as to its consummation. this is the dogmatic ideal, the postulate, uncriticised, undoubted, and unchallenged, of all rationalizers in philosophy. '_i have never doubted_,' a recent oxford writer says, that truth is universal and single and timeless, a single content or significance, one and whole and complete.[ ] advance in thinking, in the hegelian universe, has, in short, to proceed by the apodictic words _must be_ rather than by those inferior hypothetic words _may be_, which are all that empiricists can use. now hegel found that his idea of an immanent movement through the field of concepts by way of 'dialectic' negation played most beautifully into the hands of this rationalistic demand for something absolute and _inconcussum_ in the way of truth. it is easy to see how. if you affirm anything, for example that a is, and simply leave the matter thus, you leave it at the mercy of any one who may supervene and say 'not a, but b is.' if he does say so, your statement doesn't refute him, it simply contradicts him, just as his contradicts you. the only way of making your affirmation about a _self-securing_ is by getting it into a form which will by implication negate all possible negations in advance. the mere absence of negation is not enough; it must be present, but present with its fangs drawn. what you posit as a must already have cancelled the alternative or made it innocuous, by having negated it in advance. double negation is the only form of affirmation that fully plays into the hands of the dogmatic ideal. simply and innocently affirmative statements are good enough for empiricists, but unfit for rationalist use, lying open as they do to every accidental contradictor, and exposed to every puff of doubt. the _final_ truth must be something to which there is no imaginable alternative, because it contains all its possible alternatives inside of itself as moments already taken account of and overcome. whatever involves its own alternatives as elements of itself is, in a phrase often repeated, its 'own other,' made so by the _methode der absoluten negativität_. formally, this scheme of an organism of truth that has already fed as it were on its own liability to death, so that, death once dead for it, there's no more dying then, is the very fulfilment of the rationalistic aspiration. that one and only whole, with all its parts involved in it, negating and making one another impossible if abstracted and taken singly, but necessitating and holding one another in place if the whole of them be taken integrally, is the literal ideal sought after; it is the very diagram and picture of that notion of _the_ truth with no outlying alternative, to which nothing can be added, nor from it anything withdrawn, and all variations from which are absurd, which so dominates the human imagination. once we have taken in the features of this diagram that so successfully solves the world-old problem, the older ways of proving the necessity of judgments cease to give us satisfaction. hegel's way we think must be the right way. the true must be essentially the self-reflecting self-contained recurrent, that which secures itself by including its own other and negating it; that makes a spherical system with no loose ends hanging out for foreignness to get a hold upon; that is forever rounded in and closed, not strung along rectilinearly and open at its ends like that universe of simply collective or additive form which hegel calls the world of the bad infinite, and which is all that empiricism, starting with simply posited single parts and elements, is ever able to attain to. no one can possibly deny the sublimity of this hegelian conception. it is surely in the grand style, if there be such a thing as a grand style in philosophy. for us, however, it remains, so far, a merely formal and diagrammatic conception; for with the actual content of absolute truth, as hegel materially tries to set it forth, few disciples have been satisfied, and i do not propose to refer at all to the concreter parts of his philosophy. the main thing now is to grasp the generalized vision, and feel the authority of the abstract scheme of a statement self-secured by involving double negation. absolutists who make no use of hegel's own technique are really working by his method. you remember the proofs of the absolute which i instanced in my last lecture, lotze's and royce's proofs by _reductio ad absurdum_, to the effect that any smallest connexion rashly supposed in things will logically work out into absolute union, and any minimal disconnexion into absolute disunion,--these are really arguments framed on the hegelian pattern. the truth is that which you implicitly affirm in the very attempt to deny it; it is that from which every variation refutes itself by proving self-contradictory. this is the supreme insight of rationalism, and to-day the best _must-be's_ of rationalist argumentation are but so many attempts to communicate it to the hearer. thus, you see, my last lecture and this lecture make connexion again and we can consider hegel and the other absolutists to be supporting the same system. the next point i wish to dwell on is the part played by what i have called vicious intellectualism in this wonderful system's structure. rationalism in general thinks it gets the fulness of truth by turning away from sensation to conception, conception obviously giving the more universal and immutable picture. intellectualism in the vicious sense i have already defined as the habit of assuming that a concept _ex_cludes from any reality conceived by its means everything not included in the concept's definition. i called such intellectualism illegitimate as i found it used in lotze's, royce's, and bradley's proofs of the absolute (which absolute i consequently held to be non-proven by their arguments), and i left off by asserting my own belief that a pluralistic and incompletely integrated universe, describable only by the free use of the word 'some,' is a legitimate hypothesis. now hegel himself, in building up his method of double negation, offers the vividest possible example of this vice of intellectualism. every idea of a finite thing is of course a concept of _that_ thing and not a concept of anything else. but hegel treats this not being a concept of anything else as if it were _equivalent to the concept of anything else not being_, or in other words as if it were a denial or negation of everything else. then, as the other things, thus implicitly contradicted by the thing first conceived, also by the same law contradict _it_, the pulse of dialectic commences to beat and the famous triads begin to grind out the cosmos. if any one finds the process here to be a luminous one, he must be left to the illumination, he must remain an undisturbed hegelian. what others feel as the intolerable ambiguity, verbosity, and unscrupulousness of the master's way of deducing things, he will probably ascribe--since divine oracles are notoriously hard to interpret--to the 'difficulty' that habitually accompanies profundity. for my own part, there seems something grotesque and _saugrenu_ in the pretension of a style so disobedient to the first rules of sound communication between minds, to be the authentic mother-tongue of reason, and to keep step more accurately than any other style does with the absolute's own ways of thinking. i do not therefore take hegel's technical apparatus seriously at all. i regard him rather as one of those numerous original seers who can never learn how to articulate. his would-be coercive logic counts for nothing in my eyes; but that does not in the least impugn the philosophic importance of his conception of the absolute, if we take it merely hypothetically as one of the great types of cosmic vision. taken thus hypothetically, i wish to discuss it briefly. but before doing so i must call your attention to an odd peculiarity in the hegelian procedure. the peculiarity is one which will come before us again for a final judgment in my seventh lecture, so at present i only note it in passing. hegel, you remember, considers that the immediate finite data of experience are 'untrue' because they are not their own others. they are negated by what is external to them. the absolute is true because it and it only has no external environment, and has attained to being its own other. (these words sound queer enough, but those of you who know something of hegel's text will follow them.) granting his premise that to be true a thing must in some sort be its own other, everything hinges on whether he is right in holding that the several pieces of finite experience themselves cannot be said to be in any wise _their_ own others. when conceptually or intellectualistically treated, they of course cannot be their own others. every abstract concept as such excludes what it doesn't include, and if such concepts are adequate substitutes for reality's concrete pulses, the latter must square themselves with intellectualistic logic, and no one of them in any sense can claim to be its own other. if, however, the conceptual treatment of the flow of reality should prove for any good reason to be inadequate and to have a practical rather than a theoretical or speculative value, then an independent empirical look into the constitution of reality's pulses might possibly show that some of them _are_ their own others, and indeed are so in the self-same sense in which the absolute is maintained to be so by hegel. when we come to my sixth lecture, on professor bergson, i shall in effect defend this very view, strengthening my thesis by his authority. i am unwilling to say anything more about the point at this time, and what i have just said of it is only a sort of surveyor's note of where our present position lies in the general framework of these lectures. let us turn now at last to the great question of fact, _does the absolute exist or not_? to which all our previous discussion has been preliminary. i may sum up that discussion by saying that whether there really be an absolute or not, no one makes himself absurd or self-contradictory by doubting or denying it. the charges of self-contradiction, where they do not rest on purely verbal reasoning, rest on a vicious intellectualism. i will not recapitulate my criticisms. i will simply ask you to change the _venue_, and to discuss the absolute now as if it were only an open hypothesis. as such, is it more probable or more improbable? but first of all i must parenthetically ask you to distinguish the notion of the absolute carefully from that of another object with which it is liable to become heedlessly entangled. that other object is the 'god' of common people in their religion, and the creator-god of orthodox christian theology. only thoroughgoing monists or pantheists believe in the absolute. the god of our popular christianity is but one member of a pluralistic system. he and we stand outside of each other, just as the devil, the saints, and the angels stand outside of both of us. i can hardly conceive of anything more different from the absolute than the god, say, of david or of isaiah. _that_ god is an essentially finite being _in_ the cosmos, not with the cosmos in him, and indeed he has a very local habitation there, and very one-sided local and personal attachments. if it should prove probable that the absolute does not exist, it will not follow in the slightest degree that a god like that of david, isaiah, or jesus may not exist, or may not be the most important existence in the universe for us to acknowledge. i pray you, then, not to confound the two ideas as you listen to the criticisms i shall have to proffer. i hold to the finite god, for reasons which i shall touch on in the seventh of these lectures; but i hold that his rival and competitor--i feel almost tempted to say his enemy--the absolute, is not only not forced on us by logic, but that it is an improbable hypothesis. the great claim made for the absolute is that by supposing it we make the world appear more rational. any hypothesis that does that will always be accepted as more probably true than an hypothesis that makes the world appear irrational. men are once for all so made that they prefer a rational world to believe in and to live in. but rationality has at least four dimensions, intellectual, aesthetical, moral, and practical; and to find a world rational to the maximal degree _in all these respects simultaneously_ is no easy matter. intellectually, the world of mechanical materialism is the most rational, for we subject its events to mathematical calculation. but the mechanical world is ugly, as arithmetic is ugly, and it is non-moral. morally, the theistic world is rational enough, but full of intellectual frustrations. the practical world of affairs, in its turn, so supremely rational to the politician, the military man, or the man of conquering business-faculty that he never would vote to change the type of it, is irrational to moral and artistic temperaments; so that whatever demand for rationality we find satisfied by a philosophic hypothesis, we are liable to find some other demand for rationality unsatisfied by the same hypothesis. the rationality we gain in one coin we thus pay for in another; and the problem accordingly seems at first sight to resolve itself into that of getting a conception which will yield the largest _balance_ of rationality rather than one which will yield perfect rationality of every description. in general, it may be said that if a man's conception of the world lets loose any action in him that is easy, or any faculty which he is fond of exercising, he will deem it rational in so far forth, be the faculty that of computing, fighting, lecturing, classifying, framing schematic tabulations, getting the better end of a bargain, patiently waiting and enduring, preaching, joke-making, or what you like. albeit the absolute is defined as being necessarily an embodiment of objectively perfect rationality, it is fair to its english advocates to say that those who have espoused the hypothesis most concretely and seriously have usually avowed the irrationality to their own minds of certain elements in it. probably the weightiest contribution to our feeling of the rationality of the universe which the notion of the absolute brings is the assurance that however disturbed the surface may be, at bottom all is well with the cosmos--central peace abiding at the heart of endless agitation. this conception is rational in many ways, beautiful aesthetically, beautiful intellectually (could we only follow it into detail), and beautiful morally, if the enjoyment of security can be accounted moral. practically it is less beautiful; for, as we saw in our last lecture, in representing the deepest reality of the world as static and without a history, it loosens the world's hold upon our sympathies and leaves the soul of it foreign. nevertheless it does give _peace_, and that kind of rationality is so paramountly demanded by men that to the end of time there will be absolutists, men who choose belief in a static eternal, rather than admit that the finite world of change and striving, even with a god as one of the strivers, is itself eternal. for such minds professor royce's words will always be the truest: 'the very presence of ill in the temporal order is the condition of the perfection of the eternal order.... we long for the absolute only in so far as in us the absolute also longs, and seeks through our very temporal striving, the peace that is nowhere in time, but only, and yet absolutely, in eternity. were there no longing in time there would be no peace in eternity.... god [_i.e._ the absolute] who here in me aims at what i now temporally miss, not only possesses in the eternal world the goal after which i strive, but comes to possess it even through and because of my sorrow. through this my tribulation the absolute triumph then is won.... in the absolute i am fulfilled. yet my very fulfilment demands and therefore can transcend this sorrow.'[ ] royce is particularly felicitous in his ability to cite parts of finite experience to which he finds his picture of this absolute experience analogous. but it is hard to portray the absolute at all without rising into what might be called the 'inspired' style of language--i use the word not ironically, but prosaically and descriptively, to designate the only literary form that goes with the kind of emotion that the absolute arouses. one can follow the pathway of reasoning soberly enough,[ ] but the picture itself has to be effulgent. this admirable faculty of transcending, whilst inwardly preserving, every contrariety, is the absolute's characteristic form of rationality. we are but syllables in the mouth of the lord; if the whole sentence is divine, each syllable is absolutely what it should be, in spite of all appearances. in making up the balance for or against absolutism, this emotional value weights heavily the credit side of the account. the trouble is that we are able to see so little into the positive detail of it, and that if once admitted not to be coercively proven by the intellectualist arguments, it remains only a hypothetic possibility. on the debit side of the account the absolute, taken seriously, and not as a mere name for our right occasionally to drop the strenuous mood and take a moral holiday, introduces all those tremendous irrationalities into the universe which a frankly pluralistic theism escapes, but which have been flung as a reproach at every form of monistic theism or pantheism. it introduces a speculative 'problem of evil' namely, and leaves us wondering why the perfection of the absolute should require just such particular hideous forms of life as darken the day for our human imaginations. if they were forced on it by something alien, and to 'overcome' them the absolute had still to keep hold of them, we could understand its feeling of triumph, though we, so far as we were ourselves among the elements overcome, could acquiesce but sullenly in the resultant situation, and would never just have chosen it as the most rational one conceivable. but the absolute is represented as a being without environment, upon which nothing alien can be forced, and which has spontaneously chosen from within to give itself the spectacle of all that evil rather than a spectacle with less evil in it.[ ] its perfection is represented as the source of things, and yet the first effect of that perfection is the tremendous imperfection of all finite experience. in whatever sense the word 'rationality' may be taken, it is vain to contend that the impression made on our finite minds by such a way of representing things is altogether rational. theologians have felt its irrationality acutely, and the 'fall,' the predestination, and the election which the situation involves have given them more trouble than anything else in their attempt to pantheize christianity. the whole business remains a puzzle, both intellectually and morally. grant that the spectacle or world-romance offered to itself by the absolute is in the absolute's eyes perfect. why would not the world be more perfect by having the affair remain in just those terms, and by not having any finite spectators to come in and add to what was perfect already their innumerable imperfect manners of seeing the same spectacle? suppose the entire universe to consist of one superb copy of a book, fit for the ideal reader. is that universe improved or deteriorated by having myriads of garbled and misprinted separate leaves and chapters also created, giving false impressions of the book to whoever looks at them? to say the least, the balance of rationality is not obviously in favor of such added mutilations. so this question becomes urgent: why, the absolute's own total vision of things being so rational, was it necessary to comminute it into all these coexisting inferior fragmentary visions? leibnitz in his theodicy represents god as limited by an antecedent reason in things which makes certain combinations logically incompatible, certain goods impossible. he surveys in advance all the universes he might create, and by an act of what leibnitz calls his antecedent will he chooses our actual world as the one in which the evil, unhappily necessary anyhow, is at its minimum. it is the best of all the worlds that are possible, therefore, but by no means the most abstractly desirable world. having made this mental choice, god next proceeds to what leibnitz calls his act of consequent or decretory will: he says '_fiat_' and the world selected springs into objective being, with all the finite creatures in it to suffer from its imperfections without sharing in its creator's atoning vision. lotze has made some penetrating remarks on this conception of leibnitz's, and they exactly fall in with what i say of the absolutist conception. the world projected out of the creative mind by the _fiat_, and existing in detachment from its author, is a sphere of being where the parts realize themselves only singly. if the divine value of them is evident only when they are collectively looked at, then, lotze rightly says, the world surely becomes poorer and not richer for god's utterance of the _fiat_. he might much better have remained contented with his merely antecedent choice of the scheme, without following it up by a creative decree. the scheme _as such_ was admirable; it could only lose by being translated into reality.[ ] why, i similarly ask, should the absolute ever have lapsed from the perfection of its own integral experience of things, and refracted itself into all our finite experiences? it is but fair to recent english absolutists to say that many of them have confessed the imperfect rationality of the absolute from this point of view. mr. mctaggart, for example, writes: 'does not our very failure to perceive the perfection of the universe destroy it? ... in so far as we do not see the perfection of the universe, we are not perfect ourselves. and as we are parts of the universe, that cannot be perfect.'[ ] and mr. joachim finds just the same difficulty. calling the hypothesis of the absolute by the name of the 'coherence theory of truth,' he calls the problem of understanding how the complete coherence of all things in the absolute should involve as a necessary moment in its self-maintenance the self-assertion of the finite minds, a self-assertion which in its extreme form is error,--he calls this problem, i say, an insoluble puzzle. if truth be the universal _fons et origo_, how does error slip in? 'the coherence theory of truth,' he concludes, 'may thus be said to suffer shipwreck at the very entrance of the harbor.'[ ] yet in spite of this rather bad form of irrationality, mr. joachim stoutly asserts his 'immediate certainty'[ ] of the theory shipwrecked, the correctness of which he says he has 'never doubted.' this candid confession of a fixed attitude of faith in the absolute, which even one's own criticisms and perplexities fail to disturb, seems to me very significant. not only empiricists, but absolutists also, would all, if they were as candid as this author, confess that the prime thing in their philosophy is their vision of a truth possible, which they then employ their reasoning to convert, as best it can, into a certainty or probability. i can imagine a believer in the absolute retorting at this point that _he_ at any rate is not dealing with mere probabilities, but that the nature of things logically requires the multitudinous erroneous copies, and that therefore the universe cannot be the absolute's book alone. for, he will ask, is not the absolute defined as the total consciousness of everything that is? must not its field of view consist of parts? and what can the parts of a total consciousness be unless they be fractional consciousnesses? our finite minds _must_ therefore coexist with the absolute mind. we are its constituents, and it cannot live without us.--but if any one of you feels tempted to retort in this wise, let me remind you that you are frankly employing pluralistic weapons, and thereby giving up the absolutist cause. the notion that the absolute is made of constituents on which its being depends is the rankest empiricism. the absolute as such has _objects_, not constituents, and if the objects develop selfhoods upon their own several accounts, those selfhoods must be set down as facts additional to the absolute consciousness, and not as elements implicated in its definition. the absolute is a rationalist conception. rationalism goes from wholes to parts, and always assumes wholes to be self-sufficing.[ ] my conclusion, so far, then, is this, that altho the hypothesis of the absolute, in yielding a certain kind of religious peace, performs a most important rationalizing function, it nevertheless, from the intellectual point of view, remains decidedly irrational. the _ideally_ perfect whole is certainly that whole of which the _parts also are perfect_--if we can depend on logic for anything, we can depend on it for that definition. the absolute is defined as the ideally perfect whole, yet most of its parts, if not all, are admittedly imperfect. evidently the conception lacks internal consistency, and yields us a problem rather than a solution. it creates a speculative puzzle, the so-called mystery of evil and of error, from which a pluralistic metaphysic is entirely free. in any pluralistic metaphysic, the problems that evil presents are practical, not speculative. not why evil should exist at all, but how we can lessen the actual amount of it, is the sole question we need there consider. 'god,' in the religious life of ordinary men, is the name not of the whole of things, heaven forbid, but only of the ideal tendency in things, believed in as a superhuman person who calls us to co-operate in his purposes, and who furthers ours if they are worthy. he works in an external environment, has limits, and has enemies. when john mill said that the notion of god's omnipotence must be given up, if god is to be kept as a religious object, he was surely accurately right; yet so prevalent is the lazy monism that idly haunts the region of god's name, that so simple and truthful a saying was generally treated as a paradox: god, it was said, _could_ not be finite. i believe that the only god worthy of the name _must_ be finite, and i shall return to this point in a later lecture. if the absolute exist in addition--and the hypothesis must, in spite of its irrational features, still be left open--then the absolute is only the wider cosmic whole of which our god is but the most ideal portion, and which in the more usual human sense is hardly to be termed a religious hypothesis at all. 'cosmic emotion' is the better name for the reaction it may awaken. observe that all the irrationalities and puzzles which the absolute gives rise to, and from which the finite god remains free, are due to the fact that the absolute has nothing, absolutely nothing, outside of itself. the finite god whom i contrast with it may conceivably have _almost_ nothing outside of himself; he may already have triumphed over and absorbed all but the minutest fraction of the universe; but that fraction, however small, reduces him to the status of a relative being, and in principle the universe is saved from all the irrationalities incidental to absolutism. the only irrationality left would be the irrationality of which pluralism as such is accused, and of this i hope to say a word more later. i have tired you with so many subtleties in this lecture that i will add only two other counts to my indictment. first, then, let me remind you that _the absolute is useless for deductive purposes_. it gives us absolute safety if you will, but it is compatible with every relative danger. you cannot enter the phenomenal world with the notion of it in your grasp, and name beforehand any detail which you are likely to meet there. whatever the details of experience may prove to be, _after the fact of them_ the absolute will adopt them. it is an hypothesis that functions retrospectively only, not prospectively. _that_, whatever it may be, will have been in point of fact the sort of world which the absolute was pleased to offer to itself as a spectacle. again, the absolute is always represented idealistically, as the all-knower. thinking this view consistently out leads one to frame an almost ridiculous conception of the absolute mind, owing to the enormous mass of unprofitable information which it would then seem obliged to carry. one of the many _reductiones ad absurdum_ of pluralism by which idealism thinks it proves the absolute one is as follows: let there be many facts; but since on idealist principles facts exist only by being known, the many facts will therefore mean many knowers. but that there are so many knowers is itself a fact, which in turn requires _its_ knower, so the one absolute knower has eventually to be brought in. _all_ facts lead to him. if it be a fact that this table is not a chair, not a rhinoceros, not a logarithm, not a mile away from the door, not worth five hundred pounds sterling, not a thousand centuries old, the absolute must even now be articulately aware of all these negations. along with what everything is it must also be conscious of everything which it is not. this infinite atmosphere of explicit negativity--observe that it has to be explicit--around everything seems to us so useless an encumbrance as to make the absolute still more foreign to our sympathy. furthermore, if it be a fact that certain ideas are silly, the absolute has to have already thought the silly ideas to establish them in silliness. the rubbish in its mind would thus appear easily to outweigh in amount the more desirable material. one would expect it fairly to burst with such an obesity, plethora, and superfoetation of useless information.[ ] i will spare you further objections. the sum of it all is that the absolute is not forced on our belief by logic, that it involves features of irrationality peculiar to itself, and that a thinker to whom it does not come as an 'immediate certainty' (to use mr. joachim's words), is in no way bound to treat it as anything but an emotionally rather sublime hypothesis. as such, it might, with all its defects, be, on account of its peace-conferring power and its formal grandeur, more rational than anything else in the field. but meanwhile the strung-along unfinished world in time is its rival: _reality may exist in distributive form, in the shape not of an all but of a set of eaches, just as it seems to_--this is the anti-absolutist hypothesis. _prima facie_ there is this in favor of the eaches, that they are at any rate real enough to have made themselves at least _appear_ to every one, whereas the absolute has as yet appeared immediately to only a few mystics, and indeed to them very ambiguously. the advocates of the absolute assure us that any distributive form of being is infected and undermined by self-contradiction. if we are unable to assimilate their arguments, and we have been unable, the only course we can take, it seems to me, is to let the absolute bury the absolute, and to seek reality in more promising directions, even among the details of the finite and the immediately given. if these words of mine sound in bad taste to some of you, or even sacrilegious, i am sorry. perhaps the impression may be mitigated by what i have to say in later lectures. lecture iv concerning fechner the prestige of the absolute has rather crumbled in our hands. the logical proofs of it miss fire; the portraits which its best court-painters show of it are featureless and foggy in the extreme; and, apart from the cold comfort of assuring us that with _it_ all is well, and that to see that all is well with us also we need only rise to its eternal point of view, it yields us no relief whatever. it introduces, on the contrary, into philosophy and theology certain poisonous difficulties of which but for its intrusion we never should have heard. but if we drop the absolute out of the world, must we then conclude that the world contains nothing better in the way of consciousness than our consciousness? is our whole instinctive belief in higher presences, our persistent inner turning towards divine companionship, to count for nothing? is it but the pathetic illusion of beings with incorrigibly social and imaginative minds? such a negative conclusion would, i believe, be desperately hasty, a sort of pouring out of the child with the bath. logically it is possible to believe in superhuman beings without identifying them with the absolute at all. the treaty of offensive and defensive alliance which certain groups of the christian clergy have recently made with our transcendentalist philosophers seems to me to be based on a well-meaning but baleful mistake. neither the jehovah of the old testament nor the heavenly father of the new has anything in common with the absolute except that they are all three greater than man; and if you say that the notion of the absolute is what the gods of abraham, of david, and of jesus, after first developing into each other, were inevitably destined to develop into in more reflective and modern minds, i reply that although in certain specifically philosophical minds this may have been the case, in minds more properly to be termed religious the development has followed quite another path. the whole history of evangelical christianity is there to prove it. i propose in these lectures to plead for that other line of development. to set the doctrine of the absolute in its proper framework, so that it shall not fill the whole welkin and exclude all alternative possibilities of higher thought--as it seems to do for many students who approach it with a limited previous acquaintance with philosophy--i will contrast it with a system which, abstractly considered, seems at first to have much in common with absolutism, but which, when taken concretely and temperamentally, really stands at the opposite pole. i refer to the philosophy of gustav theodor fechner, a writer but little known as yet to english readers, but destined, i am persuaded, to wield more and more influence as time goes on. it is the intense concreteness of fechner, his fertility of detail, which fills me with an admiration which i should like to make this audience share. among the philosophic cranks of my acquaintance in the past was a lady all the tenets of whose system i have forgotten except one. had she been born in the ionian archipelago some three thousand years ago, that one doctrine would probably have made her name sure of a place in every university curriculum and examination paper. the world, she said, is composed of only two elements, the thick, namely, and the thin. no one can deny the truth of this analysis, as far as it goes (though in the light of our contemporary knowledge of nature it has itself a rather 'thin' sound), and it is nowhere truer than in that part of the world called philosophy. i am sure, for example, that many of you, listening to what poor account i have been able to give of transcendental idealism, have received an impression of its arguments being strangely thin, and of the terms it leaves us with being shiveringly thin wrappings for so thick and burly a world as this. some of you of course will charge the thinness to my exposition; but thin as that has been, i believe the doctrines reported on to have been thinner. from green to haldane the absolute proposed to us to straighten out the confusions of the thicket of experience in which our life is passed remains a pure abstraction which hardly any one tries to make a whit concreter. if we open green, we get nothing but the transcendental ego of apperception (kant's name for the fact that to be counted in experience a thing has to be witnessed), blown up into a sort of timeless soap-bubble large enough to mirror the whole universe. nature, green keeps insisting, consists only in relations, and these imply the action of a mind that is eternal; a self-distinguishing consciousness which itself escapes from the relations by which it determines other things. present to whatever is in succession, it is not in succession itself. if we take the cairds, they tell us little more of the principle of the universe--it is always a return into the identity of the self from the difference of its objects. it separates itself from them and so becomes conscious of them in their separation from one another, while at the same time it binds them together as elements in one higher self-consciousness. this seems the very quintessence of thinness; and the matter hardly grows thicker when we gather, after enormous amounts of reading, that the great enveloping self in question is absolute reason as such, and that as such it is characterized by the habit of using certain jejune 'categories' with which to perform its eminent relating work. the whole active material of natural fact is tried out, and only the barest intellectualistic formalism remains. hegel tried, as we saw, to make the system concreter by making the relations between things 'dialectic,' but if we turn to those who use his name most worshipfully, we find them giving up all the particulars of his attempt, and simply praising his intention--much as in our manner we have praised it ourselves. mr. haldane, for example, in his wonderfully clever gifford lectures, praises hegel to the skies, but what he tells of him amounts to little more than this, that 'the categories in which the mind arranges its experiences, and gives meaning to them, the universals in which the particulars are grasped in the individual, are a logical chain, in which the first presupposes the last, and the last is its presupposition and its truth.' he hardly tries at all to thicken this thin logical scheme. he says indeed that absolute mind in itself, and absolute mind in its hetereity or otherness, under the distinction which it sets up of itself from itself, have as their real _prius_ absolute mind in synthesis; and, this being absolute mind's true nature, its dialectic character must show itself in such concrete forms as goethe's and wordsworth's poetry, as well as in religious forms. 'the nature of god, the nature of absolute mind, is to exhibit the triple movement of dialectic, and so the nature of god as presented in religion must be a triplicity, a trinity.' but beyond thus naming goethe and wordsworth and establishing the trinity, mr. haldane's hegelianism carries us hardly an inch into the concrete detail of the world we actually inhabit. equally thin is mr. taylor, both in his principles and in their results. following mr. bradley, he starts by assuring us that reality cannot be self-contradictory, but to be related to anything really outside of one's self is to be self-contradictory, so the ultimate reality must be a single all-inclusive systematic whole. yet all he can say of this whole at the end of his excellently written book is that the notion of it 'can make no addition to our information and can of itself supply no motives for practical endeavor.' mr. mctaggart treats us to almost as thin a fare. 'the main practical interest of hegel's philosophy,' he says, 'is to be found in the abstract certainty which the logic gives us that all reality is rational and righteous, even when we cannot see in the least how it is so.... not that it shows us how the facts around us are good, not that it shows us how we can make them better, but that it proves that they, like other reality, are _sub specie eternitatis_, perfectly good, and _sub specie temporis_, destined to become perfectly good.' here again, no detail whatever, only the abstract certainty that whatever the detail may prove to be, it will be good. common non-dialectical men have already this certainty as a result of the generous vital enthusiasm about the universe with which they are born. the peculiarity of transcendental philosophy is its sovereign contempt for merely vital functions like enthusiasm, and its pretension to turn our simple and immediate trusts and faiths into the form of logically mediated certainties, to question which would be absurd. but the whole basis on which mr. mctaggart's own certainty so solidly rests, settles down into the one nutshell of an assertion into which he puts hegel's gospel, namely, that in every bit of experience and thought, however finite, the whole of reality (the absolute idea, as hegel calls it) is 'implicitly present.' this indeed is hegel's _vision_, and hegel thought that the details of his dialectic proved its truth. but disciples who treat the details of the proof as unsatisfactory and yet cling to the vision, are surely, in spite of their pretension to a more rational consciousness, no better than common men with their enthusiasms or deliberately adopted faiths. we have ourselves seen some of the weakness of the monistic proofs. mr. mctaggart picks plenty of holes of his own in hegel's logic, and finally concludes that 'all true philosophy must be mystical, not indeed in its methods but in its final conclusions,' which is as much as to say that the rationalistic methods leave us in the lurch, in spite of all their superiority, and that in the end vision and faith must eke them out. but how abstract and thin is here the vision, to say nothing of the faith! the whole of reality, explicitly absent from our finite experiences, must nevertheless be present in them all implicitly, altho no one of us can ever see how--the bare word 'implicit' here bearing the whole pyramid of the monistic system on its slender point. mr. joachim's monistic system of truth rests on an even slenderer point.--_i have never doubted_,' he says, 'that universal and timeless truth is a single content or significance, one and whole and complete,' and he candidly confesses the failure of rationalistic attempts 'to raise this immediate certainty' to the level of reflective knowledge. there is, in short, no mediation for him between the truth in capital letters and all the little 'lower-case' truths--and errors--which life presents. the psychological fact that he never has 'doubted' is enough. the whole monistic pyramid, resting on points as thin as these, seems to me to be a _machtspruch_, a product of will far more than one of reason. unity is good, therefore things _shall_ cohere; they _shall_ be one; there _shall_ be categories to make them one, no matter what empirical disjunctions may appear. in hegel's own writings, the _shall-be_ temper is ubiquitous and towering; it overrides verbal and logical resistances alike. hegel's error, as professor royce so well says, 'lay not in introducing logic into passion,' as some people charge, 'but in conceiving the logic of passion as the only logic.... he is [thus] suggestive,' royce says, 'but never final. his system as a system has crumbled, but his vital comprehension of our life remains forever.'[ ] that vital comprehension we have already seen. it is that there is a sense in which real things are not merely their own bare selves, but may vaguely be treated as also their own others, and that ordinary logic, since it denies this, must be overcome. ordinary logic denies this because it substitutes concepts for real things, and concepts _are_ their own bare selves and nothing else. what royce calls hegel's 'system' was hegel's attempt to make us believe that he was working by concepts and grinding out a higher style of logic, when in reality sensible experiences, hypotheses, and passion furnished him with all his results. what i myself may mean by things being their own others, we shall see in a later lecture. it is now time to take our look at fechner, whose thickness is a refreshing contrast to the thin, abstract, indigent, and threadbare appearance, the starving, school-room aspect, which the speculations of most of our absolutist philosophers present. there is something really weird and uncanny in the contrast between the abstract pretensions of rationalism and what rationalistic methods concretely can do. if the 'logical prius' of our mind were really the 'implicit presence' of the whole 'concrete universal,' the whole of reason, or reality, or spirit, or the absolute idea, or whatever it may be called, in all our finite thinking, and if this reason worked (for example) by the dialectical method, doesn't it seem odd that in the greatest instance of rationalization mankind has known, in 'science,' namely, the dialectical method should never once have been tried? not a solitary instance of the use of it in science occurs to my mind. hypotheses, and deductions from these, controlled by sense-observations and analogies with what we know elsewhere, are to be thanked for all of science's results. fechner used no methods but these latter ones in arguing for his metaphysical conclusions about reality--but let me first rehearse a few of the facts about his life. born in , the son of a poor country pastor in saxony, he lived from to , when he died, seventy years therefore, at leipzig, a typical _gelehrter_ of the old-fashioned german stripe. his means were always scanty, so his only extravagances could be in the way of thought, but these were gorgeous ones. he passed his medical examinations at leipzig university at the age of twenty-one, but decided, instead of becoming a doctor, to devote himself to physical science. it was ten years before he was made professor of physics, although he soon was authorized to lecture. meanwhile, he had to make both ends meet, and this he did by voluminous literary labors. he translated, for example, the four volumes of biot's treatise on physics, and the six of thénard's work on chemistry, and took care of their enlarged editions later. he edited repertories of chemistry and physics, a pharmaceutical journal, and an encyclopaedia in eight volumes, of which he wrote about one third. he published physical treatises and experimental investigations of his own, especially in electricity. electrical measurements, as you know, are the basis of electrical science, and fechner's measurements in galvanism, performed with the simplest self-made apparatus, are classic to this day. during this time he also published a number of half-philosophical, half-humorous writings, which have gone through several editions, under the name of dr. mises, besides poems, literary and artistic essays, and other occasional articles. but overwork, poverty, and an eye-trouble produced by his observations on after-images in the retina (also a classic piece of investigation) produced in fechner, then about thirty-eight years old, a terrific attack of nervous prostration with painful hyperaesthesia of all the functions, from which he suffered three years, cut off entirely from active life. present-day medicine would have classed poor fechner's malady quickly enough, as partly a habit-neurosis, but its severity was such that in his day it was treated as a visitation incomprehensible in its malignity; and when he suddenly began to get well, both fechner and others treated the recovery as a sort of divine miracle. this illness, bringing fechner face to face with inner desperation, made a great crisis in his life. 'had i not then clung to the faith,' he writes, 'that clinging to faith would somehow or other work its reward, _so hätte ich jene zeit nicht ausgehalten_.' his religious and cosmological faiths saved him--thenceforward one great aim with him was to work out and communicate these faiths to the world. he did so on the largest scale; but he did many other things too ere he died. a book on the atomic theory, classic also; four elaborate mathematical and experimental volumes on what he called psychophysics--many persons consider fechner to have practically founded scientific psychology in the first of these books; a volume on organic evolution, and two works on experimental aesthetics, in which again fechner is considered by some judges to have laid the foundations of a new science, must be included among these other performances. of the more religious and philosophical works, i shall immediately give a further account. all leipzig mourned him when he died, for he was the pattern of the ideal german scholar, as daringly original in his thought as he was homely in his life, a modest, genial, laborious slave to truth and learning, and withal the owner of an admirable literary style of the vernacular sort. the materialistic generation, that in the fifties and sixties called his speculations fantastic, had been replaced by one with greater liberty of imagination, and a preyer, a wundt, a paulsen, and a lasswitz could now speak of fechner as their master. his mind was indeed one of those multitudinously organized cross-roads of truth which are occupied only at rare intervals by children of men, and from which nothing is either too far or too near to be seen in due perspective. patientest observation, exactest mathematics, shrewdest discrimination, humanest feeling, flourished in him on the largest scale, with no apparent detriment to one another. he was in fact a philosopher in the 'great' sense, altho he cared so much less than most philosophers care for abstractions of the 'thin' order. for him the abstract lived in the concrete, and the hidden motive of all he did was to bring what he called the daylight view of the world into ever greater evidence, that daylight view being this, that the whole universe in its different spans and wave-lengths, exclusions and envelopments, is everywhere alive and conscious. it has taken fifty years for his chief book, 'zend-avesta,' to pass into a second edition ( ). 'one swallow,' he cheerfully writes, 'does not make a summer. but the first swallow would not come unless the summer were coming; and for me that summer means my daylight view some time prevailing.' the original sin, according to fechner, of both our popular and our scientific thinking, is our inveterate habit of regarding the spiritual not as the rule but as an exception in the midst of nature. instead of believing our life to be fed at the breasts of the greater life, our individuality to be sustained by the greater individuality, which must necessarily have more consciousness and more independence than all that it brings forth, we habitually treat whatever lies outside of our life as so much slag and ashes of life only; or if we believe in a divine spirit, we fancy him on the one side as bodiless, and nature as soulless on the other. what comfort, or peace, fechner asks, can come from such a doctrine? the flowers wither at its breath, the stars turn into stone; our own body grows unworthy of our spirit and sinks to a tenement for carnal senses only. the book of nature turns into a volume on mechanics, in which whatever has life is treated as a sort of anomaly; a great chasm of separation yawns between us and all that is higher than ourselves; and god becomes a thin nest of abstractions. fechner's great instrument for vivifying the daylight view is analogy; not a rationalistic argument is to be found in all his many pages--only reasonings like those which men continually use in practical life. for example: my house is built by some one, the world too is built by some one. the world is greater than my house, it must be a greater some one who built the world. my body moves by the influence of my feeling and will; the sun, moon, sea, and wind, being themselves more powerful, move by the influence of some more powerful feeling and will. i live now, and change from one day to another; i shall live hereafter, and change still more, etc. bain defines genius as the power of seeing analogies. the number that fechner could perceive was prodigious; but he insisted on the differences as well. neglect to make allowance for these, he said, is the common fallacy in analogical reasoning. most of us, for example, reasoning justly that, since all the minds we know are connected with bodies, therefore god's mind should be connected with a body, proceed to suppose that that body must be just an animal body over again, and paint an altogether human picture of god. but all that the analogy comports is _a_ body--the particular features of _our_ body are adaptations to a habitat so different from god's that if god have a physical body at all, it must be utterly different from ours in structure. throughout his writings fechner makes difference and analogy walk abreast, and by his extraordinary power of noticing both, he converts what would ordinarily pass for objections to his conclusions into factors of their support. the vaster orders of mind go with the vaster orders of body. the entire earth on which we live must have, according to fechner, its own collective consciousness. so must each sun, moon, and planet; so must the whole solar system have its own wider consciousness, in which the consciousness of our earth plays one part. so has the entire starry system as such its consciousness; and if that starry system be not the sum of all that _is_, materially considered, then that whole system, along with whatever else may be, is the body of that absolutely totalized consciousness of the universe to which men give the name of god. speculatively fechner is thus a monist in his theology; but there is room in his universe for every grade of spiritual being between man and the final all-inclusive god; and in suggesting what the positive content of all this super-humanity may be, he hardly lets his imagination fly beyond simple spirits of the planetary order. the earth-soul he passionately believes in; he treats the earth as our special human guardian angel; we can pray to the earth as men pray to their saints; but i think that in his system, as in so many of the actual historic theologies, the supreme god marks only a sort of limit of enclosure of the worlds above man. he is left thin and abstract in his majesty, men preferring to carry on their personal transactions with the many less remote and abstract messengers and mediators whom the divine order provides. i shall ask later whether the abstractly monistic turn which fechner's speculations took was necessitated by logic. i believe it not to have been required. meanwhile let me lead you a little more into the detail of his thought. inevitably one does him miserable injustice by summarizing and abridging him. for altho the type of reasoning he employs is almost childlike for simplicity, and his bare conclusions can be written on a single page, the _power_ of the man is due altogether to the profuseness of his concrete imagination, to the multitude of the points which he considers successively, to the cumulative effect of his learning, of his thoroughness, and of the ingenuity of his detail, to his admirably homely style, to the sincerity with which his pages glow, and finally to the impression he gives of a man who doesn't live at second-hand, but who _sees_, who in fact speaks as one having authority, and not as if he were one of the common herd of professorial philosophic scribes. abstractly set down, his most important conclusion for my purpose in these lectures is that the constitution of the world is identical throughout. in ourselves, visual consciousness goes with our eyes, tactile consciousness with our skin. but altho neither skin nor eye knows aught of the sensations of the other, they come together and figure in some sort of relation and combination in the more inclusive consciousness which each of us names his _self_. quite similarly, then, says fechner, we must suppose that my consciousness of myself and yours of yourself, altho in their immediacy they keep separate and know nothing of each other, are yet known and used together in a higher consciousness, that of the human race, say, into which they enter as constituent parts. similarly, the whole human and animal kingdoms come together as conditions of a consciousness of still wider scope. this combines in the soul of the earth with the consciousness of the vegetable kingdom, which in turn contributes its share of experience to that of the whole solar system, and so on from synthesis to synthesis and height to height, till an absolutely universal consciousness is reached. a vast analogical series, in which the basis of the analogy consists of facts directly observable in ourselves. the supposition of an earth-consciousness meets a strong instinctive prejudice which fechner ingeniously tries to overcome. man's mind is the highest consciousness upon the earth, we think--the earth itself being in all ways man's inferior. how should its consciousness, if it have one, be superior to his? what are the marks of superiority which we are tempted to use here? if we look more carefully into them, fechner points out that the earth possesses each and all of them more perfectly than we. he considers in detail the points of difference between us, and shows them all to make for the earth's higher rank. i will touch on only a few of these points. one of them of course is independence of other external beings. external to the earth are only the other heavenly bodies. all the things on which we externally depend for life--air, water, plant and animal food, fellow men, etc.--are included in her as her constituent parts. she is self-sufficing in a million respects in which we are not so. we depend on her for almost everything, she on us for but a small portion of her history. she swings us in her orbit from winter to summer and revolves us from day into night and from night into day. complexity in unity is another sign of superiority. the total earth's complexity far exceeds that of any organism, for she includes all our organisms in herself, along with an infinite number of things that our organisms fail to include. yet how simple and massive are the phases of her own proper life! as the total bearing of any animal is sedate and tranquil compared with the agitation of its blood corpuscles, so is the earth a sedate and tranquil being compared with the animals whom she supports. to develop from within, instead of being fashioned from without, is also counted as something superior in men's eyes. an egg is a higher style of being than a piece of clay which an external modeler makes into the image of a bird. well, the earth's history develops from within. it is like that of a wonderful egg which the sun's heat, like that of a mother-hen, has stimulated to its cycles of evolutionary change. individuality of type, and difference from other beings of its type, is another mark of rank. the earth differs from every other planet, and as a class planetary beings are extraordinarily distinct from other beings. long ago the earth was called an animal; but a planet is a higher class of being than either man or animal; not only quantitatively greater, like a vaster and more awkward whale or elephant, but a being whose enormous size requires an altogether different plan of life. our animal organization comes from our inferiority. our need of moving to and fro, of stretching our limbs and bending our bodies, shows only our defect. what are our legs but crutches, by means of which, with restless efforts, we go hunting after the things we have not inside of ourselves. but the earth is no such cripple; why should she who already possesses within herself the things we so painfully pursue, have limbs analogous to ours? shall she mimic a small part of herself? what need has she of arms, with nothing to reach for? of a neck, with no head to carry? of eyes or nose when she finds her way through space without either, and has the millions of eyes of all her animals to guide their movements on her surface, and all their noses to smell the flowers that grow? for, as we are ourselves a part of the earth, so our organs are her organs. she is, as it were, eye and ear over her whole extent--all that we see and hear in separation she sees and hears at once. she brings forth living beings of countless kinds upon her surface, and their multitudinous conscious relations with each other she takes up into her higher and more general conscious life. most of us, considering the theory that the whole terrestrial mass is animated as our bodies are, make the mistake of working the analogy too literally, and allowing for no differences. if the earth be a sentient organism, we say, where are her brain and nerves? what corresponds to her heart and lungs? in other words, we expect functions which she already performs through us, to be performed outside of us again, and in just the same way. but we see perfectly well how the earth performs some of these functions in a way unlike our way. if you speak of circulation, what need has she of a heart when the sun keeps all the showers of rain that fall upon her and all the springs and brooks and rivers that irrigate her, going? what need has she of internal lungs, when her whole sensitive surface is in living commerce with the atmosphere that clings to it? the organ that gives us most trouble is the brain. all the consciousness we directly know seems tied to brains.--can there be consciousness, we ask, where there is no brain? but our brain, which primarily serves to correlate our muscular reactions with the external objects on which we depend, performs a function which the earth performs in an entirely different way. she has no proper muscles or limbs of her own, and the only objects external to her are the other stars. to these her whole mass reacts by most exquisite alterations in its total gait, and by still more exquisite vibratory responses in its substance. her ocean reflects the lights of heaven as in a mighty mirror, her atmosphere refracts them like a monstrous lens, the clouds and snow-fields combine them into white, the woods and flowers disperse them into colors. polarization, interference, absorption, awaken sensibilities in matter of which our senses are too coarse to take any note. for these cosmic relations of hers, then, she no more needs a special brain than she needs eyes or ears. _our_ brains do indeed unify and correlate innumerable functions. our eyes know nothing of sound, our ears nothing of light, but, having brains, we can feel sound and light together, and compare them. we account for this by the fibres which in the brain connect the optical with the acoustic centre, but just how these fibres bring together not only the sensations, but the centres, we fail to see. but if fibres are indeed all that is needed to do that trick, has not the earth pathways, by which you and i are physically continuous, more than enough to do for our two minds what the brain-fibres do for the sounds and sights in a single mind? must every higher means of unification between things be a literal _brain_-fibre, and go by that name? cannot the earth-mind know otherwise the contents of our minds together? fechner's imagination, insisting on the differences as well as on the resemblances, thus tries to make our picture of the whole earth's life more concrete. he revels in the thought of its perfections. to carry her precious freight through the hours and seasons what form could be more excellent than hers--being as it is horse, wheels, and wagon all in one. think of her beauty--a shining ball, sky-blue and sun-lit over one half, the other bathed in starry night, reflecting the heavens from all her waters, myriads of lights and shadows in the folds of her mountains and windings of her valleys, she would be a spectacle of rainbow glory, could one only see her from afar as we see parts of her from her own mountain-tops. every quality of landscape that has a name would then be visible in her at once--all that is delicate or graceful, all that is quiet, or wild, or romantic, or desolate, or cheerful, or luxuriant, or fresh. that landscape is her face--a peopled landscape, too, for men's eyes would appear in it like diamonds among the dew-drops. green would be the dominant color, but the blue atmosphere and the clouds would enfold her as a bride is shrouded in her veil--a veil the vapory transparent folds of which the earth, through her ministers the winds, never tires of laying and folding about herself anew. every element has its own living denizens. can the celestial ocean of ether, whose waves are light, in which the earth herself floats, not have hers, higher by as much as their element is higher, swimming without fins, flying without wings, moving, immense and tranquil, as by a half-spiritual force through the half-spiritual sea which they inhabit, rejoicing in the exchange of luminous influence with one another, following the slightest pull of one another's attraction, and harboring, each of them, an inexhaustible inward wealth? men have always made fables about angels, dwelling in the light, needing no earthly food or drink, messengers between ourselves and god. here are actually existent beings, dwelling in the light and moving through the sky, needing neither food nor drink, intermediaries between god and us, obeying his commands. so, if the heavens really are the home of angels, the heavenly bodies must be those very angels, for other creatures _there_ are none. yes! the earth is our great common guardian angel, who watches over all our interests combined. in a striking page fechner relates one of his moments of direct vision of this truth. 'on a certain spring morning i went out to walk. the fields were green, the birds sang, the dew glistened, the smoke was rising, here and there a man appeared; a light as of transfiguration lay on all things. it was only a little bit of the earth; it was only one moment of her existence; and yet as my look embraced her more and more it seemed to me not only so beautiful an idea, but so true and clear a fact, that she is an angel, an angel so rich and fresh and flower-like, and yet going her round in the skies so firmly and so at one with herself, turning her whole living face to heaven, and carrying me along with her into that heaven, that i asked myself how the opinions of men could ever have so spun themselves away from life so far as to deem the earth only a dry clod, and to seek for angels above it or about it in the emptiness of the sky,--only to find them nowhere.... but such an experience as this passes for fantastic. the earth is a globular body, and what more she may be, one can find in mineralogical cabinets.'[ ] where there is no vision the people perish. few professorial philosophers have any vision. fechner had vision, and that is why one can read him over and over again, and each time bring away a fresh sense of reality. his earliest book was a vision of what the inner life of plants may be like. he called it 'nanna.' in the development of animals the nervous system is the central fact. plants develop centrifugally, spread their organs abroad. for that reason people suppose that they can have no consciousness, for they lack the unity which the central nervous system provides. but the plant's consciousness may be of another type, being connected with other structures. violins and pianos give out sounds because they have strings. does it follow that nothing but strings can give out sound? how then about flutes and organ-pipes? of course their sounds are of a different quality, and so may the consciousness of plants be of a quality correlated exclusively with the kind of organization that | they possess. nutrition, respiration, propagation take place in them without nerves. in us these functions are conscious only in unusual states, normally their consciousness is eclipsed by that which goes with the brain. no such eclipse occurs in plants, and their lower consciousness may therefore be all the more lively. with nothing to do but to drink the light and air with their leaves, to let their cells proliferate, to feel their rootlets draw the sap, is it conceivable that they should not consciously suffer if water, light, and air are suddenly withdrawn? or that when the flowering and fertilization which are the culmination of their life take place, they should not feel their own existence more intensely and enjoy something like what we call pleasure in ourselves? does the water-lily, rocking in her triple bath of water, air, and light, relish in no wise her own beauty? when the plant in our room turns to the light, closes her blossoms in the dark, responds to our watering or pruning by increase of size or change of shape and bloom, who has the right to say she does not feel, or that she plays a purely passive part? truly plants can foresee nothing, neither the scythe of the mower, nor the hand extended to pluck their flowers. they can neither run away nor cry out. but this only proves how different their modes of feeling life must be from those of animals that live by eyes and ears and locomotive organs, it does not prove that they have no mode of feeling life at all. how scanty and scattered would sensation be on our globe, if the feeling-life of plants were blotted from existence. solitary would consciousness move through the woods in the shape of some deer or other quadruped, or fly about the flowers in that of some insect, but can we really suppose that the nature through which god's breath blows is such a barren wilderness as this? i have probably by this time said enough to acquaint those of you who have never seen these metaphysical writings of fechner with their more general characteristics, and i hope that some of you may now feel like reading them yourselves.[ ] the special thought of fechner's with which in these lectures i have most practical concern, is his belief that the more inclusive forms of consciousness are in part _constituted_ by the more limited forms. not that they are the mere sum of the more limited forms. as our mind is not the bare sum of our sights plus our sounds plus our pains, but in adding these terms together also finds relations among them and weaves them into schemes and forms and objects of which no one sense in its separate estate knows anything, so the earth-soul traces relations between the contents of my mind and the contents of yours of which neither of our separate minds is conscious. it has schemes, forms, and objects proportionate to its wider field, which our mental fields are far too narrow to cognize. by ourselves we are simply out of relation with each other, for it we are both of us there, and _different_ from each other, which is a positive relation. what we are without knowing, it knows that we are. we are closed against its world, but that world is not closed against us. it is as if the total universe of inner life had a sort of grain or direction, a sort of valvular structure, permitting knowledge to flow in one way only, so that the wider might always have the narrower under observation, but never the narrower the wider. fechner's great analogy here is the relation of the senses to our individual minds. when our eyes are open their sensations enter into our general mental life, which grows incessantly by the addition of what they see. close the eyes, however, and the visual additions stop, nothing but thoughts and memories of the past visual experiences remain--in combination of course with the enormous stock of other thoughts and memories, and with the data coming in from the senses not yet closed. our eye-sensations of themselves know nothing of this enormous life into which they fall. fechner thinks, as any common man would think, that they are taken into it directly when they occur, and form part of it just as they are. they don't stay outside and get represented inside by their copies. it is only the memories and concepts of them that are copies; the sensible perceptions themselves are taken in or walled out in their own proper persons according as the eyes are open or shut. fechner likens our individual persons on the earth unto so many sense-organs of the earth's soul. we add to its perceptive life so long as our own life lasts. it absorbs our perceptions, just as they occur, into its larger sphere of knowledge, and combines them with the other data there. when one of us dies, it is as if an eye of the world were closed, for all _perceptive_ contributions from that particular quarter cease. but the memories and conceptual relations that have spun themselves round the perceptions of that person remain in the larger earth-life as distinct as ever, and form new relations and grow and develop throughout all the future, in the same way in which our own distinct objects of thought, once stored in memory, form new relations and develop throughout our whole finite life. this is fechner's theory of immortality, first published in the little 'büchlein des lebens nach dem tode,' in , and re-edited in greatly improved shape in the last volume of his 'zend-avesta.' we rise upon the earth as wavelets rise upon the ocean. we grow out of her soil as leaves grow from a tree. the wavelets catch the sunbeams separately, the leaves stir when the branches do not move. they realize their own events apart, just as in our own consciousness, when anything becomes emphatic, the background fades from observation. yet the event works back upon the background, as the wavelet works upon the waves, or as the leaf's movements work upon the sap inside the branch. the whole sea and the whole tree are registers of what has happened, and are different for the wave's and the leaf's action having occurred. a grafted twig may modify its stock to the roots:--so our outlived private experiences, impressed on the whole earth-mind as memories, lead the immortal life of ideas there, and become parts of the great system, fully distinguished from one another, just as we ourselves when alive were distinct, realizing themselves no longer isolatedly, but along with one another as so many partial systems, entering thus into new combinations, being affected by the perceptive experiences of those living then, and affecting the living in their turn--altho they are so seldom recognized by living men to do so. if you imagine that this entrance after the death of the body into a common life of higher type means a merging and loss of our distinct personality, fechner asks you whether a visual sensation of our own exists in any sense _less for itself_ or _less distinctly_, when it enters into our higher relational consciousness and is there distinguished and defined. --but here i must stop my reporting and send you to his volumes. thus is the universe alive, according to this philosopher! i think you will admit that he makes it more _thickly_ alive than do the other philosophers who, following rationalistic methods solely, gain the same results, but only in the thinnest outlines. both fechner and professor royce, for example, believe ultimately in one all-inclusive mind. both believe that we, just as we stand here, are constituent parts of that mind. no other _content_ has it than us, with all the other creatures like or unlike us, and the relations which it finds between us. our eaches, collected into one, are substantively identical with its all, tho the all is perfect while no each is perfect, so that we have to admit that new qualities as well as unperceived relations accrue from the collective form. it is thus superior to the distributive form. but having reached this result, royce (tho his treatment of the subject on its moral side seems to me infinitely richer and thicker than that of any other contemporary idealistic philosopher) leaves us very much to our own devices. fechner, on the contrary, tries to trace the superiorities due to the more collective form in as much detail as he can. he marks the various intermediary stages and halting places of collectivity,--as we are to our separate senses, so is the earth to us, so is the solar system to the earth, etc.,--and if, in order to escape an infinitely long summation, he posits a complete god as the all-container and leaves him about as indefinite in feature as the idealists leave their absolute, he yet provides us with a very definite gate of approach to him in the shape of the earth-soul, through which in the nature of things we must first make connexion with all the more enveloping superhuman realms, and with which our more immediate religious commerce at any rate has to be carried on. ordinary monistic idealism leaves everything intermediary out. it recognizes only the extremes, as if, after the first rude face of the phenomenal world in all its particularity, nothing but the supreme in all its perfection could be found. first, you and i, just as we are in this room; and the moment we get below that surface, the unutterable absolute itself! doesn't this show a singularly indigent imagination? isn't this brave universe made on a richer pattern, with room in it for a long hierarchy of beings? materialistic science makes it infinitely richer in terms, with its molecules, and ether, and electrons, and what not. absolute idealism, thinking of reality only under intellectual forms, knows not what to do with _bodies_ of any grade, and can make no use of any psychophysical analogy or correspondence. the resultant thinness is startling when compared with the thickness and articulation of such a universe as fechner paints. may not satisfaction with the rationalistic absolute as the alpha and omega, and treatment of it in all its abstraction as an adequate religious object, argue a certain native poverty of mental demand? things reveal themselves soonest to those who most passionately want them, for our need sharpens our wit. to a mind content with little, the much in the universe may always remain hid. to be candid, one of my reasons for saying so much about fechner has been to make the thinness of our current transcendentalism appear more evident by an effect of contrast. scholasticism ran thick; hegel himself ran thick; but english and american transcendentalisms run thin. if philosophy is more a matter of passionate vision than of logic,--and i believe it is, logic only finding reasons for the vision afterwards,--must not such thinness come either from the vision being defective in the disciples, or from their passion, matched with fechner's or with hegel's own passion, being as moonlight unto sunlight or as water unto wine?[ ] but i have also a much deeper reason for making fechner a part of my text. his _assumption that conscious experiences freely compound and separate themselves_, the same assumption by which absolutism explains the relation of our minds to the eternal mind, and the same by which empiricism explains the composition of the human mind out of subordinate mental elements, is not one which we ought to let pass without scrutiny. i shall scrutinize it in the next lecture. lecture v the compounding of consciousness in my last lecture i gave a miserably scanty outline of the way of thinking of a philosopher remarkable for the almost unexampled richness of his imagination of details. i owe to fechner's shade an apology for presenting him in a manner so unfair to the most essential quality of his genius; but the time allotted is too short to say more about the particulars of his work, so i proceed to the programme i suggested at the end of our last hour. i wish to discuss the assumption that states of consciousness, so-called, can separate and combine themselves freely, and keep their own identity unchanged while forming parts of simultaneous fields of experience of wider scope. let me first explain just what i mean by this. while you listen to my voice, for example, you are perhaps inattentive to some bodily sensation due to your clothing or your posture. yet that sensation would seem probably to be there, for in an instant, by a change of attention, you can have it in one field of consciousness with the voice. it seems as if it existed first in a separate form, and then as if, without itself changing, it combined with your other co-existent sensations. it is after this analogy that pantheistic idealism thinks that we exist in the absolute. the absolute, it thinks, makes the world by knowing the whole of it at once in one undivided eternal act.[ ] to 'be,' _really_ to be, is to be as it knows us to be, along with everything else, namely, and clothed with the fulness of our meaning. meanwhile we _are_ at the same time not only really and as it knows us, but also apparently, for to our separate single selves we appear _without_ most other things and unable to declare with any fulness what our own meaning is. now the classic doctrine of pantheistic idealism, from the upanishads down to josiah royce, is that the finite knowers, in spite of their apparent ignorance, are one with the knower of the all. in the most limited moments of our private experience, the absolute idea, as dr. mctaggart told us, is implicitly contained. the moments, as royce says, exist only in relation to it. they are true or erroneous only through its overshadowing presence. of the larger self that alone eternally is, they are the organic parts. they _are_, only inasmuch as they are implicated in its being. there is thus in reality but this one self, consciously inclusive of all the lesser selves, _logos_, problem-solver, and all-knower; and royce ingeniously compares the ignorance that in our persons breaks out in the midst of its complete knowledge and isolates me from you and both of us from it, to the inattention into which our finite minds are liable to fall with respect to such implicitly present details as those corporeal sensations to which i made allusion just now. those sensations stand to our total private minds in the same relation in which our private minds stand to the absolute mind. privacy means ignorance--i still quote royce--and ignorance means inattention. we are finite because our wills, as such, are only fragments of the absolute will; because will means interest, and an incomplete will means an incomplete interest; and because incompleteness of interest means inattention to much that a fuller interest would bring us to perceive.[ ] in this account royce makes by far the manliest of the post-hegelian attempts to read some empirically apprehensible content into the notion of our relation to the absolute mind. i have to admit, now that i propose to you to scrutinize this assumption rather closely, that trepidation seizes me. the subject is a subtle and abstruse one. it is one thing to delve into subtleties by one's self with pen in hand, or to study out abstruse points in books, but quite another thing to make a popular lecture out of them. nevertheless i must not flinch from my task here, for i think that this particular point forms perhaps the vital knot of the present philosophic situation, and i imagine that the times are ripe, or almost ripe, for a serious attempt to be made at its untying. it may perhaps help to lessen the arduousness of the subject if i put the first part of what i have to say in the form of a direct personal confession. in the year i published a work on psychology in which it became my duty to discuss the value of a certain explanation of our higher mental states that had come into favor among the more biologically inclined psychologists. suggested partly by the association of ideas, and partly by the analogy of chemical compounds, this opinion was that complex mental states are resultants of the self-compounding of simpler ones. the mills had spoken of mental chemistry; wundt of a 'psychic synthesis,' which might develop properties not contained in the elements; and such writers as spencer, taine, fiske, barratt, and clifford had propounded a great evolutionary theory in which, in the absence of souls, selves, or other principles of unity, primordial units of mind-stuff or mind-dust were represented as summing themselves together in successive stages of compounding and re-compounding, and thus engendering our higher and more complex states of mind. the elementary feeling of a, let us say, and the elementary feeling of b, when they occur in certain conditions, combine, according to this doctrine, into a feeling of a-plus-b, and this in turn combines with a similarly generated feeling of c-plus-d, until at last the whole alphabet may appear together in one field of awareness, without any other witnessing principle or principles beyond the feelings of the several letters themselves, being supposed to exist. what each of them witnesses separately, 'all' of them are supposed to witness in conjunction. but their distributive knowledge doesn't _give rise_ to their collective knowledge by any act, it _is_ their collective knowledge. the lower forms of consciousness 'taken together' _are_ the higher. it, 'taken apart,' consists of nothing and _is_ nothing but them. this, at least, is the most obvious way of understanding the doctrine, and is the way i understood it in the chapter in my psychology. superficially looked at, this seems just like the combination of h_ and o into water, but looked at more closely, the analogy halts badly. when a chemist tells us that two atoms of hydrogen and one of oxygen combine themselves of their own accord into the new compound substance 'water,' he knows (if he believes in the mechanical view of nature) that this is only an elliptical statement for a more complex fact. that fact is that when h_ and o, instead of keeping far apart, get into closer quarters, say into the position h-o-h, they _affect surrounding bodies differently_: they now wet our skin, dissolve sugar, put out fire, etc., which they didn't in their former positions. 'water' is but _our name_ for what acts thus peculiarly. but if the skin, sugar, and fire were absent, no witness would speak of water at all. he would still talk of the h and o distributively, merely noting that they acted now in the new position h-o-h. in the older psychologies the soul or self took the place of the sugar, fire, or skin. the lower feelings produced _effects on it_, and their apparent compounds were only its reactions. as you tickle a man's face with a feather, and he laughs, so when you tickle his intellectual principle with a retinal feeling, say, and a muscular feeling at once, it laughs responsively by its category of 'space,' but it would be false to treat the space as simply made of those simpler feelings. it is rather a new and unique psychic creation which their combined action on the mind is able to evoke. i found myself obliged, in discussing the mind-dust theory, to urge this last alternative view. the so-called mental compounds are simple psychic reactions of a higher type. the form itself of them, i said, is something new. we can't say that awareness of the alphabet as such is nothing more than twenty-six awarenesses, each of a separate letter; for those are twenty-six distinct awarenesses, of single letters _without_ others, while their so-called sum is one awareness, of every letter _with_ its comrades. there is thus something new in the collective consciousness. it knows the same letters, indeed, but it knows them in this novel way. it is safer, i said (for i fought shy of admitting a self or soul or other agent of combination), to treat the consciousness of the alphabet as a twenty-seventh fact, the substitute and not the sum of the twenty-six simpler consciousnesses, and to say that while under certain physiological conditions they alone are produced, other more complex physiological conditions result in its production instead. do not talk, therefore, i said, of the higher states _consisting_ of the simpler, or _being_ the same with them; talk rather of their _knowing the same things_. they are different mental facts, but they apprehend, each in its own peculiar way, the same objective a, b, c, and d. the theory of combination, i was forced to conclude, is thus untenable, being both logically nonsensical and practically unnecessary. say what you will, twelve thoughts, each of a single word, are not the self-same mental thing as one thought of the whole sentence. the higher thoughts, i insisted, are psychic units, not compounds; but for all that, they may know together as a collective multitude the very same objects which under other conditions are known separately by as many simple thoughts. for many years i held rigorously to this view,[ ] and the reasons for doing so seemed to me during all those years to apply also to the opinion that the absolute mind stands to our minds in the relation of a whole to its parts. if untenable in finite psychology, that opinion ought to be untenable in metaphysics also. the great transcendentalist metaphor has always been, as i lately reminded you, a grammatical sentence. physically such a sentence is of course composed of clauses, these of words, the words of syllables, and the syllables of letters. we may take each word in, yet not understand the sentence; but if suddenly the meaning of the whole sentence flashes, the sense of each word is taken up into that whole meaning. just so, according to our transcendentalist teachers, the absolute mind thinks the whole sentence, while we, according to our rank as thinkers, think a clause, a word, a syllable, or a letter. most of us are, as i said, mere syllables in the mouth of allah. and as allah comes first in the order of being, so comes first the entire sentence, the _logos_ that forms the eternal absolute thought. students of language tell us that speech began with men's efforts to make _statements_. the rude synthetic vocal utterances first used for this effect slowly got stereotyped, and then much later got decomposed into grammatical parts. it is not as if men had first invented letters and made syllables of them, then made words of the syllables and sentences of the words;--they actually followed the reverse order. so, the transcendentalists affirm, the complete absolute thought is the pre-condition of our thoughts, and we finite creatures _are_ only in so far as it owns us as its verbal fragments. the metaphor is so beautiful, and applies, moreover, so literally to such a multitude of the minor wholes of experience, that by merely hearing it most of us are convinced that it must apply universally. we see that no smallest raindrop can come into being without a whole shower, no single feather without a whole bird, neck and crop, beak and tail, coming into being simultaneously: so we unhesitatingly lay down the law that no part of anything can be except so far as the whole also is. and then, since everything whatever is part of the whole universe, and since (if we are idealists) nothing, whether part or whole, exists except for a witness, we proceed to the conclusion that the unmitigated absolute as witness of the whole is the one sole ground of being of every partial fact, the fact of our own existence included. we think of ourselves as being only a few of the feathers, so to speak, which help to constitute that absolute bird. extending the analogy of certain wholes, of which we have familiar experience, to the whole of wholes, we easily become absolute idealists. but if, instead of yielding to the seductions of our metaphor, be it sentence, shower, or bird, we analyze more carefully the notion suggested by it that we are constituent parts of the absolute's eternal field of consciousness, we find grave difficulties arising. first, the difficulty i found with the mind-dust theory. if the absolute makes us by knowing us, how can we exist otherwise than _as_ it knows us? but it knows each of us indivisibly from everything else. yet if to exist means nothing but to be experienced, as idealism affirms, we surely exist otherwise, for we experience _ourselves_ ignorantly and in division. we indeed differ from the absolute not only by defect, but by excess. our ignorances, for example, bring curiosities and doubts by which it cannot be troubled, for it owns eternally the solution of every problem. our impotence entails pains, our imperfection sins, which its perfection keeps at a distance. what i said of the alphabet-form and the letters holds good of the absolute experience and our experiences. their relation, whatever it may be, seems not to be that of identity. it is impossible to reconcile the peculiarities of our experience with our being only the absolute's mental objects. a god, as distinguished from the absolute, creates things by projecting them beyond himself as so many substances, each endowed with _perseity_, as the scholastics call it. but objects of thought are not things _per se_. they are there only _for_ their thinker, and only _as_ he thinks them. how, then, can they become severally alive on their own accounts and think themselves quite otherwise than as he thinks them? it is as if the characters in a novel were to get up from the pages, and walk away and transact business of their own outside of the author's story. a third difficulty is this: the bird-metaphor is physical, but we see on reflection that in the _physical_ world there is no real compounding. 'wholes' are not realities there, parts only are realities. 'bird' is only our _name_ for the physical fact of a certain grouping of organs, just as 'charles's wain' is our name for a certain grouping of stars. the 'whole,' be it bird or constellation, is nothing but our vision, nothing but an effect on our sensorium when a lot of things act on it together. it is not realized by any organ or any star, or experienced apart from the consciousness of an onlooker.[ ] in the physical world taken by itself there _is_ thus no 'all,' there are only the 'eaches'--at least that is the 'scientific' view. in the mental world, on the contrary, wholes do in point of fact realize themselves _per se_. the meaning of the whole sentence is just as much a real experience as the feeling of each word is; the absolute's experience _is_ for itself, as much as yours is for yourself or mine for myself. so the feather-and-bird analogy won't work unless you make the absolute into a distinct sort of mental agent with a vision produced in it _by_ our several minds analogous to the 'bird'-vision which the feathers, beak, etc., produce _in_ those same minds. the 'whole,' which is _its_ experience, would then be its unifying reaction on our experiences, and not those very experiences self-combined. such a view as this would go with theism, for the theistic god is a separate being; but it would not go with pantheistic idealism, the very essence of which is to insist that we are literally _parts_ of god, and he only ourselves in our totality--the word 'ourselves' here standing of course for all the universe's finite facts. i am dragging you into depths unsuitable, i fear, for a rapid lecture. such difficulties as these have to be teased out with a needle, so to speak, and lecturers should take only bird's-eye views. the practical upshot of the matter, however, so far as i am concerned, is this, that if i had been lecturing on the absolute a very few years ago, i should unhesitatingly have urged these difficulties, and developed them at still greater length, to show that the hypothesis of the absolute was not only non-coercive from the logical point of view, but self-contradictory as well, its notion that parts and whole are only two names for the same thing not bearing critical scrutiny. if you stick to purely physical terms like stars, there is no whole. if you call the whole mental, then the so-called whole, instead of being one fact with the parts, appears rather as the integral reaction on those parts of an independent higher witness, such as the theistic god is supposed to be. so long as this was the state of my own mind, i could accept the notion of self-compounding in the supernal spheres of experience no more easily than in that chapter on mind-dust i had accepted it in the lower spheres. i found myself compelled, therefore, to call the absolute impossible; and the untrammelled freedom with which pantheistic or monistic idealists stepped over the logical barriers which lotze and others had set down long before i had--i had done little more than quote these previous critics in my chapter--surprised me not a little, and made me, i have to confess, both resentful and envious. envious because in the bottom of my heart i wanted the same freedom myself, for motives which i shall develop later; and resentful because my absolutist friends seemed to me to be stealing the privilege of blowing both hot and cold. to establish their absolute they used an intellectualist type of logic which they disregarded when employed against it. it seemed to me that they ought at least to have mentioned the objections that had stopped me so completely. i had yielded to them against my 'will to believe,' out of pure logical scrupulosity. they, professing to loathe the will to believe and to follow purest rationality, had simply ignored them. the method was easy, but hardly to be called candid. fechner indeed was candid enough, for he had never thought of the objections, but later writers, like royce, who should presumably have heard them, had passed them by in silence. i felt as if these philosophers were granting their will to believe in monism too easy a license. my own conscience would permit me no such license. so much for the personal confession by which you have allowed me to introduce the subject. let us now consider it more objectively. the fundamental difficulty i have found is the number of contradictions which idealistic monists seem to disregard. in the first place they attribute to all existence a mental or experiential character, but i find their simultaneous belief that the higher and the lower in the universe are entitatively identical, incompatible with this character. incompatible in consequence of the generally accepted doctrine that, whether berkeley were right or not in saying of material existence that its _esse_ is _sentiri_, it is undoubtedly right to say of _mental_ existence that its _esse_ is _sentiri_ or _experiri_. if i feel pain, it is just pain that i feel, however i may have come by the feeling. no one pretends that pain as such only appears like pain, but in itself is different, for to be as a mental experience _is_ only to appear to some one. the idealists in question ought then to do one of two things, but they do neither. they ought either to refute the notion that as mental states appear, so they are; or, still keeping that notion, they ought to admit a distinct agent of unification to do the work of the all-knower, just as our respective souls or selves in popular philosophy do the work of partial knowers. otherwise it is like a joint-stock company all shareholders and no treasurer or director. if our finite minds formed a billion facts, then its mind, knowing our billion, would make a universe composed of a billion and one facts. but transcendental idealism is quite as unfriendly to active principles called souls as physiological psychology is, kant having, as it thinks, definitively demolished them. and altho some disciples speak of the transcendental ego of apperception (which they celebrate as kant's most precious legacy to posterity) as if it were a combining agent, the drift of monistic authority is certainly in the direction of treating it as only an all-witness, whose field of vision we finite witnesses do not cause, but constitute rather. we are the letters, it is the alphabet; we are the features, it is the face; not indeed as if either alphabet or face were something additional to the letters or the features, but rather as if it were only another name for the very letters or features themselves. the all-form assuredly differs from the each-form, but the _matter_ is the same in both, and the each-form only an unaccountable appearance. but this, as you see, contradicts the other idealist principle, of a mental fact being just what it appears to be. if their forms of appearance are so different, the all and the eaches cannot be identical. the way out (unless, indeed, we are willing to discard the logic of identity altogether) would seem to be frankly to write down the all and the eaches as two distinct orders of witness, each minor witness being aware of its own 'content' solely, while the greater witness knows the minor witnesses, knows their whole content pooled together, knows their relations to one another, and knows of just how much each one of them is ignorant. the two types of witnessing are here palpably non-identical. we get a pluralism, not a monism, out of them. in my psychology-chapter i had resorted openly to such pluralism, treating each total field of consciousness as a distinct entity, and maintaining that the higher fields merely supersede the lower functionally by knowing more about the same objects. the monists themselves writhe like worms on the hook to escape pluralistic or at least dualistic language, but they cannot escape it. they speak of the eternal and the temporal 'points of view'; of the universe in its infinite 'aspect' or in its finite 'capacity'; they say that '_quâ_ absolute' it is one thing, '_quâ_ relative' another; they contrast its 'truth' with its appearances; they distinguish the total from the partial way of 'taking' it, etc.; but they forget that, on idealistic principles, to make such distinctions is tantamount to making different beings, or at any rate that varying points of view, aspects, appearances, ways of taking, and the like, are meaningless phrases unless we suppose outside of the unchanging content of reality a diversity of witnesses who experience or take it variously, the absolute mind being just the witness that takes it most completely. for consider the matter one moment longer, if you can. ask what this notion implies, of appearing differently from different points of view. if there be no outside witness, a thing can appear only to itself, the eaches or parts to their several selves temporally, the all or whole to itself eternally. different 'selves' thus break out inside of what the absolutist insists to be intrinsically one fact. but how can what is _actually_ one be _effectively_ so many? put your witnesses anywhere, whether outside or inside of what is witnessed, in the last resort your witnesses must on idealistic principles be distinct, for what is witnessed is different. i fear that i am expressing myself with terrible obscurity--some of you, i know, are groaning over the logic-chopping. be a pluralist or be a monist, you say, for heaven's sake, no matter which, so long as you stop arguing. it reminds one of chesterton's epigram that the only thing that ever drives human beings insane is logic. but whether i be sane or insane, you cannot fail, even tho you be transcendentalists yourselves, to recognize to some degree by my trouble the difficulties that beset monistic idealism. what boots it to call the parts and the whole the same body of experience, when in the same breath you have to say that the all 'as such' means one sort of experience and each part 'as such' means another? difficulties, then, so far, but no stable solution as yet, for i have been talking only critically. you will probably be relieved to hear, then, that having rounded this corner, i shall begin to consider what may be the possibilities of getting farther. to clear the path, i beg you first to note one point. what has so troubled my logical conscience is not so much the absolute by itself as the whole class of suppositions of which it is the supreme example, collective experiences namely, claiming identity with their constituent parts, yet experiencing things quite differently from these latter. if _any_ such collective experience can be, then of course, so far as the mere logic of the case goes, the absolute may be. in a previous lecture i have talked against the absolute from other points of view. in this lecture i have meant merely to take it as the example most prominent at oxford of the thing which has given me such logical perplexity. i don't logically see how a collective experience of any grade whatever can be treated as logically identical with a lot of distributive experiences. they form two different concepts. the absolute happens to be the only collective experience concerning which oxford idealists have urged the identity, so i took it as my prerogative instance. but fechner's earth-soul, or any stage of being below or above that, would have served my purpose just as well: the same logical objection applies to these collective experiences as to the absolute. so much, then, in order that you may not be confused about my strategical objective. the real point to defend against the logic that i have used is the identity of the collective and distributive anyhow, not the particular example of such identity known as the absolute. so now for the directer question. shall we say that every complex mental fact is a separate psychic entity succeeding upon a lot of other psychic entities which are erroneously called its parts, and superseding them in function, but not literally being composed of them? this was the course i took in my psychology; and if followed in theology, we should have to deny the absolute as usually conceived, and replace it by the 'god' of theism. we should also have to deny fechner's 'earth-soul' and all other superhuman collections of experience of every grade, so far at least as these are held to be compounded of our simpler souls in the way which fechner believed in; and we should have to make all these denials in the name of the incorruptible logic of self-identity, teaching us that to call a thing and its other the same is to commit the crime of self-contradiction. but if we realize the whole philosophic situation thus produced, we see that it is almost intolerable. loyal to the logical kind of rationality, it is disloyal to every other kind. it makes the universe discontinuous. these fields of experience that replace each other so punctually, each knowing the same matter, but in ever-widening contexts, from simplest feeling up to absolute knowledge, _can_ they have no _being_ in common when their cognitive function is so manifestly common? the regular succession of them is on such terms an unintelligible miracle. if you reply that their common _object_ is of itself enough to make the many witnesses continuous, the same implacable logic follows you--how _can_ one and the same object appear so variously? its diverse appearances break it into a plurality; and our world of objects then falls into discontinuous pieces quite as much as did our world of subjects. the resultant irrationality is really intolerable. i said awhile ago that i was envious of fechner and the other pantheists because i myself wanted the same freedom that i saw them unscrupulously enjoying, of letting mental fields compound themselves and so make the universe more continuous, but that my conscience held me prisoner. in my heart of hearts, however, i knew that my situation was absurd and could be only provisional. that secret of a continuous life which the universe knows by heart and acts on every instant cannot be a contradiction incarnate. if logic says it is one, so much the worse for logic. logic being the lesser thing, the static incomplete abstraction, must succumb to reality, not reality to logic. our intelligence cannot wall itself up alive, like a pupa in its chrysalis. it must at any cost keep on speaking terms with the universe that engendered it. fechner, royce, and hegel seem on the truer path. fechner has never heard of logic's veto, royce hears the voice but cannily ignores the utterances, hegel hears them but to spurn them--and all go on their way rejoicing. shall we alone obey the veto? sincerely, and patiently as i could, i struggled with the problem for years, covering hundreds of sheets of paper with notes and memoranda and discussions with myself over the difficulty. how can many consciousnesses be at the same time one consciousness? how can one and the same identical fact experience itself so diversely? the struggle was vain; i found myself in an _impasse_. i saw that i must either forswear that 'psychology without a soul' to which my whole psychological and kantian education had committed me,--i must, in short, bring back distinct spiritual agents to know the mental states, now singly and now in combination, in a word bring back scholasticism and common sense--or else i must squarely confess the solution of the problem impossible, and then either give up my intellectualistic logic, the logic of identity, and adopt some higher (or lower) form of rationality, or, finally, face the fact that life is logically irrational. sincerely, this is the actual trilemma that confronts every one of us. those of you who are scholastic-minded, or simply common-sense minded, will smile at the elaborate groans of my parturient mountain resulting in nothing but this mouse. accept the spiritual agents, for heaven's sake, you will say, and leave off your ridiculous pedantry. let but our 'souls' combine our sensations by their intellectual faculties, and let but 'god' replace the pantheistic world-soul, and your wheels will go round again--you will enjoy both life and logic together. this solution is obvious and i know that many of you will adopt it. it is comfortable, and all our habits of speech support it. yet it is not for idle or fantastical reasons that the notion of the substantial soul, so freely used by common men and the more popular philosophies, has fallen upon such evil days, and has no prestige in the eyes of critical thinkers. it only shares the fate of other unrepresentable substances and principles. they are without exception all so barren that to sincere inquirers they appear as little more than names masquerading--wo die begriffe fehlen da stellt ein wort zur rechten zeit sich ein. you see no deeper into the fact that a hundred sensations get compounded or known together by thinking that a 'soul' does the compounding than you see into a man's living eighty years by thinking of him as an octogenarian, or into our having five fingers by calling us pentadactyls. souls have worn out both themselves and their welcome, that is the plain truth. philosophy ought to get the manifolds of experience unified on principles less empty. like the word 'cause,' the word 'soul' is but a theoretic stop-gap--it marks a place and claims it for a future explanation to occupy. this being our post-humian and post-kantian state of mind, i will ask your permission to leave the soul wholly out of the present discussion and to consider only the residual dilemma. some day, indeed, souls may get their innings again in philosophy--i am quite ready to admit that possibility--they form a category of thought too natural to the human mind to expire without prolonged resistance. but if the belief in the soul ever does come to life after the many funeral-discourses which humian and kantian criticism have preached over it, i am sure it will be only when some one has found in the term a pragmatic significance that has hitherto eluded observation. when that champion speaks, as he well may speak some day, it will be time to consider souls more seriously. let us leave out the soul, then, and confront what i just called the residual dilemma. can we, on the one hand, give up the logic of identity?--can we, on the other, believe human experience to be fundamentally irrational? neither is easy, yet it would seem that we must do one or the other. few philosophers have had the frankness fairly to admit the necessity of choosing between the 'horns' offered. reality must be rational, they have said, and since the ordinary intellectualist logic is the only usual test of rationality, reality and logic must agree 'somehow.' hegel was the first non-mystical writer to face the dilemma squarely and throw away the ordinary logic, saving a pseudo-rationality for the universe by inventing the higher logic of the 'dialectic process.' bradley holds to the intellectualist logic, and by dint of it convicts the human universe of being irrationality incarnate. but what must be and can be, is, he says; there must and can be relief from _that_ irrationality; and the absolute must already have got the relief in secret ways of its own, impossible for us to guess at. _we_ of course get no relief, so bradley's is a rather ascetic doctrine. royce and taylor accept similar solutions, only they emphasize the irrationality of our finite universe less than bradley does; and royce in particular, being unusually 'thick' for an idealist, tries to bring the absolute's secret forms of relief more sympathetically home to our imagination. well, what must we do in this tragic predicament? for my own part, i have finally found myself compelled to _give up the logic_, fairly, squarely, and irrevocably. it has an imperishable use in human life, but that use is not to make us theoretically acquainted with the essential nature of reality--just what it is i can perhaps suggest to you a little later. reality, life, experience, concreteness, immediacy, use what word you will, exceeds our logic, overflows and surrounds it. if you like to employ words eulogistically, as most men do, and so encourage confusion, you may say that reality obeys a higher logic, or enjoys a higher rationality. but i think that even eulogistic words should be used rather to distinguish than to commingle meanings, so i prefer bluntly to call reality if not irrational then at least non-rational in its constitution,--and by reality here i mean reality where things _happen_, all temporal reality without exception. i myself find no good warrant for even suspecting the existence of any reality of a higher denomination than that distributed and strung-along and flowing sort of reality which we finite beings swim in. that is the sort of reality given us, and that is the sort with which logic is so incommensurable. if there be any higher sort of reality--the 'absolute,' for example--that sort, by the confession of those who believe in it, is still less amenable to ordinary logic; it transcends logic and is therefore still less rational in the intellectualist sense, so it cannot help us to save our logic as an adequate definer and confiner of existence. these sayings will sound queer and dark, probably they will sound quite wild or childish in the absence of explanatory comment. only the persuasion that i soon can explain them, if not satisfactorily to all of you, at least intelligibly, emboldens me to state them thus baldly as a sort of programme. please take them as a thesis, therefore, to be defended by later pleading. i told you that i had long and sincerely wrestled with the dilemma. i have now to confess (and this will probably re-animate your interest) that i should not now be emancipated, not now subordinate logic with so very light a heart, or throw it out of the deeper regions of philosophy to take its rightful and respectable place in the world of simple human practice, if i had not been influenced by a comparatively young and very original french writer, professor henri bergson. reading his works is what has made me bold. if i had not read bergson, i should probably still be blackening endless pages of paper privately, in the hope of making ends meet that were never meant to meet, and trying to discover some mode of conceiving the behavior of reality which should leave no discrepancy between it and the accepted laws of the logic of identity. it is certain, at any rate, that without the confidence which being able to lean on bergson's authority gives me i should never have ventured to urge these particular views of mine upon this ultra-critical audience. i must therefore, in order to make my own views more intelligible, give some preliminary account of the bergsonian philosophy. but here, as in fechner's case, i must confine myself only to the features that are essential to the present purpose, and not entangle you in collateral details, however interesting otherwise. for our present purpose, then, the essential contribution of bergson to philosophy is his criticism of intellectualism. in my opinion he has killed intellectualism definitively and without hope of recovery. i don't see how it can ever revive again in its ancient platonizing rôle of claiming to be the most authentic, intimate, and exhaustive definer of the nature of reality. others, as kant for example, have denied intellectualism's pretensions to define reality _an sich_ or in its absolute capacity; but kant still leaves it laying down laws--and laws from which there is no appeal--to all our human experience; while what bergson denies is that its methods give any adequate account of this human experience in its very finiteness. just how bergson accomplishes all this i must try to tell in my imperfect way in the next lecture; but since i have already used the words 'logic,' 'logic of identity, intellectualistic logic,' and 'intellectualism' so often, and sometimes used them as if they required no particular explanation, it will be wise at this point to say at greater length than heretofore in what sense i take these terms when i claim that bergson has refuted their pretension to decide what reality can or cannot be. just what i mean by intellectualism is therefore what i shall try to give a fuller idea of during the remainder of this present hour. in recent controversies some participants have shown resentment at being classed as intellectualists. i mean to use the word disparagingly, but shall be sorry if it works offence. intellectualism has its source in the faculty which gives us our chief superiority to the brutes, our power, namely, of translating the crude flux of our merely feeling-experience into a conceptual order. an immediate experience, as yet unnamed or classed, is a mere _that_ that we undergo, a thing that asks, '_what_ am i?' when we name and class it, we say for the first time what it is, and all these whats are abstract names or concepts. each concept means a particular _kind_ of thing, and as things seem once for all to have been created in kinds, a far more efficient handling of a given bit of experience begins as soon as we have classed the various parts of it. once classed, a thing can be treated by the law of its class, and the advantages are endless. both theoretically and practically this power of framing abstract concepts is one of the sublimest of our human prerogatives. we come back into the concrete from our journey into these abstractions, with an increase both of vision and of power. it is no wonder that earlier thinkers, forgetting that concepts are only man-made extracts from the temporal flux, should have ended by treating them as a superior type of being, bright, changeless, true, divine, and utterly opposed in nature to the turbid, restless lower world. the latter then appears as but their corruption and falsification. intellectualism in the vicious sense began when socrates and plato taught that what a thing really is, is told us by its _definition_. ever since socrates we have been taught that reality consists of essences, not of appearances, and that the essences of things are known whenever we know their definitions. so first we identify the thing with a concept and then we identify the concept with a definition, and only then, inasmuch as the thing _is_ whatever the definition expresses, are we sure of apprehending the real essence of it or the full truth about it. so far no harm is done. the misuse of concepts begins with the habit of employing them privatively as well as positively, using them not merely to assign properties to things, but to deny the very properties with which the things sensibly present themselves. logic can extract all its possible consequences from any definition, and the logician who is _unerbittlich consequent_ is often tempted, when he cannot extract a certain property from a definition, to deny that the concrete object to which the definition applies can possibly possess that property. the definition that fails to yield it must exclude or negate it. this is hegel's regular method of establishing his system. it is but the old story, of a useful practice first becoming a method, then a habit, and finally a tyranny that defeats the end it was used for. concepts, first employed to make things intelligible, are clung to even when they make them unintelligible. thus it comes that when once you have conceived things as 'independent,' you must proceed to deny the possibility of any connexion whatever among them, because the notion of connexion is not contained in the definition of independence. for a like reason you must deny any possible forms or modes of unity among things which you have begun by defining as a 'many.' we have cast a glance at hegel's and bradley's use of this sort of reasoning, and you will remember sigwart's epigram that according to it a horseman can never in his life go on foot, or a photographer ever do anything but photograph. the classic extreme in this direction is the denial of the possibility of change, and the consequent branding of the world of change as unreal, by certain philosophers. the definition of a is changeless, so is the definition of b. the one definition cannot change into the other, so the notion that a concrete thing a should change into another concrete thing b is made out to be contrary to reason. in mr. bradley's difficulty in seeing how sugar can be sweet intellectualism outstrips itself and becomes openly a sort of verbalism. sugar is just sugar and sweet is just sweet; neither is the other; nor can the word 'is' ever be understood to join any subject to its predicate rationally. nothing 'between' things can connect them, for 'between' is just that third thing, 'between,' and would need itself to be connected to the first and second things by two still finer betweens, and so on ad infinitum. the particular intellectualistic difficulty that had held my own thought so long in a vise was, as we have seen at such tedious length, the impossibility of understanding how 'your' experience and 'mine,' which 'as such' are defined as not conscious of each other, can nevertheless at the same time be members of a world-experience defined expressly as having all its parts co-conscious, or known together. the definitions are contradictory, so the things defined can in no way be united. you see how unintelligible intellectualism here seems to make the world of our most accomplished philosophers. neither as they use it nor as we use it does it do anything but make nature look irrational and seem impossible. in my next lecture, using bergson as my principal topic, i shall enter into more concrete details and try, by giving up intellectualism frankly, to make, if not the world, at least my own general thesis, less unintelligible. lecture vi bergson and his critique of intellectualism i gave you a very stiff lecture last time, and i fear that this one can be little less so. the best way of entering into it will be to begin immediately with bergson's philosophy, since i told you that that was what had led me personally to renounce the intellectualistic method and the current notion that logic is an adequate measure of what can or cannot be. professor henri bergson is a young man, comparatively, as influential philosophers go, having been born at paris in . his career has been the perfectly routine one of a successful french professor. entering the école normale supérieure at the age of twenty-two, he spent the next seventeen years teaching at _lycées_, provincial or parisian, until his fortieth year, when he was made professor at the said école normale. since he has been professor at the college de france, and member of the institute since . so far as the outward facts go, bergson's career has then been commonplace to the utmost. neither one of taine's famous principles of explanation of great men, _the race, the environment, or the moment_, no, nor all three together, will explain that peculiar way of looking at things that constitutes his mental individuality. originality in men dates from nothing previous, other things date from it, rather. i have to confess that bergson's originality is so profuse that many of his ideas baffle me entirely. i doubt whether any one understands him all over, so to speak; and i am sure that he would himself be the first to see that this must be, and to confess that things which he himself has not yet thought out clearly, had yet to be mentioned and have a tentative place assigned them in his philosophy. many of us are profusely original, in that no man can understand us--violently peculiar ways of looking at things are no great rarity. the rarity is when great peculiarity of vision is allied with great lucidity and unusual command of all the classic expository apparatus. bergson's resources in the way of erudition are remarkable, and in the way of expression they are simply phenomenal. this is why in france, where _l'art de bien dire_ counts for so much and is so sure of appreciation, he has immediately taken so eminent a place in public esteem. old-fashioned professors, whom his ideas quite fail to satisfy, nevertheless speak of his talent almost with bated breath, while the youngsters flock to him as to a master. if anything can make hard things easy to follow, it is a style like bergson's. a 'straightforward' style, an american reviewer lately called it; failing to see that such straightforwardness means a flexibility of verbal resource that follows the thought without a crease or wrinkle, as elastic silk underclothing follows the movements of one's body. the lucidity of bergson's way of putting things is what all readers are first struck by. it seduces you and bribes you in advance to become his disciple. it is a miracle, and he a real magician. m. bergson, if i am rightly informed, came into philosophy through the gateway of mathematics. the old antinomies of the infinite were, i imagine, the irritant that first woke his faculties from their dogmatic slumber. you all remember zeno's famous paradox, or sophism, as many of our logic books still call it, of achilles and the tortoise. give that reptile ever so small an advance and the swift runner achilles can never overtake him, much less get ahead of him; for if space and time are infinitely divisible (as our intellects tell us they must be), by the time achilles reaches the tortoise's starting-point, the tortoise has already got ahead of _that_ starting-point, and so on _ad infinitum_, the interval between the pursuer and the pursued growing endlessly minuter, but never becoming wholly obliterated. the common way of showing up the sophism here is by pointing out the ambiguity of the expression 'never can overtake.' what the word 'never' falsely suggests, it is said, is an infinite duration of time; what it really means is the inexhaustible number of the steps of which the overtaking must consist. but if these steps are infinitely short, a finite time will suffice for them; and in point of fact they do rapidly converge, whatever be the original interval or the contrasted speeds, toward infinitesimal shortness. this proportionality of the shortness of the times to that of the spaces required frees us, it is claimed, from the sophism which the word 'never' suggests. but this criticism misses zeno's point entirely. zeno would have been perfectly willing to grant that if the tortoise can be overtaken at all, he can be overtaken in (say) twenty seconds, but he would still have insisted that he can't be overtaken at all. leave achilles and the tortoise out of the account altogether, he would have said--they complicate the case unnecessarily. take any single process of change whatever, take the twenty seconds themselves elapsing. if time be infinitely divisible, and it must be so on intellectualist principles, they simply cannot elapse, their end cannot be reached; for no matter how much of them has already elapsed, before the remainder, however minute, can have wholly elapsed, the earlier half of it must first have elapsed. and this ever re-arising need of making the earlier half elapse _first_ leaves time with always something to do _before_ the last thing is done, so that the last thing never gets done. expressed in bare numbers, it is like the convergent series / plus / plus / ..., of which the limit is one. but this limit, simply because it is a limit, stands outside the series, the value of which approaches it indefinitely but never touches it. if in the natural world there were no other way of getting things save by such successive addition of their logically involved fractions, no complete units or whole things would ever come into being, for the fractions' sum would always leave a remainder. but in point of fact nature doesn't make eggs by making first half an egg, then a quarter, then an eighth, etc., and adding them together. she either makes a whole egg at once or none at all, and so of all her other units. it is only in the sphere of change, then, where one phase of a thing must needs come into being before another phase can come that zeno's paradox gives trouble. and it gives trouble then only if the succession of steps of change be infinitely divisible. if a bottle had to be emptied by an infinite number of successive decrements, it is mathematically impossible that the emptying should ever positively terminate. in point of fact, however, bottles and coffee-pots empty themselves by a finite number of decrements, each of definite amount. either a whole drop emerges or nothing emerges from the spout. if all change went thus drop-wise, so to speak, if real time sprouted or grew by units of duration of determinate amount, just as our perceptions of it grow by pulses, there would be no zenonian paradoxes or kantian antinomies to trouble us. all our sensible experiences, as we get them immediately, do thus change by discrete pulses of perception, each of which keeps us saying 'more, more, more,' or 'less, less, less,' as the definite increments or diminutions make themselves felt. the discreteness is still more obvious when, instead of old things changing, they cease, or when altogether new things come. fechner's term of the 'threshold,' which has played such a part in the psychology of perception, is only one way of naming the quantitative discreteness in the change of all our sensible experiences. they come to us in drops. time itself comes in drops. our ideal decomposition of the drops which are all that we feel into still finer fractions is but an incident in that great transformation of the perceptual order into a conceptual order of which i spoke in my last lecture. it is made in the interest of our rationalizing intellect solely. the times directly _felt_ in the experiences of living subjects have originally no common measure. let a lump of sugar melt in a glass, to use one of m. bergson's instances. we feel the time to be long while waiting for the process to end, but who knows how long or how short it feels to the sugar? all _felt_ times coexist and overlap or compenetrate each other thus vaguely, but the artifice of plotting them on a common scale helps us to reduce their aboriginal confusion, and it helps us still more to plot, against the same scale, the successive possible steps into which nature's various changes may be resolved, either sensibly or conceivably. we thus straighten out the aboriginal privacy and vagueness, and can date things publicly, as it were, and by each other. the notion of one objective and 'evenly flowing' time, cut into numbered instants, applies itself as a common measure to all the steps and phases, no matter how many, into which we cut the processes of nature. they are now definitely contemporary, or later or earlier one than another, and we can handle them mathematically, as we say, and far better, practically as well as theoretically, for having thus correlated them one to one with each other on the common schematic or conceptual time-scale. motion, to take a good example, is originally a turbid sensation, of which the native shape is perhaps best preserved in the phenomenon of vertigo. in vertigo we feel that movement _is_, and is more or less violent or rapid, more or less in this direction or that, more or less alarming or sickening. but a man subject to vertigo may gradually learn to co-ordinate his felt motion with his real position and that of other things, and intellectualize it enough to succeed at last in walking without staggering. the mathematical mind similarly organizes motion in its way, putting it into a logical definition: motion is now conceived as 'the occupancy of serially successive points of space at serially successive instants of time.' with such a definition we escape wholly from the turbid privacy of sense. but do we not also escape from sense-reality altogether? whatever motion really may be, it surely is not static; but the definition we have gained is of the absolutely static. it gives a set of one-to-one relations between space-points and time-points, which relations themselves are as fixed as the points are. it gives _positions_ assignable ad infinitum, but how the body gets from one position to another it omits to mention. the body gets there by moving, of course; but the conceived positions, however numerously multiplied, contain no element of movement, so zeno, using nothing but them in his discussion, has no alternative but to say that our intellect repudiates motion as a non-reality. intellectualism here does what i said it does--it makes experience less instead of more intelligible. we of course need a stable scheme of concepts, stably related with one another, to lay hold of our experiences and to co-ordinate them withal. when an experience comes with sufficient saliency to stand out, we keep the thought of it for future use, and store it in our conceptual system. what does not of itself stand out, we learn to _cut_ out; so the system grows completer, and new reality, as it comes, gets named after and conceptually strung upon this or that element of it which we have already established. the immutability of such an abstract system is its great practical merit; the same identical terms and relations in it can always be recovered and referred to--change itself is just such an unalterable concept. but all these abstract concepts are but as flowers gathered, they are only moments dipped out from the stream of time, snap-shots taken, as by a kinetoscopic camera, at a life that in its original coming is continuous. useful as they are as samples of the garden, or to re-enter the stream with, or to insert in our revolving lantern, they have no value but these practical values. you cannot explain by them what makes any single phenomenon be or go--you merely dot out the path of appearances which it traverses. for you cannot make continuous being out of discontinuities, and your concepts are discontinuous. the stages into which you analyze a change are _states_, the change itself goes on between them. it lies along their intervals, inhabits what your definition fails to gather up, and thus eludes conceptual explanation altogether. 'when the mathematician,' bergson writes, 'calculates the state of a system at the end of a time _t_, nothing need prevent him from supposing that betweenwhiles the universe vanishes, in order suddenly to appear again at the due moment in the new configuration. it is only the _t_-th moment that counts--that which flows throughout the intervals, namely real time, plays no part in his calculation.... in short, the world on which the mathematician operates is a world which dies and is born anew at every instant, like the world which descartes thought of when he spoke of a continued creation.' to know adequately what really _happens_ we ought, bergson insists, to see into the intervals, but the mathematician sees only their extremities. he fixes only a few results, he dots a curve and then interpolates, he substitutes a tracing for a reality. this being so undeniably the case, the history of the way in which philosophy has dealt with it is curious. the ruling tradition in philosophy has always been the platonic and aristotelian belief that fixity is a nobler and worthier thing than change. reality must be one and unalterable. concepts, being themselves fixities, agree best with this fixed nature of truth, so that for any knowledge of ours to be quite true it must be knowledge by universal concepts rather than by particular experiences, for these notoriously are mutable and corruptible. this is the tradition known as rationalism in philosophy, and what i have called intellectualism is only the extreme application of it. in spite of sceptics and empiricists, in spite of protagoras, hume, and james mill, rationalism has never been seriously questioned, for its sharpest critics have always had a tender place in their hearts for it, and have obeyed some of its mandates. they have not been consistent; they have played fast and loose with the enemy; and bergson alone has been radical. to show what i mean by this, let me contrast his procedure with that of some of the transcendentalist philosophers whom i have lately mentioned. coming after kant, these pique themselves on being 'critical,' on building in fact upon kant's 'critique' of pure reason. what that critique professed to establish was this, that concepts do not apprehend reality, but only such appearances as our senses feed out to them. they give immutable intellectual forms to these appearances, it is true, but the reality _an sich_ from which in ultimate resort the sense-appearances have to come remains forever unintelligible to our intellect. take motion, for example. sensibly, motion comes in drops, waves, or pulses; either some actual amount of it, or none, being apprehended. this amount is the datum or _gabe_ which reality feeds out to our intellectual faculty; but our intellect makes of it a task or _aufgabe_--this pun is one of the most memorable of kant's formulas--and insists that in every pulse of it an infinite number of successive minor pulses shall be ascertainable. these minor pulses _we_ can indeed _go on_ to ascertain or to compute indefinitely if we have patience; but it would contradict the definition of an infinite number to suppose the endless series of them to have actually counted _themselves_ out piecemeal. zeno made this manifest; so the infinity which our intellect requires of the sense-datum is thus a future and potential rather than a past and actual infinity of structure. the datum after it has made itself must be decompos_able_ ad infinitum by our conception, but of the steps by which that structure actually got composed we know nothing. our intellect casts, in short, no ray of light on the processes by which experiences _get made_. kant's monistic successors have in general found the data of immediate experience even more self-contradictory, when intellectually treated, than kant did. not only the character of infinity involved in the relation of various empirical data to their 'conditions,' but the very notion that empirical things should be related to one another at all, has seemed to them, when the intellectualistic fit was upon them, full of paradox and contradiction. we saw in a former lecture numerous instances of this from hegel, bradley, royce, and others. we saw also where the solution of such an intolerable state of things was sought for by these authors. whereas kant had placed it outside of and _before_ our experience, in the _dinge an sich_ which are the causes of the latter, his monistic successors all look for it either _after_ experience, as its absolute completion, or else consider it to be even now implicit within experience as its ideal signification. kant and his successors look, in short, in diametrically opposite directions. do not be misled by kant's admission of theism into his system. his god is the ordinary dualistic god of christianity, to whom his philosophy simply opens the door; he has nothing whatsoever in common with the 'absolute spirit' set up by his successors. so far as this absolute spirit is logically derived from kant, it is not from his god, but from entirely different elements of his philosophy. first from his notion that an unconditioned totality of the conditions of any experience must be assignable; and then from his other notion that the presence of some witness, or ego of apperception, is the most universal of all the conditions in question. the post-kantians make of the witness-condition what is called a concrete universal, an individualized all-witness or world-self, which shall imply in its rational constitution each and all of the other conditions put together, and therefore necessitate each and all of the conditioned experiences. abridgments like this of other men's opinions are very unsatisfactory, they always work injustice; but in this case those of you who are familiar with the literature will see immediately what i have in mind; and to the others, if there be any here, it will suffice to say that what i am trying so pedantically to point out is only the fact that monistic idealists after kant have invariably sought relief from the supposed contradictions of our world of sense by looking forward toward an _ens rationis_ conceived as its integration or logical completion, while he looked backward toward non-rational _dinge an sich_ conceived as its cause. pluralistic empiricists, on the other hand, have remained in the world of sense, either naïvely and because they overlooked the intellectualistic contradictions, or because, not able to ignore them, they thought they could refute them by a superior use of the same intellectualistic logic. thus it is that john mill pretends to refute the achilles-tortoise fallacy. the important point to notice here is the intellectualist logic. both sides treat it as authoritative, but they do so capriciously: the absolutists smashing the world of sense by its means, the empiricists smashing the absolute--for the absolute, they say, is the quintessence of all logical contradictions. neither side attains consistency. the hegelians have to invoke a higher logic to supersede the purely destructive efforts of their first logic. the empiricists use their logic against the absolute, but refuse to use it against finite experience. each party uses it or drops it to suit the vision it has faith in, but neither impugns in principle its general theoretic authority. bergson alone challenges its theoretic authority in principle. he alone denies that mere conceptual logic can tell us what is impossible or possible in the world of being or fact; and he does so for reasons which at the same time that they rule logic out from lordship over the whole of life, establish a vast and definite sphere of influence where its sovereignty is indisputable. bergson's own text, felicitous as it is, is too intricate for quotation, so i must use my own inferior words in explaining what i mean by saying this. in the first place, logic, giving primarily the relations between concepts as such, and the relations between natural facts only secondarily or so far as the facts have been already identified with concepts and defined by them, must of course stand or fall with the conceptual method. but the conceptual method is a transformation which the flux of life undergoes at our hands in the interests of practice essentially and only subordinately in the interests of theory. we live forward, we understand backward, said a danish writer; and to understand life by concepts is to arrest its movement, cutting it up into bits as if with scissors, and immobilizing these in our logical herbarium where, comparing them as dried specimens, we can ascertain which of them statically includes or excludes which other. this treatment supposes life to have already accomplished itself, for the concepts, being so many views taken after the fact, are retrospective and post mortem. nevertheless we can draw conclusions from them and project them into the future. we cannot learn from them how life made itself go, or how it will make itself go; but, on the supposition that its ways of making itself go are unchanging, we can calculate what positions of imagined arrest it will exhibit hereafter under given conditions. we can compute, for instance, at what point achilles will be, and where the tortoise will be, at the end of the twentieth minute. achilles may then be at a point far ahead; but the full detail of how he will have managed practically to get there our logic never gives us--we have seen, indeed, that it finds that its results contradict the facts of nature. the computations which the other sciences make differ in no respect from those of mathematics. the concepts used are all of them dots through which, by interpolation or extrapolation, curves are drawn, while along the curves other dots are found as consequences. the latest refinements of logic dispense with the curves altogether, and deal solely with the dots and their correspondences each to each in various series. the authors of these recent improvements tell us expressly that their aim is to abolish the last vestiges of intuition, _videlicet_ of concrete reality, from the field of reasoning, which then will operate literally on mental dots or bare abstract units of discourse, and on the ways in which they may be strung in naked series. this is all very esoteric, and my own understanding of it is most likely misunderstanding. so i speak here only by way of brief reminder to those who know. for the rest of us it is enough to recognize this fact, that altho by means of concepts cut out from the sensible flux of the past, we can re-descend upon the future flux and, making another cut, say what particular thing is likely to be found there; and that altho in this sense concepts give us knowledge, and may be said to have some theoretic value (especially when the particular thing foretold is one in which we take no present practical interest); yet in the deeper sense of giving _insight_ they have no theoretic value, for they quite fail to connect us with the inner life of the flux, or with the causes that govern its direction. instead of being interpreters of reality, concepts negate the inwardness of reality altogether. they make the whole notion of a causal influence between finite things incomprehensible. no real activities and indeed no real connexions of any kind can obtain if we follow the conceptual logic; for to be distinguishable, according to what i call intellectualism, is to be incapable of connexion. the work begun by zeno, and continued by hume, kant, herbart, hegel, and bradley, does not stop till sensible reality lies entirely disintegrated at the feet of 'reason.' of the 'absolute' reality which reason proposes to substitute for sensible reality i shall have more to say presently. meanwhile you see what professor bergson means by insisting that the function of the intellect is practical rather than theoretical. sensible reality is too concrete to be entirely manageable--look at the narrow range of it which is all that any animal, living in it exclusively as he does, is able to compass. to get from one point in it to another we have to plough or wade through the whole intolerable interval. no detail is spared us; it is as bad as the barbed-wire complications at port arthur, and we grow old and die in the process. but with our faculty of abstracting and fixing concepts we are there in a second, almost as if we controlled a fourth dimension, skipping the intermediaries as by a divine winged power, and getting at the exact point we require without entanglement with any context. what we do in fact is to _harness up_ reality in our conceptual systems in order to drive it the better. this process is practical because all the termini to which we drive are _particular_ termini, even when they are facts of the mental order. but the sciences in which the conceptual method chiefly celebrates its triumphs are those of space and matter, where the transformations of external things are dealt with. to deal with moral facts conceptually, we have first to transform them, substitute brain-diagrams or physical metaphors, treat ideas as atoms, interests as mechanical forces, our conscious 'selves' as 'streams,' and the like. paradoxical effect! as bergson well remarks, if our intellectual life were not practical but destined to reveal the inner natures. one would then suppose that it would find itself most at home in the domain of its own intellectual realities. but it is precisely there that it finds itself at the end of its tether. we know the inner movements of our spirit only perceptually. we feel them live in us, but can give no distinct account of their elements, nor definitely predict their future; while things that lie along the world of space, things of the sort that we literally _handle_, are what our intellects cope with most successfully. does not this confirm us in the view that the original and still surviving function of our intellectual life is to guide us in the practical adaptation of our expectancies and activities? one can easily get into a verbal mess at this point, and my own experience with pragmatism' makes me shrink from the dangers that lie in the word 'practical,' and far rather than stand out against you for that word, i am quite willing to part company with professor bergson, and to ascribe a primarily theoretical function to our intellect, provided you on your part then agree to discriminate 'theoretic' or scientific knowledge from the deeper 'speculative' knowledge aspired to by most philosophers, and concede that theoretic knowledge, which is knowledge _about_ things, as distinguished from living or sympathetic acquaintance with them, touches only the outer surface of reality. the surface which theoretic knowledge taken in this sense covers may indeed be enormous in extent; it may dot the whole diameter of space and time with its conceptual creations; but it does not penetrate a millimeter into the solid dimension. that inner dimension of reality is occupied by the _activities_ that keep it going, but the intellect, speaking through hume, kant & co., finds itself obliged to deny, and persists in denying, that activities have any intelligible existence. what exists for _thought_, we are told, is at most the results that we illusorily ascribe to such activities, strung along the surfaces of space and time by _regeln der verknüpfung_, laws of nature which state only coexistences and successions.[ ] thought deals thus solely with surfaces. it can name the thickness of reality, but it cannot fathom it, and its insufficiency here is essential and permanent, not temporary. the only way in which to apprehend reality's thickness is either to experience it directly by being a part of reality one's self, or to evoke it in imagination by sympathetically divining some one else's inner life. but what we thus immediately experience or concretely divine is very limited in duration, whereas abstractly we are able to conceive eternities. could we feel a million years concretely as we now feel a passing minute, we should have very little employment for our conceptual faculty. we should know the whole period fully at every moment of its passage, whereas we must now construct it laboriously by means of concepts which we project. direct acquaintance and conceptual knowledge are thus complementary of each other; each remedies the other's defects. if what we care most about be the synoptic treatment of phenomena, the vision of the far and the gathering of the scattered like, we must follow the conceptual method. but if, as metaphysicians, we are more curious about the inner nature of reality or about what really makes it go, we must turn our backs upon our winged concepts altogether, and bury ourselves in the thickness of those passing moments over the surface of which they fly, and on particular points of which they occasionally rest and perch. professor bergson thus inverts the traditional platonic doctrine absolutely. instead of intellectual knowledge being the profounder, he calls it the more superficial. instead of being the only adequate knowledge, it is grossly inadequate, and its only superiority is the practical one of enabling us to make short cuts through experience and thereby to save time. the one thing it cannot do is to reveal the nature of things--which last remark, if not clear already, will become clearer as i proceed. dive back into the flux itself, then, bergson tells us, if you wish to _know_ reality, that flux which platonism, in its strange belief that only the immutable is excellent, has always spurned; turn your face toward sensation, that flesh-bound thing which rationalism has always loaded with abuse.--this, you see, is exactly the opposite remedy from that of looking forward into the absolute, which our idealistic contemporaries prescribe. it violates our mental habits, being a kind of passive and receptive listening quite contrary to that effort to react noisily and verbally on everything, which is our usual intellectual pose. what, then, are the peculiar features in the perceptual flux which the conceptual translation so fatally leaves out? the essence of life is its continuously changing character; but our concepts are all discontinuous and fixed, and the only mode of making them coincide with life is by arbitrarily supposing positions of arrest therein. with such arrests our concepts may be made congruent. but these concepts are not _parts_ of reality, not real positions taken by it, but _suppositions_ rather, notes taken by ourselves, and you can no more dip up the substance of reality with them than you can dip up water with a net, however finely meshed. when we conceptualize, we cut out and fix, and exclude everything but what we have fixed. a concept means a _that-and-no-other_. conceptually, time excludes space; motion and rest exclude each other; approach excludes contact; presence excludes absence; unity excludes plurality; independence excludes relativity; 'mine' excludes 'yours'; this connexion excludes that connexion--and so on indefinitely; whereas in the real concrete sensible flux of life experiences compenetrate each other so that it is not easy to know just what is excluded and what not. past and future, for example, conceptually separated by the cut to which we give the name of present, and defined as being the opposite sides of that cut, are to some extent, however brief, co-present with each other throughout experience. the literally present moment is a purely verbal supposition, not a position; the only present ever realized concretely being the 'passing moment' in which the dying rearward of time and its dawning future forever mix their lights. say 'now' and it _was_ even while you say it. it is just intellectualism's attempt to substitute static cuts for units of experienced duration that makes real motion so unintelligible. the conception of the first half of the interval between achilles and the tortoise excludes that of the last half, and the mathematical necessity of traversing it separately before the last half is traversed stands permanently in the way of the last half ever being traversed. meanwhile the living achilles (who, for the purposes of this discussion, is only the abstract name of one phenomenon of impetus, just as the tortoise is of another) asks no leave of logic. the velocity of his acts is an indivisible nature in them like the expansive tension in a spring compressed. we define it conceptually as [_s/t_], but the _s_ and _t_ are only artificial cuts made after the fact, and indeed most artificial when we treat them in both runners as the same tracts of 'objective' space and time, for the experienced spaces and times in which the tortoise inwardly lives are probably as different as his velocity from the same things in achilles. the impetus of achilles is one concrete fact, and carries space, time, and conquest over the inferior creature's motion indivisibly in it. he perceives nothing, while running, of the mathematician's homogeneous time and space, of the infinitely numerous succession of cuts in both, or of their order. end and beginning come for him in the one onrush, and all that he actually experiences is that, in the midst of a certain intense effort of his own, the rival is in point of fact outstripped. we are so inveterately wedded to the conceptual decomposition of life that i know that this will seem to you like putting muddiest confusion in place of clearest thought, and relapsing into a molluscoid state of mind. yet i ask you whether the absolute superiority of our higher thought is so very clear, if all that it can find is impossibility in tasks which sense-experience so easily performs. what makes you call real life confusion is that it presents, as if they were dissolved in one another, a lot of differents which conception breaks life's flow by keeping apart. but _are_ not differents actually dissolved in one another? hasn't every bit of experience its quality, its duration, its extension, its intensity, its urgency, its clearness, and many aspects besides, no one of which can exist in the isolation in which our verbalized logic keeps it? they exist only _durcheinander_. reality always is, in m. bergson's phrase, an endosmosis or conflux of the same with the different: they compenetrate and telescope. for conceptual logic, the same is nothing but the same, and all sames with a third thing are the same with each other. not so in concrete experience. two spots on our skin, each of which feels the same as a third spot when touched along with it, are felt as different from each other. two tones, neither distinguishable from a third tone, are perfectly distinct from each other. the whole process of life is due to life's violation of our logical axioms. take its continuity as an example. terms like a and c appear to be connected by intermediaries, by b for example. intellectualism calls this absurd, for 'b-connected-with-a' is, 'as such,' a different term from 'b-connected-with-c.' but real life laughs at logic's veto. imagine a heavy log which takes two men to carry it. first a and b take it. then c takes hold and a drops off; then d takes hold and b drops off, so that c and d now bear it; and so on. the log meanwhile never drops, and keeps its sameness throughout the journey. even so it is with all our experiences. their changes are not complete annihilations followed by complete creations of something absolutely novel. there is partial decay and partial growth, and all the while a nucleus of relative constancy from which what decays drops off, and which takes into itself whatever is grafted on, until at length something wholly different has taken its place. in such a process we are as sure, in spite of intellectualist logic with its 'as suches,' that it _is_ the same nucleus which is able now to make connexion with what goes and again with what comes, as we are sure that the same point can lie on diverse lines that intersect there. without being one throughout, such a universe is continuous. its members interdigitate with their next neighbors in manifold directions, and there are no clean cuts between them anywhere. the great clash of intellectualist logic with sensible experience is where the experience is that of influence exerted. intellectualism denies (as we saw in lecture ii) that finite things can act on one another, for all things, once translated into concepts, remain shut up to themselves. to act on anything means to get into it somehow; but that would mean to get out of one's self and be one's other, which is self-contradictory, etc. meanwhile each of us actually _is_ his own other to that extent, livingly knowing how to perform the trick which logic tells us can't be done. my thoughts animate and actuate this very body which you see and hear, and thereby influence your thoughts. the dynamic current somehow does get from me to you, however numerous the intermediary conductors may have to be. distinctions may be insulators in logic as much as they like, but in life distinct things can and do commune together every moment. the conflict of the two ways of knowing is best summed up in the intellectualist doctrine that 'the same cannot exist in many relations.' this follows of course from the concepts of the two relations being so distinct that 'what-is-in-the-one' means 'as such' something distinct from what 'what-is-in-the-other' means. it is like mill's ironical saying, that we should not think of newton as both an englishman and a mathematician, because an englishman as such is not a mathematician and a mathematician as such is not an englishman. but the real newton was somehow both things at once; and throughout the whole finite universe each real thing proves to be many differents without undergoing the necessity of breaking into disconnected editions of itself. these few indications will perhaps suffice to put you at the bergsonian point of view. the immediate experience of life solves the problems which so baffle our conceptual intelligence: how can what is manifold be one? how can things get out of themselves? how be their own others? how be both distinct and connected? how can they act on one another? how be for others and yet for themselves? how be absent and present at once? the intellect asks these questions much as we might ask how anything can both separate and unite things, or how sounds can grow more alike by continuing to grow more different. if you already know space sensibly, you can answer the former question by pointing to any interval in it, long or short; if you know the musical scale, you can answer the latter by sounding an octave; but then you must first have the sensible knowledge of these realities. similarly bergson answers the intellectualist conundrums by pointing back to our various finite sensational experiences and saying, 'lo, even thus; even so are these other problems solved livingly.' when you have broken the reality into concepts you never can reconstruct it in its wholeness. out of no amount of discreteness can you manufacture the concrete. but place yourself at a bound, or _d'emblée_, as m. bergson says, inside of the living, moving, active thickness of the real, and all the abstractions and distinctions are given into your hand: you can now make the intellectualist substitutions to your heart's content. install yourself in phenomenal movement, for example, and velocity, succession, dates, positions, and innumerable other things are given you in the bargain. but with only an abstract succession of dates and positions you can never patch up movement itself. it slips through their intervals and is lost. so it is with every concrete thing, however complicated. our intellectual handling of it is a retrospective patchwork, a post-mortem dissection, and can follow any order we find most expedient. we can make the thing seem self-contradictory whenever we wish to. but place yourself at the point of view of the thing's interior _doing_, and all these back-looking and conflicting conceptions lie harmoniously in your hand. get at the expanding centre of a human character, the _élan vital_ of a man, as bergson calls it, by living sympathy, and at a stroke you see how it makes those who see it from without interpret it in such diverse ways. it is something that breaks into both honesty and dishonesty, courage and cowardice, stupidity and insight, at the touch of varying circumstances, and you feel exactly why and how it does this, and never seek to identify it stably with any of these single abstractions. only your intellectualist does that,--and you now also feel why _he_ must do it to the end. place yourself similarly at the centre of a man's philosophic vision and you understand at once all the different things it makes him write or say. but keep outside, use your post-mortem method, try to build the philosophy up out of the single phrases, taking first one and then another and seeking to make them fit, and of course you fail. you crawl over the thing like a myopic ant over a building, tumbling into every microscopic crack or fissure, finding nothing but inconsistencies, and never suspecting that a centre exists. i hope that some of the philosophers in this audience may occasionally have had something different from this intellectualist type of criticism applied to their own works! what really _exists_ is not things made but things in the making. once made, they are dead, and an infinite number of alternative conceptual decompositions can be used in defining them. but put yourself _in the making_ by a stroke of intuitive sympathy with the thing and, the whole range of possible decompositions coming at once into your possession, you are no longer troubled with the question which of them is the more absolutely true. reality _falls_ in passing into conceptual analysis; it _mounts_ in living its own undivided life--it buds and bourgeons, changes and creates. once adopt the movement of this life in any given instance and you know what bergson calls the _devenir réel_ by which the thing evolves and grows. philosophy should seek this kind of living understanding of the movement of reality, not follow science in vainly patching together fragments of its dead results. thus much of m. bergson's philosophy is sufficient for my purpose in these lectures, so here i will stop, leaving unnoticed all its other constituent features, original and interesting tho they be. you may say, and doubtless some of you now are saying inwardly, that his remanding us to sensation in this wise is only a regress, a return to that ultra-crude empiricism which your own idealists since green have buried ten times over. i confess that it is indeed a return to empiricism, but i think that the return in such accomplished shape only proves the latter's immortal truth. what won't stay buried must have some genuine life. _am anfang war die tat_; fact is a _first_; to which all our conceptual handling comes as an inadequate second, never its full equivalent. when i read recent transcendentalist literature--i must partly except my colleague royce!--i get nothing but a sort of marking of time, champing of jaws, pawing of the ground, and resettling into the same attitude, like a weary horse in a stall with an empty manger. it is but turning over the same few threadbare categories, bringing the same objections, and urging the same answers and solutions, with never a new fact or a new horizon coming into sight. but open bergson, and new horizons loom on every page you read. it is like the breath of the morning and the song of birds. it tells of reality itself, instead of merely reiterating what dusty-minded professors have written about what other previous professors have thought. nothing in bergson is shop-worn or at second hand. that he gives us no closed-in system will of course be fatal to him in intellectualist eyes. he only evokes and invites; but he first annuls the intellectualist veto, so that we now join step with reality with a philosophical conscience never quite set free before. as a french disciple of his well expresses it: 'bergson claims of us first of all a certain inner catastrophe, and not every one is capable of such a logical revolution. but those who have once found themselves flexible enough for the execution of such a psychological change of front, discover somehow that they can never return again to their ancient attitude of mind. they are now bergsonians ... and possess the principal thoughts of the master all at once. they have understood in the fashion in which one loves, they have caught the whole melody and can thereafter admire at their leisure the originality, the fecundity, and the imaginative genius with which its author develops, transposes, and varies in a thousand ways by the orchestration of his style and dialectic, the original theme.'[ ] this, scant as it is, is all i have to say about bergson on this occasion--i hope it may send some of you to his original text. i must now turn back to the point where i found it advisable to appeal to his ideas. you remember my own intellectualist difficulties in the last lecture, about how a lot of separate consciousnesses can at the same time be one collective thing. how, i asked, can one and the same identical content of experience, of which on idealist principles the _esse_ is to be felt, be felt so diversely if itself be the only feeler? the usual way of escape by 'quatenus' or 'as such' won't help us here if we are radical intellectualists, i said, for appearance-together is as such _not_ appearance-apart, the world _quâ_ many is not the world _quâ_ one, as absolutism claims. if we hold to hume's maxim, which later intellectualism uses so well, that whatever things are distinguished are as separate as if there were no manner of connexion between them, there seemed no way out of the difficulty save by stepping outside of experience altogether and invoking different spiritual agents, selves or souls, to realize the diversity required. but this rescue by 'scholastic entities' i was unwilling to accept any more than pantheistic idealists accept it. yet, to quote fechner's phrase again, 'nichts wirkliches kann unmöglich sein,' the actual cannot be impossible, and what _is_ actual at every moment of our lives is the sort of thing which i now proceed to remind you of. you can hear the vibration of an electric contact-maker, smell the ozone, see the sparks, and feel the thrill, co-consciously as it were or in one field of experience. but you can also isolate any one of these sensations by shutting out the rest. if you close your eyes, hold your nose, and remove your hand, you can get the sensation of sound alone, but it seems still the same sensation that it was; and if you restore the action of the other organs, the sound coalesces with the feeling, the sight, and the smell sensations again. now the natural way of talking of all this[ ] is to say that certain sensations are experienced, now singly, and now together with other sensations, in a common conscious field. fluctuations of attention give analogous results. we let a sensation in or keep it out by changing our attention; and similarly we let an item of memory in or drop it out. [please don't raise the question here of how these changes _come to pass_. the immediate condition is probably cerebral in every instance, but it would be irrelevant now to consider it, for now we are thinking only of results, and i repeat that the natural way of thinking of them is that which intellectualist criticism finds so absurd.] the absurdity charged is that the self-same should function so differently, now with and now without something else. but this it sensibly seems to do. this very desk which i strike with my hand strikes in turn your eyes. it functions at once as a physical object in the outer world and as a mental object in our sundry mental worlds. the very body of mine that _my_ thought actuates is the body whose gestures are _your_ visual object and to which you give my name. the very log which john helped to carry is the log now borne by james. the very girl you love is simultaneously entangled elsewhere. the very place behind me is in front of you. look where you will, you gather only examples of the same amid the different, and of different relations existing as it were in solution in the same thing. _quâ_ this an experience is not the same as it is _quâ_ that, truly enough; but the _quâs_ are conceptual shots of ours at its post-mortem remains, and in its sensational immediacy everything is all at once whatever different things it is at once at all. it is before c and after a, far from you and near to me, without this associate and with that one, active and passive, physical and mental, a whole of parts and part of a higher whole, all simultaneously and without interference or need of doubling-up its being, so long as we keep to what i call the 'immediate' point of view, the point of view in which we follow our sensational life's continuity, and to which all living language conforms. it is only when you try--to continue using the hegelian vocabulary--to 'mediate' the immediate, or to substitute concepts for sensational life, that intellectualism celebrates its triumph and the immanent-self-contradictoriness of all this smooth-running finite experience gets proved. of the oddity of inventing as a remedy for the inconveniences resulting from this situation a supernumerary conceptual object called an absolute, into which you pack the self-same contradictions unreduced, i will say something in the next lecture. the absolute is said to perform its feats by taking up its other into itself. but that is exactly what is done when every individual morsel of the sensational stream takes up the adjacent morsels by coalescing with them. this is just what we mean by the stream's sensible continuity. no element _there_ cuts itself off from any other element, as concepts cut themselves from concepts. no part _there_ is so small as not to be a place of conflux. no part there is not really _next_ its neighbors; which means that there is literally nothing between; which means again that no part goes exactly so far and no farther; that no part absolutely excludes another, but that they compenetrate and are cohesive; that if you tear out one, its roots bring out more with them; that whatever is real is telescoped and diffused into other reals; that, in short, every minutest thing is already its hegelian 'own other,' in the fullest sense of the term. of course this _sounds_ self-contradictory, but as the immediate facts don't sound at all, but simply _are_, until we conceptualize and name them vocally, the contradiction results only from the conceptual or discursive form being substituted for the real form. but if, as bergson shows, that form is superimposed for practical ends only, in order to let us jump about over life instead of wading through it; and if it cannot even pretend to reveal anything of what life's inner nature is or ought to be; why then we can turn a deaf ear to its accusations. the resolve to turn the deaf ear is the inner crisis or 'catastrophe' of which m. bergson's disciple whom i lately quoted spoke. we are so subject to the philosophic tradition which treats _logos_ or discursive thought generally as the sole avenue to truth, that to fall back on raw unverbalized life as more of a revealer, and to think of concepts as the merely practical things which bergson calls them, comes very hard. it is putting off our proud maturity of mind and becoming again as foolish little children in the eyes of reason. but difficult as such a revolution is, there is no other way, i believe, to the possession of reality, and i permit myself to hope that some of you may share my opinion after you have heard my next lecture. lecture vii the continuity of experience i fear that few of you will have been able to obey bergson's call upon you to look towards the sensational life for the fuller knowledge of reality, or to sympathize with his attempt to limit the divine right of concepts to rule our mind absolutely. it is too much like looking downward and not up. philosophy, you will say, doesn't lie flat on its belly in the middle of experience, in the very thick of its sand and gravel, as this bergsonism does, never getting a peep at anything from above. philosophy is essentially the vision of things from above. it doesn't simply feel the detail of things, it comprehends their intelligible plan, sees their forms and principles, their categories and rules, their order and necessity. it takes the superior point of view of the architect. is it conceivable that it should ever forsake that point of view and abandon itself to a slovenly life of immediate feeling? to say nothing of your traditional oxford devotion to aristotle and plato, the leaven of t.h. green probably works still too strongly here for his anti-sensationalism to be outgrown quickly. green more than any one realized that knowledge _about_ things was knowledge of their relations; but nothing could persuade him that our sensational life could contain any relational element. he followed the strict intellectualist method with sensations. what they were not expressly defined as including, they must exclude. sensations are not defined as relations, so in the end green thought that they could get related together only by the action on them from above of a 'self-distinguishing' absolute and eternal mind, present to that which is related, but not related itself. 'a relation,' he said, 'is not contingent with the contingency of feeling. it is permanent with the permanence of the combining and comparing thought which alone constitutes it.'[ ] in other words, relations are purely conceptual objects, and the sensational life as such cannot relate itself together. sensation in itself, green wrote, is fleeting, momentary, unnameable (because, while we name it, it has become another), and for the same reason unknowable, the very negation of knowability. were there no permanent objects of conception for our sensations to be 'referred to,' there would be no significant names, but only noises, and a consistent sensationalism must be speechless.[ ] green's intellectualism was so earnest that it produced a natural and an inevitable effect. but the atomistic and unrelated sensations which he had in mind were purely fictitious products of his rationalist fancy. the psychology of our own day disavows them utterly,[ ] and green's laborious belaboring of poor old locke for not having first seen that his ideas of sensation were just that impracticable sort of thing, and then fled to transcendental idealism as a remedy,--his belaboring of poor old locke for this, i say, is pathetic. every examiner of the sensible life _in concreto_ must see that relations of every sort, of time, space, difference, likeness, change, rate, cause, or what not, are just as integral members of the sensational flux as terms are, and that conjunctive relations are just as true members of the flux as disjunctive relations are.[ ] this is what in some recent writings of mine i have called the 'radically empiricist' doctrine (in distinction from the doctrine of mental atoms which the name empiricism so often suggests). intellectualistic critics of sensation insist that sensations are _disjoined_ only. radical empiricism insists that conjunctions between them are just as immediately given as disjunctions are, and that relations, whether disjunctive or conjunctive, are in their original sensible givenness just as fleeting and momentary (in green's words), and just as 'particular,' as terms are. later, both terms and relations get universalized by being conceptualized and named.[ ] but all the thickness, concreteness, and individuality of experience exists in the immediate and relatively unnamed stages of it, to the richness of which, and to the standing inadequacy of our conceptions to match it, professor bergson so emphatically calls our attention. and now i am happy to say that we can begin to gather together some of the separate threads of our argument, and see a little better the general kind of conclusion toward which we are tending. pray go back with me to the lecture before the last, and recall what i said about the difficulty of seeing how states of consciousness can compound themselves. the difficulty seemed to be the same, you remember, whether we took it in psychology as the composition of finite states of mind out of simpler finite states, or in metaphysics as the composition of the absolute mind out of finite minds in general. it is the general conceptualist difficulty of any one thing being the same with many things, either at once or in succession, for the abstract concepts of oneness and manyness must needs exclude each other. in the particular instance that we have dwelt on so long, the one thing is the all-form of experience, the many things are the each-forms of experience in you and me. to call them the same we must treat them as if each were simultaneously its own other, a feat on conceptualist principles impossible of performance. on the principle of going behind the conceptual function altogether, however, and looking to the more primitive flux of the sensational life for reality's true shape, a way is open to us, as i tried in my last lecture to show. not only the absolute is its own other, but the simplest bits of immediate experience are their own others, if that hegelian phrase be once for all allowed. the concrete pulses of experience appear pent in by no such definite limits as our conceptual substitutes for them are confined by. they run into one another continuously and seem to interpenetrate. what in them is relation and what is matter related is hard to discern. you feel no one of them as inwardly simple, and no two as wholly without confluence where they touch. there is no datum so small as not to show this mystery, if mystery it be. the tiniest feeling that we can possibly have comes with an earlier and a later part and with a sense of their continuous procession. mr. shadworth hodgson showed long ago that there is literally no such object as the present moment except as an unreal postulate of abstract thought.[ ] the 'passing' moment is, as i already have reminded you, the minimal fact, with the 'apparition of difference' inside of it as well as outside. if we do not feel both past and present in one field of feeling, we feel them not at all. we have the same many-in-one in the matter that fills the passing time. the rush of our thought forward through its fringes is the everlasting peculiarity of its life. we realize this life as something always off its balance, something in transition, something that shoots out of a darkness through a dawn into a brightness that we feel to be the dawn fulfilled. in the very midst of the continuity our experience comes as an alteration. 'yes,' we say at the full brightness, '_this_ is what i just meant.' 'no,' we feel at the dawning, 'this is not yet the full meaning, there is more to come.' in every crescendo of sensation, in every effort to recall, in every progress towards the satisfaction of desire, this succession of an emptiness and fulness that have reference to each other and are one flesh is the essence of the phenomenon. in every hindrance of desire the sense of an ideal presence which is absent in fact, of an absent, in a word, which the only function of the present is to _mean_, is even more notoriously there. and in the movement of pure thought we have the same phenomenon. when i say _socrates is mortal_, the moment _socrates_ is incomplete; it falls forward through the _is_ which is pure movement, into the _mortal_ which is indeed bare mortal on the tongue, but for the mind is _that mortal_, the _mortal socrates_, at last satisfactorily disposed of and told off.[ ] here, then, inside of the minimal pulses of experience, is realized that very inner complexity which the transcendentalists say only the absolute can genuinely possess. the gist of the matter is always the same--something ever goes indissolubly with something else. you cannot separate the same from its other, except by abandoning the real altogether and taking to the conceptual system. what is immediately given in the single and particular instance is always something pooled and mutual, something with no dark spot, no point of ignorance. no one elementary bit of reality is eclipsed from the next bit's point of view, if only we take reality sensibly and in small enough pulses--and by us it has to be taken pulse-wise, for our span of consciousness is too short to grasp the larger collectivity of things except nominally and abstractly. no more of reality collected together at once is extant anywhere, perhaps, than in my experience of reading this page, or in yours of listening; yet within those bits of experience as they come to pass we get a fulness of content that no conceptual description can equal. sensational experiences _are_ their 'own others,' then, both internally and externally. inwardly they are one with their parts, and outwardly they pass continuously into their next neighbors, so that events separated by years of time in a man's life hang together unbrokenly by the intermediary events. their _names_, to be sure, cut them into separate conceptual entities, but no cuts existed in the continuum in which they originally came. if, with all this in our mind, we turn to our own particular predicament, we see that our old objection to the self-compounding of states of consciousness, our accusation that it was impossible for purely logical reasons, is unfounded in principle. every smallest state of consciousness, concretely taken, overflows its own definition. only concepts are self-identical; only 'reason' deals with closed equations; nature is but a name for excess; every point in her opens out and runs into the more; and the only question, with reference to any point we may be considering, is how far into the rest of nature we may have to go in order to get entirely beyond its overflow. in the pulse of inner life immediately present now in each of us is a little past, a little future, a little awareness of our own body, of each other's persons, of these sublimities we are trying to talk about, of the earth's geography and the direction of history, of truth and error, of good and bad, and of who knows how much more? feeling, however dimly and subconsciously, all these things, your pulse of inner life is continuous with them, belongs to them and they to it. you can't identify it with either one of them rather than with the others, for if you let it develop into no matter which of those directions, what it develops into will look back on it and say, 'that was the original germ of me.' in _principle_, then, the real units of our immediately-felt life are unlike the units that intellectualist logic holds to and makes its calculations with. they are not separate from their own others, and you have to take them at widely separated dates to find any two of them that seem unblent. then indeed they do appear separate even as their concepts are separate; a chasm yawns between them; but the chasm itself is but an intellectualist fiction, got by abstracting from the continuous sheet of experiences with which the intermediary time was filled. it is like the log carried first by william and henry, then by william, henry, and john, then by henry and john, then by john and peter, and so on. all real units of experience _overlap_. let a row of equidistant dots on a sheet of paper symbolize the concepts by which we intellectualize the world. let a ruler long enough to cover at least three dots stand for our sensible experience. then the conceived changes of the sensible experience can be symbolized by sliding the ruler along the line of dots. one concept after another will apply to it, one after another drop away, but it will always cover at least two of them, and no dots less than three will ever adequately cover _it_. you falsify it if you treat it conceptually, or by the law of dots. what is true here of successive states must also be true of simultaneous characters. they also overlap each other with their being. my present field of consciousness is a centre surrounded by a fringe that shades insensibly into a subconscious more. i use three separate terms here to describe, this fact; but i might as well use three hundred, for the fact is all shades and no boundaries. which part of it properly is in my consciousness, which out? if i name what is out, it already has come in. the centre works in one way while the margins work in another, and presently overpower the centre and are central themselves. what we conceptually identify ourselves with and say we are thinking of at any time is the centre; but our _full_ self is the whole field, with all those indefinitely radiating subconscious possibilities of increase that we can only feel without conceiving, and can hardly begin to analyze. the collective and the distributive ways of being coexist here, for each part functions distinctly, makes connexion with its own peculiar region in the still wider rest of experience and tends to draw us into that line, and yet the whole is somehow felt as one pulse of our life,--not conceived so, but felt so. in principle, then, as i said, intellectualism's edge is broken; it can only approximate to reality, and its logic is inapplicable to our inner life, which spurns its vetoes and mocks at its impossibilities. every bit of us at every moment is part and parcel of a wider self, it quivers along various radii like the wind-rose on a compass, and the actual in it is continuously one with possibles not yet in our present sight.[ ] and just as we are co-conscious with our own momentary margin, may not we ourselves form the margin of some more really central self in things which is co-conscious with the whole of us? may not you and i be confluent in a higher consciousness, and confluently active there, tho we now know it not? i am tiring myself and you, i know, by vainly seeking to describe by concepts and words what i say at the same time exceeds either conceptualization or verbalization. as long as one continues _talking_, intellectualism remains in undisturbed possession of the field. the return to life can't come about by talking. it is an _act_; to make you return to life, i must set an example for your imitation, i must deafen you to talk, or to the importance of talk, by showing you, as bergson does, that the concepts we talk with are made for purposes of _practice_ and not for purposes of insight. or i must _point_, point to the mere _that_ of life, and you by inner sympathy must fill out the _what_ for yourselves. the minds of some of you, i know, will absolutely refuse to do so, refuse to think in non-conceptualized terms. i myself absolutely refused to do so for years together, even after i knew that the denial of manyness-in-oneness by intellectualism must be false, for the same reality does perform the most various functions at once. but i hoped ever for a revised intellectualist way round the difficulty, and it was only after reading bergson that i saw that to continue using the intellectualist method was itself the fault. i saw that philosophy had been on a false scent ever since the days of socrates and plato, that an _intellectual_ answer to the intellectualist's difficulties will never come, and that the real way out of them, far from consisting in the discovery of such an answer, consists in simply closing one's ears to the question. when conceptualism summons life to justify itself in conceptual terms, it is like a challenge addressed in a foreign language to some one who is absorbed in his own business; it is irrelevant to him altogether--he may let it lie unnoticed. i went thus through the 'inner catastrophe' of which i spoke in the last lecture; i had literally come to the end of my conceptual stock-in-trade, i was bankrupt intellectualistically, and had to change my base. no words of mine will probably convert you, for words can be the names only of concepts. but if any of you try sincerely and pertinaciously on your own separate accounts to intellectualize reality, you may be similarly driven to a change of front. i say no more: i must leave life to teach the lesson. we have now reached a point of view from which the self-compounding of mind in its smaller and more accessible portions seems a certain fact, and in which the speculative assumption of a similar but wider compounding in remoter regions must be reckoned with as a legitimate hypothesis. the absolute is not the impossible being i once thought it. mental facts do function both singly and together, at once, and we finite minds may simultaneously be co-conscious with one another in a superhuman intelligence. it is only the extravagant claims of coercive necessity on the absolute's part that have to be denied by _a priori_ logic. as an hypothesis trying to make itself probable on analogical and inductive grounds, the absolute is entitled to a patient hearing. which is as much as to say that our serious business from now onward lies with fechner and his method, rather than with hegel, royce, or bradley. fechner treats the superhuman consciousness he so fervently believes in as an hypothesis only, which he then recommends by all the resources of induction and persuasion. it is true that fechner himself is an absolutist in his books, not actively but passively, if i may say so. he talks not only of the earth-soul and of the star-souls, but of an integrated soul of all things in the cosmos without exception, and this he calls god just as others call it the absolute. nevertheless he _thinks_ only of the subordinate superhuman souls, and content with having made his obeisance once for all to the august total soul of the cosmos, he leaves it in its lonely sublimity with no attempt to define its nature. like the absolute, it is 'out of range,' and not an object for distincter vision. psychologically, it seems to me that fechner's god is a lazy postulate of his, rather than a part of his system positively thought out. as we envelop our sight and hearing, so the earth-soul envelops us, and the star-soul the earth-soul, until--what? envelopment can't go on forever; it must have an _abschluss_, a total envelope must terminate the series, so god is the name that fechner gives to this last all-enveloper. but if nothing escapes this all-enveloper, he is responsible for everything, including evil, and all the paradoxes and difficulties which i found in the absolute at the end of our third lecture recur undiminished. fechner tries sincerely to grapple with the problem of evil, but he always solves it in the leibnitzian fashion by making his god non-absolute, placing him under conditions of 'metaphysical necessity' which even his omnipotence cannot violate. his will has to struggle with conditions not imposed on that will by itself. he tolerates provisionally what he has not created, and then with endless patience tries to overcome it and live it down. he has, in short, a history. whenever fechner tries to represent him clearly, his god becomes the ordinary god of theism, and ceases to be the absolutely totalized all-enveloper.[ ] in this shape, he represents the ideal element in things solely, and is our champion and our helper and we his helpers, against the bad parts of the universe. fechner was in fact too little of a metaphysician to care for perfect formal consistency in these abstract regions. he believed in god in the pluralistic manner, but partly from convention and partly from what i should call intellectual laziness, if laziness of any kind could be imputed to a fechner, he let the usual monistic talk about him pass unchallenged. i propose to you that we should discuss the question of god without entangling ourselves in advance in the monistic assumption. is it probable that there is any superhuman consciousness at all, in the first place? when that is settled, the further question whether its form be monistic or pluralistic is in order. before advancing to either question, however, and i shall have to deal with both but very briefly after what has been said already, let me finish our retrospective survey by one more remark about the curious logical situation of the absolutists. for what have they invoked the absolute except as a being the peculiar inner form of which shall enable it to overcome the contradictions with which intellectualism has found the finite many as such to be infected? the many-in-one character that, as we have seen, every smallest tract of finite experience offers, is considered by intellectualism to be fatal to the reality of finite experience. what can be distinguished, it tells us, is separate; and what is separate is unrelated, for a relation, being a 'between,' would bring only a twofold separation. hegel, royce, bradley, and the oxford absolutists in general seem to agree about this logical absurdity of manyness-in-oneness in the only places where it is empirically found. but see the curious tactics! is the absurdity _reduced_ in the absolute being whom they call in to relieve it? quite otherwise, for that being shows it on an infinitely greater scale, and flaunts it in its very definition. the fact of its not being related to any outward environment, the fact that all relations are inside of itself, doesn't save it, for mr. bradley's great argument against the finite is that _in_ any given bit of it (a bit of sugar, for instance) the presence of a plurality of characters (whiteness and sweetness, for example) is self-contradictory; so that in the final end all that the absolute's name appears to stand for is the persistent claim of outraged human nature that reality _shall_ not be called absurd. _somewhere_ there must be an aspect of it guiltless of self-contradiction. all we can see of the absolute, meanwhile, is guilty in the same way in which the finite is. intellectualism sees what it calls the guilt, when comminuted in the finite object; but is too near-sighted to see it in the more enormous object. yet the absolute's constitution, if imagined at all, has to be imagined after the analogy of some bit of finite experience. take any _real_ bit, suppress its environment and then magnify it to monstrosity, and you get identically the type of structure of the absolute. it is obvious that all your difficulties here remain and go with you. if the relative experience was inwardly absurd, the absolute experience is infinitely more so. intellectualism, in short, strains off the gnat, but swallows the whole camel. but this polemic against the absolute is as odious to me as it is to you, so i will say no more about that being. it is only one of those wills of the wisp, those lights that do mislead the morn, that have so often impeded the clear progress of philosophy, so i will turn to the more general positive question of whether superhuman unities of consciousness should be considered as more probable or more improbable. in a former lecture i went over some of the fechnerian reasons for their plausibility, or reasons that at least replied to our more obvious grounds of doubt concerning them. the numerous facts of divided or split human personality which the genius of certain medical men, as janet, freud, prince, sidis, and others, have unearthed were unknown in fechner's time, and neither the phenomena of automatic writing and speech, nor of mediumship and 'possession' generally, had been recognized or studied as we now study them, so fechner's stock of analogies is scant compared with our present one. he did the best with what he had, however. for my own part i find in some of these abnormal or supernormal facts the strongest suggestions in favor of a superior co-consciousness being possible. i doubt whether we shall ever understand some of them without using the very letter of fechner's conception of a great reservoir in which the memories of earth's inhabitants are pooled and preserved, and from which, when the threshold lowers or the valve opens, information ordinarily shut out leaks into the mind of exceptional individuals among us. but those regions of inquiry are perhaps too spook-haunted to interest an academic audience, and the only evidence i feel it now decorous to bring to the support of fechner is drawn from ordinary religious experience. i think it may be asserted that there _are_ religious experiences of a specific nature, not deducible by analogy or psychological reasoning from our other sorts of experience. i think that they point with reasonable probability to the continuity of our consciousness with a wider spiritual environment from which the ordinary prudential man (who is the only man that scientific psychology, so called, takes cognizance of) is shut off. i shall begin my final lecture by referring to them again briefly. lecture viii conclusions at the close of my last lecture i referred to the existence of religious experiences of a specific nature. i must now explain just what i mean by such a claim. briefly, the facts i have in mind may all be described as experiences of an unexpected life succeeding upon death. by this i don't mean immortality, or the death of the body. i mean the deathlike termination of certain mental processes within the individual's experience, processes that run to failure, and in some individuals, at least, eventuate in despair. just as romantic love seems a comparatively recent literary invention, so these experiences of a life that supervenes upon despair seem to have played no great part in official theology till luther's time; and possibly the best way to indicate their character will be to point to a certain contrast between the inner life of ourselves and of the ancient greeks and romans. mr. chesterton, i think, says somewhere, that the greeks and romans, in all that concerned their moral life, were an extraordinarily solemn set of folks. the athenians thought that the very gods must admire the rectitude of phocion and aristides; and those gentlemen themselves were apparently of much the same opinion. cato's veracity was so impeccable that the extremest incredulity a roman could express of anything was to say, 'i would not believe it even if cato had told me.' good was good, and bad was bad, for these people. hypocrisy, which church-christianity brought in, hardly existed; the naturalistic system held firm; its values showed no hollowness and brooked no irony. the individual, if virtuous enough, could meet all possible requirements. the pagan pride had never crumbled. luther was the first moralist who broke with any effectiveness through the crust of all this naturalistic self-sufficiency, thinking (and possibly he was right) that saint paul had done it already. religious experience of the lutheran type brings all our naturalistic standards to bankruptcy. you are strong only by being weak, it shows. you cannot live on pride or self-sufficingness. there is a light in which all the naturally founded and currently accepted distinctions, excellences, and safeguards of our characters appear as utter childishness. sincerely to give up one's conceit or hope of being good in one's own right is the only door to the universe's deeper reaches. these deeper reaches are familiar to evangelical christianity and to what is nowadays becoming known as 'mind-cure' religion or 'new thought.' the phenomenon is that of new ranges of life succeeding on our most despairing moments. there are resources in us that naturalism with its literal and legal virtues never recks of, possibilities that take our breath away, of another kind of happiness and power, based on giving up our own will and letting something higher work for us, and these seem to show a world wider than either physics or philistine ethics can imagine. here is a world in which all is well, in _spite_ of certain forms of death, indeed _because_ of certain forms of death--death of hope, death of strength, death of responsibility, of fear and worry, competency and desert, death of everything that paganism, naturalism, and legalism pin their faith on and tie their trust to. reason, operating on our other experiences, even our psychological experiences, would never have inferred these specifically religious experiences in advance of their actual coming. she could not suspect their existence, for they are discontinuous with the 'natural' experiences they succeed upon and invert their values. but as they actually come and are given, creation widens to the view of their recipients. they suggest that our natural experience, our strictly moralistic and prudential experience, may be only a fragment of real human experience. they soften nature's outlines and open out the strangest possibilities and perspectives. this is why it seems to me that the logical understanding, working in abstraction from such specifically religious experiences, will always omit something, and fail to reach completely adequate conclusions. death and failure, it will always say, _are_ death and failure simply, and can nevermore be one with life; so religious experience, peculiarly so called, needs, in my opinion, to be carefully considered and interpreted by every one who aspires to reason out a more complete philosophy. the sort of belief that religious experience of this type naturally engenders in those who have it is fully in accord with fechner's theories. to quote words which i have used elsewhere, the believer finds that the tenderer parts of his personal life are continuous with a _more_ of the same quality which is operative in the universe outside of him and which he can keep in working touch with, and in a fashion get on board of and save himself, when all his lower being has gone to pieces in the wreck. in a word, the believer is continuous, to his own consciousness, at any rate, with a wider self from which saving experiences flow in. those who have such experiences distinctly enough and often enough to live in the light of them remain quite unmoved by criticism, from whatever quarter it may come, be it academic or scientific, or be it merely the voice of logical common sense. they have had their vision and they _know_--that is enough--that we inhabit an invisible spiritual environment from which help comes, our soul being mysteriously one with a larger soul whose instruments we are. one may therefore plead, i think, that fechner's ideas are not without direct empirical verification. there is at any rate one side of life which would be easily explicable if those ideas were true, but of which there appears no clear explanation so long as we assume either with naturalism that human consciousness is the highest consciousness there is, or with dualistic theism that there is a higher mind in the cosmos, but that it is discontinuous with our own. it has always been a matter of surprise with me that philosophers of the absolute should have shown so little interest in this department of life, and so seldom put its phenomena in evidence, even when it seemed obvious that personal experience of some kind must have made their confidence in their own vision so strong. the logician's bias has always been too much with them. they have preferred the thinner to the thicker method, dialectical abstraction being so much more dignified and academic than the confused and unwholesome facts of personal biography. in spite of rationalism's disdain for the particular, the personal, and the unwholesome, the drift of all the evidence we have seems to me to sweep us very strongly towards the belief in some form of superhuman life with which we may, unknown to ourselves, be co-conscious. we may be in the universe as dogs and cats are in our libraries, seeing the books and hearing the conversation, but having no inkling of the meaning of it all. the intellectualist objections to this fall away when the authority of intellectualist logic is undermined by criticism, and then the positive empirical evidence remains. the analogies with ordinary psychology and with the facts of pathology, with those of psychical research, so called, and with those of religious experience, establish, when taken together, a decidedly _formidable_ probability in favor of a general view of the world almost identical with fechner's. the outlines of the superhuman consciousness thus made probable must remain, however, very vague, and the number of functionally distinct 'selves' it comports and carries has to be left entirely problematic. it may be polytheistically or it may be monotheistically conceived of. fechner, with his distinct earth-soul functioning as our guardian angel, seems to me clearly polytheistic; but the word 'polytheism' usually gives offence, so perhaps it is better not to use it. only one thing is certain, and that is the result of our criticism of the absolute: the only way to escape from the paradoxes and perplexities that a consistently thought-out monistic universe suffers from as from a species of auto-intoxication--the mystery of the 'fall' namely, of reality lapsing into appearance, truth into error, perfection into imperfection; of evil, in short; the mystery of universal determinism, of the block-universe eternal and without a history, etc.;--the only way of escape, i say, from all this is to be frankly pluralistic and assume that the superhuman consciousness, however vast it may be, has itself an external environment, and consequently is finite. present day monism carefully repudiates complicity with spinozistic monism. in that, it explains, the many get dissolved in the one and lost, whereas in the improved idealistic form they get preserved in all their manyness as the one's eternal object. the absolute itself is thus represented by absolutists as having a pluralistic object. but if even the absolute has to have a pluralistic vision, why should we ourselves hesitate to be pluralists on our own sole account? why should we envelop our many with the 'one' that brings so much poison in its train? the line of least resistance, then, as it seems to me, both in theology and in philosophy, is to accept, along with the superhuman consciousness, the notion that it is not all-embracing, the notion, in other words, that there is a god, but that he is finite, either in power or in knowledge, or in both at once. these, i need hardly tell you, are the terms in which common men have usually carried on their active commerce with god; and the monistic perfections that make the notion of him so paradoxical practically and morally are the colder addition of remote professorial minds operating _in distans_ upon conceptual substitutes for him alone. why cannot 'experience' and 'reason' meet on this common ground? why cannot they compromise? may not the godlessness usually but needlessly associated with the philosophy of immediate experience give way to a theism now seen to follow directly from that experience more widely taken? and may not rationalism, satisfied with seeing her _a priori_ proofs of god so effectively replaced by empirical evidence, abate something of her absolutist claims? let god but have the least infinitesimal _other_ of any kind beside him, and empiricism and rationalism might strike hands in a lasting treaty of peace. both might then leave abstract thinness behind them, and seek together, as scientific men seek, by using all the analogies and data within reach, to build up the most probable approximate idea of what the divine consciousness concretely may be like. i venture to beg the younger oxford idealists to consider seriously this alternative. few men are as qualified by their intellectual gifts to reap the harvests that seem certain to any one who, like fechner and bergson, will leave the thinner for the thicker path. compromise and mediation are inseparable from the pluralistic philosophy. only monistic dogmatism can say of any of its hypotheses, 'it is either that or nothing; take it or leave it just as it stands.' the type of monism prevalent at oxford has kept this steep and brittle attitude, partly through the proverbial academic preference for thin and elegant logical solutions, partly from a mistaken notion that the only solidly grounded basis for religion was along those lines. if oxford men could be ignorant of anything, it might almost seem that they had remained ignorant of the great empirical movement towards a pluralistic panpsychic view of the universe, into which our own generation has been drawn, and which threatens to short-circuit their methods entirely and become their religious rival unless they are willing to make themselves its allies. yet, wedded as they seem to be to the logical machinery and technical apparatus of absolutism, i cannot but believe that their fidelity to the religious ideal in general is deeper still. especially do i find it hard to believe that the more clerical adherents of the school would hold so fast to its particular machinery if only they could be made to think that religion could be secured in some other way. let empiricism once become associated with religion, as hitherto, through some strange misunderstanding, it has been associated with irreligion, and i believe that a new era of religion as well as of philosophy will be ready to begin. that great awakening of a new popular interest in philosophy, which is so striking a phenomenon at the present day in all countries, is undoubtedly due in part to religious demands. as the authority of past tradition tends more and more to crumble, men naturally turn a wistful ear to the authority of reason or to the evidence of present fact. they will assuredly not be disappointed if they open their minds to what the thicker and more radical empiricism has to say. i fully believe that such an empiricism is a more natural ally than dialectics ever were, or can be, of the religious life. it is true that superstitions and wild-growing over-beliefs of all sorts will undoubtedly begin to abound if the notion of higher consciousnesses enveloping ours, of fechnerian earth-souls and the like, grows orthodox and fashionable; still more will they superabound if science ever puts her approving stamp on the phenomena of which frederic myers so earnestly advocated the scientific recognition, the phenomena of psychic research so-called--and i myself firmly believe that most of these phenomena are rooted in reality. but ought one seriously to allow such a timid consideration as that to deter one from following the evident path of greatest religious promise? since when, in this mixed world, was any good thing given us in purest outline and isolation? one of the chief characteristics of life is life's redundancy. the sole condition of our having anything, no matter what, is that we should have so much of it, that we are fortunate if we do not grow sick of the sight and sound of it altogether. everything is smothered in the litter that is fated to accompany it. without too much you cannot have enough, of anything. lots of inferior books, lots of bad statues, lots of dull speeches, of tenth-rate men and women, as a condition of the few precious specimens in either kind being realized! the gold-dust comes to birth with the quartz-sand all around it, and this is as much a condition of religion as of any other excellent possession. there must be extrication; there must be competition for survival; but the clay matrix and the noble gem must first come into being unsifted. once extricated, the gem can be examined separately, conceptualized, defined, and insulated. but this process of extrication cannot be short-circuited--or if it is, you get the thin inferior abstractions which we have seen, either the hollow unreal god of scholastic theology, or the unintelligible pantheistic monster, instead of the more living divine reality with which it appears certain that empirical methods tend to connect men in imagination. arrived at this point, i ask you to go back to my first lecture and remember, if you can, what i quoted there from your own professor jacks--what he said about the philosopher himself being taken up into the universe which he is accounting for. this is the fechnerian as well as the hegelian view, and thus our end rejoins harmoniously our beginning. philosophies are intimate parts of the universe, they express something of its own thought of itself. a philosophy may indeed be a most momentous reaction of the universe upon itself. it may, as i said, possess and handle itself differently in consequence of us philosophers, with our theories, being here; it may trust itself or mistrust itself the more, and, by doing the one or the other, deserve more the trust or the mistrust. what mistrusts itself deserves mistrust. this is the philosophy of humanism in the widest sense. our philosophies swell the current of being, add their character to it. they are part of all that we have met, of all that makes us be. as a french philosopher says, 'nous sommes du réel dans le réel.' our thoughts determine our acts, and our acts redetermine the previous nature of the world. thus does foreignness get banished from our world, and far more so when we take the system of it pluralistically than when we take it monistically. we are indeed internal parts of god and not external creations, on any possible reading of the panpsychic system. yet because god is not the absolute, but is himself a part when the system is conceived pluralistically, his functions can be taken as not wholly dissimilar to those of the other smaller parts,--as similar to our functions consequently. having an environment, being in time, and working out a history just like ourselves, he escapes from the foreignness from all that is human, of the static timeless perfect absolute. remember that one of our troubles with that was its essential foreignness and monstrosity--there really is no other word for it than that. its having the all-inclusive form gave to it an essentially heterogeneous _nature_ from ourselves. and this great difference between absolutism and pluralism demands no difference in the universe's material content--it follows from a difference in the form alone. the all-form or monistic form makes the foreignness result, the each-form or pluralistic form leaves the intimacy undisturbed. no matter what the content of the universe may be, if you only allow that it is _many_ everywhere and always, that _nothing_ real escapes from having an environment; so far from defeating its rationality, as the absolutists so unanimously pretend, you leave it in possession of the maximum amount of rationality practically attainable by our minds. your relations with it, intellectual, emotional, and active, remain fluent and congruous with your own nature's chief demands. it would be a pity if the word 'rationality' were allowed to give us trouble here. it is one of those eulogistic words that both sides claim--for almost no one is willing to advertise his philosophy as a system of irrationality. but like most of the words which people used eulogistically, the word 'rational' carries too many meanings. the most objective one is that of the older logic--the connexion between two things is rational when you can infer one from the other, mortal from socrates, _e.g.;_ and you can do that only when they have a quality in common. but this kind of rationality is just that logic of identity which all disciples of hegel find insufficient. they supersede it by the higher rationality of negation and contradiction and make the notion vague again. then you get the aesthetic or teleologic kinds of rationality, saying that whatever fits in any way, whatever is beautiful or good, whatever is purposive or gratifies desire, is rational in so far forth. then again, according to hegel, whatever is 'real' is rational. i myself said awhile ago that whatever lets loose any action which we are fond of exerting seems rational. it would be better to give up the word 'rational' altogether than to get into a merely verbal fight about who has the best right to keep it. perhaps the words 'foreignness' and 'intimacy,' which i put forward in my first lecture, express the contrast i insist on better than the words 'rationality' and 'irrationality'--let us stick to them, then. i now say that the notion of the 'one' breeds foreignness and that of the 'many' intimacy, for reasons which i have urged at only too great length, and with which, whether they convince you or not, i may suppose that you are now well acquainted. but what at bottom is meant by calling the universe many or by calling it one? pragmatically interpreted, pluralism or the doctrine that it is many means only that the sundry parts of reality _may be externally related_. everything you can think of, however vast or inclusive, has on the pluralistic view a genuinely 'external' environment of some sort or amount. things are 'with' one another in many ways, but nothing includes everything, or dominates over everything. the word 'and' trails along after every sentence. something always escapes. 'ever not quite' has to be said of the best attempts made anywhere in the universe at attaining all-inclusiveness. the pluralistic world is thus more like a federal republic than like an empire or a kingdom. however much may be collected, however much may report itself as present at any effective centre of consciousness or action, something else is self-governed and absent and unreduced to unity. monism, on the other hand, insists that when you come down to reality as such, to the reality of realities, everything is present to _everything_ else in one vast instantaneous co-implicated completeness--nothing can in _any_ sense, functional or substantial, be really absent from anything else, all things interpenetrate and telescope together in the great total conflux. for pluralism, all that we are required to admit as the constitution of reality is what we ourselves find empirically realized in every minimum of finite life. briefly it is this, that nothing real is absolutely simple, that every smallest bit of experience is a _multum in parvo_ plurally related, that each relation is one aspect, character, or function, way of its being taken, or way of its taking something else; and that a bit of reality when actively engaged in one of these relations is not _by that very fact_ engaged in all the other relations simultaneously. the relations are not _all_ what the french call _solidaires_ with one another. without losing its identity a thing can either take up or drop another thing, like the log i spoke of, which by taking up new carriers and dropping old ones can travel anywhere with a light escort. for monism, on the contrary, everything, whether we realize it or not, drags the whole universe along with itself and drops nothing. the log starts and arrives with all its carriers supporting it. if a thing were once disconnected, it could never be connected again, according to monism. the pragmatic difference between the two systems is thus a definite one. it is just thus, that if _a_ is once out of sight of _b_ or out of touch with it, or, more briefly, 'out' of it at all, then, according to monism, it must always remain so, they can never get together; whereas pluralism admits that on another occasion they may work together, or in some way be connected again. monism allows for no such things as 'other occasions' in reality--in _real_ or absolute reality, that is. the difference i try to describe amounts, you see, to nothing more than the difference between what i formerly called the each-form and the all-form of reality. pluralism lets things really exist in the each-form or distributively. monism thinks that the all-form or collective-unit form is the only form that is rational. the all-form allows of no taking up and dropping of connexions, for in the all the parts are essentially and eternally co-implicated. in the each-form, on the contrary, a thing may be connected by intermediary things, with a thing with which it has no immediate or essential connexion. it is thus at all times in many possible connexions which are not necessarily actualized at the moment. they depend on which actual path of intermediation it may functionally strike into: the word 'or' names a genuine reality. thus, as i speak here, i may look ahead _or_ to the right _or_ to the left, and in either case the intervening space and air and ether enable me to see the faces of a different portion of this audience. my being here is independent of any one set of these faces. if the each-form be the eternal form of reality no less than it is the form of temporal appearance, we still have a coherent world, and not an incarnate incoherence, as is charged by so many absolutists. our 'multiverse' still makes a 'universe'; for every part, tho it may not be in actual or immediate connexion, is nevertheless in some possible or mediated connexion, with every other part however remote, through the fact that each part hangs together with its very next neighbors in inextricable interfusion. the type of union, it is true, is different here from the monistic type of _all-einheit_. it is not a universal co-implication, or integration of all things _durcheinander_. it is what i call the strung-along type, the type of continuity, contiguity, or concatenation. if you prefer greek words, you may call it the synechistic type. at all events, you see that it forms a definitely conceivable alternative to the through-and-through unity of all things at once, which is the type opposed to it by monism. you see also that it stands or falls with the notion i have taken such pains to defend, of the through-and-through union of adjacent minima of experience, of the confluence of every passing moment of concretely felt experience with its immediately next neighbors. the recognition of this fact of coalescence of next with next in concrete experience, so that all the insulating cuts we make there are artificial products of the conceptualizing faculty, is what distinguishes the empiricism which i call 'radical,' from the bugaboo empiricism of the traditional rationalist critics, which (rightly or wrongly) is accused of chopping up experience into atomistic sensations, incapable of union with one another until a purely intellectual principle has swooped down upon them from on high and folded them in its own conjunctive categories. here, then, you have the plain alternative, and the full mystery of the difference between pluralism and monism, as clearly as i can set it forth on this occasion. it packs up into a nutshell:--is the manyness in oneness that indubitably characterizes the world we inhabit, a property only of the absolute whole of things, so that you must postulate that one-enormous-whole indivisibly as the _prius_ of there being any many at all--in other words, start with the rationalistic block-universe, entire, unmitigated, and complete?--or can the finite elements have their own aboriginal forms of manyness in oneness, and where they have no immediate oneness still be continued into one another by intermediary terms--each one of these terms being one with its next neighbors, and yet the total 'oneness' never getting absolutely complete? the alternative is definite. it seems to me, moreover, that the two horns of it make pragmatically different ethical appeals--at least they _may_ do so, to certain individuals. but if you consider the pluralistic horn to be intrinsically irrational, self-contradictory, and absurd, i can now say no more in its defence. having done what i could in my earlier lectures to break the edge of the intellectualistic _reductiones ad absurdum_, i must leave the issue in your hands. whatever i may say, each of you will be sure to take pluralism or leave it, just as your own sense of rationality moves and inclines. the only thing i emphatically insist upon is that it is a fully co-ordinate hypothesis with monism. this world _may_, in the last resort, be a block-universe; but on the other hand it _may_ be a universe only strung-along, not rounded in and closed. reality _may_ exist distributively just as it sensibly seems to, after all. on that possibility i do insist. one's general vision of the probable usually decides such alternatives. they illustrate what i once wrote of as the 'will to believe.' in some of my lectures at harvard i have spoken of what i call the 'faith-ladder,' as something quite different from the _sorites_ of the logic-books, yet seeming to have an analogous form. i think you will quickly recognize in yourselves, as i describe it, the mental process to which i give this name. a conception of the world arises in you somehow, no matter how. is it true or not? you ask. it _might_ be true somewhere, you say, for it is not self-contradictory. it _may_ be true, you continue, even here and now. it is _fit_ to be true, it would be _well if it were true_, it _ought_ to be true, you presently feel. it _must_ be true, something persuasive in you whispers next; and then--as a final result-- it shall be _held for true_, you decide; it _shall be_ as if true, for _you_. and your acting thus may in certain special cases be a means of making it securely true in the end. not one step in this process is logical, yet it is the way in which monists and pluralists alike espouse and hold fast to their visions. it is life exceeding logic, it is the practical reason for which the theoretic reason finds arguments after the conclusion is once there. in just this way do some of us hold to the unfinished pluralistic universe; in just this way do others hold to the timeless universe eternally complete. meanwhile the incompleteness of the pluralistic universe, thus assumed and held to as the most probable hypothesis, is also represented by the pluralistic philosophy as being self-reparative through us, as getting its disconnections remedied in part by our behavior. 'we use what we are and have, to know; and what we know, to be and have still more.'[ ] thus do philosophy and reality, theory and action, work in the same circle indefinitely. i have now finished these poor lectures, and as you look back on them, they doubtless seem rambling and inconclusive enough. my only hope is that they may possibly have proved suggestive; and if indeed they have been suggestive of one point of method, i am almost willing to let all other suggestions go. that point is that _it is high time for the basis of discussion in these questions to be broadened and thickened up_. it is for that that i have brought in fechner and bergson, and descriptive psychology and religious experiences, and have ventured even to hint at psychical research and other wild beasts of the philosophic desert. owing possibly to the fact that plato and aristotle, with their intellectualism, are the basis of philosophic study here, the oxford brand of transcendentalism seems to me to have confined itself too exclusively to thin logical considerations, that would hold good in all conceivable worlds, worlds of an empirical constitution entirely different from ours. it is as if the actual peculiarities of the world that is were entirely irrelevant to the content of truth. but they cannot be irrelevant; and the philosophy of the future must imitate the sciences in taking them more and more elaborately into account. i urge some of the younger members of this learned audience to lay this hint to heart. if you can do so effectively, making still more concrete advances upon the path which fechner and bergson have so enticingly opened up, if you can gather philosophic conclusions of any kind, monistic or pluralistic, from the _particulars of life_, i will say, as i now do say, with the cheerfullest of hearts, 'ring out, ring out my mournful rhymes, but ring the fuller minstrel in.' notes lecture i note , page .--bailey: _op. cit._, first series, p. . note , page .--_smaller logic_, § . note , page .--_exploratio philosophica_, part i, , pp. xxxviii, . note , page .--hinneberg: _die kultur der gegenwart: systematische philosophie_. leipzig: teubner, . lecture ii note , page .--the difference is that the bad parts of this finite are eternal and essential for absolutists, whereas pluralists may hope that they will eventually get sloughed off and become as if they had not been. note , page .--quoted by w. wallace: _lectures and essays_, oxford, , p. . note , page .--_logic_, tr. wallace, , p. . note , page .--_ibid._, p. . note , page .--_contemporary review_, december, , vol. , p. . note , page .--_metaphysic_, sec. ff. note , page .--_the world and the individual_, vol. i, pp. - . note , page .--a good illustration of this is to be found in a controversy between mr. bradley and the present writer, in _mind_ for , mr. bradley contending (if i understood him rightly) that 'resemblance' is an illegitimate category, because it admits of degrees, and that the only real relations in comparison are absolute identity and absolute non-comparability. note , page .--_studies in the hegelian dialectic_, p. . note , page .--_appearance and reality_, , pp. - . note , page .--cf. _elements of metaphysics_, p. . note , page .--_some dogmas of religion_, p. . note , page .--for a more detailed criticism of mr. bradley's intellectualism, see appendix a. lecture iii note , page .--hegel, _smaller logic_, pp. - . note , page .--cf. hegel's fine vindication of this function of contradiction in his _wissenschaft der logik_, bk. ii, sec. , chap, ii, c, anmerkung . note , page --_hegel_, in _blackwood's philosophical classics_, p. . note , page --_wissenschaft der logik_, bk. i, sec. , chap, ii, b, a. note , page --wallace's translation of the _smaller logic_, p. . note , page --joachim, _the nature of truth_, oxford, , pp. , . the argument in case the belief should be doubted would be the higher synthetic idea: if two truths were possible, the duality of that possibility would itself be the one truth that would unite them. note , page .--_the world and the individual_, vol. ii, pp. , , . note , page .--the best _un_inspired argument (again not ironical!) which i know is that in miss m.w. calkins's excellent book, _the persistent problems of philosophy_, macmillan, . note , page .--cf. dr. fuller's excellent article,' ethical monism and the problem of evil,' in the _harvard journal of theology_, vol. i, no. , april, . note , page .--_metaphysic_, sec. . note , page .--_studies in the hegelian dialectic_, secs. , . note , page .--_the nature of truth_, , pp. - . note , page .--_ibid._, p. . note , page .--the psychological analogy that certain finite tracts of consciousness are composed of isolable parts added together, cannot be used by absolutists as proof that such parts are essential elements of all consciousness. other finite fields of consciousness seem in point of fact not to be similarly resolvable into isolable parts. note , page .--judging by the analogy of the relation which our central consciousness seems to bear to that of our spinal cord, lower ganglia, etc., it would seem natural to suppose that in whatever superhuman mental synthesis there may be, the neglect and elimination of certain contents of which we are conscious on the human level might be as characteristic a feature as is the combination and interweaving of other human contents. lecture iv note , page .--_the spirit of modern philosophy_, p. . note , page .--fechner: _Über die seelenfrage_, , p. . note , page .--fechner's latest summarizing of his views, _die tagesansicht gegenüber der nachtansicht_, leipzig, , is now, i understand, in process of translation. his _little book of life after death_ exists already in two american versions, one published by little, brown & co., boston, the other by the open court co., chicago. note , page .--mr. bradley ought to be to some degree exempted from my attack in these last pages. compare especially what he says of non-human consciousness in his _appearance and reality_, pp. - . lecture v note , page .--royce: _the spirit of modern philosophy_, p. . note , page .--_the world and the individual_, vol. ii, pp. - . note , page .--i hold to it still as the best description of an enormous number of our higher fields of consciousness. they demonstrably do not _contain_ the lower states that know the same objects. of other fields, however this is not so true; so, in the _psychological review_ for , vol. ii, p. (see especially pp. - ), i frankly withdrew, in principle, my former objection to talking of fields of consciousness being made of simpler 'parts,' leaving the facts to decide the question in each special case. note , page .--i abstract from the consciousness attached to the whole itself, if such consciousness be there. lecture vi note , page .--for a more explicit vindication of the notion of activity, see appendix b, where i try to defend its recognition as a definite form of immediate experience against its rationalistic critics. i subjoin here a few remarks destined to disarm some possible critics of professor bergson, who, to defend himself against misunderstandings of his meaning, ought to amplify and more fully explain his statement that concepts have a practical but not a theoretical use. understood in one way, the thesis sounds indefensible, for by concepts we certainly increase our knowledge about things, and that seems a theoretical achievement, whatever practical achievements may follow in its train. indeed, m. bergson might seem to be easily refutable out of his own mouth. his philosophy pretends, if anything, to give a better insight into truth than rationalistic philosophies give: yet what is it in itself if not a conceptual system? does its author not reason by concepts exclusively in his very attempt to show that they can give no insight? to this particular objection, at any rate, it is easy to reply. in using concepts of his own to discredit the theoretic claims of concepts generally, bergson does not contradict, but on the contrary emphatically illustrates his own view of their practical role, for they serve in his hands only to 'orient' us, to show us to what quarter we must _practically turn_ if we wish to gain that completer insight into reality which he denies that they can give. he directs our hopes away from them and towards the despised sensible flux. _what he reaches by their means is thus only a new practical attitude_. he but restores, against the vetoes of intellectualist philosophy, our naturally cordial relations with sensible experience and common sense. this service is surely only practical; but it is a service for which we may be almost immeasurably grateful. to trust our senses again with a good philosophic conscience!--who ever conferred on us so valuable a freedom before? by making certain distinctions and additions it seems easy to meet the other counts of the indictment. concepts are realities of a new order, with particular relations between them. these relations are just as much directly perceived, when we compare our various concepts, as the distance between two sense-objects is perceived when we look at it. conception is an operation which gives us material for new acts of perception, then; and when the results of these are written down, we get those bodies of 'mental truth' (as locke called it) known as mathematics, logic, and _a priori_ metaphysics. to know all this truth is a theoretic achievement, indeed, but it is a narrow one; for the relations between conceptual objects as such are only the static ones of bare comparison, as difference or sameness, congruity or contradiction, inclusion or exclusion. nothing _happens_ in the realm of concepts; relations there are 'eternal' only. the theoretic gain fails so far, therefore, to touch even the outer hem of the real world, the world of causal and dynamic relations, of activity and history. to gain insight into all that moving life, bergson is right in turning us away from conception and towards perception. by combining concepts with percepts, _we can draw maps of the distribution_ of other percepts in distant space and time. to know this distribution is of course a theoretic achievement, but the achievement is extremely limited, it cannot be effected without percepts, and even then what it yields is only static relations. from maps we learn positions only, and the position of a thing is but the slightest kind of truth about it; but, being indispensable for forming our plans of action, the conceptual map-making has the enormous practical importance on which bergson so rightly insists. but concepts, it will be said, do not only give us eternal truths of comparison and maps of the positions of things, they bring new _values_ into life. in their mapping function they stand to perception in general in the same relation in which sight and hearing stand to touch--spencer calls these higher senses only organs of anticipatory touch. but our eyes and ears also open to us worlds of independent glory: music and decorative art result, and an incredible enhancement of life's value follows. even so does the conceptual world bring new ranges of value and of motivation to our life. its maps not only serve us practically, but the mere mental possession of such vast pictures is of itself an inspiring good. new interests and incitements, and feelings of power, sublimity, and admiration are aroused. abstractness _per se_ seems to have a touch of ideality. royce's 'loyalty to loyalty' is an excellent example. 'causes,' as anti-slavery, democracy, liberty, etc., dwindle when realized in their sordid particulars. the veritable 'cash-value' of the idea seems to cleave to it only in the abstract status. truth at large, as royce contends, in his _philosophy of loyalty_, appears another thing altogether from the true particulars in which it is best to believe. it transcends in value all those 'expediencies,' and is something to live for, whether expedient or inexpedient. truth with a big t is a 'momentous issue'; truths in detail are 'poor scraps,' mere 'crumbling successes.' (_op. cit._, lecture vii, especially § v.) is, now, such bringing into existence of a new _value_ to be regarded as a theoretic achievement? the question is a nice one, for altho a value is in one sense an objective quality perceived, the essence of that quality is its relation to the will, and consists in its being a dynamogenic spur that makes our action different. so far as their value-creating function goes, it would thus appear that concepts connect themselves more with our active than with our theoretic life, so here again bergson's formulation seems unobjectionable. persons who have certain concepts are animated otherwise, pursue their own vital careers differently. it doesn't necessarily follow that they understand other vital careers more intimately. again it may be said that we combine old concepts into new ones, conceiving thus such realities as the ether, god, souls, or what not, of which our sensible life alone would leave us altogether ignorant. this surely is an increase of our knowledge, and may well be called a theoretical achievement. yet here again bergson's criticisms hold good. much as conception may tell us _about_ such invisible objects, it sheds no ray of light into their interior. the completer, indeed, our definitions of ether-waves, atoms, gods, or souls become, the less instead of the more intelligible do they appear to us. the learned in such things are consequently beginning more and more to ascribe a solely instrumental value to our concepts of them. ether and molecules may be like co-ordinates and averages, only so many crutches by the help of which we practically perform the operation of getting about among our sensible experiences. we see from these considerations how easily the question of whether the function of concepts is theoretical or practical may grow into a logomachy. it may be better from this point of view to refuse to recognize the alternative as a sharp one. the sole thing that is certain in the midst of it all is that bergson is absolutely right in contending that the whole life of activity and change is inwardly impenetrable to conceptual treatment, and that it opens itself only to sympathetic apprehension at the hands of immediate feeling. all the _whats_ as well as the _thats_ of reality, relational as well as terminal, are in the end contents of immediate concrete perception. yet the remoter unperceived _arrangements_, temporal, spatial, and logical, of these contents, are also something that we need to know as well for the pleasure of the knowing as for the practical help. we may call this need of arrangement a theoretic need or a practical need, according as we choose to lay the emphasis; but bergson is accurately right when he limits conceptual knowledge to arrangement, and when he insists that arrangement is the mere skirt and skin of the whole of what we ought to know. note , page .--gaston rageot, _revue philosophique_, vol. lxiv, p. (july, ). note , page .--i have myself talked in other ways as plausibly as i could, in my _psychology_, and talked truly (as i believe) in certain selected cases; but for other cases the natural way invincibly comes back. lecture vii note , page .--_introduction to hume_, , p. . note , page .--_ibid._, pp. , , , _et passim_. note , page .--see, _inter alia_, the chapter on the 'stream of thought' in my own psychologies; h. cornelius, _psychologie_, , chaps, i and iii; g.h. luquet, _idées générales de psychologie_, , _passim_. note , page .--compare, as to all this, an article by the present writer, entitled 'a world of pure experience,' in the _journal of philosophy_, new york, vol. i, pp. , ( ). note , page .--green's attempt to discredit sensations by reminding us of their 'dumbness,' in that they do not come already _named_, as concepts may be said to do, only shows how intellectualism is dominated by verbality. the unnamed appears in green as synonymous with the unreal. note , page .--_philosophy of reflection_, i, ff. note , page .--most of this paragraph is extracted from an address of mine before the american psychological association, printed in the _psychological review_, vol. ii, p. . i take pleasure in the fact that already in i was so far advanced towards my present bergsonian position. note , page .--the conscious self of the moment, the central self, is probably determined to this privileged position by its functional connexion with the body's imminent or present acts. it is the present _acting_ self. tho the more that surrounds it may be 'subconscious' to us, yet if in its 'collective capacity' it also exerts an active function, it may be conscious in a wider way, conscious, as it were, over our heads. on the relations of consciousness to action see bergson's _matière et mémoire, passim_, especially chap. i. compare also the hints in münsterberg's _grundzüge der psychologie_, chap, xv; those in my own _principles of psychology_, vol. ii, pp. - ; and those in w. mcdougall's _physiological psychology_, chap. vii. note , page .--compare _zend-avesta_, d edition, vol. i, pp. ff., , , ff., etc.; _die tagesansicht_, etc., chap, v, § ; and chap. xv. lecture viii note , page .--blondel: _annales de philosophie chrétienne_, june, , p. . appendices appendix a the thing and its relations[ ] experience in its immediacy seems perfectly fluent. the active sense of living which we all enjoy, before reflection shatters our instinctive world for us, is self-luminous and suggests no paradoxes. its difficulties are disappointments and uncertainties. they are not intellectual contradictions. when the reflective intellect gets at work, however, it discovers incomprehensibilities in the flowing process. distinguishing its elements and parts, it gives them separate names, and what it thus disjoins it cannot easily put together. pyrrhonism accepts the irrationality and revels in its dialectic elaboration. other philosophies try, some by ignoring, some by resisting, and some by turning the dialectic procedure against itself, negating its first negations, to restore the fluent sense of life again, and let redemption take the place of innocence. the perfection with which any philosophy may do this is the measure of its human success and of its importance in philosophic history. in an article entitled 'a world of pure experience,[ ] i tried my own hand sketchily at [footnote : reprinted from the _journal of philosophy, psychology, and scientific methods_, vol. ii, new york, , with slight verbal revision.] [footnote : _journal of philosophy, psychology, and scientific methods_, vol. i, no. , p. .] the problem, resisting certain first steps of dialectics by insisting in a general way that the immediately experienced conjunctive relations are as real as anything else. if my sketch is not to appear too _näif_, i must come closer to details, and in the present essay i propose to do so. i 'pure experience' is the name which i gave to the immediate flux of life which furnishes the material to our later reflection with its conceptual categories. only new-born babes, or men in semi-coma from sleep, drugs, illnesses, or blows, may be assumed to have an experience pure in the literal sense of a _that_ which is not yet any definite _what_, tho ready to be all sorts of whats; full both of oneness and of manyness, but in respects that don't appear; changing throughout, yet so confusedly that its phases interpenetrate and no points, either of distinction or of identity, can be caught. pure experience in this state is but another name for feeling or sensation. but the flux of it no sooner comes than it tends to fill itself with emphases, and these salient parts become identified and fixed and abstracted; so that experience now flows as if shot through with adjectives and nouns and prepositions and conjunctions. its purity is only a relative term, meaning the proportional amount of unverbalized sensation which it still embodies. far back as we go, the flux, both as a whole and in its parts, is that of things conjunct and separated. the great continua of time, space, and the self envelop everything, betwixt them, and flow together without interfering. the things that they envelop come as separate in some ways and as continuous in others. some sensations coalesce with some ideas, and others are irreconcilable. qualities compenetrate one space, or exclude each other from it. they cling together persistently in groups that move as units, or else they separate. their changes are abrupt or discontinuous; and their kinds resemble or differ; and, as they do so, they fall into either even or irregular series. in all this the continuities and the discontinuities are absolutely co-ordinate matters of immediate feeling. the conjunctions are as primordial elements of 'fact' as are the distinctions and disjunctions. in the same act by which i feel that this passing minute is a new pulse of my life, i feel that the old life continues into it, and the feeling of continuance in no wise jars upon the simultaneous feeling of a novelty. they, too, compenetrate harmoniously. prepositions, copulas, and conjunctions, 'is,' 'isn't,' 'then,' 'before,' 'in,' 'on,' 'beside,' 'between,' 'next,' 'like,' 'unlike,' 'as,' 'but,' flower out of the stream of pure experience, the stream of concretes or the sensational stream, as naturally as nouns and adjectives do, and they melt into it again as fluidly when we apply them to a new portion of the stream. ii if now we ask why we must translate experience from a more concrete or pure into a more intellectualized form, filling it with ever more abounding conceptual distinctions, rationalism and naturalism give different replies. the rationalistic answer is that the theoretic life is absolute and its interests imperative; that to understand is simply the duty of man; and that who questions this need not be argued with, for by the fact of arguing he gives away his case. the naturalist answer is that the environment kills as well as sustains us, and that the tendency of raw experience to extinguish the experient himself is lessened just in the degree in which the elements in it that have a practical bearing upon life are analyzed out of the continuum and verbally fixed and coupled together, so that we may know what is in the wind for us and get ready to react in time. had pure experience, the naturalist says, been always perfectly healthy, there would never have arisen the necessity of isolating or verbalizing any of its terms. we should just have experienced inarticulately and unintellectually enjoyed. this leaning on 'reaction' in the naturalist account implies that, whenever we intellectualize a relatively pure experience, we ought to do so for the sake of redescending to the purer or more concrete level again; and that if an intellect stays aloft among its abstract terms and generalized relations, and does not reinsert itself with its conclusions into some particular point of the immediate stream of life, it fails to finish out its function and leaves its normal race unrun. most rationalists nowadays will agree that naturalism gives a true enough account of the way in which our intellect arose at first, but they will deny these latter implications. the case, they will say, resembles that of sexual love. originating in the animal need of getting another generation born, this passion has developed secondarily such imperious spiritual needs that, if you ask why another generation ought to be born at all, the answer is: 'chiefly that love may go on.' just so with our intellect: it originated as a practical means of serving life; but it has developed incidentally the function of understanding absolute truth; and life itself now seems to be given chiefly as a means by which that function may be prosecuted. but truth and the understanding of it lie among the abstracts and universals, so the intellect now carries on its higher business wholly in this region, without any need of redescending into pure experience again. if the contrasted tendencies which i thus designate as naturalistic and rationalistic are not recognized by the reader, perhaps an example will make them more concrete. mr. bradley, for instance, is an ultra-rationalist. he admits that our intellect is primarily practical, but says that, for philosophers, the practical need is simply truth.[ ] truth, moreover, must be assumed 'consistent.' immediate experience has to be broken into subjects and qualities, terms and relations, to be understood as truth at all. yet when so broken it is less consistent than ever. taken raw, it is all undistinguished. intellectualized, it is all distinction without oneness. 'such an arrangement may _work_, but the theoretic problem is not solved' (p. ). the question is, '_how_ the diversity can exist in harmony with the oneness' (p. ). to go back to pure experience is unavailing. 'mere feeling gives no answer to our riddle' (p. ). even if your intuition is a fact, it is not an _understanding_. 'it is a mere experience, and furnishes no consistent view' (pp. - ). the experiences offered as facts or truths 'i find that my intellect rejects because they contradict themselves. they offer a complex of diversities conjoined in a way which it feels is not its way and which it cannot repeat as its own.... for to be satisfied, my intellect must understand, and it cannot understand by taking a congeries in the lump' (p. ). so mr. bradley, in the sole interests of 'understanding' (as he conceives that function), turns his back on finite [footnote : _appearance and reality_, pp. - .] experience forever. truth must lie in the opposite direction, the direction of the absolute; and this kind of rationalism and naturalism, or (as i will now call it) pragmatism, walk thenceforward upon opposite paths. for the one, those intellectual products are most true which, turning their face towards the absolute, come nearest to symbolizing its ways of uniting the many and the one. for the other, those are most true which most successfully dip back into the finite stream of feeling and grow most easily confluent with some particular wave or wavelet. such confluence not only proves the intellectual operation to have been true (as an addition may 'prove' that a subtraction is already rightly performed), but it constitutes, according to pragmatism, all that we mean by calling it true. only in so far as they lead us, successfully or unsuccessfully, into sensible experience again, are our abstracts and universals true or false at all. iii in section the th of my article, 'a world of pure experience,' i adopted in a general way the common-sense belief that one and the same world is cognized by our different minds; but i left undiscussed the dialectical arguments which maintain that this is logically absurd. the usual reason given for its being absurd is that it assumes one object (to wit, the world) to stand in two relations at once; to my mind, namely, and again to yours; whereas a term taken in a second relation cannot logically be the same term which it was at first. i have heard this reason urged so often in discussing with absolutists, and it would destroy my radical empiricism so utterly, if it were valid, that i am bound to give it an attentive ear, and seriously to search its strength. for instance, let the matter in dispute be a term _m_, asserted to be on the one hand related to _l_, and on the other to _n_; and let the two cases of relation be symbolized by _l--m_ and _m--n_ respectively. when, now, i assume that the experience may immediately come and be given in the shape _l--m--n_, with no trace of doubling or internal fission in the _m_, i am told that this is all a popular delusion; that _l--m--n_ logically means two different experiences, _l--m_ and _m--n_, namely; and that although the absolute may, and indeed must, from its superior point of view, read its own kind of unity into _m_'s two editions, yet as elements in finite experience the two _m_'s lie irretrievably asunder, and the world between them is broken and unbridged. in arguing this dialectic thesis, one must avoid slipping from the logical into the physical point of view. it would be easy, in taking a concrete example to fix one's ideas by, to choose one in which the letter _m_ should stand for a collective noun of some sort, which noun, being related to _l_ by one of its parts and to _n_ by another, would inwardly be two things when it stood outwardly in both relations. thus, one might say: 'david hume, who weighed so many stone by his body, influences posterity by his doctrine.' the body and the doctrine are two things, between which our finite minds can discover no real sameness, though the same name covers both of them. and then, one might continue: 'only an absolute is capable of uniting such a non-identity.' we must, i say, avoid this sort of example; for the dialectic insight, if true at all, must apply to terms and relations universally. it must be true of abstract units as well as of nouns collective; and if we prove it by concrete examples, we must take the simplest, so as to avoid irrelevant material suggestions. taken thus in all its generality, the absolutist contention seems to use as its major premise hume's notion 'that all our distinct perceptions are distinct existences, and that the mind never perceives any real connexion among distinct existences.' undoubtedly, since we use two phrases in talking first about '_m_'s relation to _l_' and then again about '_m_'s relation to _n_,' we must be having, or must have had, two distinct perceptions;--and the rest would then seem to follow duly. but the starting-point of the reasoning here seems to be the fact of the two _phrases_; and this suggests that the argument may be merely verbal. can it be that the whole dialectic achievement consists in attributing to the experience talked-about a constitution similar to that of the language in which we describe it? must we assert the objective doubleness of the _m_ merely because we have to name it twice over when we name its two relations? candidly, i can think of no other reason than this for the dialectic conclusion![ ] for, if we think, not of our words, but of any simple concrete matter which they may be held to signify, the experience itself belies the paradox asserted. we use indeed two separate concepts in analyzing our object, but we know them all the while to be but substitutional, and that the _m_ in _l--m_ and the _m_ in _m--n_ _mean_ (_i.e._, are capable of leading to and terminating in) one self-same piece, _m_, of sensible experience. this persistent identity of certain units, or emphases, or points, or objects, or members--call them what you will--of the experience-continuum, is just one of those conjunctive features of it, on which i am obliged to insist so emphatically. for samenesses are parts of experience's indefeasible structure. when i hear a bell-stroke and, as life flows on, its after-image dies away, i still hark back to it as 'that same [footnote : technically, it seems classable as a 'fallacy of composition.' a duality, predicable of the two wholes, _l--m_ and _m--n_, is forthwith predicated of one of their parts, _m_.] bell-stroke.' when i see a thing _m_, with _l_ to the left of it and _n_ to the right of it, i see it _as_ one _m_; and if you tell me i have had to 'take' it twice, i reply that if i 'took' it a thousand times, i should still _see_ it as a unit.[ ] its unity is aboriginal, just as the multiplicity of my successive takings is aboriginal. it comes unbroken as _that m_, as a singular which i encounter; they come broken, as _those_ takings, as my plurality of operations. the unity and the separateness are strictly co-ordinate. i do not easily fathom why my opponents should find the separateness so much more easily understandable that they must needs infect the whole of finite experience with it, and relegate the unity (now taken as a bare postulate and no longer as a thing positively perceivable) to the region of the absolute's mysteries. i do not easily fathom this, i say, for the said opponents are above mere verbal quibbling; yet all that i can catch in their talk is the substitution of what is true of certain words for what is true of what they signify. they stay with the words,--not returning to the stream of life whence all the meaning of them came, and which is always ready to reabsorb them. [footnote : i may perhaps refer here to my _principles of psychology_, vol. i, pp. ff. it really seems 'weird' to have to argue (as i am forced now to do) for the notion that it is one sheet of paper (with its two surfaces and all that lies between) which is both under my pen and on the table while i write--the 'claim' that it is two sheets seems so brazen. yet i sometimes suspect the absolutists of sincerity!] iv for aught this argument proves, then, we may continue to believe that one thing can be known by many knowers. but the denial of one thing in many relations is but one application of a still profounder dialectic difficulty. man can't be good, said the sophists, for man is _man_ and _good_ is good; and hegel and herbart in their day, more recently h. spir, and most recently and elaborately of all, mr. bradley, inform us that a term can logically only be a punctiform unit, and that not one of the conjunctive relations between things, which experience seems to yield, is rationally possible. of course, if true, this cuts off radical empiricism without even a shilling. radical empiricism takes conjunctive relations at their face-value, holding them to be as real as the terms united by them. the world it represents as a collection, some parts of which are conjunctively and others disjunctively related. two parts, themselves disjoined, may nevertheless hang together by intermediaries with which they are severally connected, and the whole world eventually may hang together similarly, inasmuch as _some_ path of conjunctive transition by which to pass from one of its parts to another may always be discernible. such determinately various hanging-together may be called _concatenated_ union, to distinguish it from the 'through-and-through' type of union, 'each in all and all in each' (union of _total conflux_, as one might call it), which monistic systems hold to obtain when things are taken in their absolute reality. in a concatenated world a partial conflux often is experienced. our concepts and our sensations are confluent; successive states of the same ego, and feelings of the same body are confluent. where the experience is not of conflux, it may be of conterminousness (things with but one thing between); or of contiguousness (nothing between); or of likeness; or of nearness; or of simultaneousness; or of in-ness; or of on-ness; or of for-ness; or of simple with-ness; or even of mere and-ness, which last relation would make of however disjointed a world otherwise, at any rate for that occasion a universe 'of discourse.' now mr. bradley tells us that none of these relations, as we actually experience them, can possibly be real.[ ] my next duty, accordingly, must be to rescue radical empiricism from mr. bradley. fortunately, as it seems to me, his general contention, that the very notion of relation is [footnote : here again the reader must beware of slipping from logical into phenomenal considerations. it may well be that we _attribute_ a certain relation falsely, because the circumstances of the case, being complex, have deceived us. at a railway station we may take our own train, and not the one that fills our window, to be moving. we here put motion in the wrong place in the world, but in its original place the motion is a part of reality. what mr. bradley means is nothing like this, but rather that such things as motion are nowhere real, and that, even in their aboriginal and empirically incorrigible seats, relations are impossible of comprehension.] unthinkable clearly, has been successfully met by many critics.[ ] it is a burden to the flesh, and an injustice both to readers and to the previous writers, to repeat good arguments already printed. so, in noticing mr. bradley, i will confine myself to the interests of radical empiricism solely. v the first duty of radical empiricism, taking given conjunctions at their face-value, is to class some of them as more intimate and some as more external. when two terms are _similar_, their very natures enter into the relation. being _what_ they are, no matter where or when, the likeness never can be denied, if asserted. it continues predicable as long as the terms continue. other relations, the _where_ and the _when_, for example, seem adventitious. the sheet of paper may be 'off' or 'on' the table, for example; and in either case the relation involves only the outside of its terms. having an outside, both of them, they contribute by it to the relation. it is external: the term's inner nature is irrelevant to it. any [footnote : particularly so by andrew seth pringle-pattison, in his _man and the cosmos_; by l.t. hobhouse, in chapter xii (the validity of judgment) of his _theory of knowledge_; and by f.c.s. schiller, in his _humanism_, essay xi. other fatal reviews (in my opinion) are hodder's, in the _psychological review_, vol. i, ; stout's, in the _proceedings of the aristotelian society_, - , p. ; and maclennan's, in the _journal of philosophy_, etc., vol. i, .] book, any table, may fall into the relation, which is created _pro hac vice_, not by their existence, but by their casual situation. it is just because so many of the conjunctions of experience seem so external that a philosophy of pure experience must tend to pluralism in its ontology. so far as things have space-relations, for example, we are free to imagine them with different origins even. if they could get to _be_, and get into space at all, then they may have done so separately. once there, however, they are _additives_ to one another, and, with no prejudice to their natures, all sorts of space-relations may supervene between them. the question of how things could come to be, anyhow, is wholly different from the question what their relations, once the being accomplished, may consist in. mr. bradley now affirms that such external relations as the space-relations which we here talk of must hold of entirely different subjects from those of which the absence of such relations might a moment previously have been plausibly asserted. not only is the _situation_ different when the book is on the table, but the _book itself_ is different as a book, from what it was when it was off the table. he admits that 'such external relations [footnote : once more, don't slip from logical into physical situations. of course, if the table be wet, it will moisten the book, or if it be slight enough and the book heavy enough, the book will break it down. but such collateral phenomena are not the point at issue. the point is whether the successive relations 'on' and 'not-on' can rationally (not physically) hold of the same constant terms, abstractly taken. professor a.e. taylor drops from logical into material considerations when he instances color-contrast as a proof that _a_, 'as contra-distinguished from _b_, is not the same thing as mere _a_ not in any way affected' (_elements of metaphysics_, , p. ). note the substitution, for 'related,' of the word 'affected,' which begs the whole question.] seem possible and even existing.... that you do not alter what you compare or rearrange in space seems to common sense quite obvious, and that on the other side there are as obvious difficulties does not occur to common sense at all. and i will begin by pointing out these difficulties.... there is a relation in the result, and this relation, we hear, is to make no difference in its terms. but, if so, to what does it make a difference? [_doesn't it make a difference to us onlookers, at least?_] and what is the meaning and sense of qualifying the terms by it? [_surely the meaning is to tell the truth about their relative position_.[ ]] if, in short, it is external to the terms, how can it possibly be true _of_ them? [_is it the 'intimacy' suggested by the little word 'of,' here, which i have underscored, that is the root of mr. bradley's trouble?_].... if the terms from their inner nature do not enter into the relation, then, so far as they are concerned, they seem related for no reason at all.... things are spatially related, first in one way, and then become related in another way, and yet in no way themselves [footnote : but 'is there any sense,' asks mr. bradley, peevishly, on p. , 'and if so, what sense, in truth that is only outside and "about" things?' surely such a question may be left unanswered.] are altered; for the relations, it is said, are but external. but i reply that, if so, i cannot _understand_ the leaving by the terms of one set of relations and their adoption of another fresh set. the process and its result to the terms, if they contribute nothing to it [_surely they contribute to it all there is 'of' it!_] seem irrational throughout. [_if 'irrational' here means simply 'non-rational,' or non-deducible from the essence of either term singly, it is no reproach; if it means 'contradicting' such essence, mr. bradley should show wherein and how_.] but, if they contribute anything, they must surely be affected internally. [_why so, if they contribute only their surface? in such relations as 'on,' 'a foot away,' 'between,' 'next,' etc., only surfaces are in question_.] ... if the terms contribute anything whatever, then the terms are affected [_inwardly altered?_] by the arrangement.... that for working purposes we treat, and do well to treat, some relations as external merely, i do not deny, and that of course is not the question at issue here. that question is ... whether in the end and in principle a mere external relation [_i.e., a relation which can change without forcing its terms to change their nature simultaneously_] is possible and forced on us by the facts.'[ ] mr. bradley next reverts to the antinomies of space, which, according to him, prove it to be unreal, although it appears as so prolific a medium of external relations; [footnote : _appearance and reality_, d edition, pp. - .] and he then concludes that 'irrationality and externality cannot be the last truth about things. somewhere there must be a reason why this and that appear together. and this reason and reality must reside in the whole from which terms and relations are abstractions, a whole in which their internal connexion must lie, and out of which from the background appear those fresh results which never could have come from the premises' (p. ). and he adds that 'where the whole is different, the terms that qualify and contribute to it must so far be different.... they are altered so far only [_how far? farther than externally, yet not through and through?_], but still they are altered.... i must insist that in each case the terms are qualified by their whole [_qualified how?--do their external relations, situations, dates, etc., changed as these are in the new whole, fail to qualify them 'far' enough?_], and that in the second case there is a whole which differs both logically and psychologically from the first whole; and i urge that in contributing to the change the terms so far are altered' (p. ). not merely the relations, then, but the terms are altered: _und zwar_ 'so far.' but just _how_ far is the whole problem; and 'through-and-through' would seem (in spite of mr. bradley's somewhat undecided utterances[ ]) [footnote : i say 'undecided,' because, apart from the 'so far,' which sounds terribly half-hearted, there are passages in these very pages in which mr. bradley admits the pluralistic thesis. read, for example, what he says, on p. , of a billiard ball keeping its 'character' unchanged, though, in its change of place, its 'existence' gets altered; or what he says, on p. , of the possibility that an abstract quality a, b, or c, in a thing, 'may throughout remain unchanged' although the thing be altered; or his admission that in red-hairedness, both as analyzed out of a man and when given with the rest of him, there may be 'no change' (p. ). why does he immediately add that for the pluralist to plead the non-mutation of such abstractions would be an _ignoratio elenchi_? it is impossible to admit it to be such. the entire _elenchus_ and inquest is just as to whether parts which you can abstract from existing wholes can also contribute to other wholes without changing their inner nature. if they can thus mould various wholes into new _gestalt-qualitäten_, then it follows that the same elements are logically able to exist in different wholes [whether physically able would depend on additional hypotheses]; that partial changes are thinkable, and through-and-through change not a dialectic necessity; that monism is only an hypothesis; and that an additively constituted universe is a rationally respectable hypothesis also. all the theses of radical empiricism, in short, follow.] to be the full bradleyan answer. the 'whole' which he here treats as primary and determinative of each part's manner of 'contributing,' simply _must_, when it alters, alter in its entirety. there _must_ be total conflux of its parts, each into and through each other. the 'must' appears here as a _machtspruch_, as an _ipse dixit_ of mr. bradley's absolutistically tempered 'understanding,' for he candidly confesses that how the parts _do_ differ as they contribute to different wholes, is unknown to him (p. ). although i have every wish to comprehend the authority by which mr. bradley's understanding speaks, his words leave me wholly unconverted. 'external relations' stand with their withers all unwrung, and remain, for aught he proves to the contrary, not only practically workable, but also perfectly intelligible factors of reality. vi mr. bradley's understanding shows the most extraordinary power of perceiving separations and the most extraordinary impotence in comprehending conjunctions. one would naturally say 'neither or both,' but not so mr. bradley. when a common man analyzes certain _whats_ from out the stream of experience, he understands their distinctness _as thus isolated_. but this does not prevent him from equally well understanding their combination with each other as _originally experienced in the concrete_, or their confluence with new sensible experiences in which they recur as 'the same.' returning into the stream of sensible presentation, nouns and adjectives, and _thats_ and abstract _whats_, grow confluent again, and the word 'is' names all these experiences of conjunction. mr. bradley understands the isolation of the abstracts, but to understand the combination is to him impossible.[ ] 'to understand a complex _ab_,' he [footnote : so far as i catch his state of mind, it is somewhat like this: 'book,' 'table,' 'on'--how does the existence of these three abstract elements result in _this_ book being livingly on _this_ table? why isn't the table on the book? or why doesn't the 'on' connect itself with another book, or something that is not a table? mustn't something _in_ each of the three elements already determine the two others to _it_, so that they do not settle elsewhere or float vaguely? mustn't the whole fact be _prefigured in each part_, and exist _de jure_ before it can exist _de facto_? but, if so, in what can the jural existence consist, if not in a spiritual miniature of the whole fact's constitution actuating; every partial factor as its purpose? but is this anything but the old metaphysical fallacy of looking behind a fact _in esse_ for the ground of the fact, and finding it in the shape of the very same fact _in posse_? somewhere we must leave off with a _constitution_ behind which there is nothing.] says, 'i must begin with _a_ or _b_. and beginning, say with _a_, if i then merely find _b_, i have either lost _a_, or i have got beside _a_, [_the word 'beside' seems here vital, as meaning a conjunction 'external' and therefore unintelligible_] something else, and in neither case have i understood.[ ] for my intellect cannot simply unite a diversity, nor has it in itself any form or way of togetherness, and you gain nothing if, beside _a_ and _b_, you offer me their conjunction in fact. for to my intellect that is no more than another external element. and "facts," once for all, are for my intellect not true unless they satisfy it.... the intellect has in its nature no principle of mere togetherness' (pp. , ). of course mr. bradley has a right to define 'intellect' as the power by which we perceive separations but not unions--provided he give due notice to the reader. but why then claim that such a maimed and amputated power must reign supreme in philosophy, and accuse on its behoof the whole empirical world of irrationality? it is true that he elsewhere (p. ) attributes to the intellect a _proprius motus_ of transition, but says that [footnote : apply this to the case of 'book-on-table'! w.j.] when he looks for _these_ transitions in the detail of living experience, he 'is unable to verify such a solution' (p. ). yet he never explains what the intellectual transitions would be like in case we had them. he only defines them negatively--they are not spatial, temporal, predicative, or causal; or qualitatively or otherwise serial; or in any way relational as we naïvely trace relations, for relations _separate_ terms, and need themselves to be hooked on _ad infinitum_. the nearest approach he makes to describing a truly intellectual transition is where he speaks of _a_ and _b_ as being 'united, each from its own nature, in a whole which is the nature of both alike' (p. ). but this (which, _pace_ mr. bradley, seems exquisitely analogous to 'taking a congeries in a lump,' if not to 'swamping') suggests nothing but that _conflux_ which pure experience so abundantly offers, as when 'space,' 'white,' and 'sweet' are confluent in a 'lump of sugar,' or kinesthetic, dermal, and optical sensations confluent in 'my hand.'[ ] all that i can verify in the transitions which mr. bradley's intellect desiderates as its _proprius motus_ is a reminiscence of these and other sensible conjunctions (especially space-conjunctions), [footnote : how meaningless is the contention that in such wholes (or in 'book-on-table,' 'watch-in-pocket,' etc.) the relation is an additional entity _between_ the terms, needing itself to be related again to each! both bradley (_appearance and reality_, pp. - ) and royce (_the world and the individual_, i, ) lovingly repeat this piece of profundity.] but a reminiscence so vague that its originals are not recognized. bradley, in short, repeats the fable of the dog, the bone, and its image in the water. with a world of particulars, given in loveliest union, in conjunction definitely various, and variously definite, the 'how' of which you 'understand' as soon as you see the fact of them,[ ] for there is no how except the constitution of the fact as given; with all this given him, i say, in pure experience, he asks for some ineffable union in the abstract instead, which, if he gained it, would only be a duplicate of what he has already in his full possession. surely he abuses the privilege which society grants to all of us philosophers, of being puzzle-headed. polemic writing like this is odious; but with absolutism in possession in so many quarters, omission to defend my radical empiricism against its best known champion would count as either superficiality or inability. i have to conclude that its dialectic has not invalidated in the least degree the usual conjunctions by which the world, as experienced, hangs so variously together. in particular it leaves an empirical theory of knowledge intact, and lets us continue to believe with common sense that one object _may_ be known, if we have any ground for thinking that it _is_ known, to many knowers. [footnote : the 'why' and the 'whence' are entirely other questions, not under discussion, as i understand mr. bradley. not how experience gets itself born, but how it can be what it is after it is born, is the puzzle.] appendix b the experience of activity[ ] ... mr. bradley calls the question of activity a scandal to philosophy, and if one turns to the current literature of the subject--his own writings included--one easily gathers what he means. the opponents cannot even understand one another. mr. bradley says to mr. ward: 'i do not care what your oracle is, and your preposterous psychology may here be gospel if you please; ... but if the revelation does contain a meaning, i will commit myself to this: either the oracle is so confused that its signification is not discoverable, or, upon the other hand, if it can be pinned down to any definite statement, then that statement will be false.'[ ] mr. ward in turn says of mr. bradley: 'i cannot even imagine the state of mind to which his description applies.... it reads like an unintentional travesty of herbartian psychology by one who has tried to improve upon it without being at the pains to master it.' münsterberg excludes a view opposed to his own by saying that with any one who holds it a _verständigung_ with him is '_grundsätzlich ausgeschlossen_'; and royce, [footnote : president's address before the american psychological association, december, . reprinted from the _psychological review_, vol. xii, , with slight verbal revision.] [footnote : _appearance and reality_, p. . obviously written _at_ ward, though ward's name is not mentioned.] in a review of stout,[ ] hauls him over the coals at great length for defending 'efficacy' in a way which i, for one, never gathered from reading him, and which i have heard stout himself say was quite foreign to the intention of his text. in these discussions distinct questions are habitually jumbled and different points of view are talked of _durcheinander_. ( ) there is a psychological question: have we perceptions of activity? and if so, what are they like, and when and where do we have them? ( ) there is a metaphysical question: is there a _fact_ of activity? and if so, what idea must we frame of it? what is it like? and what does it do, if it does anything? and finally there is a logical question: ( ) whence do we _know_ activity? by our own feelings of it solely? or by some other source of information? throughout page after page of the literature one knows not which of these questions is before one; and mere description of the surface-show of experience is proffered as if it implicitly answered every one of them. no one of the disputants, moreover, tries to show what pragmatic consequences his own view would carry, or what assignable particular differences in any one's experience it would make if his adversary's were triumphant. [footnote : _mind_, n.s., vi, .] it seems to me that if radical empiricism be good for anything, it ought, with its pragmatic method and its principle of pure experience, to be able to avoid such tangles, or at least to simplify them somewhat. the pragmatic method starts from the postulate that there is no difference of truth that doesn't make a difference of fact somewhere; and it seeks to determine the meaning of all differences of opinion by making the discussion hinge as soon as possible upon some practical or particular issue. the principle of pure experience is also a methodical postulate. nothing shall be admitted as fact, it says, except what can be experienced at some definite time by some experient; and for every feature of fact ever so experienced, a definite place must be found somewhere in the final system of reality. in other words: everything real must be experienceable somewhere, and every kind of thing experienced must somewhere be real. armed with these rules of method, let us see what face the problems of activity present to us. by the principle of pure experience, either the word 'activity' must have no meaning at all, or else the original type and model of what it means must lie in some concrete kind of experience that can be definitely pointed out. whatever ulterior judgments we may eventually come to make regarding activity, _that sort_ of thing will be what the judgments are about. the first step to take, then, is to ask where in the stream of experience we seem to find what we speak of as activity. what we are to think of the activity thus found will be a later question. now it is obvious that we are tempted to affirm activity wherever we find anything _going on_. taken in the broadest sense, any apprehension of something _doing_, is an experience of activity. were our world describable only by the words 'nothing happening,' 'nothing changing,' 'nothing doing,' we should unquestionably call it an 'inactive' world. bare activity, then, as we may call it, means the bare fact of event or change. 'change taking place' is a unique content of experience, one of those 'conjunctive' objects which radical empiricism seeks so earnestly to rehabilitate and preserve. the sense of activity is thus in the broadest and vaguest way synonymous with the sense of 'life.' we should feel our own subjective life at least, even in noticing and proclaiming an otherwise inactive world. our own reaction on its monotony would be the one thing experienced there in the form of something coming to pass. this seems to be what certain writers have in mind when they insist that for an experient to be at all is to be active. it seems to justify, or at any rate to explain, mr. ward's expression that we _are_ only as we are active,[ ] [footnote : _naturalism and agnosticism_, vol. ii, p. . one thinks naturally of the peripatetic _actus primus_ and _actus secundus_ here.] for we _are_ only as experients; and it rules out mr. bradley's contention that 'there is no original experience of anything like activity.' what we ought to say about activities thus simply given, whose they are, what they effect, or whether indeed they effect anything at all--these are later questions, to be answered only when the field of experience is enlarged. bare activity would thus be predicable, though there were no definite direction, no actor, and no aim. mere restless zigzag movement, or a wild _ideenflucht_, or _rhapsodie der wahrnehmungen_, as kant would say, would constitute an active as distinguished from an inactive world. but in this actual world of ours, as it is given, a part at least of the activity comes with definite direction; it comes with desire and sense of goal; it comes complicated with resistances which it overcomes or succumbs to, and with the efforts which the feeling of resistance so often provokes; and it is in complex experiences like these that the notions of distinct agents, and of passivity as opposed to activity arise. here also the notion of causal efficacy comes to birth. perhaps the most elaborate work ever done in descriptive psychology has been the analysis by various recent writers of the more complex activity-situations. in their descriptions, exquisitely subtle some of them,[ ] the activity appears as the _gestalt-qualität_ [footnote : their existence forms a curious commentary on professor munsterberg's dogma that will-attitudes are not describable. he himself has contributed in a superior way to their description, both in his _willenshandlung_, and in his _grundzüge_, part ii, chap, ix, § .] or the _fundirte inhalt_ (or as whatever else you may please to call the conjunctive form) which the content falls into when we experience it in the ways which the describers set forth. those factors in those relations are what we _mean_ by activity-situations; and to the possible enumeration and accumulation of their circumstances and ingredients there would seem to be no natural bound. every hour of human life could contribute to the picture gallery; and this is the only fault that one can find with such descriptive industry--where is it going to stop? ought we to listen forever to verbal pictures of what we have already in concrete form in our own breasts?[ ] they never take us off the superficial plane. we knew the facts already--less spread out and separated, to be sure--but we knew them still. we always felt our own activity, for example, as 'the expansion of an idea with which our self is identified, against an obstacle'; and the following out of such a definition through a multitude of cases elaborates the obvious so as to be little more than an exercise in synonymic speech. all the descriptions have to trace familiar outlines, and to use familiar terms. the activity is, for example, [footnote : i ought myself to cry _peccavi_, having been a voluminous sinner in my own chapter on the will.] attributed either to a physical or to a mental agent, and is either aimless or directed. if directed, it shows tendency. the tendency may or may not be resisted. if not, we call the activity immanent, as when a body moves in empty space by its momentum, or our thoughts wander at their own sweet will. if resistance is met, _its_ agent complicates the situation. if now, in spite of resistance, the original tendency continues, effort makes its appearance, and along with effort, strain or squeeze. will, in the narrower sense of the word, then comes upon the scene, whenever, along with the tendency, the strain and squeeze are sustained. but the resistance may be great enough to check the tendency, or even to reverse its path. in that case, we (if 'we' were the original agents or subjects of the tendency) are overpowered. the phenomenon turns into one of tension simply, or of necessity succumbed--to, according as the opposing power is only equal, or is superior to ourselves. whosoever describes an experience in such terms as these, describes an experience _of_ activity. if the word have any meaning, it must denote what there is found. _there_ is complete activity in its original and first intention. what it is 'known-as' is what there appears. the experiencer of such a situation possesses all that the idea contains. he feels the tendency, the obstacle, the will, the strain, the triumph, or the passive giving up, just as he feels the time, the space, the swiftness or intensity, the movement, the weight and color, the pain and pleasure, the complexity, or whatever remaining characters the situation may involve. he goes through all that ever can be imagined where activity is supposed. if we suppose activities to go on outside of our experience, it is in forms like these that we must suppose them, or else give them some other name; for the word 'activity' has no imaginable content whatever save these experiences of process, obstruction, striving, strain, or release, ultimate _qualia_ as they are of the life given us to be known. were this the end of the matter, one might think that whenever we had successfully lived through an activity-situation we should have to be permitted, without provoking contradiction, to say that we had been really active, that we had met real resistance and had really prevailed. lotze somewhere says that to be an entity all that is necessary is to _gelten_ as an entity, to operate, or be felt, experienced, recognized, or in any way realized, as such. in our activity-experiences the activity assuredly fulfils lotze's demand. it makes itself _gelten_. it is witnessed at its work. no matter what activities there may really be in this extraordinary universe of ours, it is impossible for us to conceive of any one of them being either lived through or authentically known otherwise than in this dramatic shape of something sustaining a felt purpose against felt obstacles and overcoming or being overcome. what 'sustaining' means here is clear to any one who has lived through the experience, but to no one else; just as 'loud,' 'red,' 'sweet,' mean something only to beings with ears, eyes, and tongues. the _percipi_ in these originals of experience is the _esse_; the curtain is the picture. if there is anything hiding in the background, it ought not to be called activity, but should get itself another name. this seems so obviously true that one might well experience astonishment at finding so many of the ablest writers on the subject flatly denying that the activity we live through in these situations is real. merely to feel active is not to be active, in their sight. the agents that appear in the experience are not real agents, the resistances do not really resist, the effects that appear are not really effects at all.[ ] it is evident from this that [footnote : _verborum gratiâ_:'the feeling of activity is not able, quâ feeling, to tell us anything about activity' (loveday: _mind_, n.s., x., ); 'a sensation or feeling or sense of activity ... is not, looked at in another way, a feeling of activity at all. it is a mere sensation shut up within which you could by no reflection get the idea of activity.... whether this experience is or is not later on a character essential to our perception and our idea of activity, it, as it comes first, is not in itself an experience of activity at all. it, as it comes first, is only so for extraneous reasons and only so for an outside observer' (bradley, _appearance and reality_, d edition, p. ); 'in dem tätigkeitsgefühle leigt an sich nicht der geringste beweis für das vorhandensein einer psychischen tätigkeit' (münsterberg: _grundzüge_, etc., p. ). i could multiply similar quotations, and would have introduced some of them into my text to make it more concrete, save that the mingling of different points of view in most of these author's discussions (not in münsterberg's) make it impossible to disentangle exactly what they mean. i am sure in any case to be accused of misrepresenting them totally, even in this note, by omission of the context, so the less i name names and the more i stick to abstract characterization of a merely possible style of opinion, the safer it will be. and apropos of misunderstandings, i may add to this note a complaint on my own account. professor stout, in the excellent chapter on 'mental activity,' in vol. i of his _analytic psychology_, takes me to task for identifying spiritual activity with certain muscular feelings, and gives quotations to bear him out. they are from certain paragraphs on 'the self,' in which my attempt was to show what the central nucleus of the activities that we call 'ours' is. i found it in certain intracephalic movements which we habitually oppose, as 'subjective,' to the activities of the transcorporeal world. i sought to show that there is no direct evidence that we feel the activity of an inner spiritual agent as such (i should now say the activity of 'consciousness' as such, see my paper 'does consciousness exist?' in the _journal of philosophy_, vol. i, p. ). there are, in fact, three distinguishable 'activities' in the field of discussion: the elementary activity involved in the mere _that_ of experience, in the fact that _something_ is going on, and the farther specification of this _something_ into two _whats_, an activity felt as 'ours,' and an activity ascribed to objects. stout, as i apprehend him, identifies 'our' activity with that of the total experience-process, and when i circumscribe it as a part thereof, accuses me of treating it as a sort of external appendage to itself (pp. - ), as if i 'separated the activity from the process which is active.' but all the processes in question are active, and their activity is inseparable from their being. my book raised only the question of _which_ activity deserved the name of 'ours.' so far as we are 'persons,' and contrasted and opposed to an 'environment,' movements in our body figure as our activities; and i am unable to find any other activities that are ours in this strictly personal sense. there is a wider sense in which the whole 'choir of heaven and furniture of the earth,' and their activities, are ours, for they are our 'objects.' but 'we' are here only another name for the total process of experience, another name for all that is, in fact; and i was dealing with the personal and individualized self exclusively in the passages with which professor stout finds fault. the individualized self, which i believe to be the only thing properly called self, is a part of the content of the world experienced. the world experienced (otherwise called the 'field of consciousness') comes at all times with our body as its centre, centre of vision, centre of action, centre of interest. where the body is is 'here'; when the body acts is 'now'; what the body touches is 'this'; all other things are 'there' and 'then' and 'that.' these words of emphasized position imply a systematization of things with reference to a focus of action and interest which lies in the body; and the systematization is now so instinctive (was it ever not so?) that no developed or active experience exists for us at all except in that ordered form. so far as 'thoughts' and 'feelings' can be active, their activity terminates in the activity of the body, and only through first arousing its activities can they begin to change those of the rest of the world. the body is the storm centre, the origin of co-ordinates, the constant place of stress in all that experience-train. everything circles round it, and is felt from its point of view. the word 'i,' then, is primarily a noun of position, just like 'this' and 'here.' activities attached to 'this' position have prerogative emphasis, and, if activities have feelings, must be felt in a peculiar way. the word 'my' designates the kind of emphasis. i see no inconsistency whatever in defending, on the one hand, 'my' activities as unique and opposed to those of outer nature, and, on the other hand, in affirming, after introspection, that they consist in movements in the head. the 'my' of them is the emphasis, the feeling of perspective-interest in which they are dyed.] mere descriptive analysis of any one of our activity-experiences is not the whole story, that there is something still to tell _about_ them that has led such able writers to conceive of a _simon-pure_ activity, of an activity _an sich_, that does, and doesn't merely appear to us to do, and compared with whose real doing all this phenomenal activity is but a specious sham. the metaphysical question opens here; and i think that the state of mind of one possessed by it is often something like this: 'it is all very well,' we may imagine him saying, 'to talk about certain experience-series taking on the form of feelings of activity, just as they might take on musical or geometric forms. suppose that they do so; suppose that what we feel is a will to stand a strain. does our feeling do more than _record_ the fact that the strain is sustained? the _real_ activity, meanwhile, is the _doing_ of the fact; and what is the doing made of before the record is made? what in the will _enables_ it to act thus? and these trains of experience themselves, in which activities appear, what makes them _go_ at all? does the activity in one bit of experience bring the next bit into being? as an empiricist you cannot say so, for you have just declared activity to be only a kind of synthetic object, or conjunctive relation experienced between bits of experience already made. but what made them at all? what propels experience _überhaupt_ into being? _there_ is the activity that _operates_; the activity _felt_ is only its superficial sign.' to the metaphysical question, popped upon us in this way, i must pay serious attention ere i end my remarks, but, before doing so, let me show that without leaving the immediate reticulations of experience, or asking what makes activity itself act, we still find the distinction between less real and more real activities forced upon us, and are driven to much soul-searching on the purely phenomenal plane. we must not forget, namely, in talking of the ultimate character of our activity-experiences, that each of them is but a portion of a wider world, one link in the vast chain of processes of experience out of which history is made. each partial process, to him who lives through it, defines itself by its origin and its goal; but to an observer with a wider mind-span who should live outside of it, that goal would appear but as a provisional halting-place, and the subjectively felt activity would be seen to continue into objective activities that led far beyond. we thus acquire a habit, in discussing activity-experiences, of defining them by their relation to something more. if an experience be one of narrow span, it will be mistaken as to what activity it is and whose. you think that _you_ are acting while you are only obeying some one's push. you think you are doing _this_, but you are doing something of which you do not dream. for instance, you think you are but drinking this glass; but you are really creating the liver-cirrhosis that will end your days. you think you are just driving this bargain, but, as stevenson says somewhere, you are laying down a link in the policy of mankind. generally speaking, the onlooker, with his wider field of vision, regards the _ultimate outcome_ of an activity as what it is more really doing; and _the most previous agent_ ascertainable, being the first source of action, he regards as the most real agent in the field. the others but transmit that agent's impulse; on him we put responsibility; we name him when one asks us, 'who's to blame?' but the most previous agents ascertainable, instead of being of longer span, are often of much shorter span than the activity in view. brain-cells are our best example. my brain-cells are believed to excite each other from next to next (by contiguous transmission of katabolic alteration, let us say), and to have been doing so long before this present stretch of lecturing-activity on my part began. if any one cell-group stops its activity, the lecturing will cease or show disorder of form. _cessante causa, cessat et effectus_--does not this look as if the short-span brain activities were the more real activities, and the lecturing activities on my part only their effects? moreover, as hume so clearly pointed out, in my mental activity-situation the words physically to be uttered are represented as the activity's immediate goal. these words, however, cannot be uttered without intermediate physical processes in the bulb and vagi nerves, which processes nevertheless fail to figure in the mental activity-series at all. that series, therefore, since it leaves out vitally real steps of action, cannot represent the real activities. it is something purely subjective; the _facts_ of activity are elsewhere. they are something far more interstitial, so to speak, than what my feelings record. the _real_ facts of activity that have in point of fact been systematically pleaded for by philosophers have, so far as my information goes, been of three principal types. the first type takes a consciousness of wider time-span than ours to be the vehicle of the more real activity. its will is the agent, and its purpose is the action done. the second type assumes that 'ideas' struggling with one another are the agents, and that the prevalence of one set of them is the action. the third type believes that nerve-cells are the agents, and that resultant motor discharges are the acts achieved. now if we must de-realize our immediately felt activity-situations for the benefit of either of these types of substitute, we ought to know what the substitution practically involves. _what practical difference ought it to make if_, instead of saying naively that 'i' am active now in delivering this address, i say that _a wider thinker is active_, or that _certain ideas are active_, or that _certain nerve-cells are active_, in producing the result? this would be the pragmatic meaning of the three hypotheses. let us take them in succession in seeking a reply. if we assume a wider thinker, it is evident that his purposes envelop mine. i am really lecturing _for_ him; and altho i cannot surely know to what end, yet if i take him religiously, i can trust it to be a good end, and willingly connive. i can be happy in thinking that my activity transmits his impulse, and that his ends prolong my own. so long as i take him religiously, in short, he does not de-realize my activities. he tends rather to corroborate the reality of them, so long as i believe both them and him to be good. when now we turn to ideas, the case is different, inasmuch as ideas are supposed by the association psychology to influence each other only from next to next. the 'span' of an idea, or pair of ideas, is assumed to be much smaller instead of being larger than that of my total conscious field. the same results may get worked out in both cases, for this address is being given anyhow. but the ideas supposed to 'really' work it out had no prevision of the whole of it; and if i was lecturing for an absolute thinker in the former case, so, by similar reasoning, are my ideas now lecturing for me, that is, accomplishing unwittingly a result which i approve and adopt. but, when this passing lecture is over, there is nothing in the bare notion that ideas have been its agents that would seem to guarantee that my present purposes in lecturing will be prolonged. _i_ may have ulterior developments in view; but there is no certainty that my ideas as such will wish to, or be able to, work them out. the like is true if nerve-cells be the agents. the activity of a nerve-cell must be conceived of as a tendency of exceedingly short reach, an 'impulse' barely spanning the way to the next cell--for surely that amount of actual 'process' must be 'experienced' by the cells if what happens between them is to deserve the name of activity at all. but here again the gross resultant, as _i_ perceive it, is indifferent to the agents, and neither wished or willed or foreseen. their being agents now congruous with my will gives me no guarantee that like results will recur again from their activity. in point of fact, all sorts of other results do occur. my mistakes, impotencies, perversions, mental obstructions, and frustrations generally, are also results of the activity of cells. altho these are letting me lecture now, on other occasions they make me do things that i would willingly not do. the question _whose is the real activity?_ is thus tantamount to the question _what will be the actual results?_ its interest is dramatic; how will things work out? if the agents are of one sort, one way; if of another sort, they may work out very differently. the pragmatic meaning of the various alternatives, in short, is great. it makes more than a merely verbal difference which opinion we take up. you see it is the old dispute come back! materialism and teleology; elementary short-span actions summing themselves 'blindly,' or far foreseen ideals coming with effort into act. naïvely we believe, and humanly and dramatically we like to believe, that activities both of wider and of narrower span are at work in life together, that both are real, and that the long-span tendencies yoke the others in their service, encouraging them in the right direction, and damping them when they tend in other ways. but how to represent clearly the _modus operandi_ of such steering of small tendencies by large ones is a problem which metaphysical thinkers will have to ruminate upon for many years to come. even if such control should eventually grow clearly picturable, the question how far it is successfully exerted in this actual world can be answered only by investigating the details of fact. no philosophic knowledge of the general nature and constitution of tendencies, or of the relation of larger to smaller ones, can help us to predict which of all the various competing tendencies that interest us in this universe are likeliest to prevail. we know as an empirical fact that far-seeing tendencies often carry out their purpose, but we know also that they are often defeated by the failure of some contemptibly small process on which success depends. a little thrombus in a statesman's meningeal artery will throw an empire out of gear. therefore i cannot even hint at any solution of the pragmatic issue. i have only wished to show you that that issue is what gives the real interest to all inquiries into what kinds of activity may be real. are the forces that really act in the world more foreseeing or more blind? as between 'our' activities as 'we' experience them, and those of our ideas, or of our brain-cells, the issue is well defined. i said awhile back (p. ) that i should return to the 'metaphysical' question before ending; so, with a few words about that, i will now close my remarks. in whatever form we hear this question propounded, i think that it always arises from two things, a belief that _causality_ must be exerted in activity, and a wonder as to how causality is made. if we take an activity-situation at its face-value, it seems as if we caught _in flagrante delicto_ the very power that makes facts come and be. i now am eagerly striving, for example, to get this truth which i seem half to perceive, into words which shall make it show more clearly. if the words come, it will seem as if the striving itself had drawn or pulled them into actuality out from the state of merely possible being in which they were. how is this feat performed? how does the pulling _pull_? how do i get my hold on words not yet existent, and when they come, by what means have i _made_ them come? really it is the problem of creation; for in the end the question is: how do i make them _be?_ real activities are those that really make things be, without which the things are not, and with which they are there. activity, so far as we merely feel it, on the other hand, is only an impression of ours, it may be maintained; and an impression is, for all this way of thinking, only a shadow of another fact. arrived at this point, i can do little more than indicate the principles on which, as it seems to me, a radically empirical philosophy is obliged to rely in handling such a dispute. if there _be_ real creative activities in being, radical empiricism must say, somewhere they must be immediately lived. somewhere the _that_ of efficacious causing and the _what_ of it must be experienced in one, just as the what and the that of 'cold' are experienced in one whenever a man has the sensation of cold here and now. it boots not to say that our sensations are fallible. they are indeed; but to see the thermometer contradict us when we say 'it is cold' does not abolish cold as a specific nature from the universe. cold is in the arctic circle if not here. even so, to feel that our train is moving when the train beside our window moves, to see the moon through a telescope come twice as near, or to see two pictures as one solid when we look through a stereoscope at them, leaves motion, nearness, and solidity still in being--if not here, yet each in its proper seat elsewhere. and wherever the seat of real causality _is_, as ultimately known 'for true' (in nerve-processes, if you will, that cause our feelings of activity as well as the movements which these seem to prompt), a philosophy of pure experience can consider the real causation as no other _nature_ of thing than that which even in our most erroneous experiences appears to be at work. exactly what appears there is what we _mean_ by working, tho we may later come to learn that working was not exactly _there_. sustaining, persevering, striving, paying with effort as we go, hanging on, and finally achieving our intention--this _is_ action, this _is_ effectuation in the only shape in which, by a pure experience-philosophy, the whereabouts of it anywhere can be discussed. here is creation in its first intention, here is causality at work.[ ] to treat this offhand as the bare illusory [footnote : let me not be told that this contradicts a former article of mine, 'does consciousness exist?' in the _journal of philosophy_ for september , (see especially page ), in which it was said that while 'thoughts' and 'things' have the same natures, the natures work 'energetically' on each other in the things (fire burns, water wets, etc.), but not in the thoughts. mental activity-trains are composed of thoughts, yet their members do work on each other: they check, sustain, and introduce. they do so when the activity is merely associational as well as when effort is there. but, and this is my reply, they do so by other parts of their nature than those that energize physically. one thought in every developed activity-series is a desire or thought of purpose, and all the other thoughts acquire a feeling tone from their relation of harmony or oppugnancy to this. the interplay of these secondary tones (among which 'interest,' 'difficulty,' and 'effort' figure) runs the drama in the mental series. in what we term the physical drama these qualities play absolutely no part. the subject needs careful working out; but i can see no inconsistency.] surface of a world whose real causality is an unimaginable ontological principle hidden in the cubic deeps, is, for the more empirical way of thinking, only animism in another shape. you explain your given fact by your 'principle,' but the principle itself, when you look clearly at it, turns out to be nothing but a previous little spiritual copy of the fact. away from that one and only kind of fact your mind, considering causality, can never get.[ ] [footnote : i have found myself more than once accused in print of being the assertor of a metaphysical principle of activity. since literary misunderstandings retard the settlement of problems, i should like to say that such an interpretation of the pages i have published on effort and on will is absolutely foreign to what i meant to express. i owe all my doctrines on this subject to renouvier; and renouvier, as i understand him, is (or at any rate then was) an out and out phenomenist, a denier of 'forces' in the most strenuous sense. single clauses in my writing, or sentences read out of their connexion, may possibly have been compatible with a transphenomenal principle of energy; but i defy any one to show a single sentence which, taken with its context, should be naturally held to advocate that view. the misinterpretation probably arose at first from my having defended (after renouvier) the indeterminism of our efforts. 'free will' was supposed by my critics to involve a supernatural agent. as a matter of plain history, the only 'free will' i have ever thought of defending is the character of novelty in fresh activity-situations. if an activity-process is the form of a whole 'field of consciousness,' and if each field of consciousness is not only in its totality unique (as is now commonly admitted), but has its elements unique (since in that situation they are all dyed in the total), then novelty is perpetually entering the world and what happens there is not pure _repetition_, as the dogma of the literal uniformity of nature requires. activity-situations come, in short, each with an original touch. a 'principle' of free will, if there were one, would doubtless manifest itself in such phenomena, but i never saw, nor do i now see, what the principle could do except rehearse the phenomenon beforehand, or why it ever should be invoked.] i conclude, then, that real effectual causation as an ultimate nature, as a 'category,' if you like, of reality, is _just what we feel it to be_, just that kind of conjunction which our own activity-series reveal. we have the whole butt and being of it in our hands; and the healthy thing for philosophy is to leave off grubbing underground for what effects effectuation, or what makes action act, and to try to solve the concrete questions of where effectuation in this world is located, of which things are the true causal agents there, and of what the more remote effects consist. from this point of view the greater sublimity traditionally attributed to the metaphysical inquiry, the grubbing inquiry, entirely disappears. if we could know what causation really and transcendentally is in itself, the only _use_ of the knowledge would be to help us to recognize an actual cause when we had one, and so to track the future course of operations more intelligently out. the mere abstract inquiry into causation's hidden nature is not more sublime than any other inquiry equally abstract. causation inhabits no more sublime level than anything else. it lives, apparently, in the dirt of the world as well as in the absolute, or in man's unconquerable mind. the worth and interest of the world consists not in its elements, be these elements things, or be they the conjunctions of things; it exists rather in the dramatic outcome of the whole process, and in the meaning of the succession stages which the elements work out. my colleague and master, josiah royce, in a page of his review of stout's _analytic psychology_, in _mind_ for , has some fine words on this point with which i cordially agree. i cannot agree with his separating the notion of efficacy from that of activity altogether (this i understand to be one contention of his), for activities are efficacious whenever they are real activities at all. but the inner nature both of efficacy and of activity are superficial problems, i understand royce to say; and the only point for us in solving them would be their possible use in helping us to solve the far deeper problem of the course and meaning of the world of life. life, says our colleague, is full of significance, of meaning, of success and of defeat, of hoping and of striving, of longing, of desire, and of inner value. it is a total presence that embodies worth. to live our own lives better in this presence is the true reason why we wish to know the elements of things; so even we psychologists must end on this pragmatic note. the urgent problems of activity are thus more concrete. they all are problems of the true relation of longer-span to shorter-span activities. when, for example, a number of 'ideas' (to use the name traditional in psychology) grow confluent in a larger field of consciousness, do the smaller activities still coexist with the wider activities then experienced by the conscious subject? and, if so, do the wide activities accompany the narrow ones inertly, or do they exert control? or do they perhaps utterly supplant and replace them and short-circuit their effects? again, when a mental activity-process and a brain-cell series of activities both terminate in the same muscular movement, does the mental process steer the neural processes or not? or, on the other hand, does it independently short-circuit their effects? such are the questions that we must begin with. but so far am i from suggesting any definitive answer to such questions, that i hardly yet can put them clearly. they lead, however, into that region of panpsychic and ontologic speculation of which professors bergson and strong have lately enlarged the literature in so able and interesting a way. the results of these authors seem in many respects dissimilar, and i understand them as yet but imperfectly; but i cannot help suspecting that the direction of their work is very promising, and that they have the hunter's instinct for the fruitful trails. appendix c on the notion of reality as changing in my _principles of psychology_ (vol. ii, p. ) i gave the name of the 'axiom of skipped intermediaries and transferred relations' to a serial principle of which the foundation of logic, the _dictum de omni et nullo_ (or, as i expressed it, the rule that what is of a kind is of that kind's kind), is the most familiar instance. more than the more is more than the less, equals of equals are equal, sames of the same are the same, the cause of a cause is the cause of its effects, are other examples of this serial law. altho it applies infallibly and without restriction throughout certain abstract series, where the 'sames,' 'causes,' etc., spoken of, are 'pure,' and have no properties save their sameness, causality, etc., it cannot be applied offhand to concrete objects with numerous properties and relations, for it is hard to trace a straight line of sameness, causation, or whatever it may be, through a series of such objects without swerving into some 'respect' where the relation, as pursued originally, no longer holds: the objects have so many 'aspects' that we are constantly deflected from our original direction, and find, we know not why, that we are following something different from what we started with. thus a cat is in a sense the same as a mouse-trap, and a mouse-trap the same as a bird-cage; but in no valuable or easily intelligible sense is a cat the same as a bird-cage. commodore perry was in a sense the cause of the new régime in japan, and the new régime was the cause of the russian douma; but it would hardly profit us to insist on holding to perry as the cause of the douma: the terms have grown too remote to have any real or practical relation to each other. in every series of real terms, not only do the terms themselves and their associates and environments change, but we change, and their _meaning_ for us changes, so that new kinds of sameness and types of causation continually come into view and appeal to our interest. our earlier lines, having grown irrelevant, are then dropped. the old terms can no longer be substituted nor the relations 'transferred,' because of so many new dimensions into which experience has opened. instead of a straight line, it now follows a zigzag; and to keep it straight, one must do violence to its spontaneous development. not that one might not possibly, by careful seeking (tho i doubt it), _find_ some line in nature along which terms literally the same, or causes causal in the same way, might be serially strung without limit, if one's interest lay in such finding. within such lines our axioms might hold, causes might cause their effect's effects, etc.; but such lines themselves would, if found, only be partial members of a vast natural network, within the other lines of which you could not say, in any sense that a wise man or a sane man would ever think of, in any sense that would not be concretely _silly_, that the principle of skipt intermediaries still held good. in the _practical_ world, the world whose significances we follow, sames of the same are certainly not sames of one another; and things constantly cause other things without being held responsible for everything of which those other things are causes. professor bergson, believing as he does in a heraclitean 'devenir réel,' ought, if i rightly understand him, positively to deny that in the actual world the logical axioms hold good without qualification. not only, according to him, do terms change, so that after a certain time the very elements of things are no longer what they were, but relations also change, so as no longer to obtain in the same identical way between the new things that have succeeded upon the old ones. if this were really so, then however indefinitely sames might still be substituted for sames in the logical world of nothing but pure sameness, in the world of real operations every line of sameness actually started and followed up would eventually give out, and cease to be traceable any farther. sames of the same, in such a world, will not always (or rather, in a strict sense will never) be the same as one another, for in such a world there _is_ no literal or ideal sameness among numerical differents. nor in such a world will it be true that the cause of the cause is unreservedly the cause of the effect; for if we follow lines of real causation, instead of contenting ourselves with hume's and kant's eviscerated schematism, we find that remoter effects are seldom aimed at by causal intentions,[ ] that no one kind of causal activity continues indefinitely, and that the principle of skipt intermediaries can be talked of only _in abstracto_.[ ] volumes i, ii, and iii of the _monist_ ( - ) contain a number of articles by mr. charles s. peirce, articles the originality of which has apparently prevented their making an immediate impression, but which, if i mistake not, will prove a gold-mine of ideas for thinkers of the coming generation. mr. peirce's views, tho reached so differently, are altogether congruous with bergson's. both philosophers believe that the appearance of novelty in things is genuine. to an observer standing outside of its generating causes, novelty can appear only as so much 'chance'; to one who stands inside it is the expression of 'free creative activity.' peirce's 'tychism' is thus practically synonymous with bergson's 'devenir réel.' the common objection to admitting novelties is that by jumping abruptly in, _ex nihilo_, they shatter the world's rational continuity. peirce meets this objection by combining his tychism [footnote : compare the douma with what perry aimed at.] [footnote : compare appendix b, as to what i mean here by 'real' casual activity.] with an express doctrine of 'synechism' or continuity, the two doctrines merging into the higher synthesis on which he bestows the name of 'agapasticism (_loc. cit._, iii, ), which means exactly the same thing as bergson's 'évolution créatrice.' novelty, as empirically found, doesn't arrive by jumps and jolts, it leaks in insensibly, for adjacents in experience are always interfused, the smallest real datum being both a coming and a going, and even numerical distinctness being realized effectively only after a concrete interval has passed. the intervals also deflect us from the original paths of direction, and all the old identities at last give out, for the fatally continuous infiltration of otherness warps things out of every original rut. just so, in a curve, the same direction is _never_ followed, and the conception of it as a myriad-sided polygon falsifies it by supposing it to do so for however short a time. peirce speaks of an 'infinitesimal' tendency to diversification. the mathematical notion of an infinitesimal contains, in truth, the whole paradox of the same and yet the nascent other, of an identity that won't _keep_ except so far as it keeps _failing_, that won't _transfer_, any more than the serial relations in question transfer, when you apply them to reality instead of applying them to concepts alone. a friend of mine has an idea, which illustrates on such a magnified scale the impossibility of tracing the same line through reality, that i will mention it here. he thinks that nothing more is needed to make history 'scientific' than to get the content of any two epochs (say the end of the thirteenth and the end of the nineteenth century) accurately defined, then accurately to define the direction of the change that led from the one epoch into the other, and finally to prolong the line of that direction into the future. so prolonging the line, he thinks, we ought to be able to define the actual state of things at any future date we please. we all feel the essential unreality of such a conception of 'history' as this; but if such a synechistic pluralism as peirce, bergson, and i believe in, be what really exists, every phenomenon of development, even the simplest, would prove equally rebellious to our science should the latter pretend to give us literally accurate instead of approximate, or statistically generalized, pictures of the development of reality. i can give no further account of mr. peirce's ideas in this note, but i earnestly advise all students of bergson to compare them with those of the french philosopher. index index to the lectures absolute, the, , - , ff., , , ff., , , ff., ; not the same as god, , ; its rationality, f.; its irrationality, - ; difficulty of conceiving it, . absolutism, , , , , f, , , . see monism. achilles and tortoise, , . all-form, the, , . analogy, , f. angels, . antinomies, , . aristides, . bailey, s., . bergson, h., lecture vi, _passim_. his characteristics, f, . 'between,' . block-universe, , . bradley, f.h., , , , , , . brain, . caird, e., , , . cato, . causation, . see influence. change, , . chesterton, , . compounding of mental states, , , f., , , , , . concepts, , f. conceptual method, f., , . concrete reality, , . confluence, . conflux, . consciousness, superhuman, , f.; its compound nature, , , f., . continuity, f., . contradiction, in hegel, f. creation, , . death, . degrees, . dialectic method, . difference, f. diminutive epithets, , . discreteness of change, . 'each-form,' the, , . earth, the, in fechner's philosophy, ; is an angel, . earth-soul, f. elan vital, . empiricism, , ; and religion, ; defined, . endosmosis, . epithets. see diminutive. evil, . experience, ; religious, . extremes, , . 'faith-ladder,' . 'fall,' the, , . fechner, lecture iv, _passim._ his life, - ; he reasons by analogy, ; his genius, ; compared with royce, , ; not a genuine monist, ; his god; and religious experience, . ferrier, jas., . finite experience, , , , - . finiteness, of god, , , . foreignness, . german manner of philosophizing, . god, f., , , , , . green, t.h., , , , . haldane, r.b., . hegel, lecture iii, _passim_, , , , , , . his vision, , f., ; his use of double negation, ; his vicious intellectualism ; haldane on, ; mctaggart on, ; royce on, . hodgson, s.h., . horse, . hume, , . idealism, . see absolutism. identity, . immortality, fechner's view of, . 'independent' beings, , . indeterminism, . infinity, . influence, , . intellect, its function is practical, f., . intellectualism, vicious, , . intellectualist logic, , , . intellectualist method, . interaction, . intimacy, . irrationality, ; of the absolute, - . jacks, l.p., . joachim, h., , . jones, h., . kant, , , , . leibnitz, . life, . log, . logic, , ; intellectualist, , . lotze, , . luther, . mctaggart, , f., , f., . manyness in oneness, . see compounding. mental chemistry, . mill, j.s., , . mind, dust theory, . mind, the eternal, . see absolute. monism, , , , , , f.; fechner's, . see absolutism. monomaniacs, . motion, , , ; zeno on, . myers, f.w.h., . nature, , . negation, f.; double, . newton, . other, , ; 'its own other,' f., . oxford, _ _, , . pantheism, , . paulsen, , . personality, divided, . philosophers, their method, ; their common desire, f.; they must reason, . philosophies, their types, , . phocion, . plant-soul, f. pluralism, , , , , , f. polytheism, . practical reason, . psychic synthesis, . see compounding. psychical research, . 'quâ,' , , , . 'quatenus,' , . rationalism defined, , ; its thinness, , . rationality, , f., f. reality, f., , f. reason, , . relating, . relations, , ff.; 'external,' . religious experiences, f. ritchie, . royce, f., , , f., , , , , . same, , . savage philosophy, . science, . sensations, . socialism, . socrates, . soul, , . 'some,' . sphinx, . spinoza, . spiritualistic philosophy, . sugar, , . synthesis, psychic. see compounding. taylor, a.e., , , . theism, . thick, the, . 'thickness' of fechner's philosophy, . thin, the, . thinness of the current transcendentalism, , f. time, . units of reality, . vision, in philosophy, . wells, h.g., . will to believe, . witnesses, as implied in experience, . wundt, w., . zeno, . note: project gutenberg also has an html version of this file which includes the original illustrations. see -h.htm or -h.zip: (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/ / -h/ -h.htm) or (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/ / -h.zip) transcriber's note: page numbers in curly braces (example: { }) have been included in the text to enable the reader to use the index. a few typographical errors have been corrected; they are listed at the end of the text. [illustration: giordano bruno. from the statue in the campo dei fiori, rome.] history of modern philosophy by a. w. benn, author of "the history of english rationalism in the nineteenth century," etc. [illustration: giordano bruno. from the statue in the campo dei fiori, rome.] [issued for the rationalist press association, limited] london: watts & co., johnson's court, fleet street, e.c. printed by watts and co., johnson's court, fleet street, london, e.c. contents chapter i. page the philosophical renaissance chapter ii. the metaphysicians chapter iii. the theorists of knowledge chapter iv. the german idealists chapter v. the humanists of the nineteenth century bibliography index list of illustrations giordano bruno _frontispiece_ page francis bacon renÉ descartes benedictus spinoza david hume immanuel kant g. w. f. hegel arthur schopenhauer auguste comte herbert spencer { } chapter i. the philosophical renaissance for a thousand years after the schools of athens were closed by justinian philosophy made no real advance; no essentially new ideas about the constitution of nature, the workings of mind, or the ends of life were put forward. it would be false to say that during this period no progress was made. the civilisation of the roman empire was extended far beyond its ancient frontiers; and, although much ground was lost in asia and africa, more than the equivalent was gained in northern europe. within europe also the gradual abolition of slavery and the increasing dignity of peaceful labour gave a wider diffusion to culture, combined with a larger sense of human fellowship than any but the best minds of greece and rome had felt. whether the status of women was really raised may be doubted; but the ideas and sentiments of women began to exercise an influence on social intercourse unknown before. and the arts of war and peace were in some ways almost revolutionised. this remarkable phenomenon of movement in everything except ideas has been explained by the influence of christianity, or rather of catholicism. there is truth in the contention, but it is not the whole truth. the church entered into a heritage that she did not create; she defined and accentuated tendencies that { } long before her advent had secretly been at work. in the west that diffusion of civilisation which is her historic boast had been begun and carried far by the rome whence her very name is taken. in the east the title of orthodox by which the greek church is distinguished betrays the presence of that greek thought which moulded her dogmas into logical shape. what is more, the very idea of right belief as a vital and saving thing came to christianity from platonism, accompanied by the persuasion that wrong belief was immoral and its promulgation a crime to be visited by the penalty of death. ecclesiastical intolerance has been made responsible for the speculative stagnation of the middle ages, and it has been explained as an effect of the belief in the future punishment of heresy by eternal torments. but in truth the persecuting spirit was responsible for the dogma, not the dogma for persecution. and we must look for the underlying cause of the whole evil in the premature union of metaphysics with religion and morality first effected by plato, or rather by the genius of athens working through plato. indeed, on a closer examination we shall find that the slowing-down of speculation had begun long before the advent of christianity, and coincides with the establishment of its headquarters at athens, where also the first permanent schools of philosophy were established. these schools were distinctly religious in their character; and none was so set against innovation as that of epicurus, falsely supposed to have been a home of freethought. in the last greek system of philosophy, neo-platonism, theology reigned supreme; and during the two and a-half centuries of its existence no real advance on the teaching of plotinus was made. { } neo-platonism when first constituted had incorporated a large aristotelian element, the expulsion of which had been accomplished by its last great master, proclus; and christendom took over metaphysics under what seemed a platonic form--the more welcome as plato passed for giving its creeds the independent support of pure reason. this support extended beyond a future life and went down to the deepest mysteries of revealed faith. for, according to the platonic doctrine of ideas, it was quite in order that there should be a divine unity existing independently of the three divine persons composing it; that the idea of humanity should be combined with one of these persons; and that the same idea, being both one with and distinct from adam, should involve all mankind in the guilt of his transgression. thus the church started with a strong prejudice in favour of plato which continued to operate for many centuries, although the first great schoolman, john scotus eriugena ( - ), incurred a condemnation for heresy by adopting the pantheistic metaphysics of neo-platonism. as the platonic doctrine of ideas came to life again in the realism, as it was called, of scholastic philosophy, so the conflicting view of his old opponent aristotle was revived under the form of conceptualism. according to this theory the genera and species of the objective world correspond to real and permanent distinctions in the nature of things; but, apart from the conceptions by which they are represented in the intellect of god and man, those distinctions have no separate existence. aristotle's philosophy was first brought into europe by the mohammedan conquerors of spain, which became an important centre of learning in the earlier middle ages. not a few christian scholars went there to { } study. latin translations were made from arabic versions of aristotle, and in this way his doctrines became more widely known to the lecture-rooms of the catholic world. but their derivation from infidel sources roused a prejudice against them, still further heightened by the circumstance that an arabian commentator, averroes, had interpreted the theology of the _metaphysics_ in a pantheistic sense. and on any sincere reading aristotle denied the soul's immortality which plato had upheld. accordingly, all through the twelfth century platonism still dominated religious thought, and even so late as the early thirteenth century the study of aristotle was still condemned by the church. nevertheless a great revolution was already in progress. as a result of the capture of constantinople by the crusaders in a.d. the greek manuscripts of aristotle's writings were brought to paris, and at a subsequent period they were translated into latin under the direction of st. thomas aquinas, the ablest of the schoolmen, who so manipulated the peripatetic philosophy as to convert it from a battering-ram into a buttress of catholic theology--a position still officially assigned to it at the present day. aristotelianism, however, did not reign without a rival even in the later middle ages. aquinas was a dominican; and the jealousy of the competing franciscan order found expression in maintaining a certain tradition of platonism, represented in different ways by roger bacon ( - ) and by duns scotus ( - ). in this connection we have to note the extraordinary fertility of the british islands in eminent thinkers during the middle ages. besides the two last mentioned there is eriugena ("born in ireland"), john of salisbury { } ( - ), the first humanist, william of ockham, and wycliffe, the first reformer--making six in all, a larger contribution than any other region of europe, or indeed all the rest of europe put together, has made to the stars of scholasticism. this advantage is probably not due to any inherent genius for philosophy in the inhabitants of these islands, but to their relative immunity from war and to the political liberty that cannot but have been favourable to independent thought. five out of the six were more or less inclined to platonism, and their idealist or mystical tendencies were sometimes associated with the same practicality that distinguished their master. the sixth, commonly called occam (died about ), is famous as the champion of nominalism--that is, of the doctrine that genera and species have no real existence either in nature or in mind; there are only individuals more or less resembling one another. he is the author of the famous saying--the sole legacy of scholasticism to common thought: "entities ought not to be gratuitously multiplied" (entia non sunt præter necessitatem multiplicanda). the capture of constantinople by the crusaders had led to aristotle's triumph in the thirteenth century. two hundred years later the conquering ottoman advance on the same city was the immediate cause of his overthrow. for the byzantine scholars who fled for help and refuge to italy brought with them the manuscripts of plato and plotinus, and these soon became known to western europe through the latin translations of marsilio ficino. on its literary side the platonic revival fell in admirably with the humanism to which the schoolmen had long been intensely distasteful. and the religious movement that preceded { } luther's reformation found a welcome ally in neo-platonic mysticism. at the same time the invention of printing, by opening the world of books to non-academic readers, vastly widened the possibilities of independent thought. and the reformation, by discrediting the scholastic theology in northern europe, dealt another blow at the system with which it had been associated by aquinas. it has been supposed that the discovery of america and the circumnavigation of the globe contributed also to the impending philosophical revolution. but the true theory of the earth's figure formed the very foundation of aristotle's cosmology, and was as well known to dante as to ourselves. made by a fervent catholic, acting under the patronage of the catholic queen _par excellence_, the discovery of columbus increased the prestige of catholicism by opening a new world to its missions and adding to the wealth of its supporters in the old world. the decisive blow to medieval ideas came from another quarter--from the copernican astronomy. what the true theory of the earth's motion meant for philosophy has not always been rightly understood. it seems to be commonly supposed that the heliocentric system excited hostility because it degraded the earth from her proud position as centre of the universe. but the reverse is true. according to aristotle and his scholastic followers, the centre of the universe is the lowest and least honourable, the circumference the highest and most distinguished position in it. and that is why earth, as the vilest of the four elements, tends to the centre; while fire, being the most precious, flies upward. again, the incorruptible æther of which the heavens are composed shows its eternal character { } by moving for ever round in a circle of which god, as prime mover, occupies the outermost verge. and this metaphysical topography is faithfully followed by dante, who even improves on it by placing the worst criminals (that is, the rebels and traitors--satan, with judas and brutus and cassius) in the eternal ice at the very centre of the earth. such fancies were incompatible with the new astronomy. no longer cold and dead, our earth might henceforth take her place among the stars, animated like them--if animated they were--and suggesting by analogy that they too supported teeming multitudes of reasonable inhabitants. but the transposition of values did not end here. aristotle's whole philosophy had been based on a radical antithesis between the sublunary and the superlunary spheres--the world of growth, decay, vicissitude, and the world of everlasting realities. in the sublunary sphere, also, it distinguished sharply between the forms of things, which were eternal, and the matter on which they were imposed, an intangible, evanescent thing related to form as possibility to actuality. we know that these two convenient categories are logically independent of the false cosmology that may or may not have suggested their world-wide application. but the immediate effect of having it denied, or even doubted, was greatly to exalt the credit of matter or power at the expense of form or act. the first to draw these revolutionary inferences from the copernican theory was giordano bruno ( - ). born at nola, a south italian city not far from naples, bruno entered the dominican order before the age of fifteen, and on that occasion exchanged his baptismal name of filippo for that by which he has ever since been known. here he became acquainted with the { } whole of ancient and medieval philosophy, besides the copernican astronomy, then not yet condemned by the church. at the early age of eighteen he first came into collision with the authorities; and at twenty-eight ( ) [mcintyre, pp. - ] he openly questioned the chief characteristic dogmas of catholicism, was menaced with an action for heresy, and fled from the convent. the pursuit must have been rather perfunctory, for bruno found himself free to spend two years wandering from one italian city to another, earning a precarious livelihood by tuition and authorship. leaving italy at last, rather from a desire to push his fortunes abroad than from any fear of molestation, and finding france too hot to hold him, he tried geneva for a little while, but, on being given to understand that he could only stay on the condition of embracing calvinism, returned to france, where he lived first for two years as professor of philosophy at toulouse, and three more in a somewhat less official position at paris. thence, in the train of the french ambassador, he passed to england, where his two years' sojourn seems to have been the happiest and most fruitful period of his restless career. it was cut short by his chief's return to paris. but the philosopher's fearless advocacy of copernicanism made that bigoted capital impossible. the truth, however, seems to be that bruno never could hit it off with anyone or any society; and the next five years, spent in trying to make himself acceptable at one german university after another, are a record of hopeless failure. finally, in an evil hour, he goes to venice at the invitation of a young noble, mocenigo, who, in revenge for disappointed expectations, betrays him to the inquisition. questioned about his heresies, bruno showed perfect willingness to accept all the theological dogmas that { } he had formerly denied. whether he withdrew his retractation on being transferred from a venetian to a roman prison does not appear, as the roman depositions are not forthcoming. neither is it clear why so long a delay as six years ( - ) was granted to the philosopher when such short work was made of other heretics. it seems most probable that bruno, while pliant enough on questions of religious belief, remained inflexible in maintaining the infinity of inhabited worlds. when the final condemnation was read out, he told the judges that he heard it with less fear than they felt in pronouncing it. in the customary euphemistic terms they had sent him to death by fire. at the stake, when the crucifix was held up to him, he turned away his eyes--with what thoughts we cannot tell. there is a monument to the heroic thinker at nola, and another in the campo dei fiori on the spot where he suffered at rome, raised against the strongest protests of the ecclesiastical authorities. the greek-italian philosophers--the pythagoreans and parmenides--had introduced the idea of finiteness or limitation as a necessary condition of reality and perfection into thought. from them it passed over to plato and aristotle, who made it dominant in the schools. epicurus and lucretius had, indeed, carried on the older ionian tradition of infinite atoms and infinite worlds dispersed through infinite space; but their philosophy was practically atheistic, and the church condemned it as both heretical and false. probably the discovery of the earth's globular shape had first suggested the idea of a finite universe to parmenides; at any rate, the discovery of the earth's motion suggested the idea of an infinite universe to his greek-souled italian successor; or rather it was { } the break-up of aristotle's spherical world by copernicanism that threw bruno back--as he gives us himself to understand--on the older ionian cosmologies, with their assumption of infinite space and infinite worlds. in this reference bruno went far beyond copernicus, and even kepler; for both had assumed, in deference to current opinion, that the fixed stars were equidistant from the solar system, and formed a single sphere enclosing it on all sides. he, on the contrary, anticipated modern astronomy in conceiving the stars as so many suns dispersed without assignable limits through space, and each surrounded by inhabited planets. infinite space had been closely associated by democritus and epicurus with infinite atoms; and the next great step taken by bruno was to rehabilitate atomism as a necessary concept of modern science. he figured the atoms as very minute spheres of solid earthy matter, forming by their combinations the framework of visible bodies. but their combinations are by no means fortuitous, as democritus had impiously supposed; nor do they move through an absolute void. all space is filled with an ocean of liquid æther, which is no other than the quintessence of which aristotle's celestial spheres were composed. only in bruno's system it takes the place of that first matter which is the extreme antithesis of the disembodied form personified in the prime mover, god. and here we come to that reversal of cosmic values brought about by the reversal of the relations between the earth and sun which copernicus had effected. the primordial matter, so far from passively receiving the forms imposed on it from without, has an infinite capacity for evolving forms from its own bosom; and, so far { } from being unspiritual, is itself the universal spirit, the creative and animating soul of the world. the first matter, form, energy, life, and reason are identified with nature, nature with the universe, and the universe with god. so far all is clear, if not convincing. it is otherwise with the theory of monads. this is only expounded in bruno's latin works, for the most part ill-written and hopelessly obscure. it seems possible that by the monads bruno sometimes means the infinitesimal parts into which the æther of space may conceivably be divided. each of these possesses consciousness, and therefore may be considered as reflecting and representing the whole universe. a number of monads, or rather a continuous portion of the æther surrounding and interpenetrating a group of atoms, endows them with the forms and qualities of elementary bodies, ascending gradually through vegetal and animal organisations to human beings. but the animating process does not stop with man. the earth, with the other planets, the sun, and all the stars, are also monads on the largest scale, with reasonable souls, just as aristotle thought. in fact, the old mythology whence he derived the idea repeats itself in his great enemy bruno. beyond and above all these partial unities is the monas monadum--the supreme unity, the infinite god who is the soul of the infinite universe. doubtless there is here a reminiscence of the neo-platonic one, the ineffable absolute, beyond all existence, yet endowed with the infinite power whence all existence proceeds. bruno had learned from cardinal nicolas of cusa--a copernican before copernicus--to recognise the principle of heracleitus that opposites are one; and in this instance he applies it with brilliant audacity; for every infinitesimal { } part of the space-filling æther is no less the soul of the universe than the monad of monads itself. and both agree in being non-existent in the sense of being transfinite, since there can be no sum of infinity and no animated mathematical points. from anaximander to plotinus there is hardly a great greek thinker whose influence cannot be traced in the system of giordano bruno. and while he represents the philosophical renaissance in this eminent degree, he heads the two lines of speculation which, separately or combined, run through the whole history of modern metaphysics--the monistic, and what is now called the pluralistic tendency. with none, except, perhaps, with hegel, have the two been perfectly balanced; and in bruno himself the leaning is distinctly towards plurality, his supreme monad being a mere survival from the neo-platonic one. francis bacon. francis bacon ( - ) was by profession a lawyer, by taste a scientific inquirer, by character a seeker after wealth and power, by natural genius an immortal master of words. he began life as the friend, adviser, and client of elizabeth's favourite, the earl of essex. when that unfortunate courtier, in disregard of his warnings, rushed into a treasonable enterprise, bacon appeared as one of the most zealous of the counsel for the prosecution. strictly speaking, this may have been his duty as a loyal subject of the queen; it was hardly his duty, even on the queen's commission, after essex's execution, to assist in the composition of a pamphlet blackening the memory of his former friend and patron. in the next reign bacon paid assiduous court to james and his favourites. { } [illustration: francis bacon. (_copyright b. p. c._)] { } when the first of these, somerset, fell and was tried on a charge of murder, he conducted the prosecution, and, finding the evidence insufficient, suggested to james that the prisoner should be entrapped into a confession by dangling a false promise of forgiveness before his eyes. bacon owed his final exaltation to buckingham, and as lord keeper allowed himself to be made the tool of that bad man for the perversion of justice. a suit was brought before him by a young man against a fraudulent trustee (his own uncle) for the restitution of a sum of money. bacon gave sentence for the plaintiff. buckingham then intervened with a demand that the case should be retried. "upon this bacon saw the parties privately, and, annulling all the deliberate decisions of the court, compelled the youth to assent to the ceasing of all proceedings, and to accept" a smaller sum than he was entitled to (e. a. abbott). on another occasion he exercised his judicial authority in a way that did not square with buckingham's wishes, but quite legitimately and without any consciousness of giving offence; whereupon the insolent favourite addressed him in a letter filled with outrageous abuse, to which bacon replied in terms of abject submission. this meanness had its reward, for in the philosopher became lord chancellor. after a three years' tenure bacon was flung from his high position by a charge of judicial corruption, to the truth of every count in which he confessed. the question is very complicated, obscure, and much controverted, not admitting of discussion within the limits here assigned. on the subject of bacon's truthfulness, however, a word must be said. the chancellor admitted having taken presents from suitors, but { } denied having ever let his judgments be influenced thereby; and his word seems to be generally accepted as a sufficient exoneration. but its value may be doubted in view of two statements quoted by dean church. of these "one was made in the house of commons by sir george hastings, a member of the house, who had been the channel of awbry's gift [made to the chancellor _pendente lite_], that when he had told bacon that if questioned he must admit it, bacon's answer was: 'george, if you do so, i must deny it, upon my honour--upon my oath.' the other was that he had given an opinion in favour of some claim of the masters in chancery, for which he received £ , , and with which he said that all the judges agreed--an assertion which all the judges denied. of these charges there is no contradiction." the denial of bacon that he ever allowed his judgments to be influenced by bribes, and his assertion that he was the justest judge since his own father, cannot, then, count for much. as to the plea that the justice of his sentences was never challenged, who was to challenge it? the successful suitor would hold his tongue; and the unsuccessful suitor could hardly be expected to complete his own ruin by going to law again on the strength of the chancellor's condemnation. bacon, at any rate, knew quite well that to take presents before judgment was wrong and criminal, as his answer to egerton sufficiently shows--an answer which also fully disposes of the plea that to take such presents was the common custom of the age. moreover, had such been the common custom, bacon might have taken his trial and pleaded it as a sufficient apology or extenuation for his own conduct. this would have been a somewhat more dignified course { } than the one he actually pursued, which was to plead guilty to all the charges, throwing himself on the mercy of the lords. it has been suggested that he did this at the desire of his powerful patrons, whose malpractices might have been brought to light by a public investigation. as his punishment was immediately remitted, some arrangement with the king and buckingham seems probable. but for an innocent man to have saved himself by a false acknowledgment of guilt would, as macaulay shows, have been still more infamous than to take bribes. the desperate efforts of some apologists to whitewash bacon are apparently due to a very exaggerated estimate of his services to mankind. other critics give themselves the pleasure of painting what has been called a rembrandt portrait, with noon on the forehead and night at the heart. and a third class argue from a rotten morality to a rotten intelligence. in fact, bacon as little deserves to be called the wisest and greatest as the meanest of mankind. he really loved humanity, and tried hard to serve it, devoting a truly philosophical intellect to that end. the service was to consist in an immense extension of man's power over nature, to be obtained by a complete knowledge of her secrets; and this knowledge he hoped to win by reforming the methods of scientific investigation. unfortunately, intellect alone proved unequal to that mighty task. bacon passes, and not without good grounds, for a great upholder of the principle that truth can only be learned by experience. but his philosophy starts by setting that principle at defiance. he who took all knowledge for his province omitted from his survey the rather important subject of knowledge itself, its limits and its laws. had his attention { } been drawn that way, the very first requisite, on empirical principles, would have been to take stock of the leading truths already ascertained. but the enormous vanity of the amateur reformer seems to have persuaded him that these amounted to little or nothing. the later renaissance was an age of intense scientific activity, conditioned, in the first instance, by a revival of greek learning. already before the middle of the sixteenth century great advance had been made in algebra, trigonometry, astronomy, mineralogy, botany, anatomy, and physiology. before the publication of the _novum organum_ napier had invented logarithms, galileo was reconstituting physics, gilbert had created the science of magnetism, and harvey had discovered the circulation of the blood. these were facts that bacon took no pains to study; he either ignores or slights or denies the work done by his illustrious predecessors and contemporaries. that he rejected the copernican theory with scorn is an exaggeration; but he never accepted it, notwithstanding arguments that the best astronomers of his time found convincing; and the longer he lived the more unfavourable became his opinion of its merits. and it is certain that tycho brahe's wonderful mass of observations, with the splendid generalisations based on them by kepler, are never mentioned in his writings. now what really ruined aristotelianism was the heliocentric astronomy, as bruno perfectly saw; and ignorance of this left bacon after all in the bonds of medieval philosophy. we have seen in studying bruno that the very soul of aristotle's system was his distinction between form and matter, and this distinction bacon accepted without examination from scholasticism. the purpose of his { } life was to ascertain by what combination of forms each particular body was constituted, and then, by artificially superinducing them on some portion of matter, to call the desired substance into existence. his celebrated inductive method was devised as a means to that end. to discover the forms "we are instructed first to draw up exhaustive tables of the phenomena and forms under investigation, and then to exclude from our list any 'form' which does not invariably co-exist with the phenomenon of which _the_ form is sought. for example, if we are trying to discover the form of heat it will not do to adduce 'celestial nature'; for, though the sun's light is hot, that of the moon is cold. after a series of such _exclusions_, bacon believed that a single form would finally remain to be the invariable cause of the phenomenon investigated, and of nothing else" (f. c. s. schiller). as dr. schiller observes, this _method of exclusions_ is not new; nor, indeed, does bacon claim to have originated it; at least he observes in his _novum organum_ that it had been already employed by plato to a certain extent for the purpose of discussing definitions and ideas. and elsewhere he praises plato as "a man (and one that surveyed all things from a lofty cliff) for having discerned in his doctrine of ideas that forms were the true object of knowledge; howsoever he lost the fruit of this most true opinion by considering and trying to apprehend forms as absolutely abstracted from matter, whence it came that he turned aside to theological speculations." bacon must have known that this reproach does not apply to aristotle; as, indeed, the very schoolmen knew that he did not--except in the single case of god--give forms a separate { } existence. but, probably from jealousy, he specially hated aristotle, and in this particular instance the stagirite more particularly excited his hostility by identifying forms with final causes. these bacon rather contemptuously handed over to the sole cognisance of theology as consecrated virgins bearing no fruit. as a point of scientific method this condemnation of teleology is quite unjustified even in the eyes of inquirers who reject the theological argument from design. to a darwinian, purpose means survival value, and the parts of an organism are so many utilities evolved in the action and reaction between living beings and their environment. but bacon disliked any theory tending to glorify the existing arrangements of nature as perfect and unalterable achievements, for the good reason that it threatened to discountenance his own scheme for practically creating the world over again with exclusive reference to the good of humanity. thus in his utopia, the _new atlantis_, there are artificial mines, producing artificial metals, plants raised without seeds, contrivances for turning one tree or plant into another, for prolonging the lives of animals after the removal of particular organs, for making "a number of kinds of serpents, worms, flies, fishes of putrefaction; whereof some are advanced to be perfect creatures like beasts or birds"; with flying-machines, submarines, and perpetual motions--in short, a general anticipation of jules verne and mr. h. g. wells. such dreams, however, do not entitle bacon to be regarded as a true prophet of modern science and modern mechanical inventions. in themselves his ideas do not go beyond the magic of the middle ages, or rather of all ages. the original thing was his { } method; and this method, considered as a means for surprising the secrets of nature, we know to be completely chimerical, because there are no such forms as he imagined, to be enucleated by induction, with or without the method of exclusion. the truth is that the inductive method which he borrowed from socrates and plato was originally created by athenian philosophy for the humanistic studies of law, morality, æsthetics, and psychology. physical science, on the other hand, should be approached, as the greeks rightly felt, through the door of mathematics, an instrument of whose potency the great chancellor notoriously had no conception. thus his prodigious powers would have been much more usefully devoted to moral philosophy. as it is, the _essays_ alone remain to show what great things he might have done by limiting himself to the subjects with which they deal. the famous logical and physical treatises, the _novum organum_ and the _de augmentis_, notwithstanding their wealth and splendour of language, are to us at the present day less living than the fragments of early greek thought, than most of plato, than much of aristotle, than atomism as expounded by lucretius. macaulay rests his claim of the highest place among philosophers for bacon not on his inductive theory, to which the historian rightly denies any novelty, but on the new purpose and direction that the search for knowledge is assumed to have received from his teaching. on this view the whole of modern science has been created by the desire to convert nature into an instrument for the satisfaction of human wants--an ambition dating from the publication of the _novum organum_. the claim will not stand, for two reasons. the first is that the great movement of modern science { } began at least half a century before bacon's birth, growing rapidly during his life, but without his knowledge, and continuing its course without being perceptibly accelerated by his intervention ever since. the one man of science who most commonly passes for his disciple is robert boyle ( - ). but boyle did not read the _novum organum_ before he was thirty, whereas, residing at florence before fifteen, he received a powerful stimulus from the study of galileo. and his chemistry was based on the atomic theory which bacon rejected. the second reason for not accepting macaulay's claim is that in modern europe no less than in ancient greece the great advances in science have only been made by those who loved knowledge for its own sake, or, if the expression be preferred, simply for the gratification of their intellectual curiosity. no doubt their discoveries have added enormously to the utilities of life; but such advantages have been gained on the sole condition of not making them the primary end in view. the labours of bacon's own contemporaries, kepler and gilbert, have led to the navigation of the sea by lunar distances, and to the various industrial applications of electro-magnetism; but they were undertaken without a dream of these remote results. and in our own day the greatest of scientific triumphs, which is the theory of evolution, was neither worked out with any hope of material benefits to mankind nor has it offered any prospect of them as yet. the same may be said of modern sidereal astronomy. from the humanist point of view it would not be easy to justify the enormous expenditure of energy, money, and time that this science has absorbed. the schoolmen have been much ridiculed for discussing the question how { } many angels could dance on the point of a needle; but as a purely speculative problem it surely merits as much attention as the total number of the stars, the rates of their velocities, or the law of their distribution through space. a schoolman might even have urged in justification of his curiosity that some of us might feel a reasonable curiosity about the exact size--if size they have--of beings with whom we hope to associate one day; whereas by the confession of the astronomers themselves neither we nor our descendants can ever hope to verify by direct measurement the precarious guesses of their science in this branch of celestial statics and dynamics. thomas hobbes. it has been shown that one momentous effect of the copernican astronomy, as interpreted by giordano bruno, was to reverse the relative importance ascribed in aristotle's philosophy to the two great categories of power and act, giving to power a value and dignity of which it had been stripped by the judgment of plato and aristotle. even epicurus, when he rehabilitated infinite space, had been careful as a moralist to urge the expediency of placing a close limitation on human desires, denouncing the excesses of avarice and ambition more mildly but not less decisively than the contemporary stoic school. thus lucretius describes his master as travelling beyond the flaming walls of the world only that he may bring us back a knowledge of the fixed barrier set by the very laws of existence to our aspirations and hopes. the classic revival of the renaissance did not bring back the greek spirit of moderation. on the contrary, the new world, the new astronomy, the new monarchy, { } and the new religion combined to create such a sense of power, in contradistinction to act, as the world had never before known. for us this new feeling has received its most triumphant artistic expression from shakespeare and milton, for france from rabelais, for italy from ariosto and michelangelo. in philosophy bacon strikes the same note when he values knowledge as a source of power--knowledge which for greek philosophy meant rather a lesson in self-restraint. and this idea receives a further development from bacon's chief successor in english philosophy, thomas hobbes ( - ), in whose system love of power figures as the very essence of human nature, the self-conscious manifestation of that motion which is the real substance of the physical world. hobbes was a precocious child, and received a good school training; but the five years he spent at oxford added nothing to his information, and a continental tour with the young heir of the cavendishes had no other effect than to convince him of the general contempt into which the scholasticism still taught at oxford had fallen. on returning to england, he began his studies over again in the cavendish library, acquiring a thorough familiarity with the classic literature of greece and rome, a deep hatred (imbibed through thucydides) of democracy, and a genuinely antique theory that the state should be supreme in religious no less than in civil matters. amid these studies hobbes occasionally enjoyed the society of bacon, then spending his last years in the retirement of gorhambury. as secretary and latin translator he proved serviceable to the ex-chancellor, but remained quite unaffected by his inductive and experimental philosophy. indeed, the determining impulse of his { } speculative activity came from the opposite quarter. going abroad once more as travelling tutor, at the age of forty, he chanced on a copy of euclid in a gentleman's library lying open at the famous forty-seventh proposition. his first impulse was to reject the theorem as impossible; but, on going backwards from proposition to proposition, he laid down the book not only convinced, but "in love with geometry." beginning so late in life, his ulterior studies led hobbes into the belief that he had squared the circle, besides the far more pernicious error of applying the deductive method of geometry to the solution of political problems. could he and bacon have exchanged philosophies, the brilliant faculties of each might have been employed to better purpose. the categories of form and matter, combined with the logic of elimination and tentative generalisation, would have found a fitting field for their application in the familiar facts of human nature. but those facts refused to be treated as so many wheels, pulleys, and cords in a machine for crushing the life out of society and transmitting the will of a single despot unresisted through its whole extent; for such is a faithful picture of what a well-governed community, as hobbes conceived it, ought to be. during his second residence abroad he had become acquainted with the physical philosophy of galileo--the theory that regards every change in the external or phenomenal world as a mere rearrangement of matter and motion, matter being an aggregate of independent molecules held together by mechanical pressure and impact. the component parts of this aggregate become known to us by the impressions their movements produce on our senses, traces of which { } are preserved in memory, and subsequently recalled by association. language consists of signs conventionally affixed to such images; only the signs, standing as they do for all objects of a certain sort, have a universal value, not possessed by the original sensations, through which reasoning becomes possible. hobbes had evidently fallen in love with algebra as well as with geometry; and it is on the type of algebraic reasoning--in other words, on the type of rigorous deduction--that his logic is constructed. and such a view of the way in which knowledge advances seemed amply justified by the scientific triumphs of his age. but his principle that all motion originates in antecedent motion, although plausible in itself and occasionally revived by ingenious speculators, has not been verified by modern science. gravitation, cohesion, and chemical affinity have, so far, to be accepted as facts not resoluble into more general facts. hobbes died before the great discoveries of newton which first turned away men's minds from the purely mechanical interpretation of energy. that mechanical interpretation led our philosopher to reject aristotle's notion of sociality as an essentially human characteristic. to him this seemed a mere occult quality, the substitution of a word for an explanation. the counter-view put forth in his great work, _leviathan_, is commonly called atomistic. but it would be gross flattery to compare the ultimate elements of society, as hobbes conceived them, to the molecules of modern science, which attract as well as repel each other; or even with the democritean atoms, which are at least neutral. according to him, the tendency to self-preservation, shared by men with all other beings, takes the form of an insatiable appetite { } for power, leading each individual to pursue his own aggrandisement at the cost of any loss or suffering to the rest. and he tries to prove the permanence of this impulse by referring to the precautions against robbery taken by householders and travellers. aristotle had much more justly mentioned the kindnesses shown to travellers as a proof of how widely goodwill is diffused. our countryman, with all his acuteness, strangely ignores the necessity as a matter of prudence of going armed and locking the door at night, even if the robbers only amounted to one in a thousand of the population. modern researches have shown that there are very primitive societies where the assumed war of all against each is unknown, predatory conflicts being a mark of more advanced civilisation, and the cause rather than the effect of anti-social impulses. granting an original state of anarchy and internecine hostility, there is, according to hobbes, only one way out of it, which is a joint resolution of the whole community to surrender their rights of individual sovereignty into the hands of one man, who thenceforth becomes absolute ruler of the state, with authority to defend its citizens against mutual aggressions, and the whole community against attacks from a foreign power. this agreement constitutes the famous social contract, of which so much was to be heard during the next century and a-half. it holds as between the citizens themselves, but not between the subjects and their sovereign, for that would be admitting a responsibility which there is no power to enforce. and anyone refusing to obey the sovereign justly forfeits his life; for he thereby returns to the state of nature, where any man that likes may kill his neighbour if he can. all this theory of an original institution of the state { } by contract impresses a modern reader as utterly unhistorical. but its value, if any, does not depend on its historical truth. even if the remote ancestors of the seventeenth-century europeans had surrendered all their individual rights, with certain trifling exceptions, into the hands of an autocrat, no sophistry could show that their mutual engagements were binding on the subjects of charles i. and louis xiv. and it is really on expediency, understood in the largest sense, that the claims of the new monarchy are based by hobbes. what he maintains is that nothing short of a despotic government exercised by one man can save society from relapsing into chaos. but even under this amended form the theory remains amenable to historical criticism. had hobbes pursued his studies beyond thucydides, he would have found that other polities besides the athenian democracy broke down at the hour of trial. above all, roman imperialism, which seems to have been his ideal, failed to secure its subjects either against internal disorder or against foreign invasion. democracy, however, was not the sole or the worst enemy dreaded by the author of _leviathan_ as a competitor with his "mortal god." in the frontispiece of that work the deified monarch who holds the sword erect with his right hand grasps the crozier with his left, thus typifying the union of the spiritual and temporal powers in the same person. the publicists of the italian renaissance, with their classical ideals, had, indeed, been as anti-papal as the protestants; and the political disorders fomented by the agents of the catholic reaction during the last hundred years had given hobbes an additional reason for perpetuating their point of view. meanwhile another menace to { } public order had presented itself from an opposite quarter. calvinism had created a new spiritual power based on the free individual interpretation of scripture, in close alliance with the alleged rights of conscience and with the spirit of republican liberty. each creed in turn had attacked the stuart monarchy, and the second had just effected its overthrow. therefore, to save the state it was necessary that religious creeds, no less than codes of conduct, should be dictated by the secular authority, enslaving men's minds as well as their bodies. by the dialectic irony of the speculative movement, this attempt to fetter opinion was turned into an instrument for its more complete emancipation. in order to discredit the pretensions of the religious zealots, hobbes made a series of attacks on the foundations of their faith, mostly by way of suggestion and innuendo--no more being possible under the conditions then obtaining---but with such effect that, according to macaulay, "for many years the _leviathan_ was the gospel of cold-blooded and hard-headed unbelievers." that one who made religious belief a matter to be fixed by legislation could be in any sense a christian seems most unlikely. he professed, with what sincerity we know not, to regard the existence of god as something only a fool could deny. but his philosophy from beginning to end forms a rigorously-thought-out system of materialism which any atheist, if otherwise it satisfied him, might without inconsistency accept. on the meeting of the long parliament, hobbes again left england for the continent, where he remained for eleven years. but his principles were no more to the taste of the exiled royalists than of { } their opponents. he therefore returned once more to england, made his submission to the parliament, and spent the rest of his days, practically unmolested by either party, under the commonwealth and the restoration until his death in at the age of ninety-one. it may be said of hobbes, as of bacon, that the intellect at work is so amazing and the mass of literary performance so imposing that the illusions of historians about the value of their contributions to the progress of thought are excusable. nevertheless, it cannot be too distinctly stated that the current or academic estimate of these great men as having effected a revolution in physical and moral science is wrong. they stand as much apart from the true line of evolution as do the gigantic saurians of a remote geological period whose remains excite our wonder in museums of natural history. their systems proved as futile as the monarchies of philip ii. and of louis xiv. bacon's dreams are no more related to the coming victories of science than raleigh's el dorado was to the future colonial empire of britain. hobbes had better fortune than strafford, in so far as he kept his head on his shoulders; but the logic of his absolutism shrivelled up under the sun of english liberty like the great minister's policy of thorough. the theory of a social contract is a speculative idea of the highest practical importance. but the idea of contract as the foundation of morals goes back to epicurus, and it is assumed in a more developed form by hooker's _ecclesiastical polity_. its potency as a revolutionary instrument comes from the reinterpretations of locke and rousseau, which run directly counter to the assumptions of the _leviathan_. { } hobbes shares with bacon the belief that all knowledge comes from experience, besides making it clearer than his predecessor that experience of the world comes through external sense alone. here also there can be no claim to originality, for more than one school of greek philosophy had said the same. as an element of subsequent thought, more importance belongs to the idea of power, which was to receive its full development from spinoza; but only in association with other ideas derived from the philosopher whom we have next to examine, the founder of modern metaphysics, descartes. * * * * * { } chapter ii. the metaphysicians descartes, malebranche, spinoza, leibniz. rené descartes ( - ) was a frenchman, born in touraine, and belonging by family to the inferior nobility. educated at the jesuit college of la flèche, he early acquired a distaste for the scholastic philosophy, or at least for its details; the theology of scholasticism, as we shall see, left a deep impression on him through life. on leaving college he took up mathematics, varied by a short plunge into the dissipations of paris. some years of military service as a volunteer with the catholic armies at the beginning of the thirty years' war enabled him to travel and see the world. returning to paris, he resumed his studies, but found them seriously interrupted by the tactless bores who, as we know from molière's amusing comedy _les fâcheux,_ long continued to infest french society. to escape their assiduities descartes, who prized solitude before all things, fled the country. the inheritance of an independent income enabled the philosopher to live where he liked; and holland became, with a few interruptions, his chosen residence for the next twenty years ( - ). even here frequent changes of residence and occasional concealment of his address were necessary in order to elude the visits of importunate admirers. with all his unsociability there seems to have { } been something singularly magnetic about the personality of descartes; yet he only fell in with one congenial spirit, the princess elizabeth, daughter of the unfortunate winter king and granddaughter of our james i. possessing to the fullest extent the intellectual brilliancy and the incomparable charm of the stuart family, this great lady impressed the lonely thinker as the only person who ever understood his philosophy. another royal friendship brought his career to an untimely end. queen christina of sweden, the gifted and restless daughter of gustavus adolphus, heard of descartes, and invited him to her court. on his arrival she sent for the pilot who had brought the illustrious stranger to stockholm and questioned him about his passenger. "madame," he replied, "it is not a man whom i conducted to your majesty, but a demi-god. he taught me more in three weeks of the science of seamanship and of winds and navigation than i had learned in the sixty years i had been at sea" (miss e. s. haldane's _life of rené descartes_). the queen fully came up to the expectations of her visitor, in whose eyes she had no fault but an unfortunate tendency to waste her time on learning greek. besides her other merits, she possessed "a sweetness and goodness which made men devoted to her service." it soon appeared that, as with others of the same rank, this was only the veneer of a heartless selfishness. christina, who was an early riser, required his attendance in her library to give her lessons in philosophy at five o'clock in the morning. descartes was by habit a very late riser. besides, he had not even a lodging in the royal palace, but was staying at the french embassy, and in going there "had to pass over a long bridge which was always bitterly cold." the cold { } killed him. he had arrived at stockholm in october, and meant to leave in january; but remained at the urgent request of the queen, who, however, made no change in the hour of their interviews, although that winter was one of the severest on record. at the beginning of february, , he fell ill and died of inflammation of the lungs on the th, in the fifty-fourth year of his age. descartes had the physical courage which hobbes lacked; but he seems, like bacon, to have been a moral coward. the most striking instance of this is that, on hearing of galileo's condemnation for teaching the heliocentric astronomy, he withheld from publication and had even thoughts of destroying a work of his own in which the same doctrine was maintained. this was at a time when he was living in a country where there could be no question of personal danger from the inquisition. but something of the same weakness shows itself in his running away from france to escape those intrusions on his studious retirement which one would think might have been checked by letting it be known with sufficient firmness that his hours could not be wasted on idle conversation. and we have seen how at last his life was lost for no better reason than the dread of giving offence to queen christina. it seems strange that a character so unheroic should figure among the great emancipators of human thought. in fact, descartes's services to liberty have been much exaggerated. his intellectual fame rests on three foundations. of these the most indubitable is the creation of analytical geometry, the starting-point of modern mathematics. the value of his contributions to physics has been much disputed; but, on the whole, expert opinion seems to have decided that what was new in them was not true, and what was true was not new. however, the place we must assign descartes in the history of philosophy can only be determined by our opinion of his metaphysics. { } [illustration: renÉ descartes.] { } as a philosopher descartes has, to begin with, the merit of exemplary clearness. the fault is not with him if we cannot tell what he thought and how he came to think it. the classic _discourse on method_ ( ) relates his mental history in a style of almost touching simplicity. it appears that from an early age truth had been his paramount object, not as with bacon and hobbes for its utility, but for its own sake. in search of this ideal he read widely, but without finding what he wanted. the great and famous works of literature might entertain or dazzle; they could not convince. the philosophers professed to teach truth; their endless disputes showed that they had not found it. mathematics, on the other hand, presented a pleasing picture of demonstrated certainty, but a certainty that seemed to be prized only as a sure foundation for the mechanical arts. wearily throwing his books aside, the young man then applied himself to the great book of life, mingling with all sorts and conditions of men to hear what they had to say about the prime interests of existence. but the same vanity and vexation of spirit followed him here. men were no more agreed among themselves than were the authorities of his college days. the truths of religion seemed, indeed, to offer a safe refuge; but they were an exception that proved the rule; being, as descartes observes, a supernatural revelation, not the natural knowledge that he wanted. the conflict of authorities had at least one good result, which was to discredit the very notion of { } authority, thus throwing the inquirer back on his own reason as the sole remaining resource. and as mathematics seemed, so far, to be the only satisfactory science, the most reasonable course was to give a wider extension and application to the methods of algebra and geometry. four fundamental rules were thus obtained: ( ) to admit nothing as true that was not evidently so; ( ) to analyse every problem into as many distinct questions as the nature of the subject required; ( ) to ascend gradually from the simplest to the most complex subjects; and ( ) to be sure that his enumerations and surveys were so exhaustive and complete as to let no essential element of the question escape. the rules as they stand are ill-arranged, vague, and imperfect. the last should come first and the first last. the notions of simplicity, complexity, and truth are neither illustrated nor defined. and no pains are taken to discriminate judgments from concepts. it may be said that the method worked well; at least descartes tells us that with the help of his rules he made rapid progress in the solution of mathematical problems. we may believe in his success without admitting that an inferior genius could have achieved the same results by the same means. the real point is to ascertain whether the method, whatever its utility in mathematics, could be advantageously applied to metaphysics. and the answer seems to be that as manipulated by its author the new system led to nothing but hopeless fallacies. after reserving a provisional assent to the customs of the country where he happens to be residing and to the creed of the roman church, descartes begins by calling in question the whole mass of beliefs he has { } hitherto accepted, including the reality of the external world. but the very act of doubt implies the existence of the doubter himself. i think, therefore i am. it has been supposed that the initial affirmation of this self-evident principle implies that descartes identified being with thought. he did no such thing. no more is meant, to begin with, than that, whatever else is or is not, i the thinker certainly am. this is no great discovery; the interesting thing is to find out what it implies. a good deal according to descartes. first he infers that, since the act of thinking assures him of his existence, therefore he is a substance the whole essence of which consists in thought, which is independent of place and of any material object--in short, an immaterial soul, entirely distinct from the body, easier to know, and capable of existing without it. here the confusion of conception with judgment is apparent, and it leads to a confusion of our thoughts about reality with the realities themselves. and descartes carries this loose reasoning a step further by going on to argue that, as the certainty of his own existence has no other guarantee than the clearness with which it is inferred from the fact of his thinking, it must therefore be a safe rule to conclude that whatever things we conceive very clearly and distinctly are all true. in his other great philosophical work, the _meditations_, descartes sets out at greater length, but with less clearness, his arguments for the immateriality of the soul. here it is fully admitted that, besides thinking, self-consciousness covers the functions of perceiving, feeling, desiring, and willing; nor does it seem to be pretended that these experiences are reducible to forms of thought. but it is claimed that they depend on { } thought in the sense that without thought one would not be aware of their existence; whereas it can easily be conceived without them. a little more introspection would show that the second part of the assertion is not true; for there is no thought without words, and no words, however inaudibly articulated, without a number of tactual and muscular sensations, nor even without a series of distinct volitions. another noticeable point is that, so far from obeying the methodical rule to proceed from the simple to the complex, descartes does just the contrary. starting with the whole complex content of consciousness, he works down by a series of arbitrary rejections to what, according to him, is the simple fact of immaterial thought. let us see how it fares with his attempt to reconstruct knowledge on that elementary basis. returning to his postulate of universal doubt, our philosopher argues from this to an imperfection in his nature, and thence to the idea of a perfect being. the reasoning is most slipshod; for, even admitting that knowledge is preferable to ignorance--which has not been proved--it does not follow that the dogmatist is more perfect than the doubter. indeed, one might infer the contrary from descartes's having passed with progressive reflection from the one stage to the other. overlooking the paralogism, let us grant that he has the idea of a perfect being, and go on to the question of how he came to possess it. one might suggest that the consciousness of perfect self-knowledge, combined with the wish to know more of other subjects, would be sufficient to create an ideal of omniscience, and, proceeding in like manner from a comparison of wants with their satisfactions, to enlarge this ideal into the { } notion of infinite perfection all round. descartes, however, is not really out for truth--at least, not in metaphysics; he is out for a justification of what the jesuits had taught him at la flèche, and no jesuit casuistry could be more sophistical than the logic he finds good enough for the purpose. to argue, as he does, that the idea of a perfect being, in his mind, can be explained only by its proceeding from such a being as its creator is already sufficiently audacious. but this feat is far surpassed by his famous ontological proof of theism. a triangle, he tells us, need not necessarily exist; but, assuming there to be one, its three angles must be equal to two right angles. with god, on the other hand, to be conceived is to be; for, existence being a perfection, it follows, from the idea of a perfect being, that he must exist. the answer is more clear and distinct than any of descartes's demonstrations. perfection is affirmed of existing or of imaginary subjects, but existence is not a perfection in itself. a third argument for theism remains to be considered. descartes asks how he came to exist. not by his own act; for on that hypothesis he would have given himself all the perfections that now he lacks; nor from any other imperfect cause, for that would be to repeat the difficulty, not to solve it. besides, the simple continuance of his existence from moment to moment needs an explanation. for time consists of an infinity of parts, none depending in any way on the others; so that my having been a little while ago is no reason why i should be now, unless there is some power by which i am created anew. here we must observe that descartes is playing fast and loose with the law of causation. by what he calls the light of nature--in other words, the light of greek { } philosophy--things can no more pass into nothing than they can come out of it. moreover, the difficulty is the same for my supposed creator as for myself. we are told that thought is a necessary perfection of the divine nature. but thinking implies time; therefore god also exists from moment to moment. how, then, can he recover his being any more than we can? the answer, of course, would be: because he is perfect, and perfection involves existence. thus the argument from causation throws us back on the so-called ontological argument, whose futility has already been shown. this very idea of perfection involves us in fresh difficulties with the law of causation. a perfect being might be expected to make perfect creatures--which by hypothesis we are not. descartes quite sees this, and only escapes by a verbal quibble. our imperfections, he says, come from the share that nothingness has in our nature. once allow so much to the creative power of zero, and god seems to be a rather gratuitous postulate. after proving to his own satisfaction the existence of the soul and of god, descartes returns to the starting-point of his whole inquiry--that is, the reality of the material world and of its laws. and now his theology supplies him with a short and easy method for getting rid of the sceptical doubts that had troubled him at first. he has a clear and distinct idea of his own body and of other bodies surrounding it on all sides as extended substances communicating movements to one another. and he has a tendency to accept whatever is clearly and distinctly conceived by him as true. but to suppose that god created that tendency with the intention of deceiving him would argue a want of veracity in the divine nature incompatible with its { } perfection. such reasoning obviously ignores the alternative that god might be deceiving us for our good. or rather what we call truth might not be an insight into the nature of things in themselves, but a correct judgment of antecedents and consequents. our consciousness would then be a vast sensori-motor machinery adjusted to secure the maintenance and perfection of life. descartes, as a mathematician, places the essence of matter or body in extension. here he agrees with another mathematical philosopher, plato, who says the same in his _timæus_. so far the coincidence might be accidental; but when we find that the frenchman, like the greek, conceives his materialised space as being originally divided into triangular bodies, the evidence of unacknowledged borrowing seems irresistible--the more so that huyghens mentions this as customary with descartes. the great author of the _method_ and the _meditations_--for, after every critical deduction, his greatness as a thinker remains undoubted--contributed nothing to ethics. here he is content to reaffirm the general conclusions of greek philosophy, the necessary superiority of mind to matter, of the soul to the body, of spirit to sense. he accepts free-will from aristotle without any attempt to reconcile it with the rigid determinism of his own mechanical naturalism. at the same time there is a remarkable anticipation of modern psychology in his doctrine of intellectual assent as an act of the will. when our judgments go beyond what is guaranteed by a clear and distinct perception of their truth there is a possibility of error, and then the error is our own fault, the precipitate conclusion having been a voluntary act. thus human free-will intervenes to clear god of all { } responsibility for our delusions as well as for our crimes. malebranche. pascal, we are told, could not forgive descartes for limiting god's action on the world to the "initial fillip" by which the process of evolution was started. nevertheless, pascal's friends, the jansenists, were content to adopt cartesianism as their religious philosophy, and his epigram certainly does not apply to the next distinguished cartesian, arnold geulincx ( - ), a fleming of antwerp. unfortunate in his life, this eminent teacher has of all original thinkers received the least credit for his services to metaphysics from posterity, being, outside a small circle of students, still utterly unknown to fame. geulincx is the author of a theory called occasionalism. descartes had represented mind, which he identified with thought, and matter, which he identified with extension, as two antithetical substances with not a note in common. nevertheless, he supposed that communications between them took place through a part of the brain called the pineal body. geulincx cut through even this narrow isthmus, denying the possibility of any machinery for transmitting sensible images from the material world to our consciousness, or volitions from the mind to the limbs. how, then, were the facts to be explained? according to him, by the intervention of god. when the so-called organs of sense are acted on by vibrations from the external world, or when a particular movement is willed by the mind, the corresponding mental and material modifications are miraculously produced by the exercise of his omnipotence; and it is because these events occur _on occasion_ of signals of which they { } are not the effects but the consequents that the theory has received the name of occasionalism. the theory, as geulincx formulated it, seems at first sight simply grotesque; and from a religious point of view it has the additional drawback of making god the immediate executor of every crime committed by man. nevertheless, it is merely the logical application of a principle subsequently admitted by profound thinkers of the most opposing schools--namely, that consciousness cannot produce or transmit energy, combined with the belief in a god who does not exist for nothing. even past the middle of the nineteenth century many english and french naturalists were persuaded that animal species to the number of , represented as many distinct creative acts; and at least one astronomer, who was also a philosopher, declared that the ultimate atoms of matter, running up to an immeasurably higher figure, "bore the stamp of the manufactured article." the capture of cartesianism by theology was completed by nicolas malebranche ( - ). this accomplished writer and thinker, dedicated by physical infirmity to a contemplative life, entered the oratory at an early age, and remained in it until his death. coming across a copy of descartes's _treatise on man_ at twenty-six, he at once became a convert to the new philosophy, and devoted the next ten years to its exclusive study. at the end of that period he published his masterpiece, _on the investigation of truth_ (_de la recherche de la vérité, _), which at once won him an enormous reputation. it was followed by other works of less importance. the legend that malebranche's end was hastened by an argument with berkeley has been disproved. { } without acknowledging the obligation, malebranche accepts the conclusions of geulincx to the extent of denying the possibility of any communication between mind and matter. indeed, he goes further, and denies that one portion of matter can act on another. but his real advance on occasionalism lies in the question: how, then, can we know the laws of the material universe, or even that there is such a thing as matter at all? once more god intervenes to solve the difficulty, but after a fashion much less crude than the miraculous apparatus of geulincx. introspection assures us that we are thinking things, and that our minds are stored with ideas, including the idea of god the all-perfect being, and the idea of extension with all the mathematical and physical truths logically deducible therefrom. we did not make this idea, therefore it comes from god, was in god's mind before it was in ours. following plotinus, malebranche calls this idea intelligible extension. it is the archetype of our material world. the same is true of all other clear and distinct ideas; they are, as platonism teaches, of divine origin. but is it necessary to suppose that the ideal contents of each separate soul were placed in it at birth by the creator? surely the law of parsimony forbids. it is a simpler and easier explanation to suppose that the divine archetypal ideas alone exists, and that we apprehend them by a mystical communion with the divine consciousness; that, in short, we see all things in god. and in order to make this vision possible we must, as the apostle says, live, move, and have our being in god. as a mathematician would say, god must be the _locus_, the place of souls. there is unquestionably something grandiose about this theory, which, however, has the defect in orthodox { } opinion of logically leading to the pantheism, held in abhorrence by malebranche, of his greater contemporary spinoza. and it is a suggestive circumstance that the very similar philosophy of the eternal consciousness held by our countryman t. h. green has been shown by the criticism of henry sidgwick to exclude the personality of god. spinoza. with the philosopher whom i have just named we come for the first time in modern history to a figure recalling in its sustained equality of intellectual and moral excellence the most heroic figures of hellenic thought. giordano bruno we may, indeed, pronounce, like lucan or cranmer, "by his death approved," but his submission at venice has to be set against his martyrdom at rome; and if there is nothing very censurable in his career as a wandering teacher, there is also nothing worthy of any particular respect. differences of environment and heredity may no doubt be invoked to account for the difference of character; and in the philosophy about to be considered the determining influence of such causes for the first time finds due recognition; but on the same principle our ethical judgments also are determined by the very constitution of things. baruch de spinoza ( - ), born at amsterdam, belonged to a family of portuguese jews, exiled on account of their hebrew faith, in which also he was brought up. soon after reaching manhood he fell away from the synagogue, preferring to share in the religious exercises of certain latitudinarian christian sects. spies were set to report his conversation, which soon supplied evidence of sufficiently heterodox opinions. { } a sentence of formal excommunication followed; but modern research has discredited the story of an attempt to assassinate him made by an emissary of the synagogue. after successfully resisting the claim of his sister and his brother-in-law to shut out the apostate from his share of the paternal inheritance, spinoza surrendered the disputed property, but henceforth broke off all communication with his family. subsequently he refused an offer of , florins, made by a wealthy friend and admirer, simon de vries, as also a proposal from the same friend to leave him his whole fortune, insisting that it should go to the legal heir, simon's brother isaac. the latter, on succeeding, wished to settle an annual pension of florins on spinoza, but the philosopher would accept no more than . books were his only luxury, material wants being supplied by polishing glass lenses, an art in which he attained considerable proficiency. but it was an unhealthy occupation, and probably contributed to his death by consumption. democracy was then and long afterwards associated with fanaticism and intolerance rather than with free-thought in religion. the liberal party in dutch politics was the aristocratic party. spinoza sympathised with its leader, john de witt; he wept bitter tears over the great statesman's murder; and only the urgent remonstrances of his friends, who knew what danger would be incurred by such a step, prevented him from placarding the walls of the hague, where he then resided, with an address reproaching the infuriated people for their crime. { } [illustration: reproduced (by permission) from _spinoza's short treatise on god, man, and his well-being_, by professor a. wolf (a. & c. black).] { } in the enlightened ruler of the palatinate, a brother of descartes's princess elizabeth, offered spinoza a professorship at heidelberg, with full liberty to teach his philosophy. but the pantheistic recluse wisely refused it. even at the present day such teaching as his would meet with little mercy at berlin, cambridge, or edinburgh. as it was, we have reason to believe that even in free holland only a premature death saved him from a prosecution for blasphemy, and his great work the _ethica_ could not with safety be published during his lifetime. it appeared anonymously among his posthumous works in november, , without the name of the true place of publication on the title-page. spinoza was for his time no less daring as a biblical critic than as a metaphysician. his celebrated _tractatus theologico-politicus_ has for its primary purpose to vindicate the freedom of scientific thought against ecclesiastical interference. and this he does by drawing a trenchant line of demarcation between the respective offices of religion and of philosophy. the business of the one is to form the character and to purify the heart, of the other to guide and inform the intellect. when religion undertakes to teach scientific truth the very ends for which it exists are defeated. when theological dogmatism gains control of the churches the worst passions are developed under its influence. instead of becoming lowly and charitable, men become disturbers of public order, grasping intriguers, bitter and censorious persecutors. the claims of theology to dictate our intellectual beliefs are not only mischievous, but totally invalid. they rest on the authority of the bible as a revelation of god's will. but no such supernatural revelation ever was or could be given. such violation of the order of nature as the miracles recorded in scripture history would be impossible. and the narratives recording them are discredited by { } the criticism which shows that various books of the old testament were not written by the men whose names they bear, but long after their time. as a hebrew scholar spinoza discusses the jewish scriptures in some detail, showing in particular that the pentateuch is of a later date than moses. his limited knowledge of greek is offered as a reason for not handling the new testament with equal freedom; but some contradictions are indicated as disallowing the infallibility claimed for it. at the same time the perfection of christ's character is fully acknowledged and accepted as a moral revelation of god. spinoza shared to the fullest extent, and even went beyond, descartes's ambition to reconstruct philosophy on a mathematical basis. the idea may have come to him from the french thinker, but it is actually of much older origin, being derived from plato, the leading spirit of the renaissance, as aristotle had been the oracle of the later middle ages. now plato's ideal had been to construct a philosophy transcending the assumptions--or, as he calls them, the hypotheses--of geometry as much as those assumptions transcend the demonstrations of geometry; and this also was the ideal of spinoza. descartes had been content to accept from tradition his ultimate realities, thought, extension, and god, without showing that they must necessarily exist; for his proof of god's existence starts from an idea in the human mind, while thought and extension are not deduced at all. to appreciate the work of the hebrew philosopher, of the lonely muser, bred in the religion of jahveh--a name traditionally interpreted as the very expression of absolute self-existence--we must conceive him as starting with a question deeper even than the cartesian { } doubt, asking not how can i know what is? but why should there _be_ anything whatever? and the answer, divested of scholastic terminology, is: because it is inconceivable that there should be nothing, and if there is anything there must be everything. this universe of things, which must also be everlasting, spinoza calls god. the philosophy or religion--for it is both--which identifies god with the totality of existence was of long standing in greece, and had been elaborated in systematic detail by the stoics. it has been known for the last two centuries under the name of pantheism, a word of greek etymology, but not a creation of the greeks themselves, and, indeed, of more modern date than spinoza. historians always speak of him as a pantheist, and there is no reason to think that he would have objected to the designation had it been current during his lifetime. but there are important points of distinction between him and those who preceded or followed him in the same speculative direction. the stoics differed from him in being materialists. to them reality and corporeality were convertible terms. it seems likely that hobbes and his contemporary, the atomist gassendi, were of the same opinion, although they did not say it in so many words. but descartes was a strong spiritualist; and spinoza followed the master's lead so far, at any rate, as to give thought at least equal reality with matter, which he also identified with extension. it has been seen what difficulties were created by the radical cartesian antithesis between thought and extension, or--to call them by their more familiar names--mind and body, when taken together with the intimate association shown by experience to obtain between them; and also how { } geulincx and malebranche were led on by the very spirit of philosophy itself almost to submerge the two disparate substances in the all-absorbing agency of god. the obvious course, then, for spinoza, being unfettered by the obligations of any christian creed, was to take the last remaining step, to resolve the dualism of thought and extension into the unity of the divine substance. in fact, the hebrew philosopher does this, declaring boldly that thought and extension are one and the same thing--which thing is god, the only true reality of which they are merely appearances. and, so far, he has had many followers who strive to harmonise the opposition of what we now call subject and object in the synthesis of the all-one. but he goes beyond this, expanding the conception of god--or the absolute--to a degree undreamed of by any religion or philosophy formulated before or after his time. god, spinoza tells us, is "a substance consisting of infinite attributes, each of which expresses his absolute and eternal essence." but of these attributes two alone, thought and extension, are known to us at present, so that our ignorance infinitely exceeds our knowledge of reality. his extant writings do not explain by what process he mounted to this, the most dizzy height of speculation ever attained by man; but, in the absence of definite information, some guiding considerations suggest themselves as probable. bruno, whom spinoza is held, on strong grounds, to have read, identified god with the supreme unifying principle of a universe extending through infinite space. descartes, on the other hand, conceived god as a thinking rather than as an extended substance. but his school tended, as we saw, to conceive god as mediating { } between mind and body in a way that suggested their real union through his power. furthermore, the habit common to all cartesians of regarding geometrical reasoning as the most perfect form of thought inevitably led to the conception of thought as accompanying space wherever it went--in fact, as stretching like it to infinity. again, from the cartesian point of view, that extension which is the very essence of the material world, while it covers space, is more than mere space; it includes not only co-existence, but succession or time--that is, scientifically speaking, the eternal sequence of physical causes; or, theologically speaking, the creative activity of god. and reason or thought had also since aristotle been more or less identified with the law of universal causation no less than with the laws of geometry. thus, then, the ground was prepared for spinoza, as a pantheistic monist, to conceive god under the two attributes of extension and thought, each in its own way disclosing his essence as no other than infinite power. but why should god have, or consist of, two attributes and no more? there is a good reason why _we_ should know only those two. it is that we are ourselves modes of thought united to modes of extension, of which our thoughts are the revealing ideas. but it would be gross anthropomorphism to impose the limitations of our knowledge on the infinite being of god, manifested through those very attributes as unlimited power. the infinite of co-existence, which is space, the infinite of causal procession, which is time, suggest an infinity of unimaginable but not inconceivable attributes of which the one divine substance consists. and here at last we get the explanation of why there should be such things as thought and extension at all. they are there simply because everything is. if i grant { } anything--and i must, at least, grant myself--i grant existence, which, having nothing outside itself, must fill up all the possibilities of being which only exclude the self-contradictory from their domain. thus, the philosophy of spinoza neither obliges him to believe in the monsters of mythology nor in the miracles of scripture, nor in the dogmas of catholic theology, nor even in free-will; nor, again, would it oblige him to reject by anticipation the marvels of modern science. for, according to him, the impossibility of really incredible things could be deduced with the certainty of mathematical demonstration from the law of contradiction itself. hegel has given the name of acosmism, or negation of the world, to this form of pantheism, interpreting it as a doctrine that absorbs all concrete reality and individuality in the absolute unity of the divine essence. no misconception could be more complete. differentiation is the very soul of spinoza's system. it is, indeed, more open to the charge of excessive dispersion than of excessive centralisation. power, which is god's essence, means no more than the realisation through all eternity of all possibilities of existence, with no end or aim but just the process of infinite production itself. there is, indeed, a nominal identification between the material processes of extension and the ideal processes of thought. but this amounts to no more than a re-statement in abstract terms of the empirical truth that there is a close connection between body and mind. like the double-aspect theory, the parallelistic theory, the materialistic theory, the theory of interaction, and the theory of more or less complete reciprocal independence, it is a mere verbalism, telling us nothing that we did not know before. or, if there { } is more, it consists of the very questionable assumption that body and mind must come in somewhere to fill up what would otherwise be blank possibilities of existence. and this, like other metaphysical assumptions, is an illegitimate generalisation from experience. the ideas of space and time as filled-up _continua_ supply the model on which the whole universe must be constructed. like them, it must be infinite and eternal, but, so to speak, at a higher power; as in them, every part must be determined by the position of all other parts, with the determination put at a logical instead of at a descriptive value; corresponding to their infinitely varied differentiation of position and quantity, there must be an infinite differentiation of concrete content; and, finally, the laws of the universe must be demonstrable by the same _à priori_ mathematical method that has been so successfully applied to continuous quantity. the geometrical form into which spinoza has thrown his philosophy unfortunately restricts the number of readers--always rather small--that it might otherwise attract. people feel themselves mystified, wearied, and cheated by the appearance, without the reality, of logical demonstration; and the repulsion is aggravated by the barbarous scholasticism with which--unlike bacon, hobbes, and descartes--he peppers his pages. yet, like the greek philosophers, he is much more modern, more on the true line of developing thought than they are. but to get at the true kernel of his teaching we must, like goethe, disregard the logical husks in which it is wrapped up. and, as it happens, spinoza has greatly facilitated this operation by printing his most interesting and suggestive discussions in the form of scholia, explanations, and appendices. even { } these are not easy reading; but, to quote his own pathetic words, "if the way of salvation lay ready to hand, and could be found without great toil, would it be neglected by nearly everyone? but all glorious things are as difficult as they are rare." some of his expositors have called spinoza a mystic; and his philosophy has been traced, in part at least, to the mystical pantheism of certain medieval jews. in my opinion this is a mistake; and i will now proceed to show that the phrases on which it rests are open to an interpretation more consistent with the rational foundations of the whole system. the things that have done most to fasten the character of a mystic on spinoza are his identification of virtue with the knowledge and love of god, and his theory--so suggestive of christian theology at its highest flight--that god loves himself with an infinite love. that, like plato and matthew arnold, he should value religion as a means of popular moralisation might seem natural enough; but not, except from a mystical motive, that he should apparently value morality merely as a help to the religious life. on examination, however, it appears that the beatific vision of this pantheist offers no experience going beyond the limits of nature and reason. since god and the universe are one, to know god is to know that we are, body and soul, necessary modes of the two attributes, extension and thought, by which the infinite power which is the essence of the universe expresses itself for us. to love god is to recognise our own vitality as a portion of that power, welcoming it with grateful joy as a gift from the universe whence we come. and to say that god loves himself with an infinite love is merely to say that the attribute of thought eternally divides itself among an infinity of { } thinking beings, through whose activity the universe keeps up a delighted consciousness of itself. spinoza declares by the very name of his great work that for him the philosophical problem is essentially a problem of ethics, being, indeed, no other than the old question, first started by plato, how to reconcile disinterestedness with self-interest; and his metaphysical system is really an elaborate mechanism for proving that, on the profoundest interpretation, their claims coincide. his great contemporary, hobbes, had taught that the fundamental impulse of human nature is the will for power; and spinoza accepts this idea to the fullest extent in proclaiming power to be the very stuff of which we and all other things are made. but he parts company with the english philosopher in his theory of what it means. on his view it is an utter illusion to suppose that to gratify such passions as pride, avarice, vanity, and lust is to acquire or exercise power. for strength means freedom, self-determination; and no man can be free whose happiness depends on a fortuitous combination of external circumstances, or on the consent of other persons whose desires are such as to set up a conflict between his gratification and theirs. real power means self-realisation, the exercise of that faculty which is most purely human--that is to say, of thought under the form of reason. in pleading for the subordination of the self-seeking desires to reason spinoza repeats the lessons of moral philosophy in all ages and countries since its first independent constitution. in connecting the interests of morality with the interests of science as such, he follows the tradition of athenian thought. in interpreting pantheism as an ethical enthusiasm of the universe he returns to the creed of stoicism, and { } strikes the keynote of wordsworth's loftiest poetry. in fixing each man's place in nature as one among the infinite individuations of divine power he repeats another stoic idea--with this difference, however, that among the stoics it was intimately associated with their teleology, with the doctrine that everything in nature has a function without whose performance the universe would not be complete; whereas spinoza, following bacon and descartes, utterly abjures final causes as an anthropomorphism, an intrusion of human interests into a universe whose sole perfection is to exhaust the possibilities of existence. and herein lies his justification of evil which the stoics could only defend on aesthetic grounds as enhancing the beauty of moral heroism by contrast and conflict. "if i am asked," he says, "why god did not create all men of such a character as to be guided by reason alone, my answer is because he had materials enough to create all things from the highest to the lowest degree of perfection." perfection with him meaning reality, this account of evil--and of error also--points to the theory of degrees of reality, revived and elaborated in our own time by mr. f. h. bradley, involving a correlative theory of illusion. now, the idea of illusion, although older than plato, was first applied on a great scale in plato's philosophy, of whose influence on seventeenth-century thought this is not the only example. we shall find it to some extent countervailed by a revived aristotelian current in the work of the metaphysician who now remains to be considered. leibniz. g. w. leibniz ( - ), son of a professor at the university of leipzig, is marked by some of the distinguishing intellectual characters of the german genius. { } far more truly than francis bacon, this man took all knowledge for his province. at once a mathematician, a physicist, a historian, a metaphysician, and a diplomatist, he went to the bottom of whatever subject he touched, and enriched all his multifarious studies with new views or with new facts. and as with other great countrymen of his, the final end of all this curiosity and interest was to combine and reconcile. one of his ambitions was to create a universal language of philosophy, by whose means its problems were to be made a matter of mathematical demonstration; another to harmonise ancient with modern speculation; a third--the most chimerical of all--to compose the differences between rome and protestantism; a fourth--partly realised long after his time--to unite the german calvinists with the lutherans. in politics he tried, with equal unsuccess, to build up a confederation of the rhine as a barrier against louis xiv., and to divert the ambition of louis himself from encroachments on his neighbours to the conquest of egypt. it seems probable that no intellect of equal power was ever applied in modern times to the service of philosophy. and this power is demonstrated, not, as with other metaphysicians, by constructions of more or less contestable value, however dazzling the ingenuity they may display, but by contributions of the first order to positive science. it is now agreed that leibniz discovered the differential calculus independently of newton; and, what is more, that the formulation by which alone it has been made available for fruitful application was his exclusive invention. in physics he is a pioneer of the conservation of energy. in geology he starts the theory that our planet began as a glowing molten mass derived from the sun; and the modern { } theory of evolution is a special application of his theory of development. intellect alone, however, does not make a great philosopher; character also is required; and leibniz's character was quite unworthy of his genius. ambitious and avaricious, a courtier and a time-server, he neither made truth for its own sake a paramount object, nor would he keep on terms with those who cherished a nobler ideal. after cultivating spinoza's acquaintance, he joined in the cry of obloquy raised after his death, and was mean enough to stir up religious prejudice against newton's theory of gravitation. of the calamity that embittered his closing days we may say with confidence that it could not possibly have befallen spinoza. on the accession of the elector of hanover to the english crown as george i., leibniz sought for an invitation to the court of st. james. apparently the prince had not found him very satisfactory as a state official, and had reason to believe that leibniz would have liked to exchange his office of historiographer at hanover for a better appointment at vienna. greatness in other departments could not recommend one whom he knew only as a negligent and perhaps unfaithful servant to the favour of such an illiterate master. anyhow, the english appointment was withheld, and the worn-out encyclopædist succumbed to disease and vexation combined. the only mourner at his funeral was his secretary, eckhardt, who hastened to solicit the reversion of the offices left vacant by his chief's decease. a single theory of leibniz has attained more celebrity than any one utterance of any other philosopher; but that fame is due to the undying fire in which it has been enveloped by the mocking irony of voltaire. { } everything is for the best in the best of all possible worlds. such is the famous text as a satire on which _candide_ was composed. yet whatever value voltaire's objections to optimism may possess tells nearly as much against voltaire himself as against his unfortunate butt. for, after all, believing as he did in a god who combined omnipotence with perfect goodness he could not any more than leibniz evade the obligation of reconciling the divine character with the divine work. on _à priori_ grounds the german philosopher seems to have an incontrovertible case. a perfect being must have made the best possible world. the only question is what we mean by goodness and by possibility. spinoza had solved the problem by identifying goodness with existence. it is enough that the things we call evil are possible; the infinite power of nature would be a self-contradiction were they not realised. leibniz rejects the pantheistic position in terms, but nearly admits it in practice. evil for him means imperfection, and if god made a world at all it was bound to be imperfect. the next step was to call pain an imperfection, which suggests a serious logical deficiency in the optimist; for, although in certain circumstances the production of pain argues imperfection in the operator, we are not entitled to argue that wherever there is pain there must be imperfection. another plea is the necessity of pain as a punishment for crime, or, more generally, as a result of moral freedom. such an argument is only open to the believers in free-will. a world of free and responsible agents, they urge, is infinitely more valuable than a world of automata; and it is not too dearly purchased even at the cost of such suffering as we witness. the argument is not very convincing; for liberty of choice { } in a painless world is quite conceivable. but, be it a good or bad argument, although it might appeal to voltaire, who believed in free-will, it could not decently be used by leibniz, who was a determinist of the strictest type. to make this clear we must now turn to his metaphysical system. bacon, descartes, and spinoza, disagreeing widely on other subjects, were agreed in discountenancing the study of final causes: bacon, apparently, from dislike of the idea that the perfect adaptation of all things to the service of man rendered superfluous any efforts to make them more serviceable still; descartes from his devotion to the mathematical method which was more applicable to a system of mechanical causation; spinoza for the same reason, and also from his disbelief in a personal god. leibniz, on the contrary, felt deeply impressed by a famous passage in plato's _phædo,_ where socrates, opposing the philosophy of teleology to the philosophy of mechanism, desiderates an explanation of nature as designed with a view to the highest good. but leibniz did not go so far as plato. mediating between the two methods, he taught that all is done for the best, but also that all is done through an unbroken series of efficient causes. at the same time, these causes are only material in appearance; in reality they are spiritual beings. there is no such thing as dead matter; the universe consists of living forces all through. the general idea of force probably came from that infinite power of which, according to spinoza, the whole universe is at once the product and the expression; or it may have been suggested by plato's incidental identification of being with action. but leibniz found his type of force in human personality, which, following the lead of aristotle { } rather than of plato, he conceived as an entelechy, or realised actuality, and a first substance. after years of anxious reflection he chose the far happier name of monad, a term originally coined by bruno, but not, as would appear, directly borrowed from him by the german metaphysician. according to leibniz, the monads or ultimate elements of existence are constituted by the two essential properties of psychic life, perception and appetency. in this connection two points have to be made clear. what he calls bare monads--_i.e._, the components of what is known as inorganic matter--although percipient, are not conscious of their perceptions; in his language they do not _apperceive_. and he endeavours to prove that such a mentality is possible by a reference to our own experience. we hear the roaring of waves on the seashore, but we do not hear the sound made by the falling of each particle of water. and yet we certainly must perceive it in some way or other, since the total volume of sound is made up of those inaudible impacts. he overlooks the conceivable alternative that the immediate antecedent of our auditory sensations is a cerebral disturbance, and that this must attain a certain volume in order to produce an effect on our consciousness. the other point is that the appetency of a monad does not mean an active impulse, but a search for more and more perceptions, a continuous widening of its cognitive range. in short, each monad is a little leibniz for ever increasing the sum of its knowledge. at no stage does that knowledge come from experience. the monad has no windows, no communication of any kind with the external world. but each reflects the whole universe, knowing what it knows by { } mere introspection. and each reflects all the others at a different angle, the angles varying from one another by infinitesimal degrees, so that in their totality they form a continuous series of differentiated individuals. and the same law of infinitesimal differentiation is observed by the series of progressive changes through which the monads are ever passing, so that they keep exact step, the continuity of existence being unbroken in the order of succession as in the order of co-existence. evidently there is no place for free-will in such a system; and that leibniz, with his relentless fatalism, should not only admit the eternal punishment of predestined sinners, but even defend it as morally appropriate, obliges us to condemn his theology as utterly irrational or utterly insincere. in this system animal and human souls are conceived as monads of superior rank occupying a central and commanding position among a multitude of inferior monads constituting what we call their bodies, and changing _pari passu_ with them, the correspondence of their respective states being, according to leibniz, of such a peculiarly intimate character that the phenomena of sensation and volition seem to result from a causal reaction instead of from a mechanical adjustment such as we can imagine to exist between two clocks so constructed and set as to strike the same hour at the same time. this theory of the relations between body and soul is known to philosophy as the system of pre-established harmony. it may be asked how every monad can possibly reflect every other monad when we do not know what is passing in our own bodies, still less what is passing all over the universe. the answer consists in a convenient distinction between clear and confused { } perceptions, the one constituting our actual and the other our potential knowledge. a more difficult problem is to explain how any particular monad--leibniz or another--can consistently be a monadologist rather than a solipsist believing only in its own existence. here, as usual, the _deus ex machina_ comes in. following descartes, i think of god as a perfect being whose idea involves his existence, with, of course, the power, will, and wisdom to create the best possible world--a universe of monads--which, again, by its perfect mutual adjustments, proves that there is a god. a more serious, and indeed absolutely insuperable, objection arises from the definition of the monads as nothing but mutually reflecting entities. for even an infinity of little mirrors with nothing but each other to reflect must at once collapse into absolute vacuity. and with their disappearance their creator also disappears. god, the supreme monad, we are told, has only clear perceptions; but the clearness is of no avail when he has nothing to perceive but an absolute blank. leibniz rejected the objectivity of time and space; yet the hollow infinity of those blank forms seems, in his philosophy, to have reached the consciousness of itself. * * * * * { } chapter iii. the theorists of knowledge locke, berkeley, hume, kant. epistemology, or theory of knowledge, did not begin in modern times. among the greeks it goes back, at least, to empedocles, and figures largely in the programmes of the later schools. and descartes's universal doubt seems to give the question, how can we be sure of anything? a foremost place in speculation. but the singular assurance with which the cartesian metaphysicians presented their adventurous hypotheses as demonstrated certainties showed that with them the test of truth meant whatever told for that which, on other grounds, they believed to be true. in reality, the thing they called reason was hardly more than a covert appeal to authority, a suggestion that the duty of philosophy was to reconcile old beliefs with new. and the last great dogmatist, leibniz, was the one who practised this method of uncritical assumption to the utmost extent. locke. it is the peculiar glory of john locke ( - ) to have resumed that method of doubt which descartes had attempted, but which his dogmatic prepossessions had falsified almost at the first start. this illustrious thinker is memorable not only for his services to speculation, but for the example of a genuinely philosophic life { } entirely devoted to truth and good--a character in which personal sweetness, simplicity, and charm were combined with strenuous, disinterested, and fearless devotion to the service of the state. locke was a whig when whiggism meant advanced liberalism in religion and politics, and when _that_ often meant a choice between exile and death. thus, after the fall of his patron, lord shaftesbury, the philosopher had to take refuge in holland, remaining there for some years, lying hid even there for some time to escape an extradition order for which the government of james ii. had applied. it was in holland that he wrote the _essay concerning human understanding_. this revolutionist in thought was no solitary recluse, but, in the best sense, a thorough man of the world. educated at westminster and christ church, he had, in the german poet's phrase, the supreme happiness of combining the seriousness of an enthusiast with the sagacity of a statesman, so that great statesmen recognised him as one of themselves. with the triumph of the whig cause at a time when diplomacy demanded the utmost tact and skill, it was proposed to send locke as ambassador to the court of brandenburg, and, as that would not have suited his sober habits, to the court of vienna. weak health obliging him to decline this also, he received office in the ministry at home, taking a department where business talents were eminently required. in that capacity he bore a leading part in the restoration of the coinage, besides inspiring the toleration act and the act for unlicensed printing. even the wisest men make mistakes; and it must be noticed with regret that locke's theory of toleration excluded roman catholics on the one side and atheists on the other--the former because their { } creed made persecution a duty, the latter because their want of a creed left them no sanction for any duties whatever. to say that locke had not our experience does not excuse him, for in both cases the expediency of toleration can be proved _à priori_. romanists must be expected to suppress a heresy whose spokesman declares that when he has the power he will suppress their church; and, if atheists are without moral principle, they will propagate, under cover of orthodoxy, negations that they are not allowed openly to profess. locke was brought up by a puritan father; and, although in after life he wandered far from its doctrinal standards, he no doubt always retained a sense of that close connection between religion and morality which puritanism implies. telling about the train of thought that started his great essay, he refers it to a conversation between himself and some friends, in which they "found themselves quickly at a stand by the difficulties that rose on every side;" and, according to an intimate friend of his, the discussion turned "on the principles of morality and revealed religion." it then occurred to him that they should first ascertain "what objects their understandings were or were not fitted to deal with." and the mottoes prefixed to the essay prove that the results were of a decidedly sceptical cast. indeed, his successors, though not himself, were destined to develop them into what is now called agnosticism. we have further to note that, while his continental rivals were mathematicians, our english philosopher never went deeply into mathematics, but was by calling a physician. in this he resembles aristotle and sextus empiricus among the greeks; and so it is quite in order that, with the same sort of training, he should { } adopt aristotle's method of experience as against platonic transcendentalism, and the sceptical relativism of sextus as against the dogmatism of the schools. locke begins his essay with a vigorous polemic against the doctrine of innate ideas. the word "idea," as he uses it, is ambiguous, serving to denote perceptions, notions, and propositions; but this confusion is of no practical importance, his object being to show that all our knowledge originates in experience; whereas the reigning belief was that at least the first principles of knowledge had a more authoritative, if not a mystical, source. hobbes had been beforehand with him in deriving every kind of knowledge from experience, but had been content to assume his case; whereas locke supports his by a formidable array of proofs. the gist of his argument is that intellectual and moral principles supposed to be recognised by all mankind from their infancy are admitted only by some, and by those only as the result of teaching. as we saw, the whole inquiry began with questions about religion and morality; and it is precisely in reference to the alleged universality and innateness of the belief in god and the moral law that locke is most successful. and the more modern anthropology teaches us about primitive man, the stronger becomes the case against the transcendental side in the controversy. where his analysis breaks down is in dealing with the difficult and important ideas of space, time, substance, and causality--with the fatal result that such questions as, how is experience itself possible? or, how from a partial experience can we draw universal and necessary conclusions? find no place in his theory of knowledge. of course, his contemporaries are open to the same { } criticism--nor, indeed, had the time come even for the statement of such problems. meanwhile, the facility with which the founder of epistemology accepts fallacies whence spinoza had already found his way out shows how little he was master of his means. according to locke, it is "a certain and evident truth that there is an eternal, most powerful, and most knowing being, which whether anyone will please to call god it matters not." on examination the proof appears to involve two unproved assumptions. the first is that nothing can begin to exist without a cause. the second is that effects must resemble their causes. and from these it is inferred that an all-powerful being must have existed from all eternity. the alternative is overlooked that a succession of more limited beings would answer the purpose equally well, while it would also be more consistent with our experience. but a far more fatal objection to locke's theism results from his second assumption. this, although not explicitly stated, is involved in the assertion that for knowledge such as we possess to originate from things without knowledge is impossible. for, on the same principle, matter must have been made by something material, pain by something that is pained, and evil by something that is evil. it would not even be going too far to say that by this logic i myself must have existed from all eternity; for to say that i was created by a not-myself would be to say that something may come from nothing. we have seen how locke refused toleration to atheists on the ground that their denial of a divine lawgiver and judge destroys the basis of morality. he did not, like spinoza, believe that morality is of the nature of things. for him it is constituted by the will of god. possibly, if pressed, he might have explained { } that what atheism denies is not the rule of right, but the sanction of that rule, the fear of supernatural retribution. yet being, like spinoza and leibniz, a determinist, he should have seen that a creator who sets in motion the train of causes and effects necessarily resulting in what we call good or bad human actions has the same responsibility for those actions as if he had committed them himself. to reward one of his passive agents and to punish another would be grossly unjust and at the same time perfectly useless. but how do we know that he will, on any theory of volition, reward the good and punish the bad? "because we have his word for it." and how do we know that he will keep his word? "because he is all-good." but that, on locke's principles, is pure assumption; and god, being quite sure that _he_ has no retribution to fear, must be even more irresponsible than the atheist. the principle that nothing can come from nothing, so far from proving theism, leads logically either to pantheism or to a much more thorough monadism than the system of leibniz. and, metaphysics apart, it conflicts with a leading doctrine of the essay--that is the fundamental distinction between the primary and the secondary qualities of matter. we think of bodies as in themselves extended, resisting and mobile, but not in themselves as coloured, sonorous, odorous, hot, cold, or sapid. they cause our special sensations, but cause them by an unknown power. again we perceive--or think we perceive--both primary and secondary qualities in close union as properties of a single object, and this object in which they jointly inhere is called a substance. and to the question, what is substance? locke admits that he has no answer except something we know not what. he has returned to the agnostic standpoint of the { } cyrenaic school. this something, for aught we know, might have created the world. continental historians regard the whole rationalistic movement of the eighteenth century, or what in germany is called the enlightenment (aufklärung), as having been started by locke. but the sort of arguments that he adduces for the existence of a god prove that in theology at least his rationalism had rather narrow limits. both his theism and his acceptance of christianity on the evidence of prophecy and miracles show no advance on medieval logic. in this respect spinoza and bayle ( - ) were far more in line with the modern movement. still, assuming scripture as an authoritative revelation, locke shows that, rationally interpreted, it yields much less support to dogmatic orthodoxy than english churchmen supposed. and whatever may have been the letter of his religious teaching, there can be little doubt that the english deists, toland, shaftesbury, and anthony collins, represented its true spirit more faithfully than the philosopher himself. representative government and the subordination of ecclesiastical to secular authority--or, better still, their separation--are both good things in themselves and favourable conditions to the life of reason. another condition is that children should be trained to exercise their intelligence instead of relying blindly on authority. in these respects also locke's writings acted powerfully on the public opinion of the next century, especially through the agency of french writers; france, as macaulay justly claims, being the interpreter between england and the world. our present business, however, is not with the diffusion but the development of thought, and to trace this we must return to british philosophy. { } berkeley. george berkeley ( - ) was born and educated in ireland. the fact is of no racial or national importance, but interests us as accounting for his having received a better training in philosophy than at that time was possible in england. for the study of locke, then proscribed at oxford, had already been introduced into dublin when berkeley was an undergraduate there; and it was as a critical advance on locke that his first publication, the _new theory of vision_ ( ), was offered. next year came the epoch-making _principles of human knowledge_, followed in by the more popular _dialogues_. at twenty-nine his work was done, and although he lived forty years longer, rising to be a bishop in the irish church, after projecting a christian utopia for the civilisation of the north american indians that never came to anything, and practising "every virtue under heaven," he made no other permanent contribution to thought. berkeley is at once a theorist of knowledge and a metaphysician, combining, in a way, the method of locke with the method of descartes and his successors. the popular notion of his philosophy is that it resolved the external world into a dream, or at least into something that has no existence outside our minds. but this is an utter misconception, against which berkeley constantly protested. his quarrel was not with common sense, but with the theorists of perception. to understand this we must return for a moment to locke's teaching. it will be remembered in what a tangle of difficulties the essay had left its author. matter had two sets of qualities, primary and secondary, the one belonging to things in themselves, the other existing only { } in our minds; yet both somehow combined in real substances independent of us, but acting on our senses. substance as such is an unknown and unknowable postulate; nevertheless, we know that it was created by god, of whom our knowledge is, if anything, inconveniently extensive. now berkeley, to find his way out of these perplexities, begins by attacking the distinction between primary and secondary qualities. for this purpose his _theory of vision_ was written. it proves--or attempts to prove--that extension is not a real attribute of things in themselves, but an intellectual construction, or what locke would have called an "idea of reflection." till then people had thought that its objectivity was firmly established by the concurrent testimony of two senses, sight and touch. berkeley shows, on the contrary, that visible and tangible extension are not the same thing, that the sensations--or, as he calls them, the ideas--of sight and touch are two different languages whose words we learn by experience to interpret in terms of each other without their being necessarily connected. a man born blind would not at first sight know how to interpret the visual signs of distance, direction, and magnitude; he would have to learn them by experience. these, in fact, are ideal relations only existing in the mind; and so we have no right to oppose mind as inextended to an extended or an external world. having thus cleared the ground, our young idealist proceeds in his next and greatest work, _of the principles of human knowledge_, to attack the problem from another side. the world of objects revealed through sensation and reflection is clearly no illusion, no creation of our own. we find it there, changing, when it changes, without or even very much against our will. { } what, then, is its origin and nature? locke's view, which is the common view, tells us that it consists of material bodies, some animated and some not. and matter, the supposed substance of body, is made known to us by impressions on our organs of sense. but when we try to think of matter apart from these sensible qualities and the relations between them it vanishes into an empty abstraction. now, according to berkeley there are no abstract ideas--_i.e._, no thoughts unassociated with some mental image besides a mere word; and matter or inanimate substance would be such an idea, therefore it does not exist. there is nothing but mind and its contents--what we call states of consciousness, what locke and berkeley called ideas. whence, then, come the objects of our consciousness, and whither do they go when we cease to perceive them? at this point the new metaphysical system intervenes. berkeley says that all things subsist in the consciousness of god, and by their subsistence his existence is proved. the direct apprehension of a reality that is not ourselves only becomes possible through what would be called in modern language a subjective participation in the divine consciousness, more feebly reflected, as would seem, in the memories, imaginations, and reasonings of our finite minds. in pursuing these wonderful speculations berkeley deviated widely from the direct line of english philosophy, and it is difficult not to believe that the deflection was determined by the influence of malebranche, especially when we find that the writings of the oratorian father were included in his college studies. moreover, a parallel line of idealistic development derived from the same source was evolving itself at { } the same time in english thought. john norris ( - ), a correspondent of the platonist henry more, an opponent of locke, and a disciple of malebranche, had himself found an enthusiastic admirer in arthur collier ( - ), whose _clavis universalis_ professed to be "a demonstration of the _non-existence or impossibility of an external world_" ( ). both norris and collier, like malebranche and berkeley, were churchmen; but so strong was the drift towards idealism that leibniz, a layman and a man of science, contributed by his monadology to the same current. malebranche neither was nor could he be a complete idealist in the sense of denying the reality of matter; for the dogma of transubstantiation bound him, as a catholic, to its acceptance, while berkeley, collier, and leibniz, as protestants, were under no such obligation. his idealism agreed more nearly with the neo-platonic doctrine of archetypes in the divine reason among which matter was one. on the other hand, berkeley probably borrowed from him the notion of a direct contact with god, the difference being that with the cartesian it is conceived as an objective vision, with locke's disciple as (if the expression may be permitted) a subjective con-consciousness. leibniz, again, while abolishing matter, retains an external world composed indeed of spirits and so far immaterial, but existing independently of god. all these systems involve the negation of two fundamental scientific principles. the first is that every change must be explained by reference to an antecedent change to which it bears a strict quantitative relation. the second is that no particular change can be referred to another change as its necessary antecedent unless it can be shown by experience that a precisely similar { } couple of changes are, in fact, always so connected. let me illustrate these principles by an example. i leave a kettle full of cold water on the fire, and on returning after a sufficient interval of time i find the water boiling. had i stayed by the fire and watched the process, my kettle would--a popular proverb to the contrary notwithstanding--have certainly boiled as soon, but also no sooner for being helped by my consciousness. the essential thing is that energy of combustion in the fire should be turned into energy of boiling in the water. now, what is berkeley's interpretation of the facts? fire, kettle, water, and ebullition are what in his writings are called "ideas"--_i.e._, phenomena occasionally in my mind, but always in god's mind. and according to this view the necessary antecedent to the boiling of the water is not the fire's burning, but god's consciousness of its burning, his perception being the essence of the operation. but it is proved by experience that neither my perception nor anyone else's ever made a single drop of water boil. in other words, perception is not in this instance a _vera causa_. why, then, should the perception of any other mind, however exalted, have that effect? nor is this all. how does berkeley know that god exists? because, he says, to exist is to be perceived, and therefore for the universe to exist implies a universal percipient. but he got the idea of god from other men, who certainly did not come by it as a generalisation from their perceptions; they got it by generalising from their voluntary actions, which do produce the changes that perception cannot produce. it will be said that volitions and the feelings that prompt them exist only in consciousness. in whose consciousness? in that of a spirit. and what is spirit apart from { } sensation, thought, feeling, and volition? simply one of those abstract ideas whose existence berkeley himself denied. hume. the next step in the evolution of english thought was to consist in a return to locke's method, involving a complete breach with seventeenth-century platonism, and with the continental metaphysics that it had inspired. this decisive movement was effected by one in whom german criticism has recognised the greatest of all british philosophers. david hume ( - ) was born and bred at edinburgh, which also seems to have been through life his favourite residence. but his great work, the _treatise on human nature_, was written during a stay in france, between the ages of twenty-three and twenty-six. thus his precocity was even greater than berkeley's. indeed, such maturity of thought so early reached is without a parallel in history. but hume's style had not then acquired the perfection--the inimitable charm, kant calls it--of his later writings; and, whether for this or for other reasons, the book, in his own words, "fell dead-born from the press." in middle life the office of librarian of the advocates' library at edinburgh gave him access to the materials for his _history of england_, which proved a source of fame and profit. a profound historical scholar, j. s. brewer, tells us that hume "possessed in a pre-eminent degree some of the highest excellences of a historian." other historians have treated their subjects philosophically; he furnishes the sole instance of a great speculative genius who has also produced a historical masterpiece of the first order. but morally it is a blot on his fame. it is sad that a philosopher should have deliberately perverted the truth, that one who has { } [illustration: david hume.] performed priceless services to freedom of thought should have made himself the apologist of clericalising absolutism, and, still more, that a master of english played this part to some extent through hatred of the great english people engendered by disappointed literary ambition. it may be mentioned, however, as a possible extenuation that towards the middle of the eighteenth century the highest english ability had thrown itself, with few exceptions, on the tory side. it must be mentioned { } also that in private life hume's character was entirely admirable--cheerful, generous, and gentle, without a frailty and without a stain. his opinions were unpopular; but his life offered no handle for obloquy, although his studious retirement was more than once exchanged for the responsibilities of political office, and the freedom from pedantry so conspicuous in his writings bears witness to habits of well-bred social intercourse. hume's philosophy is best understood when we consider it as, in the first place, a criticism of berkeley, just as berkeley's had been a criticism of locke. it will be remembered that the founder of subjective idealism discarded the notion of material substance as an "abstract idea," an unintelligible figment devoid of any sensuous or imaginative content. the only true substances are the subjects of what we call experience communicating through sensation with god, the infinite spirit whose eternal consciousness is reality itself. hume applied the same tests to spiritual substance, and found that it equally disappeared under his introspective analysis. he begins by dividing the contents of consciousness into two classes, impressions and ideas--the second being copies of the first, and distinguished from them by their relative faintness. now, from these perceptions (which he called thoughts) descartes had passed by an immediate inference to the ego or self, which he affirms as the primary fact of consciousness, using it as a basis for sundry other conclusions. but hume stops him at once, and will not grant the existence of the metaphysical self--that is, a simple and continued substance, as distinguished from particular states of consciousness. we are, he declares, "nothing but a bundle of different perceptions, which { } succeed each other with an inconceivable rapidity, and are in a perpetual flux and movement." "there is properly no _simplicity_ in it [the self] at one time, nor _identity_ in different [times]; whatever natural propensity we may have to imagine that simplicity and identity." so much being assumed, berkeley's whole argument for a new theology founded on subjective idealism is bound to collapse, as also is the argument for natural immortality derived from the supposed simplicity and identity of the thinking substance. modern critics have rightly insisted, as against hume, that isolated perceptions without a self are abstractions not less unintelligible than a self without perceptions. but the metaphysical argument for human immortality has not benefited by this more concrete interpretation of epistemology; and probably hume was really more interested in destroying this than in maintaining the sceptical paradox which does not recur in his later writings. a word must be added about hume's division of perceptions into impressions and ideas. the point left out of sight in this analysis is that impressions of sense habitually find their reflexes not in revived sensations, but in expressions, in motor reactions which, with human beings, mostly take the form of words uttered or thought. these, no doubt, are associated to some small extent with revived sensations; but they are more commonly grouped with other words, with movements of the limbs, and with actions on the material or human environment of the percipient. such expressions are incomparably easier to revive in memory, imagination, or expectation than the impressions that originally excited them; and, indeed, it is in connection with them that such revivals of sensation { } as we actually experience take place. and it is probable that to this active side of our consciousness that we may trace those associative processes which hume studies next in his analysis of human knowledge. putting aside principles of doubtful or secondary value, the relations between states of consciousness that first offer themselves to view are, according to hume, co-existence and succession (united under the name of contiguity), resemblance, and causation. it is with the account he gives of this last category that his name is inseparably associated, for from it all subsequent speculation has taken rise. yet primarily he seems to have had no other object in view than to simplify the laws of knowledge by resolving one of them into a particular case of another, and thus reducing his three categories to two. the relation of cause and effect, he tells us, is no more than a certain relation between antecedent and consequent in time where the sequence is so habitual as to establish in our minds a custom of expecting the one whenever the other occurs. the sequence is not necessary, for one can think, without any self-contradiction, of a change which has not been preceded by another change; nor is it, like the truths of geometry, something that can be known _à priori_. without experience no one could tell that bread will nourish a man and not nourish a lion, nor even predict how a billiard-ball will behave when another ball strikes it. should it be objected that the _à priori_ knowledge of a general principle need not involve an equal knowledge of nature's operations in particular cases, hume would doubtless reply by saying that there is no abstract idea of causation apart from its concrete exemplifications. it is possible to accept hume's theory in principle { } without pledging oneself to all his incidental contentions. causation, as a general law, may be known only by experience, whether we can or cannot think of it as a pure abstraction. and we may interpret it in terms of unconditional antecedence and consequence, while discarding his apparent assumption of an inscrutable connection between the two; a mysterious necessity for the production of the one by the other, for which it is felt that a reason exists, but for which our reason cannot account. it is inconceivable that our knowledge of any given sequence could be increased, except by the disclosure of intermediate sequences, making their continuity, in space and time, more absolute than we had before perceived, until the whole process has been resolved into a transference of momentum from one molecule to another--a change for which, according to hume, no reason can be given. nor, on his principles, would it help us to explain such transferences by bringing them under the law of the conservation of energy. for, although this would be a great triumph for science, his philosophy demands a reason why the quantity of energy should remain unalterable for ever. it is a mistake, shared by hume with his opponents, to suppose that the common sense of mankind ever saw more than invariable sequence in the relation of cause and effect, or ever interpolated a mysterious power between them. in the famous verse, "let there be light, and there was light," it is the instantaneity of succession, not the interpolation of any exerted effort, that so impresses the imagination. and when shakespeare wants to illustrate logical compulsion in conduct, his reference is to an instance of invariable succession:-- { } this above all,--to thine own self be true; and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man. indeed, i think it will be found on examination that when we associate the idea of power, or of necessity, with causal sequences, it is not in connection with a case of causation here and now, but rather in reference to similar effects that may be expected from the same cause elsewhere or at another time. and that "custom," by which hume seeks to explain our belief in the "power" of the cause to produce its effect as well as the "necessity" of the connection between them, rather acts negatively by eliminating all other antecedents as possible causes than positively by setting up a habit of thinking about a particular antecedent and consequent at the same time. and that is why a burnt child needs no repetition of the experiment to be convinced that contact with fire was the cause of its pain. the very novelty of the experiment was enough to eliminate any explanation other than that of contact with the flame. the child, as it grows older, may learn to speak of the fire as having a power to burn. but that merely means, "if i touch it, it will burn me--or light paper if i hold the paper to it." power, in fact, is incomplete causation, the presence of every condition but that one which, in aristotelian phrase, turns potency into act. and it is in contradistinction to that idea of possibility that the idea of necessary connection comes in. when all the elements of the causal antecedent are combined the effect necessarily supervenes. furthermore, the causal antecedent is thought of as necessary in contrast with the contingency of other antecedents whose connection with the effect is merely accidental. finally, { } the idea of production has been quoted as vitally distinguishing true causation from invariable sequence. but various myths, of which the story of oedipus is the best known, show that primitive folk regard day and night as alternately producing one another, just as polonius quotes their sequence as a type of logical necessity. hume professed himself a deist, but probably with no more seriousness than when he, or when gibbon, called christianity "our religion." at any rate, his philosophy destroys every argument for the existence of a creator advanced in his own or in the preceding century. nor need his particular theory of causation be invoked for the purpose. the most telling attack is on the argument from design. the apparent adaptation of means to ends in living organisms is quoted as evidence of their having been planned by a conscious intelligence. but, answers hume, such an intelligence would itself exhibit marks of design, and so on for ever. why not, then, stop at the animal organism as an ultimate fact? it was shelley's unlucky demand for a solution of this difficulty that led to his expulsion from oxford. it has been shown how the new analysis of mind cut the ground from under berkeley's theism, and from under the metaphysical argument for human immortality. by denying the substantiality of the ego it also confirmed the necessitarianism of spinoza. hume seemed to think he could abate the unpopularity of this doctrine by interpreting the constant motivation of human actions as a mere relation of antecedence and consequence. but the decisive point was that he assimilated sequences in conscious behaviour to the unconscious sequences in physical events. thus, for { } the vulgar and the theologians, he remained what would now be called a materialist. kant. the english philosophy of experience and the continental philosophy of _à priori_ spiritualism, after their brief convergence in the metaphysics of berkeley, parted company once more, the empirical tradition being henceforth represented, not only by hume, but in a more or less anti-christian and much more superficial form by voltaire, rousseau, and the french encyclopædists; while the leibnizian philosophy was systematised and taught in germany by wolf, and a dull but useful sort of modernised aristotelianism was set up under the name of "common sense" by thomas reid ( - ) and his school in the scottish universities. the extraordinary genius who was to re-combine the parted currents in a speculative movement of unexampled volume, velocity, and depth showed nothing of the precocity that had distinguished berkeley and hume. immanuel kant ( - ), the son of a saddler of scottish extraction, was born at königsberg in prussia, where he spent his whole life, holding a chair at the university from to . it is related that on the day of his death a small bright cloud was seen sailing alone across the clear blue sky, of such a remarkable appearance that a crowd assembled on the bridge to watch it. one of them, a common soldier, exclaimed, "that is kant's soul going to heaven!"--a touching and beautiful tribute to the illustrious german, whose lofty, pure, and luminous spirit it was uniquely fitted to characterise. { } [illustration: kant. (_copyright b. p. c._) { } kant grew up among the pietists, a school which played much the same part in germany that the methodists and the evangelicals played in england; indeed, it was from them that john wesley received his final inspiration. the königsberg student came in time to discard their theology while retaining the stern puritan morality with which it was wedded, and even, rationalist as he became, some of their mystical religiosity. what drew him away to philosophy seems to have been first the study of classical philology and then physical science, especially as presented to him in newton's works. and so the young man's first ambition, after settling down as a university teacher at königsberg, was to extend the newtonian method still further by explaining, on mechanical principles, the origin and constitution of that celestial system whose movements newton had reduced to law, but whose beginning he had left unaccounted for except by--what was not science--the direct fiat of omnipotence. kant offered a brilliant solution of the problem in his _natural history of the heavens_ ( ), a work embodying the celebrated nebular hypothesis rediscovered forty years later by laplace. it has been well observed that great philosophers are mostly, if not always, what at oxford and cambridge would be called "double-firsts"--that is, apart from their philosophy, they have done first-class work in some special line of investigation, as descartes by creating analytical geometry, spinoza by applying biblical criticisms to theology, leibniz by discovering the differential calculus, locke by his theory of constitutional government, berkeley by his theory of vision, hume by his contributions to history and political economy. kant's cosmogony may have been premature and mistaken in its details; but his idea of the heavenly bodies as having originated from the condensation of diffused gaseous matter still holds its { } ground; and although the more general idea of natural evolution as opposed to supernatural creation is not modern but greek, to have revived and reapplied it on so great a scale is a service of extraordinary merit. the next great event in kant's intellectual career is his rejection of continental apriorism in metaphysics for the empiricism of the english school, especially as regards the idea of causation. for a few years ( - ) kant accepts hume's theory that there is nothing in any succession of events or in change generally to prove on grounds of pure reason that there must be more in it than a customary sequence. to believe that anything may happen without a cause does not involve a logical contradiction; and at that time he believed nothing to be known _à priori_ except that the denial of which involves such a contradiction. but on reconsidering the basis of mathematical truth it seemed to him to be something other than the logical laws of identity and contradiction. when we say that seven and five are twelve we put something into the predicate that was not affirmed in the subject, and also when we say that a straight line is the shortest distance between two points. yet the second proposition is as certain as the first, and both are certain in the highest degree, more certain than anything learned from experience, and needing no experience to confirm them. so much being admitted, we have to recognise a fundamental division of judgments into two classes, analytic and synthetic. judgments in which the predicate adds nothing to the subject are analytic. when we affirm all matter to be extended, that is an instance of the former, for here we are only making more explicit what was already contained in the notion of matter. on the other hand, when we affirm that all matter is heavy, that is an { } instance of the latter or synthetic class, for we can think of matter without thinking that it has weight. furthermore, this is not only a synthetic judgment, but it is a synthetic judgment _à posteriori_; for the law of universal gravitation is known only by experience. but there are also synthetic judgments _à priori_; for, as we have just seen, the fundamental truths of arithmetic and geometry belong to this class, as do also by consequence all the propositions logically deduced from these--that is to say, the whole of mathematical science. up to this point kant would have carried the whole cartesian school, and, more generally, all the modern platonists, along with him; while he would have given the english empiricists and their french disciples a rather hard nut to crack. for they would have had to choose between admitting that mathematics was a mass of identical propositions or explaining, in the face of hume's criticism, what claims to absolute certainty its truths, any more than the law of causation, possess. now, the great philosophical genius of kant is shown by nothing more than by this, that he did not stop here. recognising to the same extent as locke and hume that all knowledge comes from experience--at any rate, in the sense of not coming by supernatural communication, as malebranche and berkeley thought--he puts the famous question, how are synthetic judgments _à priori_ possible? or, as it might be paradoxically expressed, how come we to know with the most certainty the things that we have not been taught by experience? the answer is, that we know them by the most intimate experience of all--the underlying consciousness that we have made them what they are. our minds are no mere passive recipients, in which a mass of sensations, poured in from some external { } source, are then arranged after an order equally originated from without; there is a principle of spontaneity in our own subjectivity by which the objective order of nature is created. what kant calls the matter of knowledge is given from without, the form from within. and this process begins with the imposition of the two great fundamental forms, space and time, on the raw material of sensation by our minds. by space and time kant does not mean the abstract ideas of coexistence and succession; nor does he call them, as some critics used incorrectly to suppose, forms of thought, but forms of intuition. we do not build them up with the help of muscular or other feelings, but are conscious of them in a way not admitting of any further analysis. the parts of space, no doubt, are coexistent, but they are also connected and continuous; more than this, positions in space do not admit of mutual substitution; the right hand and left hand glove are perfectly symmetrical, but the one cannot be superimposed on the other. besides, all particular spaces are contained in universal space, not as particular conceptions are contained in a general conception, but as parts of that which extends to infinity, and where each has an individual place of its own, repeating all the characters of space in general except its illimitable extension. and the same is true of time, with this further distinction from abstract succession, that succession may be reversed; whereas the order of past, present, and future is irreversibly maintained. the contemporary school of reid in scotland, and the subsequent eclectic school of victor cousin in france, would agree with kant in maintaining that sensuous experience will not account for our knowledge of space and time. but they would protest, in the name { } of common sense, against the reduction of these apparently fundamental elements to purely subjective forms. they would ask, with the german critic trendelenburg, why cannot space and time be known intuitively and yet really exist? kant furnishes no direct answer to the question, but he has suggested one in another connection. mathematical truth is concerned with spatial and temporal relations, and for that truth to be above suspicion and exception we must assume that the objects with which it deals are wholly within our grasp--that our knowledge of them is exhaustive. but there could be no such assurance on the supposition that, besides the space and time of our sensuous experience, another space and time existed independently of our consciousness as attributes of things in themselves--possibly differing in important respects from ours--as, for example, a finite, or a non-continuous, or a four-dimensional space, and a time with a circular instead of a progressive movement. this easy assumption that reality accommodates itself to our intellectual convenience, instead of our being obliged to accommodate our theories of knowledge to reality, runs through and vitiates the whole of kant's philosophy. but, taking the narrower ground of logical consistency, one hardly sees how his principles can hold together. we are told that the subjectivity of space and time is not presented as a plausible hypothesis, but as a certain and indubitable truth, for in no other way can mathematical certainty be explained. the claim is questionable, but let it be granted. immediately a fresh difficulty starts up. what is the source of our certainty that space and time are subjective forms of intuition? if the answer is, because that assumption guarantees the certainty of mathematics, then kant is { } reasoning in a circle. if he appeals--as in consistency he ought--to another order of subjectivity as the sanction of his first transcendental argument, such reasoning involves the regress to infinity. again, on kant's theory, time is the form of intuition for the inner sense. so when we become conscious of mental events we know them only as phenomena; we remain ignorant of what mind is in itself. but before the publication in of kant's inaugural dissertation on _the sensible and the intelligible world_ every one, plain men and philosophers alike, believed that the consciousness of our successive thoughts and feelings was the very type of reality itself; and they held this belief with a higher degree of assurance than that given to the axioms of geometry. by what right, then, are we asked to give up the greater for the less, to surrender our self-assurance as a ransom for euclid's _elements_ or even for newton's _principia_? once more, surely mathematics is concerned not with space and time as such, but with their artificial delimitations as points, lines, figures, numbers, moments, etc. and it may be granted that these are purely subjective in the sense of being imposed by our imagination (with the aid of sensible signs) on the external world. what if _this_ subjectivity were the true source of that peculiar certainty belonging to synthetic judgments _à priori_? true, kant counts in our judgments about the infinity and eternity of space and time with other accepted characteristics of theirs as intuitive certainties. but there are thinkers who find the negation of such properties not inconceivable, so that they cannot be adduced as evidence of a priority, still less of subjectivity. eleven years after the inaugural dissertation kant { } published his most important contribution to philosophy, _the critique of pure reason_ ( ). pure reason means the faculty by which ideas are obtained independently of all experience, and the critic's object is to ascertain how far such ideas are valid. as a preliminary to that inquiry the question is also mooted, how is experience possible? it is answered by a critique of the understanding or faculty of conception; and as conception implies perception, this again is prefaced by a section in which kant's theory of space and time is repeated and reinforced. it will be remembered that what started the whole of the new criticism was hume's sceptical analysis of causation; and the central interest of _the critique of pure reason_ lies in the effort to reconstitute the causal law in the light of the new theory of knowledge; but so enormous is the mass of technicalities piled up for this purpose as largely to conceal it from view, and, on its disclosure, to give the idea of a gigantic machine set in motion to crack a nut. and the nut after all is _not_ cracked; the shell slips from between the grappling surfaces long before they meet. we have seen how kant interpreted every judgment as a synthesis of subject and predicate. now, whether the synthesis be _à priori_ or _à posteriori_, a study of the forms of judgment as enumerated in the common logic shows that there are four, and only four, ways in which it can be effected. all judgments fall under the following classes: quantity, quality, relation, and modality--terms whose meaning will be presently explained. and each of these again is tripartite. we may say (i.) that one a is b, or that some a's are b, or that all a's are b; (ii.) that a is b, that a is not b, that not all a's are b; (iii.) that a is b, that a { } is b if c is d, that a is either b, c, or d; or (iv.) that a may be b, that a is b, or that a must be b. the reason why there are four and only four classes is that judgment has to do with the subject in reference to the predicate, which gives quantity; with the predicate in reference to the subject, which gives quality; with the connection between the two, which gives relation; and with the synthesis between them in reference to our knowledge of it, which gives modality. now, according to kant, that there should be so many kinds of judgment and no more implies that our understanding contributes a formal element to the constitution of all knowledge, consisting of four combining principles, without which experience would be impossible. he calls these categories, and they are enumerated in the following table:-- (i.) quantity. unity, plurality, totality. (ii.) quality. reality, negation, limitation. (iii.) relation. substance and accident; cause and effect; action and reaction (reciprocity). (iv.) modality. possibility and impossibility; existence and non-existence; necessity and contingency. a study of the categories suggests some rather obvious criticisms on the critical philosophy itself. (i.) the first two terms in each triad evidently form an antithetical couple, of which the third term is the synthesis. here we have the first germ of a disease by which the systems of kant's successors were much more seriously infected. in the table it is shown by { } the intrusion of limitation, a wholly superfluous adjunct to reality and negation; in the conversion of reciprocity into a wholly fictitious synthesis of substantiality with causation; and in the complete absurdity of making necessity a combination of possibility with existence. (ii.) innate ideas, after they had been exploded by locke, are reintroduced into philosophy by a sufficiently transparent piece of legerdemain. for assuming that the human intelligence possesses a power of organising and drilling the sensuous appearances which without its control would appear only as a disorderly mob, it by no means follows that they must thereby be referred to an extraphenomenal principle. but such a principle is plainly implied by the category of substance. used in a scholastic sense, it does not mean the sensuous attributes of a thing taken altogether, but something that underlies and supports them. and kant himself seems to take his category in that significance. for he claims to deduce from it the law of the indestructibility of matter; as if i could not say snow is white without committing myself to the assertion that the ultimate particles of snow have existed and will exist for ever. (iii.) the substitution of causation for logical sequence, as implicated in the hypothetical judgment of relation, is perfectly scandalous; and still more scandalous is substitution of reciprocity or action and reaction for disjunction. the last points require to be examined a little more in detail. the sequence of an effect to its cause has only a verbal resemblance to the sequence of a logical consequent to its reason. we declare categorically that every change has a cause which precedes it. logical sequence is, on the other hand, as the very name of the { } judgment shows, hypothetical, and may possibly not represent any actual occurrence, besides being, what causation is not, independent of time. a particular case of causation may be hypothetical in respect to our belief that it actually occurred; never the law of causation itself as a general truth. and the same distinction applies with even greater force to the alleged connection between a logical disjunction and a physical reaction. when i say a is either b or c, but not both, there is only this much resemblance, that both cases involve the ideas of equality and of opposition. from the admission that a is not b, i infer that it is c, or, contrariwise, from the admission that it is b, i infer that it is not c, and in both instances with the same certainty; but this does not prove that the earth attracts the moon as much as the moon attracts the earth, only in opposite directions; nor yet that in certain instances all the heat lost by one body is gained by another. kant had learned this much from hume, that causation is essentially a relation of antecedence and consequence in time; and apparently his way of "categorising" the relation--_i.e._, of proving its apriority--is to represent it as the logical form of reason and consequent masquerading, so to speak, under the intuitional time-form. yet he frequently speaks of our senses as being affected by things in themselves, implying that the resulting sensations are somehow caused by those otherwise unknown entities. but since things in themselves do not, according to kant, exist in space and time, they cannot be causally related to phenomena or to anything else. in his criticism of pure reason, properly so called--that is, of inferences made by human faculty with { } regard to questions transcending all experience--kant shows that of such things nothing can be known. the ideality of time and space once taken as proved, this amount of agnosticism seems to follow as a matter of course. it is idle to speculate about the possible extent or duration of a universe that cannot be described in terms of coexistence and succession. for each of us at the dissolution of our bodily organism time itself, and therefore existence as alone we conceive it, comes to an end. the law of causation, applying as it does to phenomena alone, offers no evidence for the existence of a god who transcends phenomena. kant, however, is not satisfied with such a simple and summary procedure as this. he tries to show, with most unnecessary pedantry, that the conditional synthesis of the understanding inevitably leads thought on to the unconditional synthesis of the reason only to find itself lost in a hopeless welter of paralogisms and self-contradictions. at this stage we are handed over to the guidance of what kant calls the practical reason. this faculty gives a synthesis for conduct, as pure reason gave a synthesis for intelligence. all reason demands uniformity, order, law; only what in theory is recognised as true has in practice to be imposed as right. in this way kant arrives at his formula of absolute morality: act so that the principle of thy conduct may be the law for all rational beings. he calls this the categorical imperative, as distinguished from such hypothetical imperatives as: act this way if you wish to be happy either here or hereafter; or, act as public opinion tells you. moreover, the motive, as distinguished from the end of moral action, should not be calculating self-interest nor uncalculating impulse, but simply desire to fulfil the law as such. previous moralists had set up { } the greatest happiness of the greatest number as the end of action, and such an aim does not lie far from kant's philosophy; but they could think of no better motive for pursuing it than self-love or a rather undefined social instinct; and their _summum bonum_ would take the happiness of irrational animals into account, while kant absolutely subordinates the interests of these to human good. a further coincidence between the utilitarian and the kantian ethics is that in the latter also the happiness of others, not their perfection, should be the end and aim of each. finally, the philosophy of pure reason adopts from contemporary french thought as the governing idea of political organisation what was long to be a principle of english utilitarianism--"the liberty of each, bounded only by the equal liberty of all." nevertheless, the old postulate of a necessary connection between virtue and individual happiness reappears in kant's ethical theory, and leads to the construction of a new religious philosophy. his critique had left no place for the old theology, nor yet for that doctrine of free-will so dear to most theologians. its whole object had been to vindicate against hume the necessity and universality of causation. human actions then must, like all other phenomena, form an unbroken chain of antecedents and consequents. nor does kant conceal his conviction that, with sufficient knowledge and powers of calculation, a man's whole future conduct might be foretold. nevertheless, under the eighteenth-century idea of man as naturally the creature of passion or self-interest, he claims for us, as moral agents, the power of choosing to obey duty in preference to either. and this freedom is supposed to be made conceivable by the subjectivity of time and causation, outside of which, { } as a thing in itself, stands the moral will. that morality, whether as action or mere intention, involves succession in time is utterly ignored. nor is this all. assuming without warrant that the moral law demands an ultimate coincidence between happiness and virtue, made impossible in this life by human weakness, kant argues that there must be an unending future life to secure time enough for working out a problem whose solution is infinitely remote. and, finally, there must be an omnipotent moral god to provide facilities for undertaking that somewhat gratuitous psyche's task. before kant moral theology had argued that the judge of all the world must do right, apportioning happiness to desert. it was reserved for him to argue, conversely, that for right to be done such a judge must exist, and that therefore he does exist. in appreciating the services of kant to philosophy we must guard ourselves against being influenced by the extravagant panegyrics of his countrymen, whose passion for square circles he so generously gratifies. still, after every deduction for mere laputian pedantry has been made, the balance of fruitful suggestion remains vast. (i.) the antithesis of object and subject, although not counted among the categories of his _critique_, has remained a prime category of thought ever since. (ii.) the idea of a necessary limit to human knowledge, given by the very theory of that knowledge, as distinguished from the scepticism of the greeks--in other words, what we now call agnosticism--may not be final, but it still remains to be dealt with. (iii.) the possibility of reducing _à priori_ knowledge to a form of unconscious experience has put an end to dogmatic metaphysics. (iv.) the problems of time and space have taken a central place in speculation; it has been { } shown--what hume did not see--that causation has the certainty of a mathematical axiom; and it has been made highly probable that all these difficulties may find their solution in a larger interpretation of experience. (v.) morality has been definitely dissociated from the appeal to selfish interests, whether in this life or in another. we have now to trace, within the limits prescribed by the nature of this work, the development of philosophy under kant's german successors. * * * * * { } chapter iv. the german idealists fichte, schelling, hegel, schopenhauer, herbart. the critical philosophy won its first success in germany less as a new epistemology than as what, in fact, its author meant it to be, a rehabilitation of religious belief. the limits of reason had been drawn so closely only to make room for faith. but the current of rationalism was running too strongly to be so summarily stopped; and so with kant's ablest successors faith is altogether abandoned, while the claims of reason are pushed relentlessly through. among these more logical thinkers the first is j. g. fichte ( - ). in him--for the third time in modern history, for the first and last time in germany--the hero as philosopher finds a worthy representative. born in silesia, like kant of humble parentage, and bred in circumstances of more oppressive poverty, he also received a severely religious and moral training as a preparation for the pastoral office. the bounty of an aristocratic patron gave him an excellent public-school education; but as a university student, first at jena and then at leipzig, he had to earn a scanty living by private tuition, finally abandoning his destined career to accept a post in a swiss family at zurich. there, as the result of an attachment in which the love was nearly all on the lady's side, he became engaged to a niece of the poet klopstock, and after a long delay, caused by money { } difficulties, was enabled to marry her. in the meantime he had become a convert to kant's philosophy, winning the admiration of the old master himself by a _critique of all revelation_, written in four weeks. published anonymously by an oversight, it was generally attributed to kant himself, and, on the real authorship becoming known, won for fichte an extraordinary professorate of philosophy at jena, where his success as a lecturer and writer gave him for a time the leadership in german speculation ( - ). an untoward incident brought this stage of his career to an end. writing in a philosophical review, he defined god as "the moral order of the universe." dr. temple long afterwards used much the same phrase when bishop of exeter, finding it, presumably, compatible with official theism; but such was not the impression created in saxony. a cry of atheism arose, much to the disgust of fichte, whose position would have been better described as pantheistic. but what incensed him most was the suspicion of an attempt to interfere with the liberty of academic teaching. with his usual impetuosity he talked about resigning his chair--with a hint that others would follow his example--were the authorities at weimar to permit such an outrage. goethe, who was then minister, observed that no government could allow itself to be threatened, and fichte was at once relieved of his post. settling at berlin, he became professor of philosophy in the new university founded after the french conquest of prussia, having previously done much to revive the national spirit by his _addresses to the german nation_ ( - ). these were in appearance the programme of a new educational utopia; but their real purpose was so evident that the speaker lived in daily expectation of being summoned { } before a french court-martial and shot. unlike his countrymen, goethe, hegel, and schopenhauer, fichte passionately resented the napoleonic despotism, throwing himself heart and soul into the great uprising by which it was finally overthrown. although his wish to accompany the victorious army as field preacher could not be gratified, the campaign of still claimed him as one of its victims. after nursing his heroic wife to recovery from a hospital fever caught in attendance on the sick and wounded at berlin, he took the infection from her and died early in , soon after hearing that blücher had crossed the rhine. g. h. lewes, in a well-known story, has made himself and his readers merry over a german savant who undertakes to evolve the idea of a camel out of the depths of his moral consciousness. the phrase is commonly quoted as "inner consciousness," but this takes away its whole point. for the original satirist, who, i think, was not lewes, but heine, had in view the philosophy of fichte. it need hardly be said that german savants are as careful observers and diligent collectors of facts as any others; and fichte in particular trusted solely to experience for the knowledge of natural phenomena. but even as regards his general philosophy the place it gives to morality has been misconceived even by his closest students. with him goodwill really plays a less important part than with kant, being not an end in itself, but a means towards an end. and what that end is his teaching makes quite clear. kant's first critics put their finger on the weak point of his system, the thing in itself. so, assuming it to be discarded, fichte set to work on new lines, the lines of pure idealism. but, though an idealist, he is not, any more than berkeley, a solipsist. the celebrated { } antithesis of the ego and the non-ego dates from him, and strikes the keynote of his whole system. it might be thought that, as compared with the old realism, this was a distinction without a difference. but that is not so; for, according to fichte, the non-ego is subjective in its origin, and that is where he departs widely from berkeley's theological idealism. not that i create the not-myself; i _assume_ it as the condition of my self-consciousness--a remarkable feat of logic, but after all not more wonderful than that space and time should result from the activity of the outer and inner senses. this figment of my imagination is anyhow solid enough to beget a new feeling of resistance and recoil, throwing the self back on itself, and bringing with it the interpretation of that external impact by the category of causation, of its own activity as substance, and of the whole deal between the ego and the non-ego as interaction or reciprocity. in this way the first triad of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis is obtained; and from this, by a vast expenditure of ingenuity, the whole array of kant's forms, categories, and faculties is evolved as a coherent system of scientific thought in obedience to a single principle--the self-realisation of the ego, alternatively admitting and transcending a limit to its activity. it will be easily understood that this self-realising ego is neither fichte's nor anyone else's self, but a universal principle, fundamentally the same in all. one is reminded of descartes's self-thinking thought by which the reality of the universe was guaranteed; but between the two there is this vast difference, that the frenchman's ego resembles a box containing a variety of independent ideas, to be separately handled and examined; the german's is a box enclosing a coiled-up spring by { } the expansion of which all the wheels of the philosophical machine are made go round. from the action of the not-self on the self results the whole of nature as we conceive it; from the reaction of the self on the not-self, the whole mentality and morality of man--morality being understood to include the domestic, social, political, educational, and industrial organisation of life. the final cause, the impelling ideal of existence, is the self-realisation of the ego, the entire absorption into its personal energy of the non-ego, of nature, to be effected by perfect knowledge of how the physical universe is constituted issuing in perfect subjugation of its forces to the human will. but such a realisation of the absolute ego would mean its annihilation, for, as we have seen, the antithesis between objective and subjective is the very condition of consciousness that without which it could neither begin nor continue to exist. therefore the process must go on for ever, and this necessity guarantees the eternal duration of the human race--not, as kant had dreamed, of the individual soul, since for fichte the categorical imperative demands a consummation widely different from that combination of virtue with happiness which had satisfied his master. and the agency by which it is being effected through infinite time is not a personal god, but that moral order of the world which fichte regarded as the only true object of religious feeling. as for human immortality, he seems to have first accepted, but afterwards rejected it in favour of a mystical union with the divine. it has been said that morality was not with fichte what it had been with kant--the highest good. nevertheless, as a means towards the final synthesis, morality interested him intensely, and his best work has been { } done in ethics. as a condition of self-realisation the primal ego becomes personified in a multitude of free individualities. just as in stoicism, each individual is conceived as having a special office to perform in the world-process, and the state exists--ideally speaking--in order to guarantee the necessary independence of all its citizens. for this purpose everyone must have the right to work and the right to a living wage. thus fichte appears as the first theorist of state socialism in the history of german thought. probably the example of the greek stoics with their communistic utopias acting on a kindred spirit, rather than any prophetic vision of the coming century, is to be credited for this remarkable anticipation. schelling. german philosophy is prolific of self-contradictions; and so far the most flagrant example has been offered by fichte's _theory of knowledge_, starting as it does with the idea of an impersonal ego, developing through a process in which this selfless self demands its own negation at every step, and determined by the prospect of a catastrophe that would be the annihilation of consciousness itself. in fact, there seemed no need to wait until time had run out; the self, or, as it was now called, the subject, had absorbed all reality, only to find that the material universe, reconstituted as the object of knowledge, was an indispensable condition of its existence. and meanwhile the physical sciences, more particularly those concerned with inorganic nature, were entering on a series of triumphs unparalleled since the days of newton. philosophy must come to terms with these or cease to exist. the task of reconciliation was first attempted by { } f. w. j. schelling ( - ), a suabian, and the first south german who made a name in pure philosophy. educated at the university of tübingen, at an early age he covered an encyclopædic range of studies and began authorship at nineteen, gaining a professorship at jena four years later. wandering about from one university to another, and putting forward new opinions as often as he changed his residence, the young adventurer ceased to publish after , and remained silent till in he came forward at berlin as the champion of a reactionary current, practically renouncing the naturalistic pantheism by which his early reputation had been made. but he utterly failed in the attempt, which was finally abandoned in the fifth year from its inception. lewes, who saw schelling in his old age, describes him as remarkably like socrates; his admirers called him a modern plato; but he had nothing of the deep moral earnestness that characterised either, nor indeed was morality needed for the work that he actually did. this, to use the phrase of his fellow-student hegel, consisted in raising philosophy to its absolute standpoint, in passing from the subjective moralism of the eighteenth century to the all-comprehensive systematisation of the nineteenth. schelling began as a disciple of fichte, but he came simultaneously under the influence of spinoza, whose fame had been incessantly spreading through the last generation in germany, with some reinforcement from the revived name of bruno. their teaching served to make the latent pantheism of fichte more explicit, while the great contemporary discoveries gave a new interest to the study of nature, which fichte, unlike kant, had put in the background, strictly subordinating it to the moral service of man. had he cared to evolve { } the idea of a camel from his moral consciousness, the operation would not have demanded several years, but only a few minutes' thought. as thus: the moral development of humanity needed the co-operation of such a race as the semites. to form their character a long residence in the arabian deserts was needed. but for such nomads an auxiliary animal would be needed with long legs and neck, a stomach for storing water, hump, etc.--q. e. d. schelling also began by explaining the material world as a preparation for the spiritual; only he did not employ the method of teleological adaptation, but a method of rather fanciful analogy. as the evolution of self-conscious reason had proceeded by a triple movement of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis, so a parallel process had to be discovered in the advance towards a consciousness supposed to be exhibited in organic and inorganic nature. the fundamental idea of natural philosophy is polarity--opposite forces combining to neutralise one another and then parting to be reunited at a higher stage of evolution. thus attraction and repulsion--represented as space and time--by their synthesis compose matter; magnetism and electricity produce chemical affinity; life results from a triad of inorganic forces; in life itself productivity and irritability give birth to sensibility. the order of the terms made little, if any, difference. when long afterwards iron was magnetised by the electric current, schelling claimed for himself the credit of anticipating this discovery, although he had placed magnetism before electricity. the next step was to construct a philosophy of history. this, with much else, is included under the name of _a system of transcendental idealism_ ( ) in the most finished of schelling's literary compositions. { } history, according to the view here unfolded, is the gradual self-revelation of god, or the absolute, in whom nature and spirit are united and identified, who never is nor can be, but always is to be. meanwhile the supreme ideal is not that ever-increasing mastery of nature by man which fichte contemplated, but their reconciliation as achieved by art. for just as natural philosophy carried an element of consciousness into the material universe, so æstheticism recognises a corresponding element of unconscious creation in the supreme works of artistic genius where spirit reaches its highest and best. here schelling appears as the philosopher of romanticism, a movement that characterised german thought from to , and is known to ourselves by the faded and feeble image of it exhibited in a certain section of english society nearly a century later. beginning with a more cultivated intelligence of hellenic antiquity, this movement rapidly grew into a new appreciation of medieval culture, falsely supposed to have given more scope to individuality than modern civilisation, and then into a search for ever-varying sources of excitement or distraction in the whole history, art, and literature of past or present times, religion being at last singled out as the vitalising principle of all. singularly enough, fichte accepted the _transcendental idealism_ as an orthodox exposition of his own philosophy. but its composition seems to have given schelling the consciousness of his own independence. soon afterwards he defined the new position as a philosophy of identity or of indifference. nature and spirit, like spinoza's thought and extension, were all the same and all one--that is to say, in their totality or in the absolute. for, considered as appearances, { } they might present quantitative differences determined by the varying preponderance of the objective or of the subjective side. in this way schelling found himself able to repeat his fanciful construction of the forces and forms of nature in successive triads under new names. the essential departure from fichte, who repudiated the philosophy of identity with undisguised contempt, was that it practically repudiated the idea of an eternal progress in man's ever-growing mastery of nature. but, in spite of all disclaimers, the master silently followed his former disciple's evolution in the direction of a pantheistic monism. his later writings represent god no longer as the moral order of the world, but, like spinoza, as the world's eternal being, of which man's knowledge is the reflected image. finally, both philosophers accepted the christian doctrines of the fall, the incarnation, and the trinity as mythical symbols of an eternal process in which god, after becoming alienated from himself in the material universe, returns to himself in man's consciousness of identity with the absolute. instead of the rather abrupt method of position, negation, and re-affirmation known as thesis, antithesis, and synthesis, we have here the more fluid process of a spiral movement, departing from and returning to itself. and this was to be the very mainspring of the system that next comes up for consideration. hegel. { } [illustration: hegel (_copyright b. p. c._)] { } g. w. f. hegel ( - ), in the opinion of some good judges germany's greatest philosopher, was, like schelling, a suabian, and intimately associated with his younger contemporary, first at tübingen and afterwards at jena, where the two friends jointly conducted a philosophical review. but they gradually drifted apart. hegel was not a romanticist, but a classic; not a naturalist, but a humanist. largely influenced by greek thought and greek literature, for which he continued to be an enthusiast through life, he readily accepted, as against kant and fichte, the change from a purely subjective to an objective point of view. but, although he gave some attention to physical science, hegel was less interested in it than his colleague, with whose crude and fanciful metaphysics he also failed to sympathise. with the publication of hegel's first important work, the _phenomenology of mind_ ( ), things came to a breach; for its preface amounts to a declaration of war against the philosophy of romanticism. schelling himself is not named; but there is no mistaking the object of certain picturesque references to "exploding the absolute on us," and "the darkness in which every cow is black." next year hegel became what we should call headmaster of a public school at nuremberg, filling that post for eight years, during which his greatest work, the _system of logic_, in three volumes, was composed and published. he then obtained a chair of philosophy at heidelberg, passing thence to berlin in , where he taught until his death by cholera in . david strauss, who saw the revered teacher a few days before the fatal seizure, describes him first as he appeared in the lecture-room, "looking ever so old, bent and coughing"; then in his home, "looking ten years younger, with clear blue eyes, and showing the most beautiful white teeth when he smiled." he had published a summary of his whole system, under the name of an _encyclopædia of the philosophical sciences_, in , and a _philosophy of law_--which is really a treatise on government--in . his { } sympathies were with bureaucratic absolutism in a modernised form, with napoleon against the german patriots, with the restored prussian government against the new liberalism, with english toryism against the whigs of the reform bill, and finally with the admirers of war against the friends of peace. hegel's collected works, published after his death, fill over twenty good-sized volumes. besides the treatises already mentioned, they include his _lectures on the history of philosophy_, the _philosophy of history_, the _philosophy of religion_, _Æsthetics_, etc., made up with much literary skill from the professor's own notes and from the reports of his hearers. the most permanently valuable of these is the _Æsthetics_; but any student desirous of getting a notion of hegelianism at first hand had better begin with the _philosophy of history_, of which there is a good and cheap english translation in one of bohn's libraries. some general points of view serving to connect the system with its predecessors are all that room can be found for here. as compared with kant, hegel is distinguished above all by his complete abjuration of the agnostic standpoint in epistemology. "the universe is penetrable to thought": an unknowable thing in itself does not exist. indeed, the intelligible reality of things is just what we know best; the unaccountable residuum, if any, lurks in the details of their appearance. so also in greek philosophy hegel holds that the truth was not in the ideal world of plato, but in the self-realising forms of aristotle. as against fichte, hegel will not allow that the reconciliation of the subjective with the objective is an infinitely "far-off divine event"; on the contrary, it is a process being continually realised by ourselves and all about us. in his homely expression, the very { } animals as they eat turn their food into consciousness, in utter disregard of prejudice. but fichte's condemnation of schelling's indifferentism is quite right. _the absolute is mind_. nature exists only as the lower stage, whence spirit emerges to contradict, to confront, and to explain her as the necessary preparation for his supreme self-assertion. and fichte was right in working out his system by the dialectical method of contradiction and solution, as against the dogmatism that summarily decrees the absolute, without taking the trouble to reason it out, in imitation of the plan pursued by the universe in becoming conscious of itself. the most portentous thing about hegel's philosophy is this notion of the world's having, so to speak, argued itself into existence. to rationalise the sum of being, to explain, without assumptions, why there should be anything, and then why it should be as we know it, had been a problem suggested by plato and solved rather summarily by spinoza's challenge to conceive infinite power as non-existing. hegel is more patient and ingenious; but, after all, his superiority merely consists in spinning the web of arbitrary dialectic so fine that we can hardly see the thread. the root-idea is to identify, or rather to confuse, causal evolution with logic. the chain of causes and effects that constitutes the universe is made out to be one with the series of reasons and consequents by which the conclusion is demonstrated. as usual, the equation is effected by a transference of terms from each side to the other. the categories and processes of logic are credited with a life and movement that belongs only to the human reasoner operating with them. and the moving, interacting masses of which the material universe consists are represented as parties to a dialectical { } discussion in which one denies what the other asserts until it is discovered, on lifting the argument to a higher plane, that after all they are agreed. nor is this all. the world as we know it is composed of co-existent elements grouped together or distinguished according to their resemblances and differences as so many natural kinds; and of successive events linked together as causes and effects. but while there is no general law of coexistence except such as may be derived from the collocation of the previously existing elements whence they are derived, there _is_ a law of causal succession--namely, this, that the quantities of mass and energy involved are conserved without loss or gain through all time. now, hegel's way of rationalising or, in plainer words, accounting for the coexistent elements and their qualities, is to bring them under a supposed law of complementary opposition, revived from heracleitus, according to which everything necessarily involves the existence, both in thought and reality, of its contradictory. and the same principle is applied to causal succession--a proceeding which would be fatal to the scientific law of conservation. there is another way of rationalising experience--namely, the theological hypothesis of a supreme intelligence by which the world was created and is governed with a view to the attainment of some ultimate good. and there is a sort of teleology in hegel evidently inspired by his religious education. but the two do not mean the same thing. for he places conscious reason not at the beginning but at the end of evolution. the rationality of things is immanent, not transcendent. purposes somehow work retrospectively so as to determine the course of events towards a good end. that end is self-consciousness--not yours or mine, but the { } world-spirit's consciousness and possession of itself. and this is reached in four ways: in art by intuition, in religion by representation, in philosophy by conception, in history and politics by the realisation of righteousness through the agency of the modern state. hegel looked on this world and this life of ours as the only world and the only life. when heine pointed to the starry skies he told the young poet that the stars were a brilliant leprosy on the face of the heavens, and met the appeal for future compensation with the sarcastic observation: "so you expect a trinkgeld for nursing your sick mother and for not poisoning your brother!" german historians have justly extolled the ingenuity, the subtlety, the originality, the systematising power--unequalled since aristotle--and the enormous knowledge of their country's chief idealist. but this, after all, amounts to no more than claiming for hegel that much of what he said is true and that much is new. the vital question is whether what is new is also true--and this is more than they seem prepared to maintain. schopenhauer. the leaders of the party known in the fourth and fifth decades of the last century as young germany, among whom heinrich heine ( - ) was the most brilliant and famous, were more or less associated with the hegelian school. they were, however, what hegel was not, political revolutionists with a tendency to socialism; while their religious rationalism, unlike his, was openly proclaimed. the temporary collapse in of the movement they initiated brought discredit on idealism as represented by germany's classic philosophers, which also had been seriously damaged by the luminous criticism of trendelenburg, the neo-aristotelian professor at berlin ( - ). { } [illustration: schopenhauer] { } at this crisis attention was drawn to the long-neglected writings of arthur schopenhauer ( - ), which then attained a vogue that they never since have lost. the son of a hamburg banker and of a literary lady whose novels enjoyed some reputation in their day, he was placed from the beginning in a position of greater material and social independence than usually falls to the lot of german thinkers; and to this, combined with the fact that he failed entirely as a university teacher, it is partly due that he wrote about philosophy not like a pedant, but like a man of the world. at the same time the german professors, resenting the intrusion of an outsider on their privileged domain, were strong enough to prevent the reading public from ever hearing of schopenhauer's existence until an article in the _westminster review_ (april, ) astonished germany by the revelation that she possessed a thinker whom the man in the street could understand. schopenhauer found his earliest teachers of philosophy in plato and kant. he then attended fichte's lectures at berlin. at some uncertain date--probably soon after taking his doctor's degree in --at the suggestion of an orientalist he took up the study of the vedanta system. all these various influences converged to impress him with the belief that the things of sense are a delusive appearance under which a fundamental reality lies concealed. according to hegel, the reality is reason; but the romanticists, with schelling at their head, never accepted his conclusion, thinking of the absolute rather as a blind, unconscious substance; still less could it please { } schopenhauer, who sought for the supreme good under the form of happiness conceived as pleasure unalloyed by pain. a gloomy and desponding temperament combined, as in the case of byron and rousseau, with passionately sensuous instincts and anti-social habits, debarred him from attaining it. the loss of a large part of his private fortune, and the world's refusal to recognise his genius, completed what natural temperament had begun; and it only remained for the philosophy of the upanishads to give a theoretic sanction to the resulting state of mind by teaching that all existence is in itself an evil--a position which placed him in still more thoroughgoing antagonism to hegel. it will be remembered that kant's criticism had denied the human mind all knowledge of things in themselves, and that the post-kantian systems had been so many efforts to get at the absolute in its despite. but none had stated the question at issue so clearly as schopenhauer put it, or answered it in such luminous terms. like theirs, his solution is idealist; but the idealism is constructed on new lines. if we know nothing else, we know ourselves; only it has to be ascertained what exactly we are. hegel said that the essence of consciousness is reason, and that reason is the very stuff of which the world is made. no, replies schopenhauer, that is a one-sided scholastic view. much the most important part of ourselves is _not_ reason, but that very unreasonable thing called will--that aimless, hopeless, infinite, insatiable craving which is the source of all our activity and of all our misery as well. _this_ is the thing-in-itself, the timeless, inextended entity behind all phenomena, come to the consciousness of itself, but also of its utter futility, in man. { } the cosmic will presents itself to us objectively under the form of the great natural forces--gravitation, heat, light, electricity, chemical affinity, etc.; then as the organising power of life in vegetables and animals; finally as human self-consciousness and sociability. these, schopenhauer says, are what is really meant by the platonic ideas, and they figure in his philosophy as first differentiations of the primordial will, coming between its absolute unity and the individualised objects and events that fill all space and time. it is the function of architecture, plastic art, painting, and poetry to give each of these dynamic ideas, singly or in combination, its adequate interpretation for the æsthetic sense. one art alone brings us a direct revelation of the real world, and that is music. musical compositions have the power to express not any mere ideal embodiment of the underlying will, but the will itself in all its majesty and unending tragic despair. schopenhauer's theory of knowledge is given in the essay by which he obtained his doctor's degree, _on the four-fold root of the sufficient reason_. notwithstanding this rather alarming title, it is a singularly clear and readable work. the standpoint is a simplification of kant's _critique_. the objects of consciousness offer themselves to the thinking, acting subject as grouped presentations in which there is "nothing sudden, nothing single." ( ) when a new object appears to us, it must have a cause, physical, physiological, or psychological; and this we call the reason why it becomes. ( ) objects are referred to concepts of more or less generality, according to the logical rules of definition, classification, and inference; that is the reason of their being known. ( ) objects are mathematically determined by their position relatively to { } other objects in space and time; that is the reason of their being. ( ) practical objects or ends of action are determined by motives; the motive is the reason why one thing rather than another is done. the last "sufficient reason" takes us to ethics. schopenhauer agrees with kant in holding that actions considered as phenomena are strictly determined by motives, so much so that a complete knowledge of a man's character and environment would enable us to predict his whole course of conduct through life. nevertheless, each man, as a timeless subject, is and knows himself to be free. to reconcile these apparently conflicting positions we must accept plato's theory that each individual's whole fate has been determined by an ante-natal or transcendental choice for which he always continues responsible. nevertheless, cases of religious "conversion" and the like prove that the eternal reality of the will occasionally asserts itself in radical transformations of character and conduct. in ethics schopenhauer distinguishes between two ideals which may be called "relative" and "absolute" good. relative good agrees with the standard of what in england is known as universalistic hedonism--the greatest pleasure combined with the least pain for all sensitive beings, each agent counting for no more than one. personally passionate, selfish, and brutal, schopenhauer still had a righteous abhorrence of cruelty to animals; whereas kant had no such feeling. but positive happiness is a delusion, and no humanity can appreciably diminish the amount of pain produced by vital competition--recognised by our philosopher before darwin--in the world. therefore buddhism is right, and the higher morality bids us extirpate the { } will-to-live altogether by ascetic practices and meditation on the universal vanity of things. suicide is not allowed, for while annihilating the intelligence it would not exclude some fresh incarnation of the will. and the last dying wish of schopenhauer was that the end of this life might be the end of all living for him. herbart. j. f. herbart ( - ) occupies a peculiar position among german idealists. like the others, he distinguishes between reality and appearance; and, like schopenhauer in particular, he altogether rejects hegel's identification of reality with reason. but, alone among post-kantian metaphysicians, he is a pluralist. according to him, things-in-themselves, the eternal existents underlying all phenomena, are not one, but many. so far his philosophy is a return to the pre-kantian system of wolf and leibniz; but whereas the monads of leibniz were credited with an inward principle of evolution carrying them for ever onward through an infinite series of progressive changes, herbart pushes his metaphysical logic to the length of denying all change and all movement to the eternal entities of which reality is made up. herbart is entitled to the credit--whatever it may be worth--of devising a system unlike every other in history; for while hegel has a predecessor in heracleitus, his rival combines the eleatic immobilism with a pluralism that is all his own. it is not, however, on these paradoxes that his reputation rests, but on more solid services as a psychologist and an educationalist. without any acquaintance, as would seem, with the work doing in britain, herbart discarded the old faculty psychology, conceiving mentality as made up { } of "presentations," among which a constant competition for the field of consciousness is going on; and it is to this view that such terms as "inhibition" and "threshold of consciousness" are due. and the enormous prominence now given to the idea of value in ethics may be traced back to the teaching of a thinker whom he greatly influenced, f. e. beneke ( - ). * * * * * { } chapter v. the humanists of the nineteenth century the philosophical movement of the nineteenth century, after the collapse of german idealism, has not been dominated by any single master or any single direction to anything like the same extent as its predecessors. but if we are called on to select the dominant note by which all its products have been more or less coloured and characterised, none more impressive than the note of humanism can be named. as applied to the culture of the renaissance, humanism meant a tendency to concentrate interest on this world rather than on the next, using classic literature as the best means of understanding what man had been and again might be. at the period on which we are entering human interests again become ascendant; but they assume the widest possible range, claiming for their dominion the whole of experience--all that has ever been done or known or imagined or dreamed or felt. hegel's inventory, in a sense, embraced all this; but hegel had a way of packing his trunk that sometimes crushed the contents out of recognition, and a way of opening it that few could understand. besides, much was left out of the trunk that could ill be spared by mankind. aristotle has well said that the soul is in a way everything; and as such its analysis, under the name of { } psychology, has entered largely into the philosophy of the century. theory of knowledge, together with logic, has figured copiously in academic courses, with the result of putting what is actually known before the student in a new and interesting light; but with the result also of developing so much pedantry and scepticism as to give many besides dull fools the impression that divine philosophy is both crabbed and harsh. the french eclectics. in the two centuries after descartes france, so great in science, history, and literature, had produced no original philosopher, although general ideas derived from english thought were extensively circulated for the purpose of discrediting the old order in church and state. when this work had been done with a thoroughness going far beyond the intention of the first reformers a reaction set in, and the demand arose for something more conservative than the so-called sensualism and materialistic atheism of the pre-revolutionary times. a certain originality and speculative disinterestedness must be allowed to maine de biran ( - ), who, some years after fichte--but, as would seem, independently of him--referred to man's voluntary activity as a source of _à priori_ knowledge. a greater immediate impression was produced by royer-collard ( - ), who, as professor at the sorbonne in , imported the common-sense spiritualism of reid ( - ) as an antidote to the then reigning theories of condillac ( - ), who, improving on locke, abolished reflection as a distinct source of our ideas. then came victor cousin ( - ), a brilliant rhetorician, and, after madame de staël, the first to popularise german philosophy in france. as { } professor at the sorbonne in the last years of the bourbon monarchy he distinctly taught a pantheistic absolutism compounded of schelling and hegel; but, whether from conviction or opportunism, this was silently withdrawn, and a so-called eclectic philosophy put in its place. according to cousin, in all countries and all ages, from ancient india to modern europe, speculation has developed under the four contrasted forms of sensualism, idealism, scepticism, and mysticism. each is true in what it asserts, false in what it denies, and the right method is to preserve the positive while rejecting the negative elements of all four. but neither the master nor his disciples have ever consistently answered the vital question, what those elements are. hamilton and the philosophy of the conditioned. among other valuable contributions to the history of philosophy, victor cousin had lectured very agreeably on the philosophy of kant, accepting the master's arguments for the apriorism of space and time, but rejecting his reduction of them to mere subjective forms as against common sense. he had not gone into kant's destructive criticism of all metaphysics, and this was now to be turned against him by an unexpected assailant. sir william hamilton ( - ), afterwards widely celebrated as professor of logic and metaphysics at edinburgh, began his philosophical career by an essay on "the philosophy of the conditioned" in the _edinburgh review_ for october, , controverting the absolutism both of cousin and of his master, schelling. the reviewer had acquired some not very accurate knowledge of kant in germany ten years before; and he uses this, with other rather flimsy { } erudition, to establish the principle that _to think is to condition_, and that therefore the absolute cannot be thought--cannot be conceived. hamilton enjoyed the reputation of having read "all that mortal man had ever written about philosophy"; but this evidently did not include hegel, who certainly had performed the feat declared to be impossible. thirty years later the philosophy of the conditioned attained a sudden but transient notoriety, thanks to the use made of it by hamilton's disciple, h. l. mansel, in his bampton lectures on _the limits of religious thought_ ( ). the object of these was to prove that, as we know nothing about things-in-themselves, nothing told about god in the bible or the creeds can be rejected _à priori_ as incredible. as an apology, the book failed utterly, its only effect being to prepare public opinion for the agnosticism of herbert spencer and huxley. auguste comte. the brilliant audiences that hung spell-bound on the lips of victor cousin as he unrolled before them the infinite, the finite, and the relation between the two, little knew that france's only great philosopher since descartes was working in obscurity among them. auguste comte ( - ), the founder of positivism, belonged to a catholic and legitimist family. by profession a mathematical teacher, he fell early under the influence of the celebrated st. simon, a mystical socialist who exercised a powerful attraction on others besides comte. the connection lasted four years, when they quarrelled; indeed comte's character was such as to make permanent co-operation with him impossible, except on terms of absolute agreement with his opinions and submission to his will. at a { } subsequent period he obtained some fairly well-paid employment at the École polytechnique, but lost it again owing to the injurious terms in which he spoke of his colleagues. in his later years he lived on a small annuity made up by contributions from his admirers. [illustration: auguste comte.] { } auguste comte disliked and despised plato, altogether preferring aristotle to him as a philosopher; but it is fundamentally as a platonist, not as an aristotelian, that he should himself be classed--in this sense, that he valued knowledge above all as the means towards reconstituting society on the basis of an ideal life. and this is the first reason why his philosophy is called positive--to distinguish it as reconstructive from the purely negative thought of the revolution. the second reason is to distinguish it as dealing with real facts from the figments of theology and the abstractions of metaphysics. positive science explains natural events neither by the intervention of supernatural beings nor by the mutual relations of hypostasised concepts, but by verifiable laws of succession and resemblance. turgot was the first to distinguish the theological, metaphysical, and mechanical interpretations as successive stages of a historical evolution ( ); hume was the first to single out the relations of orderly succession and resemblance as the essential elements of real knowledge ( ); comte, with the synthetic genius of the nineteenth century, first combined these isolated suggestions with a wealth of other ideas into a vast theory of human progress set out in the fifth and sixth volumes of his _philosophie positive_--the best sketch of universal history ever written. the positive sciences fall into two great divisions--the concrete, dealing with the actual phenomena as presented in space and time; the abstract, which alone concern philosophy, dealing with their laws. the most important of the abstract sciences is sociology, claimed by comte as his own special creation. the study of this demands a previous knowledge of biology, psychology { } being dismissed as a metaphysical delusion and phrenology put in its place. the science of life presupposes chemistry, before which comes physics, presupposing astronomy, and, as the basis of all, mathematics, divided into the calculus and geometry. at a later period morality was placed as a seventh fundamental science at the head of the whole hierarchy. at a first glance some serious flaws reveal themselves in the imposing logic of this scheme. astronomy as a concrete science ought to have been excluded from the series, its admission being apparently due to the historical circumstance that the most general laws of physics were ascertained through the study of celestial phenomena. but on the same ground geology can no longer be excluded, as its records led to the recognition of the evolution of life; or should evolution be referred to the concrete sciences of zoology and botany, by parity of reasoning human progress should be treated as a branch of universal history--which, in fact, is what comte makes it in his fifth and sixth volumes. it would have been better had he also studied social statics on the historical method. as it is, the volume in which the conditions of social equilibrium are supposed to be established contains only one chapter on the subject, and that is very meagre, consisting of some rather superficial observations on family life and the division of labour. no doubt the matter receives a far more thorough discussion in the author's later work, _politique positive_. but this merely embodies his own plan of reorganisation for the society of the future, and therefore should count not as science, but as art. the positivist theory of social dynamics is that all { } branches of knowledge pass through three successive stages already described as the theological, the metaphysical, and the scientific. and this advance is accompanied by a parallel evolution on the governmental side from the military to the industrial régime, with a revolutionary or transitional period answering to metaphysical philosophy. to this scheme it might be objected that the parallelism is merely accidental. a scientific view of nature and a profound knowledge of her laws is no doubt far more conducive to industry than a superstitious view; but it is also more favourable to the successful prosecution of war, which, indeed, always has been an industry like another. nor, to judge by modern experience, does it look as if a government placed in the hands of a country's chief capitalists--which was what comte proposed--would be less militant in its general disposition than the parliamentary governments which he condemns as "metaphysical." in fact, it is by theologians and metaphysicians that our modern horror of war has been inspired rather than by scientists. the great idea of comte's life, that the positive sciences, philosophically systematised, are destined to supply the basis of a new religion surpassing catholicism in its social efficacy, seems a delusion really inherited from one of his pet aversions, plato. it arose from a profound misconception of what catholicism had done, and a misconception, equally profound, of the means by which its priesthood worked. in spite of comte's denials, the leverage was got not by appeals to the heart, but by appeals to that future judgment with which the preaching of righteousness and temperance was associated by st. paul, his supposed precursor in religion, as aristotle was his precursor in philosophy. { } the worship of humanity, or, as it has been better called, the service of man, is a great and inspiring thought. only it is not a religion, but a metaphysical idea, derived by comte from the philosophers of the eighteenth century, and by them through imperial rome from the humanists and stoics of ancient athens. j. s. mill. john stuart mill ( - ) was, like comte, a platonist in the sense of valuing knowledge chiefly as an instrument of social reform. he was indeed bred up by his father, james mill ( - ), and by jeremy bentham as a prophet of the new utilitarianism as comte was, to some extent, trained by st. simon to substitute a new order for that which the revolution had destroyed. mill, however, had been educated on the lines of greek liberty rather than in the tradition of roman authority; while both were largely affected by the romanticism current in their youth. the worship of women, revived from the age of chivalry, entered into the romantic movement; and it may be mentioned in this connection that mill calls mrs. taylor, the lady with whom he fell in love at twenty-four and married eighteen years later, "the inspirer and in part the author of all" that was best in his writings; while comte refers his religious conversion to madame clotilde de vaux, the object of his adoration in middle life. it seems probable, however, from the little we know of mrs. taylor--whom carlyle credits with "the keenest insight and the royallest volition"--that her influence was the reverse of clotilde's. if anything, she attached mill still more firmly to the cause of pure reason. it has been mentioned how kant's metaphysical { } agnosticism was played out by hamilton against cousin. a little later whewell, the cambridge historian of physical science, imported kant's theory of necessary truth in opposition to the empiricism of popular english thought, and kant's categorical imperative in still more express contradiction to bentham's utilitarian morality. now mill, educated as he had been on the associationist psychology and in the central line of the english epistemological tradition, rejected the german apriorism as false in itself, while more particularly hating it as, in his opinion, a dangerous enemy to all social progress. for to him what people called their intuitions, whether theoretic or practical, were merely the time-honoured prejudices in which they had been brought up, and the contradictory of which they could not conceive. comte similarly interpreted the metaphysical stage of thought as the erection into immutable principles of certain abstract ideas whose value--if they had any--was merely relative and provisional. mill, with his knowledge of history, might have remembered that past thought, beginning with plato, shows no such connection between intuitionism and immobility or reaction, while such experientialists as hobbes and hume have been political tories. but in his own time the _à priori_ philosophy went hand in hand with conservatism in church and state, so he set himself to explode it in his _system of logic_ ( ). mill's _logic_, the most important english contribution to philosophy since hume, is based on hume's theory of knowledge, amended and supplemented by some german and french ideas. it is conceded to kant that mathematical truths are synthetic, not analytic. it is not contained in the idea of two and { } two that they make four, nor in the idea of two straight lines that they cannot enclose a space. such propositions are real additions to our knowledge; but it is only experience that justifies us in accepting them. what constitutes their peculiar certainty is that they can be verified by trial on imagined numbers and lines, without reference to external objects. but by what right we generalise from mental experience to all experience mill does not explain. hume's analysis of causation into antecedence and sequence of phenomena is accepted by mill as it was accepted by kant; but the law that every change must have a cause is affirmed, in adhesion to dr. thomas brown ( - ), with more distinctness than by hume. as laplace put it, the whole present state of the universe is a product of its whole preceding state. but we only know this truth by experience; and we can conceive a state of things where phenomena succeed one another by a different law or without any law at all. mill himself was ready to believe that causation did not obtain at some very remote point of space; though what difference remoteness could make, except we suppose it to be causal--which would be a reassertion of the law--he does not explain; nor yet what warrant we have for assuming that causation holds through all time, or at any future moment of time. next to the law of universal causation inductive science rests on the doctrine of natural kinds. the material universe is known to consist of a number of substances--namely, the chemical elements and their combinations, so constituted that a certain set of characteristic properties are invariably associated with an indefinite number of other properties. thus, if in a strange country a certain mineral answers the usual { } tests for arsenic, we know that a given dose of it will destroy life; and we are equally certain that if the spectroscopic examination of a new star shows the characteristic lines of iron, a metal possessing all the properties of iron as we find it in our mines is present in that distant luminary. according to mill, we are justified in drawing that sweeping inference on the strength of a single well-authenticated observation, because we know by innumerable observations on terrestrial substances that natural kinds possessing such index qualities do exist, whereas there is not a single instance of a substance possessing those qualities without the rest. for mill, as for hume, reality means states of consciousness and the relations between them. matter he defines as a permanent possibility of sensation; mind as a permanent possibility of thought and feeling. but the latter definition is admittedly not satisfactory. for a stream of thoughts and feelings which is proved by memory to have the consciousness of itself seems to be something more than a mere stream. all explanations must end in an ultimate inexplicability. god may be conceived as a series of thoughts and feelings prolonged through eternity; and it is a logically defensible hypothesis that the order of nature was designed by such a being, although the amount of suffering endured by living creatures excludes the notion of a creator at once beneficent and omnipotent. and if the darwinian theory were established, the case for a designing intelligence would collapse. personally mill believed neither in a god nor in a future life. in morals mill may be considered the creator of what henry sidgwick, in his _methods of ethics_ ( ), called universalistic hedonism. the english moralists of the { } eighteenth century had set up the greatest happiness of the greatest number as the ideal end of action; but they did not hold that each individual could be expected to pursue anything but his own happiness; the object of bentham ( - ) being to make the two coincide. kant showed that the rule of right excluded any such accommodation, and a crisis in his own life led mill to adopt the same conclusion. afterwards he rather confused the issues by distinguishing between higher and lower pleasures, leaving experts to decide which were the pleasures to be preferred. the universalistic standard settles the question summarily by estimating pleasures according to their social utility. mill fully sympathised with comte's demand for social reorganisation as a means towards the moral end. but, with his english and protestant traditions, he had no faith in the creation of a new spiritual power with an elaborate religious code and ritual as the best machinery for the purpose. in his opinion, the claims of the individual to extended liberty of thought and action, not their restriction, were what first needed attention. second to this--if second at all--came the necessity for reforming representative government on the lines of an enlarged franchise and a readjusted electoral system with plural suffrage determined by merit, votes for women, and a contrivance for giving minorities a weight proportioned to their numbers. the problem of poverty was to be dealt with by restrictions on the increase of population and on the amount of inheritable property, the maximum of which ought not to exceed a modest competence. among the noble characters presented by the history of philosophy we may distinguish between the heroic and the saintly types. to the former in modern { } times belong giordano bruno, fichte, and to some extent comte; to the latter, spinoza, berkeley, and kant. to the second class we may surely add john stuart mill, whom gladstone called "the saint of rationalism," and of whom auguste laugel said, "he was not sincere--he was sincerity itself." herbert spencer. herbert spencer ( - ) was the son of a nonconformist country schoolmaster, but was educated chiefly by his uncle thomas, an evangelical clergyman of the church of england. a radical reformer of the old school, thomas spencer seems to have indoctrinated his youthful charge with the germinal principles afterwards generalised into a whole cosmic philosophy. he had a passion for justice realised under the form of liberty, individual responsibility, and self-help. in his opinion, until it was modified by private misfortunes, everything served everybody right. beginning as an economical administrator of the new poor law, he at last became an advocate of its total abolition; and, alone among fifteen thousand clergymen, he was an active member of the anti-corn law league, besides supporting the separation of church and state. at twenty-two herbert spencer accepted and summed up this policy under the form of a general hostility to state interference with individual liberty, supporting it by a reference to the reign of natural law in all orders of existence. in his first great work, _social statics_, the principle of _laissez-faire_ received its full systematic development as the restriction of state action to the defence of liberty against internal and external aggression, the raising of taxes for any other purpose being unjust, as is also private ownership of { } land, which is by nature the common heritage of all. spencer subsequently came to abandon land nationalisation, probably from alarm at its socialistic implications. [illustration: herbert spencer.] the doctrine of natural law and liberty carried with it for spencer a strong repugnance not only to protectionism in politics, but also to miracles in theology. the profession of journalism brought him into touch { } with a freethinking set in london. whether under their influence, or shelley's, or by some spontaneous process, his religious convictions evaporated by twenty-eight into the agnosticism which thenceforth remained their permanent expression. there might or not be a first cause; if there was, we know nothing about it. at this stage lyell's attempted refutation of lamarck converted spencer to the belief in man's derivation from some lower animal by a process of gradual adaptation. thus the scion of an educationalist family came to interpret the whole history of life on our planet as an educative process. it seemed, however, as if there was one fatal exception to the scheme of naturalistic optimism. the rev. thomas malthus had originally published his _essay on population_ ( ) as a telling answer to the "infidel" godwin's _political justice_ ( ), the bolder precursor of _social statics_. the argument was that the tendency of population to outrun the means of subsistence put human perfectibility out of the question. it had been suggested by the idealists, mill among the number, that the difficulty might be obviated by habitual self-restraint on the part of married people. but spencer, with great ingenuity, made the difficulty its own solution. the pressure of population on the means of subsistence is the source of all progress; and of progress not only in discoveries and inventions, but also, through its increased exercise, in the instrument which effects them--that is, the human brain. now, it is a principle of aristotle's, revived by modern biology, that individuation is antagonistic to reproduction; and increasing individuation is the very law of developing life, shown above all in the growing power of life's chief instrument, which is thought's organ, the brain. for, as spencer proceeded { } to show in his next work, the _principles of psychology_, life means a continuous series of adjustments of internal to external relations. therefore the rate of multiplication must go on falling with the growth of intellectual and moral power until it only just suffices to balance the loss by death. the next step was to revive laplace's nebular hypothesis, and to connect it through lyell's uniformitarian geology with lamarck's developmental biology, thereby extending the same evolutionary process through the whole history of the universe. nor was this all. milne-edwards, by another return to aristotle, had pointed to the "physiological division of labour" as a mark of ascending organic perfection, to which spencer adds integration of structure as its obverse side, at the same time extending the world-law, already made familiar in part through its industrial applications by adam smith, to all orders of social activity. finally, differentiation and integration were stretched back from living to lifeless matter, thus bringing astronomy and geology, which had already entered into the causal series of cosmic transformations, under one common law of evolution; while at the same time, seeing it to be generally admitted that inorganic changes originated from the operation of purely mechanical forces, they suggested that mechanism, without teleology, could adequately explain organic evolution also. finally came the great discovery of darwin and wallace, with its extension of malthus's law to the whole world of living things. spencer had just touched, without grasping, the same idea years before. he now gladly accepted natural selection as supplementing without superseding lamarck's theory of spontaneous adaptation. { } to complete even in outline the vast sweep of his projected synthetic philosophy two steps more remained for spencer to take. the law of evolution had to be brought under the recently-discovered law of the conservation of energy, or, as he called it, the persistence of force, and the whole of unified science had to be reconciled with religion. the first problem was solved by interpreting evolution as a redistribution of matter and motion--a process in which, of course, energy is neither lost nor gained. the second problem was solved by reducing faith and knowledge to the common denominator of agnosticism--a method that found more favour with positivists (in the wide sense) than with christian believers. herbert spencer was disappointed to find that people took more interest in the portico (as he called it in a letter to the present writer)--that is to say, the metaphysical introduction to his philosophical edifice--than in its interior. he probably had some suspicion that the portico was mere lath and plaster, while he felt sure that the columns and architraves behind it were of granite. the public, however, besides their perennial interest in religion, might be excused for giving more attention to even a baroque exterior with some novelty about it than to the formalised eclecticism of what stood behind it. unfortunately, they soon found that the alleged reconciliation was a palpable sham. religion is nothing if not a revelation, and an unknowable god is no god at all. even the pretended proofs of that poor residual deity involved their author in the transparent self-contradiction of calling the universe the manifestation of an unknowable power. then the relations between this power (such as it was) and the energy (or force) whose conservation (or persistence) was the very first { } of first principles seemed hard to adjust. either energy is created, or it is not. in the one case, what becomes of its eternity? in the other case, what need is there to assume a power (knowable or not) behind it? science will not shrink back before such a phantom, nor will religion adore it. such faulty building in the portico prepares us for somewhat unsteady masonry within; and in fact none holds together except what has been transported bodily from other temples. in the past history of the universe, considered as a "rearrangement of matter and motion," disintegration and assimilation play quite as great a part as integration and differentiation. such formulas have no advantage over the metaphysical systematisation of aristotle, and they give us as little power either to predict or to direct. will war be abolished at some future time, or property equalised or abolished, or morality exalted, or religion superseded? spencer was ready with his answer; but the law of evolution could not prove it true. nevertheless, his name will long be associated with evolution as a world-wide process, though neither in the way of original discovery nor of complete generalisation, and far less of successful application to modern problems; but rather of diffusion and popularisation, even as other valuable ideas have been impressed on the public mind by other philosophies at a vast expense of ingenuity, knowledge, and labour, but not at greater expense than the eventual gain has been worth. the english hegelians. hegel's philosophy first drew attention in england through its supposed connection with strauss's mythic theory of the gospels and baur's theory of new { } testament literature as a product of party conflicts and compromises in the primitive church. rightly interpreted as a system of pantheism, it was decried and ridiculed by orthodox theologians in the name of religion and common sense, while cherished by the advanced broad church as a means of symbolising away the creeds they continued to repeat. then the triumph of spencer's agnosticism in the middle victorian period ( - ) suggested an appeal to a logic whose object had been to resolve the negations of eighteenth-century enlightenment in the synthesis of a higher unity. the first pronunciation in this sense was _the secret of hegel_ ( ), by dr. hutchison stirling ( - ), a writer of geniality and genius, who, writing from the hegelian standpoint, tried to represent the english rationalists of the day as a superficial and retrograde school. it was a bold but unsuccessful attempt to plant the banner of the hegelian right on british soil. by attacking darwinism stirling put himself out of touch with the general movement of thought. professor william wallace ( - ), john caird ( - ), and his brother edward caird ( - ) inclined more or less to the left, as also does lord haldane (_b._ ) in his _gifford lectures_ ( ); and all have the advantage over stirling of writing in a clearer if less picturesque style. t. h. green ( - ) is sometimes quoted as a hegelian, but his intellectual affinities were rather with fichte. according to him, reality is the thought of an eternal consciousness, of which personality need not be predicated, while the endless duration of personal spirits seems to be denied. another idealist, f. h. bradley (_b._ )--perhaps the greatest living english { } thinker--develops in his _appearance and reality_ ( ) a metaphysical system which, though absolutist in form, is, to me at least, in substance practically indistinguishable from the dogmatic agnosticism of herbert spencer, and even more destructive of the popular theism. finally the writings of dr. j. e. mctaggart (_b._ ), teaching as they do a doctrine of developmental personal immortality without a god, show a tendency to combine hegel with lotze. the german eclectics. by general consent the most serious and influential of german systematic thinkers since hegel is r. h. lotze ( - ). his philosophy is built up of materials derived in varying proportions from all his german predecessors, the most distinctive idea being pluralism, probably suggested in the first instance by herbart, whom he succeeded as professor at göttingen. but lotze discards the rigid monads of his master for the more intelligible soul-substances of leibniz--or rather of bruno--whose example he also follows in his attempt to combine pluralism with monism. very strenuous efforts are made to give the unifying principle the character of a personal god; but the suspicion of a leaning to pantheism is not altogether eluded. more original and far more uncompromising is the work of ed. v. hartmann ( - ). personally he enjoyed the twofold distinction--whatever it may be worth--of having served as an officer for a short time in the prussian army, and of never having taught in a university. his great work, published at twenty-seven, appeared under the telling title of the _philosophy of the unconscious_. it won immediate popularity, and reached its eleventh edition in . hartmann adopts, { } with some slight attenuation, schopenhauer's pessimism, and his metaphysics with a considerable emendation. in this new version the world is still conceived as will and representation; but whereas for schopenhauer the intellective side had been subordinated to the volitional, with hartmann the two are co-equal and intimately united, together forming that "unconscious" which is the new absolute. in this way reason again becomes, what it had been with hegel, a great cosmic principle; only as the optimistic universe had argued itself _into_ existence, so conversely the pessimistic universe has to argue itself _out of_ existence. as in the process of developing differentiation, the volitional and intellective sides draw apart, the unconscious becomes self-conscious, and thus awakens to the terrible mistake it committed in willing to be. thenceforth the whole of evolution is determined by the master-thought of how not to be. the problem is how to annul the creative will. and the solution is to divide it into two halves so opposed that the one shall be the negation and destruction of the other. there will be then, not indeed a certainty, but an equal chance of definitive self-annihilation and eternal repose. thus, the immediate duty for mankind, as also their predestined task, is the furtherance of scientific and industrial progress as a means towards this consummation, which is likewise their predestined end. a religious colouring is given to the process by representing it as an inverted christian scheme in which man figures as the redeemer of god--_i.e._ the absolute--from the unspeakable torments to which he is now condemned by the impossibility of satisfying his will. like hartmann, friedrich nietzsche ( - ), the greatest writer of modern germany, took his start from { } schopenhauer, but broke with pessimism at an early date, having come to disbelieve in the hedonism on which it is founded. his restless vanity drove him to improve on darwinism by interpreting evolution as the means towards creating what he called the superman--that is, a race as much superior to us as we are to the apes. progress, however, is not to be in the direction of a higher morality, but of greater power--the will-to-power, not the will-to-live, being the essence of what is. later in life nietzsche revived the stoic doctrine that events move, and have moved through all time, in a series of recurring cycles, each being the exact repetition of its predecessor. it is a worthless idea, and nietzsche, who had been a greek professor, must have known where he got it; but the megalomania to which he eventually succumbed prevented his recognising the debt. by a merited irony of fate this worshipper of the napoleonic type will survive only as a literary moralist in the history of thought. the modern revolt against metaphysical systemisation, with or without a theological colouring, took in germany the form of two distinct philosophical currents. the first is scientific materialism, or, as some of its advocates prefer to call it, energism. this began about , but boasts two great living representatives, the biologist haeckel and the chemist ostwald. in their practical aims these men are idealists; but their admission of space and time as objective realities beyond which there is nothing, and their repudiation of agnosticism, distinguish them from the french and english positivists. the other and more powerful school is known as neo-kantianism. it numbers numerous adherents in the german universities, and also in those of france and italy, representing various { } shades of opinion united by a common reference to kant's first critique, dissociated from its concessions to deism, as the true starting-point of modern thought. the latest developments. since the beginning of the twentieth century the interest in philosophy and the ability devoted to its cultivation have shown no sign of diminution. two new doctrines in particular have become subjects of world-wide discussion. i refer to the theory of knowledge called pragmatism, and to the metaphysics of professor henri bergson. both are of so revolutionary, so contentious, and so elusive a character as to preclude any discussion or even outline of the new solutions for old problems which they claim to provide. but i would recommend the study of both, and especially of bergson, to all who imagine that the possibilities of speculation are exhausted, or that we are any nearer finality and agreement than when heracleitus first glorified war as the father of all things, and contradiction as the central spring of life. * * * * * { } bibliography kuno fischer. _geschichte der neuern philosophie._ nine vols. fourth ed.; heidelberg, - . (comes down to schopenhauer.) erdmann. _geschichte der philosophie._ vol. ii. fourth ed.; berlin, . (comes down to lotze; third ed.; trans. by w. s. hough; london, .) windelband. _geschichte der neuern philosophie._ two vols. fifth ed. (comes down to herbart and beneke. there is an english trans. of windelband's _general history of philosophy_, by j. h. tufts, new york, . in his contribution to the general history of philosophy in the _kultur der gegenwart_, berlin, , windelband includes a brief but useful summary of pragmatism and bergson.) levy-bruhl. _history of modern philosophy in france._ trans. by miss coblence. london, . forsyth, t. m. _english philosophy: a study of its methods and general development._ london, . (a. & c. black.) giordano bruno. _opere italiane._ ed. p. lagarde. göttingen, . ---- _opera latine conscripta._ naples and florence, - . mcintyre, j. l. _life of giordano bruno._ london, . bacon, francis. _works and life._ ed. by ellis and spedding. fourteen vols. - .--works. one vol. ed. by ellis, spedding, and robertson. (routledge.)--_novum organum._ ed. by t. fowler. oxford, . abbott, edwin. _francis bacon._ london, . church, r. w. _bacon_ (english men of letters). london, . hobbes, thomas. _works english and latin._ ed. sir wm. molesworth. sixteen vols. london, - . robertson, g. c. _hobbes._ london, (blackwood's philosophical classics). stephen, sir leslie. _hobbes._ london, (english men of letters). ---- _english thought in the eighteenth century._ second ed.; two vols. london, . ---- _the english utilitarians._ three vols. london, . { } descartes. _oeuvres._ ed. v. cousin. eleven vols. paris, - . a new edition is in course of publication.--english trans. of the _method and the meditations_ in the scott library. london, .--_life_, by elizabeth haldane. london, . malebranche. _oeuvres._ three vols. ed. jules simon. paris, . spinoza. _opera._ ed. van vloten and land. two vols. the hague, - . ---- _life and philosophy._ by sir fr. pollock. london, ; second ed., . ---- _a study of._ by james martineau. london, . ----_'s ethics, a study of._ by h. h. joachim. oxford, . ---- trans. of his principal works. by elwes in bohn's library. two vols., - . also everyman's library. (dent.) ---- _ethics._ trans. by hale white, revised by amelia stirling. london, . ---- _leben und lehre._ von j. frendenthal. . leibniz. _philosophische schriften._ seven vols. ed. c. j. gerhardt. berlin, - .--_the philosophy of leibniz._ by bertrand russell. cambridge, . locke, john. _works._ nine vols. london, . ---- _essay concerning human understanding._ two vols.; in bohn's library. london, . ---- _life of._ by fox bourne. two vols. london, . ---- by thomas fowler. london, (english men of letters). ---- by prof. a. c. fraser; in blackwood's phil. classics. . berkeley, george. _works and life._ ed. a. c. fraser. four vols. oxford, . ---- by fraser (philosophical classics). . hume, david. _philosophical works._ four vols. ed. green and grose. london, - . ---- by t. h. huxley (english men of letters). new edition. london, . kant. _werke._ ed. rosenkranz and schubert. twelve vols. - . two new editions, including the correspondence, are now in course of publication at berlin. there are english translations of all the principal works. ---- _life and doctrine._ by f. paulsen; trans. by creighton and lefevre. london, . fichte, j. g. _werke._ eleven vols. - . trans. of his more popular works by dr. w. smith. two vols. london, . adamson. _fichte._ in blackwood's phil. classics. . { } schelling, f. w. j. _werke._ fourteen vols. stuttgart, - . watson, prof. j. _schelling's transcendental idealism_, chicago, . hegel, g. w. f. _werke._ nineteen vols. in twenty-one. leipzig, - . hegel. by prof. e. caird (philosophical classics for english readers.) edinburgh, . hegel's philosophies of _law, religion, history, mind, his history of philosophy_, and the smaller _logic_, have been translated into english. schopenhauer. _werke._ six volumes in the reclam series. leipzig, . ribot. _la philosophie de schopenhauer._ ninth ed.; paris, . wallace, prof. w. _life of schopenhauer_ (great writers series). london, . whittaker, thomas. "schopenhauer," in _philosophies ancient and modern_. london, . schopenhauer's _world as will and idea._ trans. by haldane and kemp. three vols. london, - .--essays. trans. by belfort bax (bohn's library). london, . schopenhauer. _studies._ consisting of translations by t. bailey saunders. seven vols. london, - .--other essays translated by madame hillebrand (london, ) and by a. b. ballock (london, ) herbart, j. f. _werke._ ed. kehrbach. fifteen vols. _ff._ wagner. _vollständige darstellung d. lehre herbarts._ . hayward, f. h. _the student's herbart._ . hamilton, sir w. _discussions on philosophy._ second ed. london, . comte, auguste. _cours de philosophie positive._ five vols. paris, - .--_politique positive._ four vols. paris, - . caird, edward. _the social philosophy of auguste comte._ glasgow, . levy-bruhl. _the philosophy of auguste comte._ english trans. london, . whewell, wm. _philosophy of the inductive sciences._ london, . mill, j. s. _a system of logic._ two vols. london, .--_on liberty._ london, .--_utilitarianism._ london, .--_examination of sir william hamilton's philosophy._ london, . whittaker, t. "comte and mill," in _philosophies ancient and modern._ london, . spencer, herbert. _first principles._ london, .--_essays._ three vols. london, .--_autobiography._ london, . macpherson, hector. _herbert spencer._ london, . { } green, t. h. _prolegomena to ethics._ oxford, . green, t. h. _works._ three vols. london, - . bradley, f. h. _appearance and reality._ third ed. london, . lotze, h. _mikrocosmus._ - .--_system der philosophie._ - .--english trans. of the _microc._ two vols. edinburgh, .--of the _metaphysics._ two vols. oxford. . jones, sir henry. _the philosophy of lotze._ glasgow, . hartmann, ed. von. _die philosophie des unbewussten._ . english trans. by w. c. coupland. three vols. london, . nietzsche, fr. _werke._ leipzig, _ff._ english trans. in fourteen vols. edinburgh. (t. n. foulis.)--d. halévy, _la vie de nietzsche._ paris, . russell, bertrand. _the problems of philosophy_ (home university library). london, . * * * * * { } index abbott, e. a., quoted, agnosticism, , , , , anaximander, aquinas, st. thomas, aristotle, , , , , , , , , , , arnold, matthew, athens, _f._ atomism, revival of, , averroes, bacon, roger, bacon, francis, _ff._, , , , baur, f. c., bayle, pierre, beneke, f. e., bergson, henri, berkeley, bishop, , _ff._; _theory of vision_, ; idealism, _ff._, boyle, robert, bradley, f. h., , brahe, tycho, brown, dr. thomas, bruno, giordano, _ff._, , , , byron, caird, edward, caird, john, _ib._ calvinism, catholicism and philosophy, _ff._ causation. _see_ hume, kant, hegel, mill christianity. _see_ catholicism christina, queen, _f._ church, dean, quoted, collier, arthur, collins, anthony, columbus, comte, auguste, _ff._; classification of the sciences, ; _politique positive_, _ib._; philosophy of history, , condillac, copernicanism, _f._ cousin, victor, dante, _f._ darwin, charles, democritus, descartes, , _ff._; on belief, , , , , duns scotus, eclectics, french, _f._; german, ego, the absolute, elizabeth, princess, empedocles, epicurus, , , epistemology, eriugena, john scotus, , _ethica_, spinoza's, fichte, j. g., _ff._; his definition of god, ; as german patriot, _f._; his idealism, _ff._; ethical standpoint, ; later teaching, ficino, marsilio, final causes in modern philosophy, ; in plato, _ib._ form and matter, , , galileo, , gassendi, geulincx, , , gilbert, , godwin, william, goethe, , green, t. h., haeckel, ernst, haldane, lord, haldane, miss e. s., quoted, hamilton, sir william, f., hartmann, ed. von, f. harvey, hegel, g. f. w., ; on spinoza, , , , _ff._; _phenomenology of mind_, ; _science of logic_, _ib._; _encyclopædia_, _ib._; _philosophy of law_, _ib._; _Æsthetics_, ; _philosophy of history_, _ib._; his didactic method, _ff._; negation of supernatural religion, , , , hegelians, the english, _ff._ heine, , heracleitus, , herbart, j. f., , hobbes, thomas, _ff._, , , hooker, richard, and the social contract, humanism in the nineteenth century, hume, david, _ff._; character as a historian, ; theory of causation, _ff._; attitude towards theism, , ; a precursor of comte, ; and of mill, _ff._ huxley, t. h., huyghens on descartes, induction, baconian, innate ideas, , john of salisbury, justinian, kant, immanuel, ff.; his nebular hypothesis, ; on synthetic and analytic judgments, _ff._; on space and time, _ff._; _critique of pure reason_, _ff._; on causation, _f._; moral and religious philosophy, ff., , , , , , kepler, , , klopstock, { } lamarck, , laplace, leibniz, g. w., _ff._; optimism, _ff._; monadology, ; determinism, ; pre-established harmony, _ib._, lewes, g. h., , locke, john, , _ff._; on toleration, ; his proof of theism, ; moral inconsistency, _f._, , , lotze, r. h., lucretius, , , luther, lyell, sir charles, macaulay on bacon, ; on hobbes, , mctaggart, dr. j. e., maine de biran, malebranche, _ff._, , , malthus, mansel, h. l., materialists, german, mill, j. s., _ff._; _system of logic_, ; metaphysics, ; theology, _ib._; ethics, _f._; politics, ; character, milne-edwards, monadism, , napier, neo-kantianism, neo-platonism, f. newton, isaac, , nicolas of cusa, nietzsche, friedrich, _f._ norris, john, occam, occasionalism, ostwald, pantheism, , parmenides, pascal, plotinus, , , , positivism. see comte power, idea of, in spinoza, ; how connected with causation, pragmatism, proclus, pythagoreans, reality, degrees of, reid, thomas, , renaissance, scientific activity of the, rousseau, , st. simon, schelling, f. w. j., _ff._; natural philosophy, ; _transcendental idealism_, _f._; romanticism, ; absolutism, , schiller, f. c. s., quoted, schopenhauer, arthur, , _ff._; pessimism, ; metaphysics, _ff._; ethics, _f._, sextus empiricus, shaftesbury, lord, author of the _characteristics_, shelley, sidgwick, henry, smith, adam, social contract, spencer, herbert, , ff.; _social statics_, ; _psychology_, ; _synthetic philosophy_, ; on religion, _ib._; formula of evolution, , spencer, rev. thomas, spinoza, , _ff._; _tractatus theologico-politicus_, ; not a mystic, ; ethics, _f._; return to stoicism, , , , , , , staël, madame de, stirling, dr. hutchison, strauss, david, , taylor, mrs., and j. s. mill, temple, archbishop, theism. _see_ descartes, locke, berkeley, hume, kant, fichte, mill _timæus_, plato's, toland, turgot, vaux, clotilde de, and comte, voltaire and optimism, vries, simon de and spinoza, wallace, a. r., wallace, prof. william, whewell, william, wordsworth, wycliffe, * * * * * transcriber's note: the following changes were made: page . "passed with progressive reflection": 'progress-sive' on line break in original. page . "only defend on aesthetic grounds": 'grounps' in original.